Hollywood

I am an unabashed admirer of Hollywood. What “grinds my gears” as the infamous Peter Griffin would say, is what that implies to others. When I say “I love Hollywood”, people tend to think of reality television, MTV, VH1, all the ABC Family and CW teen dramas, anything involving the lives of celebrities, Fox News, perhaps MSNBC, and media in general. Let’s get one thing, no, several things straight; President Obama, if we may call him a celebrity, is not an actor (okay, well, maybe an actor of a different sort); whether shake cams grasp the uninteresting lives of New Jersey and South Beach alcoholics or not does not interest me; when Republicans force the shutdown of the government and Fox News dubs it a “slimdown” to make it sound less ominous, I am not thinking about the BAFTA Awards or Los Angeles Film Festival; when Kate Gosselin announces her twenty-somethingth child, I am even less interested than when Gwyneth Paltrow announces her third. If you can see where I am going with this, then I need not continue with the examples.

     One thing that bears mentioning is that the aforementioned examples or scenarios do, in fact, concern me as a human being first and foremost, and as an American. What I do not appreciate is the fact that I must do more than just explain what it is, exactly, that I love about Hollywood, but that I must defend myself. No one has to muster a defense for loving literature or theatre (at least no one should have to), so why must I defend my love of Hollywood and film? The answer is unfortunately simple; today, film, media, and world affairs are all closely related, at best, if not completely intertwined. Film is as direct to the minds of the people as commercials and news and the politics of everyone’s respectful representatives. Film can be used as propaganda telling us what we need to stand for or against and it is just as prone to ignorance and distraction as the rest of media and its coverage.
     When film becomes unarguably artful, when it puts down the gavel to experiment with the intimacy of personal life and I must continue to defend my position on Hollywood, that’s where I really snap. I suppose I dig myself a shallow grave when I say I enjoy the films of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski. Yes, yes, we can argue that the former may or may not be guilty of being the worst of our society and, thus, his character remains ambiguous enough to admire, but we all know the latter is guilty of the crime considering, well, everything surrounding him. But their work deserves a different light. We wouldn’t say the same of Jack the Ripper and his “work”, and if we were to find an equivalent in film we could not find one; if we were to find out, one day, that Michael Bay was involved in snuff film, then maybe we would have a comparison to consider. When I cannot enjoy an art-house film because people want to play judge, jury, and executioner, I get a little upset. If Woody Allen can be brought up on charges, found guilty in a fair trial by an impartial jury, and serve jail time, if Roman Polanski can be extradited to the United States to face the full wrath of the American justice system, I have no complaints— justice is highly important. But I will not stand to see art put up on trial in a courtroom or in the media.
     In short and in general, I am speaking of the life form of film, Hollywood, and film as art and the writers, directors, actors, makeup and lighting artists, photographers, and set designers who collaborate to bring us art. I hope this explanation makes others think differently of the question, "What does it mean to be an admirer of Hollywood?" Is it really drama breaking the fourth wall or how that appeals to the idea that “this can be me one day”? Or is it the character or the actor? Is it the story or the writing? The special effects that can only exist on the screen? Is it simply and generally the awe of the power that it holds over people? It is truly a loaded question, a personal question, and there is just so much more to say about it than "I like that movie."

The credibility of Fox News is sinking and why

     Stating that Fox News is the least trusted news source for Americans is generally accepted as “stating the obvious” (even some conservatives must make up the 46% of people who outright condemn the network). But a recent poll by the New Public Policy Polling finds Fox News Network at a four year low in approval rating; in addition to this, those who do not trust Fox News Network are most likely to trust any alternatives to the network for their news (even renowned liberally leaning networks such as MSNBC).

     We have to ask ourselves, though, why are less and less people buying into the conservative bias? A liberal might say “because people are becoming more enlightened” (a less polite liberal may say “because people are becoming less and less stupid”). In any case, the intelligence of Fox News viewers and former viewers likely has nothing to do with this outcome.

     Consider this: the Republican Party, specifically, is changing— it is most likely breaking apart, at best, or outright falling apart, at the worst. If we consider the conservative-Republican favoring bias which Fox News Network represents, we have to ask ourselves how is Fox breaking apart and/or in which direction is Fox News heading?

     Sparing ourselves the liberal sentiment (“Fox News is going down”) and taking the question seriously— as though bias is a neutral or good thing— we can see that Fox News is becoming less and less popular amongst Republicans and conservatives in general because it is only appealing to the neo-liberals and ultra conservatives (remember, neo-liberal and ultra conservative are essentially the same thing nowadays).

     Now we ask why Fox News is appealing to a specific grouping of conservatives rather than the entire body of conservatives. The answer is actually quite simple: an agenda must go to extremes in the hopes that falling short may result in the desired outcome. When such a rift occurs in the same movement, all that agenda can serve are the targets that have clung to those extremes.

     Therefore, it's my prediction that as Republicans in the socio-political realm separate themselves as “Tea Party” members or right leaning libertarians (as well as some conservatives setting themselves apart from those identities), Fox News will continue to crumble until the bias it presents is so thickly riddled with the radical that it will seem “Onion”-ish to Democrats and a majority of Republicans alike (as it already appears to be doing).

     On a slightly separate note, I'd like to address the conservative concern for liberally biased media. If we consider the number of folks who prefer any other network to Fox, what we have is not a plurality of news viewers who prefer a liberal network, but a plurality of news viewers who prefer not to watch a specific network for a specific reason. MSNBC may be notoriously liberal, but that's not all people are watching. The only people who seem to continue watching Fox News Network are those who refuse to watch anything else because they deem nothing conservatively appealing enough, and it is the pursuit of a bias which should not matter in the face of receiving truthful and factual information and that fact is ultimately the reason why the network is failing. (As far as the reliability of American news in general— only a separate article can address that concern). 

~Joe

Notable links:

Fox News Credibility at Record Low

Public Policy Polling

Case Point