Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for Hooray for Hollywood in 1938 when Hollywood was much different than today. He declared, “Come on and try your luck. You could be Donald Duck. Hooray for Hollywood.”
Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for Hooray for Hollywood in 1938 when Hollywood was much different than today. He declared, “Come on and try your luck. You could be Donald Duck. Hooray for Hollywood.”
Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for Hooray for Hollywood in 1938 when Hollywood was much different than today. He declared, “Come on and try your luck. You could be Donald Duck. Hooray for Hollywood.”
Actually,
Hollywood hit the skids soon after Mercer’s song debuted and has gone
down hill like an out-of-control toboggan sled on an icy slope ever
since.
The
very next year Hollywood released Gone with the Wind and had Rhett
Butler (Clark Gable) using a four-letter word, which was a “no-no” back
in the 1930’s. American society then was more genteel and it was
reflected in films.
Not like today when movies are filled with an avalanche of profanities and expletives.
Year
after year, Hollywood pumps out the same formulaic dross, appealing to
the very basest elements in the human character. It is a rare and
wonderful Hollywood film that elevates the soul and inspires us with a
sense of human potential.
Eduoard Metrailler, editor of The Harvard Salient
in 1997, wrote, “Attending movies is nowadays an exercise in numbing
oneself to gratuitous violence, drug abuse, and sleaze. We are finally
experiencing the dangerous consequences of this corrupting education.
We must acknowledge that society cannot long endure if its children are so infected by Hollywood’s perverted attitudes.” The Harvard Salient
was founded in 1981 by students at Harvard University to provide a
journalistic alternative to the predominately liberal campus press.
Interestingly
enough, a higher percentage of Americans went to see movies each week
during the Great Depression, which swept the United States in the
1930s, than during the times of economic expansion and great prosperity
the United States has seen since.
In
1930 (the earliest year from which accurate and credible data exists),
weekly cinema attendance was 80 million people, approximately 65
percent of the resident U.S. population. However, in the year 2000,
only 27.3 million people attended the cinema weekly – a mere 9.7
percent of the U.S. population. A brief look at the raw numbers will
clearly indicate that cinema attendance has taken a steep decline in 70
years.
Michael Medved, in his book Hollywood Vs. America,
suggests that the entertainment industry is forfeiting both profits and
paying customers in a crazy campaign to foist its own loony lifestyles
and muddled world views on the American people.
Hollywood
is the primary purveyor of popular culture. In fact, American life is
becoming victim to the onslaught of Hollywood culture, its selfish,
greedy vapidity, and its far left agenda.
Furthermore,
we must resist the debasing of our political life by keeping the
boundaries between politics and popular culture clear and distinct.
Politics, though often marred by corruption, should be an arena for
virtue. By welcoming popular culture into the political sphere, the
prospects for virtue become very bleak indeed.
That
bleak prospect is exacerbated by a motley aggregation of Hollywood
glitterati – bullhorn radicals like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Martin
Sheen, Tim Robbins, Alec Baldwin, Barbara Streisand, and yes, Jane
Fonda, whose combined college credit units would probably not get you
one decent college degree, although Sean Penn did study auto mechanics
at Santa Monica College. What legitimate reasoning qualifies them to
have a platform to express their opinion on politics, the Iraq war, or
anything else?
Charlie Sheen is best known in Hollywood for his sexploits (Maxim,
a heterosexual magazine, reported last year that Sheen claims to have
had sex with 5,000 women). The Tinseltown gigolo is reportedly in talks
to narrate an Internet documentary that suggests elements of the United
States government were behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center.
The
79th Academy Awards, hosted by the openly gay Ellen Degeneres, was more
a brazen act of wartime propaganda by the shameless
secular-progressives than an awards show.
Rosie
O’Donnell, the raunchy standup comedienne and former talk show host,
but hardly a Hollywood starlet, has frequently appeared to be
sympathetic toward terrorists groups threatening America and has even
said that we ought “not to be alarmed by terrorists.”
She
frequently insults the collective intelligence of the American people
and recently demonstrated her contempt for followers of Christ by
comparing radical Islam to radical Christianity on ABC’s The View.
David
Limbaugh, best selling author and attorney, recently commented, “Until
Hollywood hotshots demonstrate some modicum of the diversity of thought
they sanctimoniously demand of others, they will not and do not deserve
to be taken seriously.”
Medved
states, “America’s long-running romance with Hollywood is over. Tens of
millions of Americans now see the entertainment industry as an
all-powerful enemy, an alien force that assaults our most cherished
values and corrupts our children. The dream factory has become the
poison factory.”
Maybe we could say “Hooray for Hollywood” in 1938, but certainly not today.
Actually, Hollywood hit
the skids soon after Mercer’s song debuted and has gone down hill like
an out-of-control toboggan sled on an icy slope ever since.
The very next year Hollywood
released Gone with the Wind and had Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) using a
four-letter word, which was a “no-no” back in the 1930’s. American
society then was more genteel and it was reflected in films.
Not like today when movies are filled with an avalanche of profanities and expletives.
Year after year, Hollywood pumps
out the same formulaic dross, appealing to the very basest elements in
the human character. It is a rare and wonderful Hollywood film that
elevates the soul and inspires us with a sense of human potential.
Eduoard Metrailler, editor of The Harvard Salient
in 1997, wrote, “Attending movies is nowadays an exercise in numbing
oneself to gratuitous violence, drug abuse, and sleaze. We are finally
experiencing the dangerous consequences of this corrupting education.
We must acknowledge that society cannot long endure if its children are so infected by Hollywood’s perverted attitudes.” The Harvard Salient
was founded in 1981 by students at Harvard University to provide a
journalistic alternative to the predominately liberal campus press.
Interestingly enough, a higher
percentage of Americans went to see movies each week during the Great
Depression, which swept the United States in the 1930s, than during the
times of economic expansion and great prosperity the United States has
seen since.
In 1930 (the earliest year from
which accurate and credible data exists), weekly cinema attendance was
80 million people, approximately 65 percent of the resident U.S.
population. However, in the year 2000, only 27.3 million people
attended the cinema weekly – a mere 9.7 percent of the U.S. population.
A brief look at the raw numbers will clearly indicate that cinema
attendance has taken a steep decline in 70 years.
Michael Medved, in his book Hollywood Vs. America,
suggests that the entertainment industry is forfeiting both profits and
paying customers in a crazy campaign to foist its own loony lifestyles
and muddled world views on the American people.
Hollywood is the primary purveyor
of popular culture. In fact, American life is becoming victim to the
onslaught of Hollywood culture, its selfish, greedy vapidity, and its
far left agenda.
Furthermore, we must resist the
debasing of our political life by keeping the boundaries between
politics and popular culture clear and distinct. Politics, though often
marred by corruption, should be an arena for virtue. By welcoming
popular culture into the political sphere, the prospects for virtue
become very bleak indeed.
That bleak prospect is exacerbated
by a motley aggregation of Hollywood glitterati – bullhorn radicals
like Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Tim Robbins, Alec
Baldwin, Barbara Streisand, and yes, Jane Fonda, whose combined college
credit units would probably not get you one decent college degree,
although Sean Penn did study auto mechanics at Santa Monica College.
What legitimate reasoning qualifies them to have a platform to express
their opinion on politics, the Iraq war, or anything else?
Charlie Sheen is best known in Hollywood for his sexploits (Maxim,
a heterosexual magazine, reported last year that Sheen claims to have
had sex with 5,000 women). The Tinseltown gigolo is reportedly in talks
to narrate an Internet documentary that suggests elements of the United
States government were behind the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center.
The 79th Academy Awards, hosted by
the openly gay Ellen Degeneres, was more a brazen act of wartime
propaganda by the shameless secular-progressives than an awards show.
Rosie O’Donnell, the raunchy
standup comedienne and former talk show host, but hardly a Hollywood
starlet, has frequently appeared to be sympathetic toward terrorists
groups threatening America and has even said that we ought “not to be
alarmed by terrorists.”
She frequently insults the
collective intelligence of the American people and recently
demonstrated her contempt for followers of Christ by comparing radical
Islam to radical Christianity on ABC’s The View.
David Limbaugh, best selling
author and attorney, recently commented, “Until Hollywood hotshots
demonstrate some modicum of the diversity of thought they
sanctimoniously demand of others, they will not and do not deserve to
be taken seriously.”
Medved states, “America’s
long-running romance with Hollywood is over. Tens of millions of
Americans now see the entertainment industry as an all-powerful enemy,
an alien force that assaults our most cherished values and corrupts our
children. The dream factory has become the poison factory.”
Maybe we could say “Hooray for Hollywood” in 1938, but certainly not today.