Oxblog’s grumpy centrism is starting to get on my nerves. Today, in response to Kevin Drum’s list of recent liberal or liberal-leaning documentaries, David Adesnik scowls, “I don’t know if the films were all that effective, but I am somewhat tickled by Kevin’s suggestion that liberals’ pre-eminence in Hollywood is something new.”
Two problems with this statement. First, while Hollywood practitioners (filmmakers, actors, producers, hangers on) are disproportionately liberal in their politics, sometimes quite publicly so, you can’t justifiably claim that Hollywood’s product is recognizably liberal in its politics. Sure, sometimes the prestige product can veer toward social problem territory (something I’m attuned to, currently writing on 40s social problem liberalism), but that cycle is counterbalanced by the conservative bent of action films and other non-prestige genres. For every Three Kings there’s a Falling Down; for Philadelphia, there’s Forrest Gump. Political bias aside, Hollywood is in the business of making money. Only at the margins, where the non-pecuniary interest of prestige starts kicking in, does the content shift leftward (and then not much).
Second, the films Kevin lists are mostly documentaries, and documentary production and culture is not centered in Los Angeles but in New York. In fact, like independent feature film, documentary filmmaking defines itself in opposition to Hollywood in form, style, economics and, yes, politics. Sure, these independent nonfiction productions are now relying on Hollywood’s minimajor distribution arms to get into cinemas, but that’s simply a fluke of the success of documentary and political-topical film recently. Distributors are seeing a niche market and are filling it, trying to use past successes to hype current releases. So Kevin Drum is describing a new phenomenon after all. (For excellent reviews and commentary on these recent political documentaries, I can’t recommend Chuck Tryon’s blog enough.)
Maybe there’s a wider tendency to confuse film with Hollywood per se, but from a blogger who brandishes his academic credentials on his sleeve, I’d expect something more thoughtful than a conservative talk-radio slur.
No comments have been added to this post yet.