Hollywood Is Dying, And The Elites Don’t Care…
by Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.us
October 14, 2020
I don’t write much about the entertainment industry because, frankly, I see it as mostly irrelevant to the bigger picture. Geopolitics and economics are the great driving force in our society, and the elitist groups that influence these elements should be our primary focus. That said, I have to admit that pop culture is a pervasive element of American public psychology, or at least it was until recently, and for decades the masters of pop culture all resided in Hollywood.
I have been a film buff for at least 20 years and I understand the business; I was even a screenwriter at one point and obtained an agent, but after dealing with the slimy behavior of some of the Hollywood ilk I was immediately disenchanted and decided to walk away. What I realized at the time was that the entertainment world is designed for a very specific purpose: To steal the energies of talented people and exploit those energies to achieve the most meaningless or manipulative endeavors.
The people that manage and own production and distribution companies are for the most part talent-less; like most narcopaths they have no capacity to be creative. So, they must feed on the intelligence and imagination of normal people in order to fuel their business. If it stopped there, then maybe the system would actually work and there could be some symbiosis. Many artistic people don’t handle business very well, so someone has to.
But, production creatures want more than money, they also want to micromanage the message of every film, TV show, video game and product that is released. They want to inject their own ideologies into every property. They do this because, as narcopaths, they desperately want to feel creative power even if it means hijacking the projects of others. They also do it because they have an agenda to influence society to accept or reject certain ideas; they want to mold the politics and values of the public.
Hollywood is ultimately about narrative control, not free expression. If you have a unique message or an interesting story to tell, they are going to twist it into something else, something that feels a lot like every other story that gets produced. Writers and directors with vision are either filtered out of the system or they are forced to conform to the propaganda model in order to get work. In the end, the people who get the most work and make it to the top are the people with no principles or morals; the people that will do anything to succeed.
Success and artistry are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts. On the other hand, free expression and artistry are mutually inclusive – You cannot have one without the other.
If you have been noticing a severe decline in the quality of American entertainment over the course of the past decade, you are not the only one. 70% of Americans say they would rather stay home and watch movies instead of paying to go to theaters, even if theaters reopen. Industry spin doctors will claim that the drop in interest is due solely to the coronavirus, but this is a lie. Domestic movie attendance hit a 25 year low in 2017, and this is part of a long term slide which was building for years beforehand.
It’s important to note that when I talk about “Hollywood” I’m including the internet streaming services, which are completely intertwined with the Hollywood machine. While streaming services have been growing (to a point) because of the pandemic lockdowns, the subscription jump is an anomaly compared to the past few years. Netflix in particular was on a severe slide in subscriptions before the pandemic hit, and with the “Cuties” child pornography debacle it will be interesting to see how many subscribers jumped ship in the final quarter of 2020.
The Rest…HERE