Hollywood's poison factory: the movies' twisted image.

• Author: Medved, Michael

America's long-running romance with Hollywood is over. For millions of people, the entertainment industry no longer represents a source of enchantment, magical fantasy, uplift, or even harmless diversion. Popular culture is viewed now as an implacable enemy, a threat to their basic values and a menace to the raising of their children. The Hollywood dream factory has become the poison factory.

This disenchantment is reflected in poll after poll. An Associated Press Media General survey released in 1990 showed that 80% of Americans objected to the amount of foul language in motion pictures, 82% to the amount of violence, 72% to the amount of explicit sexuality, and, by a ratio of three-to-one, felt that movies today are worse than ever.

In reality, you don't need polls or surveys to understand what is going on. When was the last time you heard someone say, "You know, by golly, movies today are better than ever!" Only Jack Valenti, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America, can make such statements with a straight face. There is a general recognition even among those Americans who still like to go to movies that their quality has declined. This has begun to register in disastrous box office receipts.

There is a dirty little secret in Hollywood. For movie attendance, 1991 was the worst in 15 years, the summer season the worst in 23. Forty percent of Americans report that they don't see a single film in the course of a year - a higher percentage than ever before. What Hollywood publicizes, of course, is total box office gross receipts, which look respectable, but are misleading because the ticket prices have been raised so much. If you actually count the number of warm bodies sitting in theater seats, movie attendance has declined markedly.

Major studios like MGM and Orion are teetering on the verge of collapse. Carolco, which produced "Terminator II," 1992's biggest hit, has scaled back all operations and fired one-third of its employees. This is clearly an industry in trouble.

Rather than searching for solutions, Hollywood looks for scapegoats. The most common line is: "It's the recession," but this ignores, among other things, the fact that, in the past, the movie business always has proven to be recession proof. Economic downturns generally saw the movie business profit as people sought escape.

What Hollywood insiders refuse to recognize is that the crisis of popular culture, at its very core, is a crisis of values. The problem isn't that the camera is out of focus, editing is sloppy, or the acting is bad. It is with the type of stories Hollywood is telling and the kind of messages it is sending in film after film. The industry is bursting with professionalism and prowess, but it suffers from a sickness of the soul.

Hollywood no longer reflects - or even respects - the values that most Americans cherish. Take a look, for example, at the 1992 Academy Awards. Five very fine men were nominated for best actor of the year. Three of them had portrayed murderous psychos: Robert Deniro in "Cape Fear," Warren Beatty in "Bugsy," and Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs" (a delightful family film about two serial killers - one eats and the other skins his victims). A fourth actor, Robin Williams, was nominated for playing a delusional homeless psycho in "The Fisher King." The most wholesome character was Nick Nolte's, a good old-fashioned manic-depressive-suicidal neurotic in "The Prince of Tides. "

These are all good actors, delivering splendid performances, compelling and technically accomplished. Yet, isn't it sad when all this artistry is lavished on films that are so empty, barren, and unfulfilling? Isn't it sad when, at the Academy Awards - the annual event that celebrates the highest achievement the film industry is capable of - the best we can come up with is movies that are so floridly, strangely whacked out?

I repeat: The fundamental problem with Hollywood has nothing at all to do with the brilliance of the performers, the camera work, or the editing. In many ways, these things are better than ever before. Modern films are technically brilliant, but morally and spiritually empty.

Anti-religious bias

What are the messages in today's films? For a number of years, I have been writing about Hollywood's anti-religious bias, but I must point out that this hostility never has been quite as intense as in the last few years. The 1991 season boasted one religion-bashing movie after another in which Hollywood was able to demonstrate that it was an equal-opportunity offender.

For Protestants, there was "At Play in the Fields of the Lord," a lavish $35,000,000 rainforest spectacle about natives and their wholesome primitive ways and the sick, disgusting missionaries who try to ruin their lives. For Catholics, there was "The Pope Must Die," which was re-released as "The Pope Must Diet." It didn't work either way. It features scenes of the Holy Father...