Karina on SpoutBlog

Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing is calling it “a masterful takedown” of “the right-wing myth that Hollywood keeps making anti-war movies that flop, proving how out of touch the Liberal Elite are with the will of the peeepul.” This post from Leverage creator John Rogers may be that, but it also points to something I’ve brought up many times before: the whole “Liberal Hollywood will spend untold sums of money to make sure we lose the war in Iraq and turn your children into godless eco-communists!” hysteria only floats when buoyed by willful ignorance of the stratification of the film industry. Different kinds of films are made, distributed and marketed in different kinds of ways, thus lending their ultimate market performance different kinds of expectations. I know when infidel propaganda like Taxi to the Dark Side doesn’t quite do the same business as good ol’ entertainment like Hannah Montana Topless With the Jonas Brothers in 3D, it’s tempting to say that America hates Alex Gibney. Except that America doesn’t know who Alex Gibney is.

Rogers, who wrote the post in response to a conversation at Big Hollywood, the new Breitbart offshoot edited by John “Dirty Harry” Nolte, first uses budget vs box office breakdowns to demonstrate that films like In The Valley of Elah and Lions For Lambs, oft cited as proof that Americans aren’t buying what Liberal Hollywood is selling, actually made a profit. He then argues that many of the anti-war films that *didn’t* turn a profit are hardly either proof of a Hollywood conspiracy against the will of the people, or evidence that all of America has voted with their wallets against this kind of cinema, because they were neither produced by Hollywood nor released wide enough for most Americans to even get a vote. To excerpt liberally from Rogers on Redacted:

FIFTEEN THEATERS for Redacted, for chrissake. Here’s a quick clue — when Hollywood wants to sell something, we make it as widely available as possible for purchase. Crazy, I know. What sort of marketing mumbo-jumbo is this?

…an experimental film by DePalma costing, last I heard, about $5 million, this one pops up all the time in angry screeds, but … we’re really down in the weeds here. Fifteen theaters. Grace is Gone, released in 7 theaters? No End in Sight released in 2 theaters (made a nice bit of coin in DVD)?

I’m going to assume Nolte isn’t arguing that because no one went to see a movie playing in two theaters in the entire country this is somehow proof nobody wants to see those kinds of movies. It’s like arguing that because all of America doesn’t eat at Mama Luigi’s in Brockton, Mass., America hates Italian food. He isn’t that stupid.

“Stupid” isn’t the right word. Most arguments that “prove” American theatergoers have no interest in the propaganda that evil “Liberal Hollywood” is trying to shove down our throats purposefully ignore the fact that most movies with any sort of real, balls-out political agenda are either produced independently of the Hollywood studio system, and/or are made for so little money that they can break even fairly easily. And this goes for liberal or conservative films — as Rogers points out, we could talk about Stop-Loss and An American Carol in the same breath as evidence that overtly political films on either side are a simple waste of resources … if we were “the sort of fuckwit who tries to derive patterns off two lousy data points.”

Rogers accuses Nolte and Big Hollywood of displaying a “childrens understanding of how Hollywood runs.” I say they actually do know better, they must understand basic concepts like relative gross well enough, but deliberately pretend they don’t in order make sure their rhetoric floats. Whatever gets you through the blog, right?