Hollywood vs. America

Hollywood vs. America

Author: Michael Medved

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-04-12

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 0062046209

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Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that most Americans hold dear? Why does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism? In this explosive book, one of the nation's best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets. Michael Medved powerfully argues that the entertainment business follows its own dark obsessions, rather than giving the public what it wants: In fact, the audience for feature films and network television has demonstrated its profound disillusionment in recent years, with disastrous consequences for many entertainment companies. Meanwhile, overwhelming numbers of our fellow citizens complain about the wretched quality of our popular culture--describing the offerings of the mass media as the worst ever. Medved asserts that Hollywood ignores--and assaults--the values of ordinary American families, pursuing a self-destructive and alienated ideological agenda that is harmful to the nation at large and to the industry's own interests. In hard-hitting chapters on "The Attack on Religion," "The Addiction to Violence," "Promoting Promiscuity," "The Infatuation with Foul Language," "Kids Know Best," "Motivations for Madness," and other subjects, Medved outlines the underlying themes that turn up again and again in our popular culture. He also offers conclusive evidence of the frightening real-world impact of these messages on our society and our children. Finally, Medved shows where and how Hollywood took a disastrous wrong turn toward its current crisis, and he outlines promising efforts both in and outside the industry to restore a measure of sanity and restraint to our media of mass entertainment. Sure to elicit strong response, whether it takes the form of cheers of support or howls of enraged dissent, Hollywood vs. America confronts head-on one of the most significant issues of our times.


Hollywood vs. America

Hollywood vs. America

Author: Michael Medved

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-04-12

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 0062046209

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that most Americans hold dear? Why does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism? In this explosive book, one of the nation's best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets. Michael Medved powerfully argues that the entertainment business follows its own dark obsessions, rather than giving the public what it wants: In fact, the audience for feature films and network television has demonstrated its profound disillusionment in recent years, with disastrous consequences for many entertainment companies. Meanwhile, overwhelming numbers of our fellow citizens complain about the wretched quality of our popular culture--describing the offerings of the mass media as the worst ever. Medved asserts that Hollywood ignores--and assaults--the values of ordinary American families, pursuing a self-destructive and alienated ideological agenda that is harmful to the nation at large and to the industry's own interests. In hard-hitting chapters on "The Attack on Religion," "The Addiction to Violence," "Promoting Promiscuity," "The Infatuation with Foul Language," "Kids Know Best," "Motivations for Madness," and other subjects, Medved outlines the underlying themes that turn up again and again in our popular culture. He also offers conclusive evidence of the frightening real-world impact of these messages on our society and our children. Finally, Medved shows where and how Hollywood took a disastrous wrong turn toward its current crisis, and he outlines promising efforts both in and outside the industry to restore a measure of sanity and restraint to our media of mass entertainment. Sure to elicit strong response, whether it takes the form of cheers of support or howls of enraged dissent, Hollywood vs. America confronts head-on one of the most significant issues of our times.


Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939

Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939

Author: Thomas Doherty

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0231535147

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Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films, such as Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936), a sensational true tale of "a Hollywood girl in Naziland!"; and Professor Mamlock (1938), an anti-Nazi film made by German refugees living in the Soviet Union. Doherty also recounts how the disproportionately Jewish backgrounds of the executives of the studios and the workers on the payroll shaded reactions to what was never simply a business decision. As Europe hurtled toward war, a proxy battle waged in Hollywood over how to conduct business with the Nazis, how to cover Hitler and his victims in the newsreels, and whether to address or ignore Nazism in Hollywood feature films. Should Hollywood lie low, or stand tall and sound the alarm? Doherty's history features a cast of charismatic personalities: Carl Laemmle, the German Jewish founder of Universal Pictures, whose production of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) enraged the nascent Nazi movement; Georg Gyssling, the Nazi consul in Los Angeles, who read the Hollywood trade press as avidly as any studio mogul; Vittorio Mussolini, son of the fascist dictator and aspiring motion picture impresario; Leni Riefenstahl, the Valkyrie goddess of the Third Reich who came to America to peddle distribution rights for Olympia (1938); screenwriters Donald Ogden Stewart and Dorothy Parker, founders of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; and Harry and Jack Warner of Warner Bros., who yoked anti-Nazism to patriotic Americanism and finally broke the embargo against anti-Nazi cinema with Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939).


Hollywood's America

Hollywood's America

Author: Steven Mintz

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-03-07

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 1118976495

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Fully revised, updated, and extended, the fifth edition of Hollywood’s America provides an important compilation of interpretive essays and primary documents that allows students to read films as cultural artifacts within the contexts of actual past events. A new edition of this classic textbook, which ties movies into the broader narrative of US and film history This fifth edition contains nine new chapters, with a greater overall emphasis on recent film history, and new primary source documents which are unavailable online Entries range from the first experiments with motion pictures all the way to the present day Well-organized within a chronological framework with thematic treatments to provide a valuable resource for students of the history of American film


The Hollywood Hall of Shame

The Hollywood Hall of Shame

Author: Harry Medved

Publisher: TarcherPerigee

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13:

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More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.


America on Film

America on Film

Author: Harry M. Benshoff

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-08-26

Total Pages: 472

ISBN-13: 144435759X

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America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in the Movies, 2nd Edition is a lively introduction to issues of diversity as represented within the American cinema. Provides a comprehensive overview of the industrial, socio-cultural, and aesthetic factors that contribute to cinematic representations of race, class, gender, and sexuality Includes over 100 illustrations, glossary of key terms, questions for discussion, and lists for further reading/viewing Includes new case studies of a number of films, including Crash, Brokeback Mountain, and Quinceañera


Struggling for One America

Struggling for One America

Author: Daphne Barak

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-07-13

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1510768416

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What happens when you speak with Hollywood stars and entertainers—half pro-Trump and half against—posting the question, “Can we talk?” Since the 2016 presidential campaigns, Conservatives, Liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Whites, and non-Whites in America began saying loudly that they are “Fighting for America.” Yet, by the 2020 presidential elections, they were even more divided than united despite all the good intention of the most. Now that America is well into 2021, it is time to yearn for “One America” but without “fighting.” But here is the caveat! To achieve “One America,” the “Trump Phenomena” must first be understood. Next, “Discrimination” and “Racism” in America must be re-visited. After that, “Cancel Culture” and “No-No Rhetoric” must be handled promptly and sensitively. Finally, Hollywood must first embrace #MeToo Movement and then come up with a long-term strategy. Filmmakers of the Trump vs. Hollywood documentary, Daphne Barak and Erbil Gunasti brought on board twenty-four Hollywood stars and entertainers in a documentary to discuss these topics. Half were chosen among pro-Trump, and half against. Daphne interviewed both sides, posing the question: “Can We Talk?” Struggling For One America stands as the genesis of this documentary. This book in that respect points at the presumptive and pretended “Culprits” and “Scapegoats” in the current divide, while focusing on what is obvious. The two White Houses are standing tall, in plain sight, and a step further on the wrong direction from this moment on would be nothing less than repeating history.


Hollywood Party

Hollywood Party

Author: Lloyd Billingsley

Publisher: Prima Lifestyles

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780761521662

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This engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, betrayal, and violence uncovers the true face of communism in Southern California, and names writers and actresses who were seduced by the party's philosophy.


Hollywood

Hollywood

Author: Gore Vidal

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-03-23

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0307784223

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Hollywood marks the fifth episode in Gore Vidal's "Narratives of Empire," his celebrated series of six historical novels that form his extended biography of the United States. It is 1917, and President Woodrow Wilson is about to lead the country into the Great War in Europe. In California, a new industry is born that will irreversibly transform America. Caroline Sanford, the alluring heroine of Empire, discovers the power of moving pictures to manipulate reality as she vaults to screen stardom under the name of Emma Traxler. Just as Caroline must balance her two lives--West Coast movie star and East Coast newspaper publisher and senator's mistress--so too must America balance its two power centers: Hollywood and Washington. Here is history as only Gore Vidal can re-create it: brimming with intrigue and scandal, peopled by the greats of the silver screen and American politics. "Hollywood shimmers with the illusion of politics and the politics of illusion," wrote the Chicago Sun-Times. "A wonderfully literate and consistently impressive work of fiction that clearly belongs on a shelf with Vidal's best," said The New York Times Book Review. With a new Introduction by the author.