Posted: 08.06.2023 16:41:00

Hollywood finale. How ‘Dream Factory’ turned into a bubble

The once respectable and alluring Hollywood has recently become a goldmine for jokes: it is difficult to find a film among the Oscar favourites that does not include LGBT motives to one degree or another, which would not explore the dark aspects of various human pathologies... ‘Dream Factory’, manipulating the public opinion and imposing false ideas and symbols on viewers around the world, has rapidly lost its former authority. Perhaps, we are witnessing a complete ideological and ethical collapse of the once leading film empire, a real ‘Hollywood Ending’. It is symbolic that this was the name of one of the films of the classic film by Woody Allen. 



Former glory

The old Hollywood of the 1970s and 1990s always upheld traditional family values. In almost every picture, the heroes strove for the family, for a cosy and large Christmas table, found their happiness in fatherhood and motherhood. In Hollywood cinema, there was a real cult of the family.
Hollywood filmmakers, if they considered the topic of the collapse of the family and divorce, then plunged into it entirely, as if trying to warn the audience against the mistakes of the main characters, and the problems of the family and raising a child were investigated impartially and deeply.
So in the centre of the plot of the Oscar-winning drama Kramer vs. Kramer was the struggle of two spouses during the divorce proceedings for their little son. Serious ideological and artistic innovation of the drama by Robert Benton was that for almost the first time on the Hollywood screen they started talking about equality in the rights of fathers and mothers. In the finale, Joanna Kramer, played by Meryl Streep, having already won a custody case for her son Billy, nevertheless understands that it is better for him to live with his father. “I love Billy so much, I won’t take him in,” she says. The finale of this heartbreaking melodrama with Streep crying in the elevator door is one of the most memorable scenes in Hollywood cinema.  

In general, humanism and love for a person were once the defining vector in Hollywood cinema.
The director Robert Redford innovatively approached the disclosure of the theme of family relationships in the Ordinary People drama based on the novel by Judith Guest. The film received four Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards (including Best Picture of the Year), as well as several nominations for other prestigious film awards.

Pathology has become the norm 

Gradually, other themes and motives began to appear on the Hollywood screen, the presence of gay heroes, adherents of various pathologies, became the dominant plot. The resulting bias is fully consistent with the popular concept of the Overton window, which received its name in honour of the American lawyer, vice president of the Mackinac Centre for Public Policy Joseph Overton.
As known, its essence is that due to the public discussion of any idea, it is possible to change its status in the public consciousness. This method of influencing public consciousness expands the boundaries of what is acceptable in order to introduce destructive ideas, including through cinema. 
What seemed ‘unthinkable’ before, begins to be perceived as simply ‘radical’ after long discussions, and even later goes through the ‘acceptable’, ‘reasonable’ and ‘standard’ to the ‘social norm’ accepted by all. Many viewers at one time went cold with horror, seeing on the screen the cannibal Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and Red Dragon films. The ending of Hannibal was especially shocking, where the doctor cooked a roast from the brain of one of the heroes performed by Ray Liotta, removing the skull cap from him alive. Today, the main characters of the Bones and All film are a young couple who travel around the United States and hunt people to eat them. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
Ironically, the real allegations of cannibalism markedly ruined the career of Hollywood actor Armie Hammer, Chalamet’s co-star in Call Me By Your Name. How can one not remember the wise proverb: don’t stir riot while it’s quiet.


Bones and all 

LGBT topics entered American cinema gradually, in order to flourish today. Of course, this direction has always existed, but did not go beyond its subculture, but over time won a place in the mainstream. Already in the popular film American Beauty by Sam Mendes, the hero of Chris Cooper — Colonel Frank Fitts had feelings for the main character played by Kevin Spacey. The creators of the Brokeback Mountain drama made a lot of noise and swung in general at the sacred image of cowboys in American culture. The short story of the same name by writer Annie Proulx was turned into ‘the first gay western in the history of cinema’ by director En Lee. There was so much fuss around the picture, which no one remembers today. In 2005, it received the main prize of the Venice Film Festival — Golden Lion, together with four awards from the British Academy BAFTA, three Oscars, but today it is safely forgotten. 
Today, in order for a film to be approved by the cultural elite, it is necessary to introduce a politically correct and positive image of LGBT people into it, whose activists now measure, almost with stopwatches, how many minutes on the screen are given to LGBT characters. Without this, it is not easy for a film to win an Oscar, and this is a given of the freedom of filmmaking in the United States. 

They already got to the cartoons

There are no norms for the American producers: their crazy ideas have already reached out to children’s fairy tales. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast released in theatres has been criticised for the presence of a gay character in the film. 
The Warner Brothers cartoon Storks shows how storks bring babies not only to traditional families, but also to same-sex couples, male and female. 
…Apparently, it is already too late to adopt the new Hayes Code, which appeared in the 1930s and was repealed only in 1967.

Freedom or recklessness

“LGBT topics, which have become prevalent in American cinema in recent years, aim to destroy family ties and the image of the traditional family. Everything is not presented head-on, in an easy and entertaining way, the pathology is discussed through the game. There is a beautiful conversation about the freedom of the individual and his rights, about the search for identification. This is sophistry that leads nowhere. There is a very terrible destruction of spirituality and morality, a true process of dehumanisation. At some stage, they decided to step over all the boundaries of what is acceptable. However, Europe in this process goes hand in hand with the USA. Thank God, we have a different genetic memory with the U.S. and the West. If they have a gene of conquest, destruction, superiority and enslavement firmly in their genetic memory, then creation, work, family values prevail in our genetic memory.
I am sure that it is impossible to make an anti-human movie that promotes the violation of the laws of nature, glorifies impunity, false success, the superiority of individualism. I am sure that sooner or later the Americans will punish themselves, the retribution for them will be very serious,” considers the chairman of the Belarusian Union of Cinematographers, the famous actor Viktor Vasiliev.
It is hard not to agree with Viktor Vasiliev: today we are witnessing the decline not only of Europe, but also of the once glorious Hollywood. 

By Valentin Pepelyaev