When Ronald Reagan took power, Morgan Stanley had 3,000 employees, when he left office they had 130,000. Something had changed in our society, something had profoundly changed.
Risky Business is a 1983 American teen sex comedy film written and directed by Paul Brickman (in his directorial debut) and starring Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay. The film covers themes including materialism, loss of innocence, coming of age, and capitalism. Best known as Cruise’s breakout film, Risky Business was a critical and commercial success, grossing more than $63 million against a $6.2 million budget.
In the middle of dancing in your underwear to Bob Seger, to a montage underscored by Mean Mannish Boy by Muddy Waters and Guido the Killer Pimp, was a poke to the audience that maybe, just maybe American culture was putting too much of an emphasis on materialism. In 1978 when that genius out of Pittsburgh George Romero released “Dawn of The Dead” woven into the movie about zombie cannibalism as a parody of a society succumbing to consumerism. Both these movies said something, and even if we did not know it, they both spoke to us.
“Risky Business” at its core was an indictment against capitalism, “Dawn of The Dead” against consumerism and heck even “Animal House” spoke out against a blind devotion to authority and the danger of that devotion . Some of the perspective was valid, some of it, maybe not, but I enjoyed the fact that someone was presenting a viewpoint, their perspective. In my opinion, since that movie there has been a slow erosion of personal moviemaking. Right now when we see a movie on the big screen it has been processed through herds of actuarial accountants, merchandise specialists and finally writers. Personal vision and perspective has fallen from the big screen.
It has long been known that Hollywood is not really interested in doing the right thing but damn well want to be perceived that they are. The Right present slogans and thoughts that speak to adherents in order to provoke unfocused rage. Both Left and Right engage in their own form of political correctness and distill the wine of culture and society to a point where it has no flavor or heart . A big part of why movies are so bland is that they are not really speaking to anyone or any one community. They have been diluted to the point that they really do not say much to anyone. They are bland and tasteless because either Hollywood is conforming to messaging to be marketable to a world-wide audience or they are disallowing perspective because it might offend the “woke”.
The thought police of both the Left and the Right know full well if you control language you control thought process, it you essentially ban individual thought you control storytelling. The result is a bowl of mediocrity and tasteless. When Scorsese made his first movies, he yelled out to the world, I am Italian American and this was my experience, there is a quantum difference between the smell of the street that was evoked in “Goodfellas” to his release of the “The Irishman”, the movies look similar but “The Irishman” was distilled, weakened and less based on experience and more based on driving to an outcome.
We are far away from any form of true freedom of expression. We are living in a tyranny of thought and process. People are starting to remind people in their torrent of emails of how they want their gender acknowledged. I pine for the days when Bob was Bob…..Kathy was Kathy, when things were not mandated. In a recent human resources seminar of which I was told about, it was mentioned that maybe it’s not a good idea to ask someone how their weekend was. I was dumbfounded and shocked. So I see a coworker, I am not allowed to ask how their weekend was , I had to address them according to some gender assignment. In the Disney remake of ‘Dumbo” they got rid of the singing crows because they were deemed racists. I thought they were funny and instead Disney created a new little girl character who embraces the study of science. Her love of science contributes nothing to the story and provides no plot motivation whatsoever. Now, I think girls can achieve as much as boys, and I do work that encourages girls to participate in computer sciences, but this was just pandering.
Disney at all costs wants to be considered woke. Woke is a term that refers to awareness of issues that concern social justice and racial justice. If they were not driven to be woke, what would they be talking about at their parties? I would make the argument that while we have to be sensitive to others, and we have to be aware of the vile behavior that has been exhibited, we should rebel against anything that smacks of thought control and an attempt to suppress free speech. You have to deal with issues and not bury issues with a torrent of politically correct vocabulary. What these folks on both the Left and the Right are saying is that “It’s necessary to replace the politics we’ve had up to now with their politics, or, rather, my politics.” This is a form of tyranny that is wrapped in the promise of a new world, if you let us do the thinking for you life would be grand, it’s just that Vonnegut, Mailer, John Wayne, Chaplin, Gertrude Stein or Flannery O’Connor, are out the window because they might offend some frail soul. Instead of having people evolve based on self education they we want you are saying here leave the driving to us, and conform in the manner we want you to. It’s not doing the right thing, it is allowing yourself to be controlled.
Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud is generally acknowledged to be the father of public relations. He was not a terribly nice fellow and attempted to memorialize the ways people could be controlled. He wrote volume after volume on how products could be sold based on instilling a base of inadequacy or fear. You see as he said if you can created a foundation of fear, you can sell anything.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
Unfortunately, Edward was right,
At its core, political correctness is a cancer on artistic process and as well intellect. By demanding the conforming of thought, you are denying the growth of a society and will doom first industries and then nations to a long prolonged stagnation.
Great art has always portrayed great conflict. Great storytelling involves a series of conflicts, Conflict in a story is a struggle between opposing forces. Characters must act to confront those forces and that is where conflict is born. Conflict in a story creates and drives the plot forward. External conflict refers to the obstacles a character faces in the external world. In “The Lord of The Rings” Frodo ends up having his conflict erupt within himself.
If we insist on society conforming to a set of rigid guidelines, we must be prepared for the loss of that society’s ability to innovate. If your intent is suppressing humans globally and turning them into eager consumers, then if you are to be successful you must also suppress the human soul. If you suppress the soul expect the art and entertainment derived from that society to be a thin soup of expression and not really worth engaging with. Take a look at baseball, even though the idea of Moneyball or using drilled down statistics to define and shape a team is academically interesting, you are dehumanizing it to the point where the sport is becoming very blah, too predictive which takes excitement out of the play.
People do not want to be told what to do, well actually some do. Moviegoers know if a story is contrived or diluted. If a character on screen cannot hold a diverse and maybe disruptive political position then it ends up being one giant cinematic bowl of pablum. I want people to have different and maybe sometimes rough opinions. I want to experience these people and come to my own conclusion. Movies do not project onto a screen, the screen is an intermediary. The movies that I love unfold in the mind and wrap themselves around my own experience and add to it.
Be yourself, ignore the political machinations and just be true. The greatest gift you can give this world is a true you. I heard a joke that said, they edited “Blazing Saddles” to be politically correct, it turned out to be 7 minutes long. Turn off FOX, turn off CNN…see the people trying to manipulate pain and guilt for their own goal. Ask yourself a simple question, what do I think not what am I being told to think.
If you do this you are giving your society a great gift, a free thinking person. I do not know if you think this, but I feel society is getting angrier, more desperate….maybe it’s because people are being suppressed and are having difficulty identifying the culprit. The same people who are suppressing them are turning their justified anger onto targets that have nothing to do with manipulating the people of this country. It’s really a big game of deflection.
It’s time we started thinking for ourselves again and it’s time we demanded movies that have perspective and a world view. I am a Catholic male, who has a pretty firm understanding of “guilt”, take it from me since I have a mother I am well versed on the manipulation of that guilt.
With the loosening of financial regulations under the Reagan administration, couple with the the removal of the FCC Doctrine. In 1949 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), put in place a policy that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC eliminated the policy in 1987. During this time, we saw the rise of the cable news networks. Slowly during this era, Wall Street was allowed to spin its webs and grow unfettered, and the rabid dogs of polarized media were set loose.
Pandora’s Box was opened.,Risky Business indeed.
“It seems to me that if there were any logic to our language, trust would be a four letter word.”
Joel, Risky Business
