Can capitalism save Hollywood?

Ironically, as the media gets more enlightened, the films that actually sell become coarser. Hollywood now makes most of its money from superhero movies well-suited to a postliterate audience (though the Marvel franchise may be losing steam). Meantime, tastemakers increasingly marginalize the great films of the past because of their lack of minority or female representation. Rio Bravo, Raging Bull, Nashville, and Lawrence of Arabia were recently flushed off a new British list of 100 top films. News media, too, follow increasingly strict ideological divides. As Cathy O’Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, notes, the Internet has “reversed the equation” of common knowledge, making it more profitable to promote division.

Corporate America claims that wokeness is good for business, but there’s little evidence for that claim. As film critic Michael Medved has suggested, the media have been losing touch with much of America for at least three decades, but the problem seems to have reached a breaking point. Writing off huge audiences, like young white males or, more broadly, people with conservative values, turns out not to be the best way to grow your market.

The facts are devastating. Ratings for all the traditional networks have cratered, while many of Hollywood’s politically correct movies—particularly remakes—have done poorly, along with the overall box office, which has failed to recover ground lost in the pandemic. Another signal: the decline in viewers for award shows like the Oscars and the Grammys.