Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #396605 in Books
• Published on: 1993-08-04
• Released on: 1993-08-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780060924355
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
PBS film critic Medved's jeremiad charges that Hollywood is profoundly out of touch with the values and lifestyles espoused by most Americans.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Film critic Medved, cohost of PBS's Sneak Previews , presents a scathing indictment of Hollywood that is sure to be controversial. Asserting that "the dream factory has become the poison factory," he criticizes Hollywood movies for portraying religion unfavorably, glamorizing violence, and celebrating immorality. Martin Scorcese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) is among the films censured at length, and there are many others whose objectionable scenes are singled out, from Total Recall (1990) to The Prince of Tides (1992). Those who lament America's loss of what lately have been generally called "family values" will agree with Medved, while others are likely to dismiss his impassioned text as a windy sermon. A marginal purchase for general collections.
- Richard W. Grefrath, Univ. of Nevada Lib., Reno
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"Michael Medved is not only the most perceptive and persuasive of the major American film critics, but he is also the most courageous. While his new book will not endear him to many studio executives, it is easily the most provocative study of the moral implications of film ever written, " -- Jim Svedja, film critic, CBS Radio "This book is fascinating but disturbing reading -- a badly needed wake-up call for the entertainment industry. Anyone who wants to understand how -- and why -- Hollywood is attacking family values must read this book." -- Bob DeMoss, Jr., Youth Culture Specialist, Focus on the Family "Michael Medved understands movies and the movie business better than anyone else in America. Here he puts the entertainment industry's stars and stooges on can- did camera and gives shocking proof that Hollywood is forfeiting both profits and paying customers in a crazy campaign to foist its own loony lifestyles and muddled world views on the American people." -- George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty and Life After Television "Everyone -- left, right and middle -- is perfectly aware that we are in a period of cul- tural and moral collapse. But some people don't want to concede that the popular media bear part of the responsibility. Michael Medved's book should convince them that it does."-- Steve Allen

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and informative
I imagine the reviews of this book will be split two ways: On one side, they'll say Medved is just another member of the Religious Right trying to make everyone conform to a boring religious regime.

On the other side, people will say it's a well-deserved attack on the entertainment industry at large. It is neither. Medved points out that no one movie, no one song title, no one T.V. show should be cancelled, censored, etc.

What Medved does is point out the self-destructive trends of the entertainment industry elite to flood the market with material of little worth in the name of profits or a cause. In the former, he proves that movies have been steadily repulsing more and more of the public, and decreasing the chances of bringing in families, where the real money is. In the latter matter, he shows beyond a doubt that a very narrow viewpoint is being portrayed in hollywood, to the nearly complete exclusion of all other views. A move detrimental to Americans AND the entertainment industry.

Anyone who wants to get an idea of where the entertainment industry has been, and is taking American viewers, should read this book.

Excellent documentation
Few people discuss the excellent documentation and cold, hard statistics Medved supplies - perhaps because they are irrefutable. And also because it's easier to make subtle charges of racism and bigotry. One reviewer even claimed Medved wants a world where everyone is white and Christian - Medved is Jewish and discusses his religion at length in the book!!! But then, you'd have to actually READ the book to know that...

Medved shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that Hollywood is more interested in what it thinks of itself than in anything else - true art or even money.

Strange that many of the same movie buffs who decry the dumbing-down of film within the past 15 years suddenly rush to defend Hollywood (even the trash!) in order to avoid agreeing with Medved.

An excellent book - an excellent tool for analyzing American culture.

Read The Book Hollywood Doesn't Want You To Read
I came to a bookstore shortly after this book was released with $25 in my wallet, which was intended for another book. I flipped through "Hollywood vs. America" and not only couldn't I put it down, I decided that I owed it to Medved to buy the book at full list price, before it went on sale. Finally, someone with some clout was saying what I had been saying for years about show business and the people in charge.

A previous reviewer faulted Medved for detailing a laundry list of vomit and urination scenes, but this is exactly what is necessary to illustrate how far "entertainment" has fallen. True humor and plot development is abandoned in favor of "realistic" special effects gore, more F-words, and bodily function gags.

Especially important is his illustration of the way showbiz takes great pains to prop up evil religious straw-men/women for the purpose of demonizing traditional religion per se. He also shows how "dramatic license" is used to distort the lives of actual religious figures so that their faith is unrecognizable. Medved wrote this seven years before NBC's outrageously inaccurate and blasphemous "Noah's Ark."

If you are a moviegoer, read this book. Peek into the slaughterhouse and see what's in the sausage they feed you.