Hollywood creates a culture of violence

[Edited extract from Chapter One of my book, The Decline and Imminent Fall of the West]

Hollywood hypocrisy reached its zenith at the 2018 Oscar awards.  Some of the stars on the red carpet were wearing an orange flag pin which denotes the Everytown for Gun Safety campaign, a worthy cause, but one which is not well suited to those hypocrites. Hollywood has taught generations that problems are solved, arguments finalized and relationships terminated at the end of a gun. Some of the preening virtue-signallers would, no doubt, have returned to their studios the next day to work on the latest violent movie where a Bruce Willis – type actor solves a law and order problem by killing twenty or so miscreants with – you guessed it – a gun.

For decades, the U.S. entertainment industry in general, and Hollywood in particular, has contributed to the decline of Western culture. Super-rich Hollywood celebrities love to preach their left-wing ideologies to the rest of us mere mortals. These pious hypocrites think they are taking the moral high ground in their inane moralising, but they manifest the most egregious hypocrisy in their utterances and actions – none more foolish than Meryl Streep’s outburst against Donald Trump at the 2017 Golden Globe awards.

The same people who celebrate a child rapist, such as director Roman Polanski, are sickened that the American people dared to elect a President they don’t like. Streep had no qualms about giving Polanski – who drugged and anally raped a 13-year-old girl and then fled to France to escape justice – a standing ovation when he won an Oscar for The Pianist in 2003.

But Hollywood’s greatest sin is the culture of violence it has created over the decades.

To the younger demographic, violence in society appears to be normal: that’s just how life is in the 21st century.

But in my lifetime it wasn’t always thus.

I grew up in an Australian country town in the 1950s, in a culture unknown to today’s young people. It was a time when people left their keys in the car and the front doors unlocked. Crime, particularly violent crime, and drug problems were virtually unknown.

What changed?

Back then there was no TV, no video games and little in the way of media sensationalism.

Then gradually Hollywood introduced violent movies to the world. Producers and directors soon realised that promoting violence made money. Soon they were competing with each other to produce ever more violent movies.

TV series such as The Sopranos showed there was profit in glorying mafia murderers and crooks.

Since those days society has been subjected to an increasingly violent American culture. Our senses are saturated with violent movies, violent video games and with gangsta-rap celebrities such as Snoop Dog, who glamorise violence, drugs and the mistreatment of women.

Young people are being fed a visual diet of glorified and unrestrained violence.

Violence has been a staple of U.S. director, Quentin Tarantino, since his sensational debut film, Reservoir Dogs (1992). During the 1990s Tarantino unleashed a tidal wave of bloodletting with his mix of pop culture references, low-life comedy and shocking violence. Tarantino reached a bloody crescendo with Kill Bill (2003), said to be the most violent movie ever made by an American studio. In the 20-minute nightclub-set climax, limbs are liberally hacked from torsos, sending fountains of blood squirting in the air.

U.S. death metal band, Cannibal Corpse, glorifies child rape, suicide, murder and necrophilia in its lyrics. The band’s albums include songs titled “Dismembered and Molested”, and “Necropedophile”, which details “the pleasure gained from killing, then raping, children”.[i]

The last few years have seen a surge in the number of computer games featuring graphic violence. Violence has become entrenched in Western culture.