People turning away from Hollywood for being too preachy
It appears that the recent Academy Awards are going the same way the Grammys did: into oblivion. This year yet another cataclysmic drop in viewership occurred resulting in an all time low of less than 10 million people viewing an awards program that the vast majority of the Canadian and American public once eagerly looked forward to watching.
What does this mean? There now appears to be a sharp break between what Hollywood thinks is important and what the rest of us value. Hollywood has ended up in the position of preaching its ideological prejudices to what it thinks is a receptive audience only to find that virtually no one is there. This isn’t surprising. People do not like being preached to. They come to the Academy Awards to see their favourite celebrities, find out whether their favourite movie won and see the latest fashion trends.
They do not come to engage in socio political rivalry or to support specific political causes, or at least very few of them do. On top of all this, it appears that the quality of films being presented is now lower than it ever was in previous decades. We all have favourite films we remember from yesteryear. They are not being rivalled in quality or content by what is currently being produced, especially since what we are seeing now is often a pretext for an ideological lecture or diatribe.
Sadly, what this means is that the gulf between the average person and the elites continues to increase, and we are becoming even less united than we once were. Hollywood is part of the entertainment industry. It would do well to remember the word “entertainment” and, if it wants to be restored to its former glory, de-emphasize political preaching.
Perry Foster
Duncan