Blaming youth problems on Hollywood is just too easy

LEO CARMODY
DM Columnist

"Go west, young man, go west!"

-Horace Greely

Ah, the Roaring Twenties. Against the specter of prohibition and isolationism, a sense of greatness in the United States was finally forged. The architects of that greatness recognized that true prosperity required a separation from normalcy.

In the speakeasies that filled American cities, girls wore bobbed hair and donned flapper dresses, defying prurient influence. Men drank martinis, in violation of federal law. Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton provided the soundtrack to a decade. Hemingway went to Paris.

Gertrude Stein dubbed it the "Lost Generation." Many Eastern aristocrats, suffocating under the rigorous constraints of society, finally furfilled Greely's old American axiom and ventured west. In California, south of Monterey, William Randolph Hearst built a palace called San Simeon, which still stands like a modern day Xanadu.

Howard Hughes settled farther south, at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. In the land that became the city of Los Angeles, Hughes found both majesty and dementia. The notions that spawned unflyable planes also produced unthinkable phenomenon. Eighty years later Hollywood remains, like a paramour to our better sensibilities.

For good or ill, the motion picture industry has become perhaps the most dominate form of culture. Hollywood's influence is everywhere. More and more these days, being successful is not enough ... it's got to be "BLOCKBUSTER!"

This over-the-top attitude pervades not only business and politics, but even related forms of entertainment. Just the other night I saw an ad for "The Fugitive" television series. It might have made a great movie, but the only salvation I can imagine for this particular program is a truly perverted screenwriter willing to have a field day with one-armed man jokes.

Success however, walks hand-in-hand with criticism. It is said that Hollywood is poisoning this country. Sex, guns and drugs pervade so many movies, a G rating has become somewhat of an anomaly these days. While indeed it seems movie makers have quite a faculty for producing one atrocity after another, anyone willing to blame Hollywood for America's problems isn't looking past their own cave of a living room. The problem is unfortunately not nearly so simple.

To use a related entertainment analogy, the music industry is currently up in arms in the debate over Napster. "It's killing the industry!" music executives cry. What the suits fail to realize is that it is in fact themselves who are responsible. The problem is not free music on the internet, it's horrible music on the radio. Rather than promoting and developing genuine talent, record industry executives are content to grab a quick buck with bands featuring boys wearing make-up and girls wearing shoulder pads. So instead of multiple bands which garner both critical and commercial success over a period of many years, a handful of ill-conceived, next-big-thing-but-never-amount-to- anything acts dominate Billboard charts.

The point is that violence and sex in movies isn't the cause of moral decay in America. Gun violence, teen pregnancy, and drug addiction are problems of paramount concern. Easy answers like"the movies made me do it" will never suffice or even come close to solving anything.

Politicians may earn kudos for chastising Hollywood, but they will never earn accolades for failing to see the real societal ills. Eighty years ago, America's greatness became a reality because ofpeople opened their eyes to the possibility of change. All it takes to watch a movie is sight. To rise above ignorance takes vision. Let's not blind ourselves by blaming rehearsed scenes for real lifeproblems.