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                                                                                IDEAS, Page 77

The Magistrate of Morals


There's a lot to criticize in grimy pop culture, but critic
Michael Medved is the wrong man for the job

By RICHARD CORLISS


    Why don't we just agree with Michael Medved and have done
with it? In his new book, Hollywood vs. America (HarperCollins,
$20), Medved, a critic on the PBS show Sneak Previews, denounces
today's movie industry -- and by extension the TV networks and
music business -- as "an alien force that assaults our most
cherished values and corrupts our children. The dream factory
has become the poison factory."

    Medved has tapped into a general queasiness about pop
culture, and not just from religious and social conservatives.
A large segment of the public senses that the trash has risen
to eye and ear level, and it smells rank. Freddy Krueger slices
his way into little girls' minds, and Madonna's siren song
turns little boys into prematurely dirty men. Once the U.S.
cinema was ruled by sentiment; now it is tyrannized by cynicism.
Movies have assumed the omniscient sneer of a '50s greaser; they
mock or duck any authority, whether the unfeeling parent, the
stodgy teacher, the irrelevant clergyman or the brutal cop. And
where once there was subtlety in popular art, now there is
sensation. Traditional standards have given way to tribal
impulses, which push Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers aside to
make way for a dance of the seven veils. By now the dancer is
naked; the next stage must be flaying.

    So Medved is on to something: the public's numbness at
Hollywood's shock tactics and the reluctance of critics to
attend to -- let alone defend -- Ice-T or Studs or the latest
sadistic horror movie. But he doesn't know what to do with it.
Instead of just isolating a disturbing tendency in pop culture,
he is compelled to document it with suspicious statistics, to
draw conspiratorial conclusions, to call for a return in spirit
to the movies' puritanical Production Code of the 1930s -- all
with the fervor of a modern Martin Luther, an angry evangelist
determined to nail his 95 theses not on a church door but on a
movie marquee. Problem is, he keeps hitting his thumb.

    Medved argues, for example, that the public's revulsion at
nasty films is reflected in a slump at the box office -- that
people are mad as hell and they're not going to pay for it
anymore. It's true that Americans bought only about a billion
movie tickets in 1991 (the lowest in 15 years), but they also
rented an all-time high 4.1 billion movie cassettes. And it's
true that the three major TV networks "have lost a third of
their nightly audience" in the past 15 years. But viewers didn't
turn off the set; they switched to independent and cable
channels. So Americans are watching as much TV as ever, and they
are seeing more films (in the 'plexes or at home) than they did
in the mid-'40s, the top years for movie attendance. If people
hate this garbage, why are they still buying it?

    We sympathize with anyone who each year must watch 300 new
movies, many of them junk. This may explain why Auntie Lee's
Meat Pies, Lucky Stiff, Homer & Eddie and Closet Land -- films
that barely achieved theatrical release -- are among the targets
of Medved's dudgeon. It also leads him to catalog, in avid
detail, outrages of manners in the movies. Who else would think
to tabulate recent films with scenes of vomiting (36) or
urination (18)?

    Medved's bloodshot rage makes it hard for him to perform
the crucial job of a film critic, which is to see movies -- to
figure out what's going on -- and report it. Here is his
analysis of Sleeping with the Enemy: an "indictment of
conventional wedlock as a cruel and unhealthy arrangement."
Well, it's not; it is a melodrama about wife abuse -- a social
disorder Hollywood didn't invent. Medved, determined to alienate
even his core audience of people who think Disney cartoon
features are innocuous entertainment, proclaims that The Little
Mermaid "effectively encouraged children to disregard the values
and opinions of their parents." Well, Disney has been
traumatizing kids for half a century. When Bambi's mother died,
kids screamed in horror.

    Even in Hollywood's so-called innocent so-called Golden
Age, movies were objects of public controversy or rejection. In
Medved's favorite film year, 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
was condemned by many U.S. Senators and editorial writers, and
Gone with the Wind stoked a furor with its use of the word damn.
Today, other tendencies in Golden Age movies -- the stereotyping
of blacks, gays and other minorities -- seem vicious in
retrospect. Back then, the middle class was in charge, and they
made fun of those below. Now films are a minority pleasure, so
the majority is the butt of harsh humor.

    But there's no proof that people go to movies because they
approve of the messages, or stay away because they don't. Most
likely, they are looking to be seduced by entertainment, not by
politics. They know, if Medved doesn't, that the basic stories
and attitudes have changed little since the movies were young.
Comedy always exalts the clever over the dull; romance promotes
the beautiful over the plain; gangster movies and westerns
resolve moral dilemmas with fistfights or gunfights. The hero
is a fellow cocky toward authority. And drama has always been
a charged debate between good and evil. The more vivid the evil
-- whether the Nazis in Casablanca or Hannibal Lecter in The
Silence of the Lambs -- the more satisfying the final triumph
of good.

    Medved may see himself as one of Old Hollywood's lonely
heroes: a radically righteous Mr. Smith tilting against the
liberal establishment, both creative and critical. And many
people will buy his book for the reason he thinks they would go
to movies: to see their political virtue expressed in public.
But censorious guidelines for behavior will not eradicate the
blight, if such it is. People will have to stop going, buying,
renting. Until that G-rated day comes to pass, Medved might
lighten up and read some other book. We suggest The Golden
Turkey Awards, a humorous survey of legendary bad movies. It
ought to be in Medved's library; he wrote it.