Will there be an Academy Awards ten or twenty years from now?  Will there be a Hollywood by then? 

Most likely there will still be a part of Los Angeles named Hollywood.  Whether they’ll still make movies there is a good question.  Because, movies aren’t a profitable enterprise lately.  Funny how people don’t want to pay for entertainment which bullies them for being normal.  They won’t tune in for awards shows which hand out awards based on color of skin and how much the nominees hate America, either.  Not that anyone in tinseltown admits noticing that.  Not yet, anyway. 

The conventional wisdom was that Hollywood didn’t have to care about what Americans thought anymore.  A billion Chinese constituted a much bigger market to chase.  All the movers and shakers had to do was keep the communist overlords happy and the money would just roll in like a tidal wave.  Americans were just going to have to get used to it.  The captains of other industries expected similar scenarios -- Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Finance, Big fill-in-the-blank.  The experts all said so.  And they ought to know.  They were paid enough. 

Then a funny thing happened on the way to the bright, globalist Utopia.  We the people, the proletariat, the masses started to sniff something rotten wafting down from the ivory towers and hallowed halls, and the silver screen.  To be honest, there has always been a degree of corruption and dishonesty we’ve tolerated in our governments, businesses, and cultural institutions.  Just go read up on Credit Mobilier and Teapot Dome.  As long as it didn’t impact our everyday lives, government and academia served as convenient repositories to warehouse useless people.  There were useless people in business as well.  But sooner or later they went bankrupt, which solved that problem.    

A consequence of more and more invasive government is that inherent governmental incompetence bleeds into every aspect of life.  The useless people aren’t happy just causing problems in Washington and the universities any longer.  They are compelled to come cause problems in your life as well, simply to make themselves feel less useless.

To borrow a thoroughly discredited phrase, this was not sustainable.  The communists of China are only interested in the type of globalism they can saddle up and ride to world domination.  No amount of kowtowing is going to secure that market for Hollywood, or Silicon Valley, or Big fill-in-the-blank.  The bickering committee steering the SS Woketanic is waking up to the fact that they’ve ripped their bottom out on an iceberg named Joe Biden. 

Suddenly, ignoring what the domestic market wants to buy, or watch, or values doesn’t appear to be such a good business model.  Electric cars aren’t selling all that well.  Neither is more crime, bossy teachers, high inflation, arrogant politicians, self-righteous activists, kneeling athletes, or biased reporters.  Most especially what isn’t selling are movies and TV shows which preach lies at people, and tell us to be ashamed. 

Crusading politicians and activists of the 1960s called television and movies a cultural wasteland.  They used this as an excuse to fund public broadcasting.  A great idea that turned out to be.  What actually horrified those busybodies was a free market beyond their control.  Well, took them a while, but they certainly made progress on that front. 

Now that the Chinese money has dried up, and the woke commissars have chased all real dissent from the public square and the silver screen, we really do wander a forlorn cultural wasteland.  Most people aren’t going to find anything worth buying a ticket for at the cinema.   And who hasn’t surfed up and down the TV channels, searching for something, anything, worth watching? 

In vain. 

There is going to be a lot of money made, and great careers launched by the first people in Hollywood to feed the hunger out there for movies and TV shows which start telling the truth again.  Truth and entertainment used to be the stock in trade of the industry.  No government bureaucrat regulated it.  Studios were very good at delivering what would sell.  And they knew that socialism doesn’t sell.  Apparently, it's a lesson they have to learn again. 

So, here’s some free advice to ambitious producers in Hollywood.  The first films which tell stories people want to see again, stories they need to see, are going to be big hits.  They’ll be like blessed rain after the long, woke drought.  Once that happens, the rush will be on.  Hollywood is full of herd animals, and they will stampede after what succeeds.  So, you’ll have to be at or near the front of the pack if you want to really cash in. 

There’s plenty of source material to choose from, too.  The Clintons ran a cash for influence racket.  Biden sold out to the Chinese.  Big Tech ignored antitrust laws.  The FBI suppressed evidence and spied on a president.  The media chose sides.  And, the Democrats stole a national election.  Most of that was just in the last five years.  The 1960s have got nothing on this decade in terms of turbulence.   

These don’t need to be epics or documentaries, either.  Who among us can’t recount personal or family stories of the wreckage from our national nightmare of Leftism?  Industries were shipped overseas.  Millions lost jobs and futures to offshoring and cheap, illegal imported labor.   Chinese fentanyl fueled addiction.  Criminals went free, and citizens were indicted.  Year by year, we have had to contend with tighter and tighter constraints on just how we can travel and what we can say.  Then, the final straw came in the form of a fake pandemic.  Despite the globalists having the media and the institutions on their side, we just decided we weren’t going to dance to their tune.  Now, that’s a story.  And it looks like November is shaping up to deliver a Hollywood ending. 

If there’s going to be a Hollywood in ten years, they’re going to have to start telling the truth and making real movies again.  Otherwise, they’ll just be abandoned like the other corrupted institutions which won’t reform.  There was a time when Oscars were awarded to movies most people actually wanted to see, actually paid money to see.  It’s going to have to be that way again.  If you don’t want Hollywood to die a pathetic, unmourned death.   

You can save Hollywood, and get rich doing it too.  You just have to ignore the woke critics, trust your gut, and listen to your audience instead.  You’ll barely be able to hear the critics, lounging by the pool at the mansion your success will build.  Just don’t pay them any attention.  We sure don’t. 

A.   Welderson wishes to remain anonymous, preferring morning coffee not fortified with the saliva of some triggered SJW barista.  Fame is fleeting; hepatitis is forever. 

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License