Okay. Lemme try this again.
I think we can all agree that business concerns play an enormous role in Hollywood decision making. In a word, Hollywood producers want to make money. To say "Hollywood makes what sells" is an oversimplification in a number of respects, but certainly there's a lot of truth in it. The people in Hollywood are acutely aware that the
Passion audience's dollars are as green as everybody else's. If they could find a way to make religiously themed films that were consistently successful with religious audiences, I'm sure they would jump at the opportunity.
It is also true that, appearances at times to the contrary notwithstanding, Hollywood movies are not actually made on an assembly line based purely on demographic studies and focus groups conducted throughout the U.S. and around the world. They may be packaged and sold that way, but even the most blandly generic Hollywood product represents an enormous investment of time and energy by a whole lot of people, many of whom live in a particular cultural milieu.
I understand that Hollywood isn't a homogenous
Star Trek planet. Nor is the rest of the United States. Still, it seems fair to say that the mix of things you have in Hollywood has a particular character, and that there are a lot of places you could go in the United States that, culturally speaking, are a lot more like one another than they are like Hollywood. Homogenous or not, it's not hard to imagine the effect of visiting another planet, or having people respond to you as if you were from another planet, in a meeting of Hollywood and middle America.
The truism that culture affects the media as well as the media affecting the culture is certainly valid, but it's also true that the particular cultural milieu that influences a lot of the media is often markedly different from the cultural milieu in which a lot of other people live.
Pitches and unproduced scripts are plentiful. Probably nearly all Hollywood producers of any stature pass on far more potential pictures than they make. The few that they does pick are usually films they think will sell in flyover country and around the world, but in addition to that there has to be something about that script that grabs the producer in some way. It has to feel right, to connect with him somehow. In general, a good script is one want to tell your friends about -- a script for a film that will make you money, certainly, but also one that will be admired by people who matter, one that will make other people in your town want to work with you, and possibly one that will win awards... awards that are not voted on by people who live in flyover country.
As I noted in an earlier post, a significant asterisk to the truism that "Hollywood makes what sells" is that there are no formulas or tables to tell you exactly what sells and what doesn't. A few films each year are a sure thing, and most films come with some sort of minimum expected return -- but it's certainly not a science, or even an art, as demonstrated by the number of unexpectedly poor performers and breakout hits.
When that happens, determining the reason for success or failure is another exercise in speculation and subjectivity. Did Christian backlash damage
The Golden Compass in the U.S., or did audiences fail to show up because it looked like a mediocre fantasy film with no big stars? Did
The Nativity Story flop because the subject matter failed to attract, or because the treatment wasn't very exciting?
And it doesn't stop there. Granted the decision to make a particular film, there are all sorts of intermediate decisions about shaping that film in order to maximize its appeal (which, again, is a subjective consideration). Religious elements in source material may be downplayed or emphasized, expunged or added, spun positive or negative. Islamic religious elements raise one set of sociological and political concerns; Christian religious elements raise another set.
The decision to put a rosary in the hands of a particular character or to eliminate religious references in regard to another character is probably rarely decided purely on the basis of "What will sell?" The film's overall viability in the marketplace is probably not substantially affected by such decisions; in making such decisions, filmmakers probably usually fall back on their own personal views and the expectations of their own cultural milieu. I don't think it's overstating things to say that in some circumstances any reference to or mention of Christianity in a film would inevitably be through the lens of one's opinion of the Bush administration, for instance.
In brief, the whole business is an enormously subjective process, and there are limits on the extent to which the Hollywood producer can tell middle America, "I'm just making what people want to see." Is that so? Which people? How do you know? How well do you know them? How disinterestedly are you even trying to make what you think they want to see?
If movies are a mirror to the culture, they are a very imperfect mirror, filtered through layers and layers of subjectivity, generally reflecting a particular cultural milieu and often significantly in tension with other cultural milieus, even the ones they are trying to sell to. You know the famous
Steinberg New Yorker map of the world? Sure, it's an exaggeration, but it wouldn't be funny if there were no truth to it.
Besides, whatever filmmakers may say to the media about merely "reflecting the culture," amongst themselves -- you can hear it in awards speeches -- many movers and shakers in Hollywood are firmly convinced of their ability and even manifest duty to make a difference, to be a force for change in the world. The conviction that we -- we few -- have the moral high ground need to show the way to others less fortunate, is alive and well in Tinseltown -- as elsewhere (I am not here vindicating anyone against anyone else). In other words, to "make what sells" is not the sole goal; there is also the goal to sell us what they think we should buy, to make what is good for us, and to make us like it.
A number of cultural conservatives have emphasized what is claimed as a sort of religion gap between the cultural milieu of Hollywood and that of much of the rest of America. Again, I am not here adjudicating amongst aggrieved parties; where there is a gap, individuals on both sides may be at fault, and what if anything is to be done about it by either party is entirely up for discussion. Say whatever you want about how believers' behavior and attitudes and what are constructive or non-constructive approaches. I'm simply trying to describe the situation, in part.
The religion gap, as far as I can tell, is real. By such measures as, e.g., regular worship service attendance, identification with a particular religious creed and probably belief in God, as well as in moral attitudes regarding, e.g., marriage, sex and abortion, the general milieu of Hollywood is at odds with that of much of the rest of the country. It also seems plausible to me that negative or suspicious attitudes toward "organized religion" and religious believers are probably more common and stronger in Hollywood than elsewhere -- and again, I'm not assigning blame or exculpating anyone.
I'm simply saying I don't think it's hysteria or persecution complex for Christians to feel that there is a real pattern in Hollywood movies of bias against Christianity and Christians. This is not to condemn or excuse anyone, or to recommend any particular course of action, such as standing on our roofs and wagging our fingers at Hollywood. I'm just saying.
