That Losing Summer At The Box Office ... J. D. Longstreet

That Losing Summer At The Box Office
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

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Hollywood has experienced one losing film after another this summer.  It has been expensive, and it has been embarrassing, as well.  Millions upon millions of dollars were pumped into those major movies and still -- they flopped.

A couple of things:  First, the writing of late has been, in this scribe's opinion, lousy!  So-called "block-buster" movies based on comic book characters, no less, and remakes of past hits, plus remakes of remakes.

The lack of imagination, and creativity is bad enough, but add to that the political activity of the "stars" and it has, in my opinion, soured the audience toward Hollywood's products and that includes the actors and actresses who spout their half-baked Marxist ideas on screen and stage in the middle of a performance for which the audience has just paid good, hard-earned money in hopes on being entertained not indoctrinated.       

 I am sick and tired of Hollywood’s elite “emoting” with their foolish and totally unsound ideas on American politics.  More often than not, their “pearls of wisdom” are counterfeit, and much less than wise, quite often exposing the unfathomable depths of their ignorance of the representative republic the forefathers planned for us.

To attend a paid performance of one of these Hollywood pundits and, right in the middle of the performance you PAID for, have them rattle off their leftist views of the Republican Party is in the poorest of tastes.  But -- whoever thought taste and class was present in the culture of Hollywood.

Have you noticed how their political diatribes bear remarkable likenesses to rehashed communist propaganda film dialogue from the 1950’s?   Is that a coincidence?  I doubt it.

Senator Joe McCarthy tried to warn America that Hollywood was crawling with commies way back in the 1950's.  He was destroyed by the equally left-leaning mainstream media over six decades ago.  

The thing is, you see, once I have heard one of these "stars," these intellectual lightweights, spout their hate of Conservatives it is never out of my mind when viewing, or listening, to them practice their art. 

An actor who spews hatred for conservatives, or for our constitution, or our capitalist system, for instance, and then asks me to accept him as the character he is currently portraying on the big screen, or the TV screen, is asking me to do the impossible.  I cannot do it.  I can only suspend my disbelief so far ... and then only for short periods.  

I wonder: is all this contributing to their gigantic losses at the box office?   Have the leftist actors felt it in their pocketbooks yet?  Oh, they will.  And then their little secret will be exposed:  They ARE capitalists after all!  

The pain caused by the loss in revenue will be even more intense amongst those who put up the money for the production of those terribly expensive flops.  The question then arises, how long will the money men, and money women, of Hollywood put up with the loose lips of the left wing activists among the acting community of Hollywood?

Many of us, myself included, will not watch a movie, even on TV, in which a left wing activist is starring.  I cannot get past their “air headedness”.   I mean these are people hired to play a part because they are good at “pretending” they are somebody else.  How do we know when the acting, the pretending, stops and the real person, if there is one there, steps forward?

I am convinced that one of the reasons the Liberal left is so prominent in Hollywood is the tendency of liberals to base their politics on feelings, on emotions, not fact and reality.  Actors, you see, make a living emoting, using their emotions and playing upon the ‘feelings’ of the public. It, then, is the most natural thing in the world for emoting actors to hook-up with a political party of emotions.  One could hardly be surprised at that.

In the days of the Hollywood studios, actors who made their politics known, let alone publicly supported one political party, or the other, would quickly find himself, or herself, without a contract and out on the street.  Why -- because it hurts business.  Plain and simple.

So, next time Hollywood wants to realistically look at why their revenue from motion pictures is down, maybe they ought to take a look at the political causes with which their actor’s associate themselves, and then compare the actor’s politics with the politics of the majority of Americans.  They will be surprised.  We won’t… but they will.

“Freedom of Speech”, they yell!  Of course it is.  They have the freedom to speak anything they want.  But … I have the freedom not to listen, and, in the case of the actors, not to buy a ticket to one of their movies.

It seems a lot of Americans are exercising that last “right” these days.

© J. D. Longstreet - 2013