Hollywood vs. America - by Michael Medved (Paperback)

About the Book

The co-host of PBS's Sneak Previews delivers a passionate and meticulously documented attack on Hollywood and its failure to represent the values of mainstream America. Confronting one of the most significant issues of our time, it's certain to elicit strong repsonses.

Book Synopsis

Why does our popular culture seem so consistently hostile to the values that most Americans hold dear? Why does the entertainment industry attack religion, glorify brutality, undermine the family, and deride patriotism?

In this explosive book, one of the nation's best known film critics examines how Hollywood has broken faith with its public, creating movies, television, and popular music that exacerbate every serious social problem we face, from teenage pregnancies to violence in the streets.

Michael Medved powerfully argues that the entertainment business follows its own dark obsessions, rather than giving the public what it wants: In fact, the audience for feature films and network television has demonstrated its profound disillusionment in recent years, with disastrous consequences for many entertainment companies. Meanwhile, overwhelming numbers of our fellow citizens complain about the wretched quality of our popular culture--describing the offerings of the mass media as the worst ever. Medved asserts that Hollywood ignores--and assaults--the values of ordinary American families, pursuing a self-destructive and alienated ideological agenda that is harmful to the nation at large and to the industry's own interests.

In hard-hitting chapters on "The Attack on Religion," "The Addiction to Violence," "Promoting Promiscuity," "The Infatuation with Foul Language," "Kids Know Best," "Motivations for Madness," and other subjects, Medved outlines the underlying themes that turn up again and again in our popular culture. He also offers conclusive evidence of the frightening real-world impact of these messages on our society and our children.

Finally, Medved shows where and how Hollywood took a disastrous wrong turn toward its current crisis, and he outlines promising efforts both in and outside the industry to restore a measure of sanity and restraint to our media of mass entertainment.

Sure to elicit strong response, whether it takes the form of cheers of support or howls of enraged dissent, Hollywood vs. America confronts head-on one of the most significant issues of our times.

Review Quotes

"Michael Medved is not only the most perceptive and persuasive of the major American film critics, but he is also the most courageous. While his new book will not endear him to many studio executives, it is easily the most provocative study of the moral implications of film ever written, " -- Jim Svedja, film critic, CBS Radio "This book is fascinating but disturbing reading -- a badly needed wake-up call for the entertainment industry. Anyone who wants to understand how -- and why -- Hollywood is attacking family values must read this book." -- Bob DeMoss, Jr., Youth Culture Specialist, Focus on the Family "Michael Medved understands movies and the movie business better than anyone else in America. Here he puts the entertainment industry's stars and stooges on can- did camera and gives shocking proof that Hollywood is forfeiting both profits and paying customers in a crazy campaign to foist its own loony lifestyles and muddled world views on the American people." -- George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty and Life After Television "Everyone -- left, right and middle -- is perfectly aware that we are in a period of cul- tural and moral collapse. But some people don't want to concede that the popular media bear part of the responsibility. Michael Medved's book should convince them that it does."-- Steve Allen