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Tuesday, January 17, 2006

‘Brokeback Mountain’ award sparks criticism

Following the success of “Brokeback Mountain” at last night’s Golden Globe Awards, conservative activists have called for a national inquiry into “liberal bias” in the film and theater industry.

“My scientific studies indicate that liberals outnumber conservatives by 3500 to 1 in film and theater,” said David Horowitz, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a nonpartisan watchdog group funded by nobody in particular.  “There’s no way to explain that kind of imbalance except by active, conscious discrimination on the part of so-called liberals.”

Michael Medved, an independent film critic and bestselling author, agreed, remarking that liberal bias was not confined to Hollywood and the independent film industry.  “Look at Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway, the Goodman and Steppenwolf in Chicago, the Guthrie in Minneapolis, regional theaters throughout the country—and don’t get me started on San Francisco,” said Medved.  “The bias is pervasive and systemic, running all the way from top producers and directors to set designers and stage hands.”

Medved pointed to an essay published last year by In Character magazine in which New York-based theater critic Terry Teachout wrote,

I’ve seen, read, and heard about enough contemporary American and British plays to know that the political point of view of most of their authors is well to the left of center. . . .  Of the two hundred-odd new plays I’ve seen in my two years as a working critic, not one could be described as embodying a specifically right-wing political perspective, nor do I know any New York-based playwrights or actors who are openly conservative.

“If we could do for theater what David Horowitz has done for American campuses,” said Medved, “the New York State Senate would already be holding hearings on liberal bias in the industry.”

Other critics argue that the liberal dominance of film and theater inevitably leads to a “skewing” of subject matter and perspective.  As James Dobson, an unaffiliated cultural critic with no explicit political agenda, points out, “Nowhere in ‘Brokeback Mountain’ is there any indication that 43 percent of gay cowboys have an average of five hundred sexual partners in their lifetimes, that 28 percent of gay cowboys have over one thousand sexual partners, or that gay cowboys have an average life span of only 43 years as a result.  Hollywood needs to begin telling the truth about the gay cowboy lifestyle,” concludes Dobson, “and it won’t do that until the conservative viewpoint is included in a fair and balanced way.”

L. Brent Bozell III of the Media Research Center, a just plain, ordinary media research center of some kind, added that liberal bias can also be detected in the range of subjects traditionally ignored by mainstream film and theater.  “Heterosexuality is the last taboo,” Bozell noted, “and heterosexual conservatives have to break the silence and begin demanding respect as human beings.  We want to see heterosexual Westerns, heterosexual romantic comedies, heterosexual domestic dramas, and heterosexual action films when we go to the movies.  We want Hollywood to represent our experiences, our lives, and our loves for a change.”

Dobson likened conservatives’ battle against mainstream film and theater to the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.  “Like the great Dr. Martin Luther King, we have a dream,” Dobson said, “and we dream of the day when the conservative viewpoint finally gets a fair hearing in American culture.”

Posted by Michael on 01/17 at 09:25 AM
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