FAMILY FILMS 

FAMILY FILMS ARE IGNORED BY ELITES
Michael Coren
Sun Media
Wednesday, March 9, 2005

(Editor's Note: Michael's column today reveals a major plot twist in the movie Million Dollar Baby. If you don't care, read on. If you do, save this column until after you've seen the movie)

THE Oscars came and went. Another spasm of self-congratulation and indulgence. Especially ironic in that the major movie studios are in serious financial trouble and people are staying away from theatres in increasingly large numbers.

But Hollywood has never been concerned about people. If anything, the elites of North America's entertainment industry despise the people and all for which they stand. After all, Hollywood's fetishes are liberal politics, cosmetic surgery, publicity and sexual extremism, not necessarily in that order!

The nominated movies for this year's Oscars said a great deal.

Million Dollar Baby, for example, was as much about euthanasia as about boxing and gave a blatant defence of the killing of the handicapped and the terminally ill. Little attention has been given to large-scale protests against the film by leaders of the disabled community.

Similarly Vera Drake, which was seen by virtually nobody, was a lugubrious justification for abortion. As was the absurdly lauded Cider House Rules back in 1999, when the movie's makers gave public support to the pro-abortion movement.

Another hyped film, Kinsey, chronicled the life of an infamous sex-researcher. But it was hagiography. It didn't tell us, for example, that he was a homosexual masochist, or that he refused to condemn those among his research subjects who had raped children, some as young as 15 months.

Nor did the film explain that Kinsey's absurdly inflated figures for homosexuality, adultery and promiscuity were gathered by concentrating on the prison population and a certain section of college students. In other words, tendentious nonsense that told us nothing about the sexual habits of Americans, but much about perversion within a specific group.

Yet the movie depicts Kinsey as a persecuted genius and critics eagerly fell into acclaim.

None of this would be quite as objectionable if those on the other side of the debate were allowed to make movies and state their case. Fairness of access and freedom of expression, however, have never characterized Hollywood or, for that matter, the meager Canadian movie business.

Which brings me to The Passion of the Christ and its predictable but shameful lack of any major nominations at the Oscars. All thinking people know why this happened. Simply, Hollywood is dominated by an anti-religious and left wing agenda.

With DVD and foreign sales The Passion made more than a billion dollars, and cost less than $50 million to make. An almost unprecedented financial success. You would think an entertainment culture obsessed with sequels and spin-offs has to be working on movies based on, say, any of the four Gospels, one of numerous Biblical stories or a biopic of a saint or religious leader. Instant stories, guaranteed to make money.

But no. In fact, no major studio in North America has a religion movie in production. Such is Hollywood's hatred for orthodoxy, religion and family values that producers would rather go out of business than cater to genuine public opinion and admit that perhaps they were wrong.

The issue goes beyond religion to basic family values. Of the ten most successful movies of 2004 only one of them had an "R" rating. And that was, yes, The Passion. So the 10 movies that made the vast bulk of Hollywood's profits last years were family films, entertaining cartoons and a depiction of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Which should tell us something about what North Americans want to see at the cinema. When asked, members of the public repeatedly explain that they want less offensive language, less gratuitous violence and sexuality, less perversion and more reflection of reality and stability.

Reality and stability, however, do not win Oscars and do not stimulate invitations to fashionable parties.

There are ways to fight back, as The Passion demonstrated. Another such movie is Therese, currently playing in selected theatres throughout Canada. In the United States this gentle and sensitive life of a nineteenth-century French saint did extremely well through word-of-mouth and an e-mail campaign among supporters. The mainstream media, of course, refused to recognize it.

Fight back. You, your family and the culture deserve it.