Image of US in Hollywood

In our culture, art is considered only a form of entertainment and even more so a luxurious form of leisure. It is not like that in advanced societies. Let us take movies as an example.

Some see Hollywood as a tool in the media hegemony, as Mr. Noam Chomsky does. Others consider it to be a huge machine propagating American culture to serve globalization or imperialism’s goals, if you will. They may be right, if we review some movies that are in line with this assumption. But this is only part of the truth, and if we want to have a better understanding of Hollywood we should first understand the United States as a society.

The United States is a country of institutions, political parties and various organizations. Hollywood is a micro-America. The main goal of Hollywood’s gigantic production companies is to collect record revenues at the box office, and everything else follows from this.

We should remember that Hollywood has been established in America and not in any Arab country or Middle Eastern country. Therefore, it has no common ground of interests with our governments. Hollywood exposes and discloses the U.S. government’s domestic and foreign policies, though it sometimes glorifies a national or political figure, or even the policies of a fanatic party. It seems we Arabs want Hollywood to address our Arab issues; yet if it were to do so, we would curse that and say it should not rudely intervene in our affairs.

I would like to refer to two movies that are addressing American domestic issues and exposing the performance of law enforcement agencies on high profile criminal cases that caught the public’s attention. These two movies criticize all three branches of government.

The first movie is “Changeling,” which deals with corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. It depicts the real story of a mother’s tragedy when her son was kidnapped, and she was later brought another boy from a shelter as a replacement for her child! The other movie is “Snitch.” This film was produced this year, and highlights the suffering of a father whose son was wrongly accused of drug trafficking and jailed for 10 years. In order for his son to be released from prison, the father had to take up the task of reporting other drug traffickers.

If Hollywood was trying to convince you that the United States was the cop, judge and rescuer of the world from any danger, then the powerful could not be blamed for claiming this. However, Hollywood does not shy away from criticizing its society and the authorities.

Hollywood is the plain mirror that reflects the face of American culture.