Does this mean that Hollywood movies actually reduce crime?

Saturday, January 4th, 2020

Bryan Caplan discusses the social conservatism of Hollywood:

The message of all this cinema: Follow the path of bourgeois virtue.  Work hard, keep the peace, abstain from alcohol, have very few sexual partners, and keep your whole family far away from anyone who lives otherwise.  Think about how many fictional characters would have lived longer if they never set foot in a bar.

Is this the message the writers intend to send?  Unlikely.  Instead, they try to create engrossing stories — and end up weaving morality tales.

[...]

Does this mean that Hollywood movies actually reduce crime? I doubt it. The viewers most in need of lessons in bourgeois virtue are probably too impulsive to reflect on the moral of the story. They’re captivated instead by the gunplay and machismo. Yet if you’re paying attention, the moral of these stories remains: Unless your parents are criminals, listen to your parents.

Comments

  1. Jeffrey S. says:

    This was a typically crazy post by Caplan. Check out Dylan’s comment — he nailed Caplan by pointing out that Caplan’s definition of “bourgeois virtue” is bogus. I did the same thing with my comment:

    [Dylan,

    This is an excellent point — Bryan essentially makes the case that social conservatism is equivalent to: “Live a responsible bourgeois life or you will soon be severely punished.” This is absurd — as you point out, there is serious disagreement among liberals and conservatives about what goes into a bourgeois life. I disagree with my liberal neighbors on the meaning of marriage, on the morality of abortion, the morality of homosexual acts, drug use, the production and use of pornography, etc. Hollywood often glamorizes all of these acts or suggests there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, redefining marriage, using pornography, etc.]

  2. Obie says:

    Hollywood’s constant message to the public, certainly in recent years, is that Western Civilization cannot survive without race-mixing and the complete acceptance of all forms of sexual degeneracy, but especially homosexuality and transsexualism, and the eradication of White Nationalism and anything approximating it.

  3. Kirk says:

    “Hollywood’s constant message to the public, certainly in recent years, is that Western Civilization cannot survive without race-mixing and the complete acceptance of all forms of sexual degeneracy, but especially homosexuality and transsexualism, and the eradication of White Nationalism and anything approximating it.”

    There is an interesting sort of parasitism going on, with regards to this, and the things that Andrew Yang points out about the “bubble elites”. These are essentially dysfunctional organisms that are incapable of actually reproducing or effectively living on their own, and they subsist by parasitizing the “normies” out in flyover country. They skim off the appropriate “beautiful/smart people”, and then turn them against their former communities and culture.

    At some point, this is going to be recognized for what it is, and then where we go from there? Who knows. Won’t be pretty. Harvey Weinstein and Epstein are just the tippy-tips of the iceberg–Think of the generations of Hollywood starlets and wannabe big shots that have left Podunk, USA and headed off to the bright lights and big cities to get “big”, only to wind up as second-rate whores after their big moment on the casting couch.

    I had an interesting conversation, once, with a former low-level Hollywood type that had the blinders fall off about half-way in to becoming one of the mid-level types that fed Harvey and company. She felt compromised, once she realized what was going on. Going in, it was the “death of a thousand cuts” to her ethics and morals, because it starts with just one little step, leading to another, and then you’re doing the Ghislaine Maxwell kind of crap, and holding the little girls and boys down for the Epsteins to sodomize. The entire system is corrupt, top to bottom, while there are still relatively “clean” pipelines in operation. The problem is, that can’t really tell from the outside which is which–There was one famous kid’s TV show she told me about that looked really cleanly operated, but then they put one of the worst kiddy-diddlers in Hollywood in charge, and all that changed as he started changing out the people working on the show.

    The crazy crap that Cory Feldman has been coming out with for years isn’t too far off the mark from what she was saying was going on, so… While I have no first-hand knowledge, I do have a certain set of suspicions about it all.

    You get down to it, there’s always a certain civilizational parasitism going on. The Romans had their elites that turned the countryside full of yeoman farmers into latifundia and urban slums, never realizing that they were hollowing out the true strength of Rome, its own solidly stolid countryfolk.

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