[R-G] Hollywood's New Censors

[Anthony Fenton]

  - The Graham & Alford piece cited by Pilger

...

http://www.newstatesman.com/film/2009/01/disney-hollywood-interests

The power behind the screen

Robbie Graham and Matthew Alford

Published 29 January 2009

The output of Hollywood is intrinsically pro-establishment, and to  
understand why you have to follow the money

Baz Luhrmann's epic film Australia has been criticised by many, and  
most vociferously by Germaine Greer, for sanitising the country's  
colonial history. At the same time it has served the purpose of making  
Australia look like a great place to go on holiday - its release was  
accompanied by reams of coverage in the travel sections of newspapers  
and a lavish advertising campaign by the Australian tourist board.  
This kind of marketing is hardly new - throughout cinematic history,  
films have served political and social ends. But in order to  
understand the influences at play in Hollywood today it is still worth  
asking in more detail: what prompted 20th Century Fox to produce this  
kind of material? The answer becomes clearer when we learn that the  
studio's parent company is Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which  
worked hand in hand throughout the film's production with the  
Australian government. The arrangement works well for both parties:  
the government benefits from the increase in tourism, and in turn  
Murdoch will receive tens of millions of dollars in tax rebates.

This is just one example of how the content of Hollywood movies is  
determined not only by the demands of the box office and the vision of  
studio "creatives", but also by those higher up the economic food  
chain. Indeed, in its cinema power list the Hollywood Reporter placed  
Rupert Murdoch at number one. Steven Spielberg, at number three, was  
the only director in the top ten.

The economic structure of the film industry is built around the  
dominant Hollywood studios ("the majors"), each of which is a  
subsidiary of a much larger corporation. Each studio is therefore not  
a separate or independent business, but rather just one of a great  
many sources of revenue in its parent company's wider financial  
empire. So, just as 20th Century Fox is owned by News Corp, Paramount  
is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Viacom. Universal is owned  
by General Electric/Vivendi, Disney by the Walt Disney Corporation,  
and so on. These parent companies are huge corporations, and their  
economic interests are sometimes closely tied to politicised areas,  
such as the armaments industry. They also depend on governments, which  
have the power to regulate in their favour and grant them tax breaks.

This is not to say that the content of a studio's films is determined  
entirely by the political and economic interests of its parent  
company; studio CEOs typically have considerable leeway to make the  
pictures they want to make, without any direct interference. But it is  
important to understand how and why Hollywood studios are tied into  
these wider corporate interests. At best, such interests contribute to  
a culture of conservative film-making. At worst, it is certainly not  
unknown for parent companies to take a conscious and deliberate  
interest in certain films.

To take one example: in 1969, Haskell Wexler - the cinematographer for  
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - had considerable trouble releasing  
his classic Medium Cool, which riffed on the anti-war protests at the  
Democrat convention the previous year. According to Wexler, documents  
he has received under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that on  
the eve of the film's release, Chicago's mayor and others in the  
Democratic Party let it be known to Gulf & Western (then the parent  
company of Paramount) that if Medium Cool was released, certain tax  
benefits and other perks would be withheld.

In a telephone interview, Wexler told us that Hollywood's business  
leaders "have no conscience". He explained how this corporate  
agreement was made discreetly: "Paramount called me and said I needed  
releases from all the [protesters] in the park, which was impossible  
to provide. They said if people went to see the movie and left the  
theatre and did a violent act, then the offices of Paramount could be  
prosecuted." Although Paramount was obliged to release the film, it  
successfully pushed for an X rating, advertised it feebly, and forbade  
Wexler from taking it to film festivals. Hardly the way to make a  
profit on a movie, but certainly the way to protect the broader  
interests of the parent company.

More recently, the Walt Disney Company tried to withhold Miramax's  
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004), the Michael Moore blockbuster. Miramax  
insisted Disney had no right to block it from releasing the film since  
its budget was well below the level requiring Disney's approval.  
Disney representatives responded that they could veto any Miramax film  
if it appeared that its distribution would be counterproductive to the  
interests of the company. Ari Emanuel, Moore's agent, alleged that  
Disney's boss Michael Eisner had told him he wanted to back out of the  
deal due to concerns about political fallout from conservative  
politicians, especially regarding tax breaks given to Disney  
properties, including Walt Disney World in Florida (Florida's governor  
was the then-president's brother, Jeb Bush). Disney denied any such  
high political ball game, explaining that they were worried about  
being "dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle" and  
alienating customers.

Disney has a strongly conservative tradition: Walt himself was a  
virulent anti-communist (though some of the more salacious rumours  
about him being a secret fascist and FBI informer are decidedly  
speculative). Corporate and government sponsors helped Disney make  
films promoting President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" policy as  
well as the infamous Duck and Cover documentary which suggested to  
schoolchildren that they could survive an atomic attack by hiding  
under their desks. Even now, a longtime member of Disney's board of  
directors is John E Bryson, who is also a director of the Boeing  
Company, one of the world's largest aerospace and defence contractors.  
Boeing received $16.6bn in Pentagon contracts in 2002, in the  
aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan.

Certain Disney films do appear to have been given preferential  
treatment for political reasons. When Disney released Pearl Harbor - a  
simplistic mega-budget movie which celebrated the American nationalist  
resurgence following that "day of infamy"- it received lamentable  
reviews. Nevertheless, Disney unexpectedly decided in August 2001 to  
extend the film's nationwide release window from the standard two to  
four months to seven months, meaning that this "summer" blockbuster  
would be screening until December. In addition, Disney expanded the  
number of theatres in which the film was showing from 116 to 1,036.

While such fare finds an easy route into the world's multiplexes, more  
politically challenging films are left to flounder for funding. Oliver  
Stone's Salvador (1986) was a graphic exposé of the Salvadorian civil  
war; its narrative was sympathetic to the leftist guerrillas and  
explicitly critical of US foreign policy, condemning the United States  
support of Salvador's right-wing military and infamous death squads.  
Stone's film was turned down by every major Hollywood studio, and was  
eventually financed by British and Mexican investors. More recently,  
controversial counterculture documentaries such as Loose Change, which  
argued that 9/11 was an "inside job", and Zeitgeist, which presents a  
frightening picture of global economics, have been viewed by millions  
through the internet when corporate media wouldn't touch them.

Universal Studios has backed a number of socially and politically  
critical films including Children of Men, Jarhead, and The Good  
Shepherd. However, at times it has been evident that the interests of  
the studio's parent company, General Electric, have played a part in  
decision-making. GE's most lucrative interests relate to weapons  
manufacturing, producing crucial components for hi-tech war planes,  
advanced surveillance technology, and essential hardware for the  
global oil and gas industries, notably in post-Saddam Iraq. Both GE's  
former and current CEOs had links to the Bush administration: Jack  
Welch (CEO from 1981 to 2001) is a declared Republican who announced  
his disdain for "protocol, diplomacy and regulators" and was even  
accused by the California congressman Henry Waxman of pressuring his  
NBC network to declare Bush the winner prematurely in the 2000 "stolen  
election" when he turned up unannounced in the newsroom during the  
poll count. Welch's successor, the current CEO Jeff Immelt, is a  
neoconservative and was a significant financial contributor to the  
Bush election campaign.

GE/Universal's United 93 was billed as the "true account" of how  
heroic passengers pn the plane "foiled the terrorist plot" by forcing  
it to crash prematurely in rural Pennsylvania. At the time, Bush's  
official 9/11 story was being seriously interrogated by America's  
independent news media; according to the results of a 2004 Zogby poll,  
half of New Yorkers believed "US leaders had foreknowledge of  
impending 9/11 attacks and 'consciously failed' to act"; and just one  
month prior to the release of United 93, 83 per cent of CNN viewers  
confirmed their belief "that the US government covered up the real  
events of the 9/11 attacks". With the official narrative under attack,  
the US government welcomed the release of United 93 with open arms:  
the film was a faithful audiovisual translation of the 9/11 Commission  
Report. Soon after its nationwide release date, President Bush invited  
representatives of Universal to the White House for congratulatory  
handshakes, followed by a private screening.

Munich, Steven Spielberg's exploration of Israeli vengeance following  
the Palestinian terrorist attack at the 1972 Olympics, could also be  
understood to reflect the interests of General Electric. Israel is one  
of GE's most loyal customers, buying Hellfire II laser missiles as  
well as propulsion systems for the F-16 Falcon fighter, the F-4  
Phantom fighter, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, and the UH-60  
Black Hawk helicopter. Spielberg ends his film with a lingering shot  
of the World Trade Center, its twin towers standing as monolithic  
reminders as to "why we fight", and casting a shadow over the 167  
minutes of running time, the voice of the Palestinian cause is  
restricted to just two and a half minutes of dialogue. Far from being  
an "even-handed cry for peace", as one critic claimed, Munich is more  
easily interpreted as a corporate-backed endorsement of Israeli policy.

To understand what might happen if big business interests were less  
prevalent in the film industry, consider the independent distributor  
Lions Gate Films. Lions Gate was formed in Canada by an investment  
banker, but is not beholden to a multi-billion dollar parent  
corporation with multifarious interests. The result has been some of  
the most daring and original popular political cinema of the past ten  
years: American Psycho, which criticised corporate capitalism; Hotel  
Rwanda, which highlighted the fail ings of US foreign policy, and Lord  
of War, which focused on the arms trade.

Jim Hightower, the radio commentator fired by Disney after criticising  
its policies on issues including tobacco advertising, once said that  
"the real political spectrum is not left to right, it's top to bottom,  
and the vast majority of people aren't even in shooting distance of  
the economic and political powers at the top".

As we peer up from our popcorn, it is worth remembering that behind  
the magic of the movies lurks the darker power of corporate public  
relations.

Matthew Alford is author of the forthcoming book "Projecting Power:  
American Foreign Policy and the Hollywood Propaganda System"

Robbie Graham is associate lecturer in film at Stafford College