"New" Hollywood

During the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, up until more recent years, films took on more pressing and important topics. Hollywood produced anti-establishment films (i.e. Bonnie and Clyde), escapist blockbusters (i.e. Star Wars), and went on to focus on things such as romance, family, gender, sexuality, race, and urban issues.

More recently films have taken on this new face that is shoving profanity, sex, and other crude forms of behavior in its viewers faces. Michael Medved, co-host of public television’s Sneak Previews, claimed that today’s films glamourizes violence, slanders marriage, mocks authority, promotes sexual promiscuity, and ridicules religion.

While what Medved is true, there is more to the story. David Denby, film critic, has observed that in 1966 when the Production Code was abandoned the amount of sex, violence, and profanity increased; but in the 1980s and 90s Hollywood also increased its amount of entertainment for families.

There is definite reasons why Hollywood is focusing more so on these types of movies. The cost of making and marketing films has sky rocketed and is still rising (an average of $40 million per film today). This has caused Hollywood to have to produce only guaranteed hits, which are loaded with special effects, sequels, and also remakes of older films, foreign films, and even old TV shows.

Since the mid-1980s, movie-goers have dramatically decreased, making teenage boys the largest single group of movie-goers. So for them to have hits, they focus on these crude action films that are easily understood.