Hollywood: Not That Evil

So my last post attacked the message of "The Constant Gardener." Tarun, who has been combative lately, argued with me for a bit. I guess he has a point: few movies have much of an impact on the world, so it's not particularly immoral to disregard the truth for the sake of a good story.

I'm not entirely convinced, though. "The Constant Gardener" is different from "Ghostbusters" or something. It takes a very serious tone, and surely many viewers leave the theater feeling that the movie has engaged issues of social justice in an intelligent way. Further, while few people will explicitly make decisions based on the ideas in the movie, it feeds into a set of attitudes that are very destructive in the developing world. It's an interesting question which matter more, the ideas carefully articulated in academia or the memes casually penetrating our daily thoughts. Which has had more effect on attitudes about Appalachia, the census or "Deliverance"? I don't know, but I don't think we can dismiss the influence of movies on popular perceptions.