Nina Metz: How can we come together with our world in tatters? Hollywood’s answer: Don’t even bother
Right now, it can feel like the walls are closing in. The coronavirus persists and keeps mutating. Incomes haven’t kept pace with soaring expenses. Rights and protections are being rolled back, with the promise of more to come. Another Black person killed by police. Another gun massacre. I could go on.
I wonder if the stories Hollywood has been telling us these past few years foster a defeatist sentiment, as well. There’s a preponderance of copaganda and superheroes saving the day and a category of narrative best described as wealth-aganda — stories focused on the interior lives of the rich, from the aspirational to the ridiculous to the unscrupulous.
Rarer, though, are stories of regular people working together to solve problems and balance the scales.
Captains of industry tend to get jumpy about ideas like collective action. These elite, ultra high net worth fiefdoms have no interest in being challenged. If you think that doesn’t apply to Hollywood executives, you’re not paying attention. Perhaps they see more upside in churning out TV and film that reinforces the idea that, amid all this anxiety, the best we can hope
