Hollywood's Self-Defeating Ideology

Much has been said about the left-wing, post-1960s ideology of Hollywood that shows up in the kinds of movies that are made and (like The Passion of the Christ) the kinds of movies that Hollywood refuses to make and that only come to be made through heroic efforts by individuals. But it's worth noting that the left-wing ideologists who make these decisions are acting irrationally from an economic standpoint.

Consider: here is a list of the all-time box office winners in the American domestic market adjusted for inflation. What jumps out for me is the pro-American, pro-Christian, or pro-family themes of many of the box-office champions from before the 1960s:

• The Sound of Music (inflation-adjusted domestic gross of $911 million);
• The Ten Commandments (inflation-adjusted domestic gross of $838 million);
• Ben-Hur ($627 million);
• Mary Poppins ($500 million);
• The Robe ($419 million);
• The Bells of St. Mary's ($401 million);
• Swiss Family Robinson ($344 million);
• Sergeant York ($308 million).

Notably, I am leaving out a number of Disney cartoon features that dot the list as well, including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, 101 Dalmations, Fantasia, and The Jungle Book, all of which are in the top 27 films of all time in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Notably, too, these figures are inflation-adjusted, but not population-adjusted. A pro-Christian film like The Robe or Ben-Hur that grossed $400 or $600 million in the 1950s would gross closer to $1 billion in a country that, today, is twice the size.

The question I have is the following: aren't most major studios owned by publicly-traded corporations? And, don't the boards of directors of those publicly-traded corporations owe fiduciary duties to their stockholders to try to maximize their profits? It sure seems to me that the boards of directors who ultimately run the studios aren't doing their jobs very well if they are ignoring opportunities for profit represented by pro-Christian, pro-American films.