Four Things You Need To Understand About "Hollywood" [View all]

if you want to be strategic and effective in your efforts to improve democracy.

4. You Are Not the Customer -- You are the viewer. Of course TV shows and movies get ranked by how many viewers they have. That leads many to conclude that viewers have the final say in what gets made, shown, favored and what continues. But the business of screen-based media is to sell audiences to advertisers. IOW you are what is being sold. More specifically, access to your mind is what is being sold.

3. Shows and Films Are Also Ads -- because they are full of vapid consumers and product placements. You may think you can mute or skip the ads but it's all ads. "The Kardashians" "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" "Crazy Rich Asians" "Succession", every James Bond film, The Hurt Locker and the rest are immersing your mind in worlds where lips should be plumped, possessions flaunted, the rich worshiped and war perpetuated. Hollywood shapes culture, not the other way around.

2. It's An Octopus -- "Hollywood" expanded from movies in 1922 with the dawn of radio. That was 103 years ago but people still talk about Hollywood like it is not an ever expanding conglomerate that includes radio, sports, gambling, online gaming, theme parks, news, gossip, politics and the MIC. We have just crossed another threshold as more people now watch YouTube on large TV screens than on phones. Many channels on YouTube have exponentially larger audiences than legacy media does. Is Mr Beast, with 453-million subscribers, really "Hollywood"? Hell yes. Is it ending legacy media? Also yes.

1. The Dynamics of Soft Power are Changing -- Hollywood, like the BBC, Pathe', and the Soviet Cinema Committee, historically was a way to influence people and governments around the world (as detailed in #3 above). It shifted and nudged perspectives toward a pro-America POV. Increasingly the projection of soft power influence is being shifted to AI. Chat bots act as censors and gate keepers to present a strategically distorted mirror of politics, consumerism, recent history, the role of the individual and the health, or lack thereof, of democracy.