Make-Believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment

Parenti's critical review of the Rambo movies really made an impression on me. I used to like the Rambo movies, but now watch them mainly for laughs. Each subsequent Rambo release is, as Parenti describes it, worse than its predecessor. There was talk of reviving the Rambo character now that the U.S. is at war against terrorism. Let's hope it doesn't happen.I'm not sure if working people are portrayed as negatively as Parenti has described it. If we only take Archie Bunker as an example, then yes, but filmmakers love to advance the theme of the powerless versus the powerful, because the opposite doesn't go well with audiences. Perhaps Parenti knows something I don't on this issue.Parenti's favorable ratings of two films - JFK and Salvador - made me want to see them - over ten years after they had been released. I managed to see JFK, and it was great. I am still looking to see Salvador.What I would like to see is an updated version of this book, since there has been more Hollywood propaganda released since the original version came out.

To hear newscasters avoid talk about class in America, you'd think the concept is as obsolete as the Soviet Union.Yet Michael Parenti continues to insist that class bias not only spreads out from the heart of society, but shapes it. Here he looks at TV's entertainment role in preserving social privilege. From popular stereotypes such as the Lone Ranger and his third-world flunky Tonto, to the invisible world of labor, to the well-meaning but misunderstood plutocrat, Parenti exposes capitalism's self-serving myths as portrayed on the little screen. Sure it's fun to kick around TV and a lot of people do it, but Parenti does it in a highly informative way that confronts our last remaining taboo - the role of wealth and power in American life.Maybe the best chapter concerns profits and censorship. It's no news to point out that the networks and advertisers are in it for the money. But it is news to point out those instances when producers actually forego profits for the sake of respectability. Parenti details instances when industry has eaten losses rather than jeopardise the system of wealth and power it serves. For example, Procter & Gamble, TV's biggest advertiser, makes this allegiance clear by banning all content critical of Wall Street and the Pentagon from scripts it sponsors. In fact, most scripts - as Parenti shows - go through not 1, but 4 levels of censorship. No wonder, the public walks around in an ideological haze wondering why the world hates us -- and so much for the dollar sign's being more important than the system of which it is a part.Another telling chapter concerns one of entertainment's most popular myths: "We only give 'em (the audience) what they want." Sounds good. But, as Parenti documents, despite this appeal to democratic ideals, the entertainment marketplace is anything but democratic. He sketches out control points or nerve centers that reduce real choice to pseudo choice, sort of like a multiple choice question whose options are narrowed to a desired range of outcome. All this is made sorrier by indications that American audiences respond to forbidden topics on those rare occasions when they seep through. No book that debunks the FBI's screen role in the civil rights movement, or points out the class conditioning behind TV's version of Treasure Island, can afford to be overlooked. Whatever the book lacks in depth is more than made up for in focus. Despite his unperson status, Parenti remains a key figure among dissident academics banished to the book-selling fringes. Recommended to all those who understand TV viewing as anything but a passive pastime.

Propaganda is basically found in every modern society, so it should come as no surprise to find it in a movie like "Red Dawn," which Parenti refers to. He brings up such interesting facts as that all the TV networks have a department devoted to censorship, such as CBS's euphemistically named "Standards and Practices Department"; that companies like Procter & Gamble often have inordinate veto power over broadcast content considered subversive; and that PBS, which is actually anything but a "public" organization, has been dubbed the "Petroleum Broadcast Service" due to the large influence of the oil companies that help fund it. He who pays the piper..., you might say. I highly recommend this book.

A wonderful eye-opener for any blind patriot who believes everything on TV and movies, and takes it all at face value. This book points out the hidden agenda of mass, corporate-owned media...

Parenti does an excellent job in exposing how lopsided the entertaiment industry is, and how Right it is centered. He looks at aspects as diverse as Oscar winning movies to WWF wrestling, and how politically oriented they are, more often then not the Right. The Cold War did a number on American movies and it tainted the industry to this day in producing mediocre films that did not threaten or offend anyone high in power. I feel that today the situation is improved just a little bit, with more accurate portrayels of minorities and women and so forth, but we still have a long way to go in the entertainment industry. An excellent book for anyone at all interested in the entertainment industry and an eye opener as well.