A look at our past films to help understand how Hollywood has changed over the past 20 years to reflect social justice issues instead of telling good stories. It seems that the film industry has abandoned the majority and that's a problem for them. Hollywoodwoketopia.com is run by Sasha Stone who also runs Awardsdaily.com, a site dedicated to the Oscar race, and sashastone.substack.com, which covers politics. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.hollywoodwoketopia.com?utm_medium=podcast">www.hollywoodwoketopia.com</a>
Hollywood Woketopia Podcast
Claim This Podcastby Sasha Stone
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A look at our past films to help understand how Hollywood has changed over the past 20 years to reflect social justice issues instead of telling good stories. It seems that the film industry has abandoned the majority and that's a problem for them. Hollywoodwoketopia.com is run by Sasha Stone who also runs Awardsdaily.com, a site dedicated to the Oscar race, and sashastone.substack.com, which covers politics. <br/><br/><a href="https://www.hollywoodwoketopia.com?utm_medium=podcast">www.hollywoodwoketopia.com</a>
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Recent Episodes
July 18, 2026
The Odyssey is Peak Woke
<p>After the teaser dropped for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the reactions were deadly to its box-office prospects. For a film that cost upwards of $250 million, the last thing it could be was boring. The chattering class mocked their accents, said it looked “like a slog,” and that could spell catastrophe for Universal. </p><p>Nolan’s first effort after his Oscar-winning smash hit, Oppenheimer, would have to be a big hit, and it will be. It will likely make $1 billion worldwide, and, just as I predicted, the dumb culture war surrounding it will end with a whimper, not a bang. This isn’t Supergirl or Snow White. It won’t be taken down so easily.</p><p>In case you know nothing about it, the culture war arrived like a deus ex machina for the film, as the early buzz was muted at best. Suddenly, it became a must-see, with women turning out in droves where they might not have otherwise. Seeing it became a political act, and wait until the sanctimonious TikToks start to roll out, and they will. </p><p>If the studio leaked the news to change the conversation or generate controversy, that was a good move, and it worked. With two sides of the Virtual Civil War going at it, with some in between pleading, come on, guys, it’s just a movie! Things have gotten ugly on X of late, with the two main tribes known as the Virtue Signalers vs. The Trolls going at it for days now. </p><p>The two main objections seemed to be that Elliot/Ellen Page stars in a male role when half of America is still not on board with transgender ideology, and an African actress, Lupita Nyong’o, was cast as Helen of Troy. Both of these choices seem to demand an opinion one way or the other. It’s the elephant in the room. It then became a struggle session, as anyone who would dare criticize either of them in any way would be deemed a racist or a transphobe. I’ve gotten myself into trouble yet again on X, and the totalitarians are coming for me. </p><p>The same people who go along with something like this:</p><p>The Left is obsessed with identity and race, and yet, Nolan has engaged in “color blind” casting, which demands we just forget all of that. But the film depicts what I think of as the idealized worldview of Woketopia, where everyone has a seat at the table, and there is no such thing as race or gender to decide our fate.</p><p> That idealized worldview is on display in movies I think of as Peak Woke. They don’t take us to a specific time and place, like, say, Suburbia, Nazi Germany, or a Tuscan village. It’s a place defined and shaped by aspirational progressives when culture and politics have merged.</p><p>What we were building, where we were taking society, was directly threatened when Donald Trump won in 2016. What happened to the Left to cause mass hysteria, extreme anxiety, and chaos can be described as a utopia disrupted. </p><p>This trauma has played out in many Peak Woke movies of late, including last year’s Best Picture winner, One Battle After Another, but other films on tap for this year, including Digger, Wild Horse Nine, and the Social Reckoning, all dealing with the same theme of an existential threat that feels like the end of the world. But really, it’s just a sign that their empire is collapsing. </p><p>What we see on screen in The Odyssey is a depiction of their idealized worldview, but it flattens any true sense of what we’re all living through now. It is a perspective from people who have been insulated from the rest of society and seek to correct them, and in so doing, correct our world. </p><p>That is why we see people cast merely because of their race, like Lupita Nyong’o, who is given absolutely nothing to do except sit there, because the casting choice is the story. That is what is most meaningful about it. </p><p>Just criticizing Nyong’o as Helen of Troy is deemed “racist,” but it’s also what one might call a struggle session. It’s a little like wearing a mask in 2021, after we all found out that masks barely worked if at all. Wearing them became a symbolic act of compliance and an easy way to identify who was who. Who was part of the Blue tribe and who wasn’t. This works the same way. </p><p>No one would dare say Nyong’o wasn’t the universal object of desire, even if the whole point of her casting was not to objectify her but to illustrate that men are the drivers of war, and taking the more feminist route by alleviating the blame from Helen after all of these years. </p><p>All of the female characters have been given a feminist rewrite, whether that’s by stripping them of their sexual power (which only makes the movie even more boring) or by redeeming them from blame for keeping Odysseus from getting home. </p><p>Circe and Calypso, for instance, were his lovers, and yet, there is no such sexual expression or desire or even flirtation in this film. Odysseus is buttoned up, not even the Sirens can squeeze out a drop of sexual heat from this very sexless, puritanical read of Homer.</p><p>What I see and what I got in trouble for was daring to suggest that Lupita Nyong’o doesn’t actually meet the definition of the ultimate object of desire, or one that would necessarily appeal to the male gaze. </p><p>This is considered blasphemy on the Left, even if I said the same thing about Milly Alcock in Supergirl. But to the Woketopians, Nyong’o isn’t so much a real person but rather a religious symbol. Elevating her helps justify their “goodness.” But it also robs her of her right to be seen as a real person.</p><p>Beauty, per the male gaze, has never been anything we ever had to question in movies because Hollywood just knew how to deliver for male audiences. This changed only recently, with what Helen Andrews would call the Great Feminization.</p><p>I can’t argue that Nyong’o isn’t beautiful because she is. I am merely trying to explain why there is so much controversy around it, and it can’t be explained just by calling everyone a racist. </p><p>The virtue signalers will want to be kind and never talk about the elephant in the room, but I figure, why not? What’s the worst that can happen? Oh, you know, getting called a racist by Film Twitter all day long.</p><p>But we do have to talk about it because things have dramatically changed. The Male Gaze is something that activists, and now Hollywood, have been systematically dismantling by design. It’s just not there anymore in movies and many TV shows. We rarely see hot people, which is strange. We see a lot of older women having sex with younger men, but male sexuality isn’t something we see very often.</p><p>For instance, stripping Odysseus turns The Odyssey into a dry meditation on male angst, the oft-repeated trope of the male protagonist who is in charge of everything but feels bad about it. This was also Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another, and Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. It’s the only place for the male protagonist to be in American culture in 2026.</p><p>So, in a film that strips The Odyssey of lust and sexuality, it makes sense that Helen of Troy would not necessarily be an object of desire, but rather serving a different purpose, and in this movie, it seems fairly clear that this is a feminist retelling. </p><p>Women are the objects of desire only because men are corrupt. That seems to be the message we’re getting here, along with the idea that something very bad happened at the hands of a destructive force (aka Donald Trump), and that the drama playing out on screen is a utopian society reeling from that disruption. </p><p>That’s what makes it Peak Woke, along with One Battle After Another. These are films that argue about white supremacy, hetero-supremacy, racism, and the dominance of the alpha male. At least, that’s how it read to me. I expect that if you exist inside the Woketopian bubble of the Left, this film would be deeply meaningful to you. </p><p>I personally find the “Male Gaze exciting,” especially in cinema. Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick, and others have often celebrated the pure beauty of women seen through the eyes of men. It is also the singular driver of reproductive evolution. That doesn’t mean that Lupita Nyong’o isn’t attractive. Of course, she is. </p><p>The Helens throughout history, going back thousands of years, depict women that men today might not find all that attractive, but were for their time. She is often depicted with bare breasts and in sexually provocative poses. The thing that seemed to matter most about her was not just her beauty but her sexuality, and of course, with Nyong’o, she is like all of the women in the film, stripped clean of it.</p><p>We see such a dramatic reversal, in fact, with Nyong’o as a modern-day Helen that we have no choice but to talk about it, even if her screen time is minimal. Why does it no longer matter that she be the object of desire to men everywhere? What changed? The problem is, no one is allowed to talk about it without being targeted as a “racist.”</p><p>But if we’re talking about beauty and sexuality, it is not hard to find, nor does it require any explanation. AI can do it even if Hollywood won’t:</p><p>Inside Woketopia, they must lie about everything, to themselves, to each other, to audiences. These lies are what hold them and their idealized version of what our society should be together, and when they are challenged, it becomes an existential threat. </p><p>It doesn’t matter to me much how people choose to reconstruct and deconstruct this story. The question should be, does the movie work? And for me, this movie did not. In the first fifteen minutes, I knew it would be a slog, a difficult sit for three hours of a jumbled mess of a story with no coherent through-line, no characters that felt in any way real, no dramatic tension in the characters, and a lot of action and beautiful scenery that never cohered.</p><p>The only thing I liked about the movie was Matt Damon’s performance. Even if his Odysseus wasn’t all that compelling or exciting, his performance at least showed that he had to help guide us as we tried to follow the story. </p><p>In the end, watching so many critics praise this film and being personally attacked on X for criticizing it made me start thinking about generations of moviegoers, especially the two kinds of audiences raised over the last 20 years. The social justice warriors who tend to be either LGBT or female, and the fanboys at whom most of the blockbusters coming out of Hollywood were aimed. </p><p>One thing both sides agree on is that there is a binary of good and evil and that evil must be punished, no matter what. To the Woketopians, evil is the White Male Patriarchy, and that is reflected in The Odyssey as Odysseus is, up until the final act of the movie, a muted hero who doesn’t even know his own mind, much less his way home. </p><p>For Nolan fanboys, what they want is spectacle, and Nolan delivers on that front with graphic, violent scenes and spectacular visual effects. They’re willing to overlook everything else as long as the hero saves the day. </p><p>So perhaps it is me. Perhaps I’m the problem. Maybe the kinds of movies I grew up with and the kinds of stories I love are now a thing of the past. </p><p>The kind of storytelling I respond to, and most people can recognize, is like beauty itself. It’s not that hard to define. You know it when you see it. </p><p></p> <br/><br/>Get full access to Hollywood Woketopia at <a href="https://www.hollywoodwoketopia.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">www.hollywoodwoketopia.com/subscribe</a>
May 17, 2026
The Odyssey Proves Woke Is a Feature, Not a Bug
<p>Every so often, a moment in culture arrives, a Sydney Sweeney ad, or Project Hail Mary. </p><p>Every time, we hear that the Woke fever has finally broken. Hollywood cares about the people again. Right?</p><p>The same reason Kamala Harris is likely to be the nominee in 2028, the same reason the Democrats are still selling the lie that any kind of attempt by Republicans to even out the redistricting is “Jim Crow 2.0,” is proof enough that on the Left, Woke is not going anywhere. It is who they are now. Not all of them, but the most powerful among them.</p><p>Early on, when Mark Halperin and others were insisting Gavin Newsom would be the nominee in 2028, I said there was no way the Democrats would get behind a white guy, no matter how passionately he genuflects to the Woke (“Anti-woke is anti-black!”). I know the Democrats. I was one. I helped build the modern-day party of the Great Feminization and the Great Awokening. I know what fires them up every day, and it isn’t just taking back power; it’s foisting their religion upon the rest of us.</p><p>They think it’s the opposite, that it’s the Right that is foisting their “Christian Nationalism” upon them. While it’s true that a faction of the Right has unmasked to become the very thing Rob Reiner warned about in his movie, God and Country, they aren’t the majority. Perhaps that’s true on the Left. But look around. Their religion is the dominant culture in America.</p><p>When news got out that Christopher Nolan had cast Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy, the “most beautiful woman in the world,” whose face launched a thousand ships, it ignited yet another culture war. How you reacted was like whether or not you wore a mask outside in 2020. It was a test. You’re on one side, or you’re on the other. Notice it, comment on it, object to it, criticize it, and you’re one of the bad people to be purged. </p><p>And if that weren’t enough, Nolan brought back Ellen Page from Inception, now recast as Elliot Page, the male, as an act of affirmation and yet another test. These are Orwellian 2+2=5 and force people to choose between ignoring it and going to see a big-effects movie in IMAX, or not buying a ticket and boycotting the film. </p><p>Elon Musk took the bait, becoming the villain Hollywood needs, to turn seeing The Odyssey into a righteous and political act. You can see them now: the bearded male feminists buying tickets ten times in a row. “Take that, Elon Musk!” The ladies of Blue Sky will go in groups, then fawn over how beautiful Lupita Nyong’o is and overuse the male pronoun for Ellen/Elliot Page. “Wasn’t he great?”</p><p>The game is becoming exhausting by now, as Hollywood demands the hard-working American public be impressed by them, lectured by them, and corrected by them. All audiences really want is the one thing Hollywood seems unable to accomplish: entertain them.</p><p>It isn’t that Nyong’o isn’t pretty. She is. It’s that Helen of Troy was white, famously so, even if Greek. Nyong’o is a unique beauty, not a universal one, a reality the Left wants to force, because Hollywood doesn’t care about its audience. They want to look good.</p><p>Probably the worst thing about the game Hollywood plays with the movie fans they helped raise is that Lupita Nyong’o is held out as a sacrificial lamb. She isn’t pushing any ideology, unlike Ellen/Elliot Page. They are putting her out there and expecting her to absorb criticism about herself, including whether she is pretty enough. </p><p>I met her once, back in 2013 in Telluride, before her career took off. She was too young to know how to act like a celebrity. She was so nice, I was won over. She would win an Oscar that year and become a big star in Hollywood. Is it fair to put her in this position just so they can feel good about themselves? No. Does it change anything? No. There is still such a thing as truth and reality, even if that is the thing that is unfair. </p><p>The Woke Code and the Hays Code</p><p>The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.umsl.edu/~gradyf/theory/1930code.pdf">Hays Code</a> (1930-1968) represented an era wherein decency and morality were mandated in all Hollywood films. </p><p>The Christian conservatism/morality mandated by the Hays Code reflected less a separation between art and governance and more a united effort toward a utopian society of goodness, especially as we moved through the last Fourth Turning, the Great Depression, and World War II, a time where the world saw true evil in Hitler and Stalin, not to mention the nuclear bomb.</p><p>That isn’t all that different from what the Woke Code is now. It’s roughly the same kind of thing: rigid rules to depict an ideal society. The difference is that Christian advocates have been replaced by progressive activists, and the villain is the white male patriarchy. </p><p>What is different now, amid our current Fourth Turning, is that the Woke Code includes only half of America. To the Left, they would rewrite this narrative to say that Hollywood depicted mostly White America, and that is what has changed. But really, if you respond to the box office, as Hollywood doesn’t anymore, you will always default to the majority. It isn’t rocket science — beautiful, sexy women and masculine men and a great story.</p><p>The end of the Hays Code was entirely due to economics. Television became so popular in the 1950s that there wasn’t much of a need to go to the movies if all you saw was the same kind of buttoned-up themes you could see on TV. That’s true now, too. Movies, then, had to break out of the Hays Code and become much more subversive, leading into the 1970s, which saw some of the best films ever made. </p><p>While it’s true that The Odyssey will be eligible to win Oscars under the new rules, it’s also true that the criteria could have been met in a way that didn’t make audiences play this same exhausting game that has alienated them from everything Hollywood puts out. The casting of Nyong’o and Page is less about Oscars and more about status. </p><p>Perhaps Nolan was under pressure to cast a non-white woman as Helen, or maybe he wants to be seen as a good person using his wealth and fame to make change, as the most famous white male directors reach for things money can’t buy, like Martin Scorsese making Killers of the Flower Moon, Steven Spielberg making West Side Story with a real Latina, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Peak Woke Best Picture winner, One Battle After Another.</p><p>No film has better exemplified Hollywood in the Trump era than this one. It says it all. ICE as the Gestapo, check. America is run by a cabal of wealthy white Nazis, check. A woman of color must save herself, check. </p><p>All of it is held together by a hapless white man, Leonardo DiCaprio, who represents the film’s beating heart. He’s the only good white guy, which is how those in Hollywood who make these kinds of choices would like to be seen. One Battle is actually a movie about them.</p><p>Had Nolan cast a blue-eyed blonde woman as Helen of Troy, all hell would have broken loose. When you go against the rules of the Woketopia, you aren’t just getting hit on X with lots of angry tweets by loyal fans who continually feel betrayed; they bring out the big guns - agonizing op-eds in the New Yorker, for instance. If you obey the rules, then you are praised. The problem is that it all feels so artificial, so pre-planned, so inorganic.</p><p>I used to write the Oscars report for Jane Fonda’s Women’s Media Center (who fired me after they found out I voted for Trump), counting the number of female nominees and winners. The statistics were always grim. </p><p>Every year, it was bad news. As things began to change for women after the Academy announced its DEI mandate in 2020, that change was forced. If before merit had made too many white men winners, now we were seeing something a little closer to gender parity. So then the line moved back, then it became not just about women but women of color and trans women. </p><p>Now, it’s all about Marxism disguised as art. If life isn’t fair, movies will make it fair. It isn’t just because the Oscars have it written into their new rules, and it isn’t just because activist groups like GLAAD breathe down the neck of every Hollywood studio, counting heads and making reports. It’s that this is a deeply felt belief system that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. </p><p>I have no doubt The Odyssey will make money. It’s a Christopher Nolan film, after all. Who doesn’t want to go see a giant visual effects epic filmed entirely on IMAX? If you can ignore the elephant in the room, the performative casting, you might have a great time. But if you were hoping that Woke is over, well, I think that was its own Hollywood fairy tale. </p><p>It’s why Kamala Harris was the nominee in 2024 and why she will once again be the nominee in 2028. This is how the ruling class in America wants to be represented. They want to force change, and they do that by elevating minority groups to high-status positions as symbols for the mostly white people who run things.</p><p>Culture, like the Democratic Party, will have to be built anew. That, more than anything, explains why AI is about to completely consume the business, becoming the counterculture revolution Hollywood never saw coming. They can do it all and more without the millions of dollars necessary to mount a production. </p><p>AI artists don’t have to be held to the same rigid standards. They can be purely about bringing in eyeballs by showing what people most want to see, rather than what Hollywood wants them to want to see. In other words, they can make the women as beautiful as they want, and no one can cancel them for it. </p><p>I spent my life in movie theaters gazing up at the big screen and watching some of the best films ever made. The only way that makes sense is if you are escaping real life and finding your way into a fantasy world, and maybe for the Woke, seeing Lupita Nyong’o cast as the most beautiful woman in the world is its own kind of fantasy fulfillment. </p><p>After the movie comes out, we’ll have to see whether it works or not. At the moment, it feels like just another test to decide who gets to stay and who has to go. </p> <br/><br/>Get full access to Hollywood Woketopia at <a href="https://www.hollywoodwoketopia.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">www.hollywoodwoketopia.com/subscribe</a>
October 29, 2025
John Carpenter The Master: Halloween and The Thing
<p>When I look back on the best horror movies, I do so with sadness and a sense of mourning for what once was and may never be again. Just take the year 1982 when so many great movies hit theaters, like E.T., The Year of Living Dangerously, and Blade Runner. But one movie that didn’t do so well at the time has now become one of the greatest horror movies ever made: John Carpenter’s The Thing.</p><p>The Thing holds its place in cinema history because it is heavy on mood and suspense, driven by the ominous music, some composed by John Carpenter and the rest by Ennio Morricone. It’s also the suffocating atmosphere of men trapped in a compound surrounded by nothing but snow.</p><p>And then, a dog shows up.</p><p>It isn’t really a dog, of course, it’s one of those things. But who could resist a dog? Not these men. And so they let it in and, in so doing, write their own death sentences. Yes, every single one of them will die by the end of the movie. But it is how paranoid they become, how tricky the monster is in hiding inside of them, that makes this movie still so watchable.</p><p>And of course, there’s the star of the show, Kurt Russell as MacReady, who must outwit, outlast, and outplay the thing. Russell is surrounded by a talented ensemble, with no weak links in the bunch. David Clennon as Palmer, Wilford Brimley as Blair, Keith David as Childs, Richard Masur as Clark, and one of my personal favorites, Donald Moffat as Garry.</p><p>I remember when it came out and how everyone was comparing it to 1979’s Alien, which was also about letting a monster into an enclosed space as it becomes something that can’t be killed, peeling them off one by one until only Ripley and Jonesy remain. </p><p>But The Thing doesn’t offer any such salvation for its characters; they all have to die because one of them might be The Thing, even when there are only two remaining characters left. We never find out if either of them is The Thing. But killing them all off was a daring choice back then, when audiences wanted uplifting conclusions. </p><p>The Thing made just $19 million, which was nothing compared to E.T.'s $350 million. On such a low budget, the visual effects are still legendary, crafted by Rob Bottin, then just 22 years old. </p><p> Carpenter builds suspense in The Thing by making us uncertain where anyone is at any given time. Like Alien, the computer is also a big warning sign for these doomed men. It tells them the bad news that this Thing could wipe out the entire human race. They know they can’t save themselves because they have to sacrifice their lives to save humanity.</p><p>Like all movies and horror movies especially, they had to be for everyone. They had to depict a time and place we all knew. They didn’t take a side politically most of the time. You didn’t have to belong to a certain group of people to get the movie. You were immersed in the story because they actually wanted people to come see their movies. They weren’t made for critics or for awards. They were made for audiences.</p><p>Every time I watch The Thing, it feels like the first time I’ve ever seen it. Since I already know how it will end, I enjoy the getting there, how Carpenter sets up the story and makes us get involved with the characters - even if we don’t always know who the good guys are and who might be one of those things. </p><p>The Thing is top-tier Carpenter, though he’s made some great ones, like They Live, Christine, Escape from New York, and The Fog - but around Halloween, there is only one movie one that everyone has to watch. And it is THE movie. </p><p> Halloween is not a complicated story. It’s guided by the mood of the place, of the spooky nature of Halloween itself, and the masked villain who can’t be killed. So immortal is he that he would be the subject of 12 more movies, though none coming anywhere near as good as the original. </p><p>What is Halloween about? It’s about cinematic horror and the power of the image, but Carpenter also clearly sees it as a film about fate that brings together Michel Myers and Laurie because she, as played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is the embodiment of innocence. She’s a good girl. She does her homework. She babysits and isn't a frivolous, easy, good-time gal like her friends. </p><p>Michael Myers is pure evil. He was born bad. How great is the film’s opening, when we see Michael stalking his sister and witness his first kill? Who is this killer, we wonder, and when the mask is ripped off, we’re shocked to see the face of a confused little boy.</p><p>From then on, we’re to fear this supernatural, evil entity that has returned to Haddonfield, which is supposed to be in New Jersey but is also rumored to have been filmed in South Pasadena.</p><p>All the characters in Halloween are pretty great, but what stands out to me most is John Carpenter’s score and Dean Cundey’s hand-held Panaglide cinematography, which makes us feel like we are right there in the town. We can almost smell the coming of fall and feel the leaves crunching under our feet, the cool night breeze of late October.</p><p>It’s this Carpenter movie that best captures the mystery of Halloween. There is a guy roaming around in a mask on a day when lots of people are wearing them. He is the ultimate evil, but how could they know that in this sleepy town? All Jamie Lee Curtis can do is survive. </p><p>As with The Thing, there is no need to belong to a specific class, gender, or ethnic group. It is a story set in a town somewhere in Illinois. The only thing that matters is that we believe it. We don’t watch the characters wondering about power dynamics or representation. We watch the characters because we are invested in the story. </p><p>Halloween proves that great movies can be made as long as everyone on board is committed to the story. The budget was around $1 million, with Carpenter earning just $10,000. It went on to make roughly $50 million, which was a lot back in 1978. </p><p>The film is extremely violent as Michael Myers goes on a killing rampage, and for many in today’s fragile America, it might not have even gotten made, especially since serial killers were on the rise in the 1970s. Sooner or later, someone would complain about violence in the movies, but audiences couldn’t get enough.</p><p>Of course, it’s common knowledge by now that scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis made her cinematic debut as a nod to Carpenter’s idol, Alfred Hitchcock, who depicted Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh, being likewise hacked with a big knife in Psycho. Carpenter shows more, of course, than Hitchcock did, but nowhere near as much as filmmakers show in film and television today. But the best horror movies don’t rely on graphic violence but on mood, suspense, and time and place. </p><p>Time and place are what Hollywood is missing now. Everything looks like this mythic land they built inside utopia, where everyone is equal and everyone is represented. They depict the America they wanted to exist, and do so out of fear. It is pure dogma made for the religious and the devout.</p><p>Maybe Hollywood always depicted an America that wasn’t real, but it should at least be one we recognize —one that feels rooted in some kind of truth, even if that means it doesn’t reflect an ideal utopian vision of society. All that matters is that we believe what we’re seeing on screen.</p><p>And this time and place are ones I remember from growing up in the 1970s, before all Halloween costumes were known brands, and when people still handed out homemade treats. You don’t want to be always looking back at the past and remembering the good old days, but that gets harder and harder to do now, because movies don’t seem to be getting better, and it’s doubtful there will ever be any as good as Halloween. </p><p></p> <br/><br/>Get full access to Hollywood Woketopia at <a href="https://www.hollywoodwoketopia.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4">www.hollywoodwoketopia.com/subscribe</a>
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