The Ideology of the Entertainment Media
Some Hollywood movies are platforms for jingoistic militarism laced with racism. Take John Wayne in a Western, e.g., saying, “There’s humans and then there’s Comanches.” In a WWII movie, a GI says of the Japanese, “They’re not people. They live in the trees like apes.” Michael Parenti asks, “How can we speak of Hollywood films and TV shows as being ‘purely’ entertainment when they regularly propagate certain political themes and carefully avoid others?” They are “permeated,” he says “with class, racial, gender, and other political biases.” Parenti says, “‘The Lone Ranger and Tonto’ offer us a familiar media prototype of the domesticated imperialist relationship. When Third World people are not portrayed as heartless savages, they are cast as devoted subordinates.” Stallone’s Rambo Vietnam War character exemplifies the historical engineering in so many films: the U.S. was not the marauding invader but rather the victim of the perfidious Vietnamese. U.S. troops were betrayed by weak politicians in Washington who did not want to win the war.
Speaker
Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti was a leading independent political analyst, scholar, and author. Cornel West called him “a towering prophetic voice.” He taught at major colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. He is the author of numerous books, including Democracy for the Few, Power and the Powerless, and Against Empire. He passed away on January 24, 2026, at the age of 92.
Questioning the Unquestionable
“It is not demanded of readers that they embrace my views, but that they reflect upon their own. How seldom we bother to explore in some critical fashion the fundamental preconceptions that shape our understanding of social and political life. How frequently, as if by reflex rather than reflection, we respond to certain cues and incantations, resisting any incongruous notion. Our opinions shelter and support us; it is an excruciating effort to submit them to reappraisal. Yet if we are to maintain some pretense at being rational creatures, we must risk the discomfiture that comes with questioning the unquestionable, and try to transcend our tendencies toward mental confinement.” – Michael Parenti
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