Just over two months ago, Pajamas Media blogger Roger Kimball insisted that the economic picture could not possible be as dire as those mainstream liberal media hysterics wanted us to think. Then last week, Pajamas Media announced that their blog network is going out of business. Lesson learned: he who attempts to undercut the current economic pessimism ends up ironically fucked.
That is, unless “he” is talking about Hollywood. The movie industry is thriving so undeniably in this downturn –– Hollywood just wrapped its best January ever at the box office, with theater attendance up over 16% –– that just yesterday the MPAA’s proposed tax credits were thrown out of the economic stimulus package (California senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, no doubt well aware of the longer-tail consequences of the credit crunch on film financing, voted to keep the tax credits in). With the recent successes of mindless escapist fare like Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and the middling box office performance of “serious” Oscar contenders like Milk and Frost/Nixon, the pervasive meme in entertainment media coverage is that, just like during the first (and still the best!) Great Depression, audiences are flocking to the movies to forget their troubles.
