{"id":146,"date":"2006-02-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-08T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2006\/02\/moving-mountains.html"},"modified":"2006-02-08T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-02-08T12:00:00","slug":"moving-mountains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/02\/moving-mountains.html","title":{"rendered":"Moving Mountains"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Can movies change how we behave as a society? An opinion piece<\/a> by Maria Dibattista in Sunday\u2019s L.A. Times argues that they can–except for the movies that set out to do that. She adds the Oscar-nominated \u201cBrokeback Mountain<\/a>\u201d to a lineup of \u201cproblem films\u201d like \u201cGentleman\u2019s Agreement\u201d (anti-Semitism), \u201cGuess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner\u201d (racism), and \u201cWall Street\u201d (corporate greed),which are affecting and powerful in the theater but turn out to be powderpuffs when it comes to real-world impact. \u201cIf “Brokeback Mountain” changes the way we think and act about homosexual relationships,\u201d DiBattista writes, \u201cthat change won’t come from seeing two men throbbing with love for each other.\u201d <\/p>\n

From this remove, it\u2019s difficult to gauge whether \u201cGuess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner\u201d really changed America\u2019s attitude about race, or showed how our attitude toward race was already beginning to change. Hollywood is a generally a pretty conservative place, as any industry would be that places such large bets on what the broad audience will pay for. Officially an independent film, \u201cBrokeback\u201d is a major release with major stars who took the risk of sucking major face. All the principles, among them Paramount Pictures, probably felt secure in their wager that filmgoers have already accepted homosexuality. Its presence, if not its success, in other words, has probably more to do with “Will and Grace” than the bravery of the filmmakers.<\/p>\n

So can movies change how we behave? Maybe not. But they are a good indicator of how we\u2019ve changed already.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can movies change how we behave as a society? An opinion piece by Maria Dibattista in Sunday\u2019s L.A. Times argues that they can–except for the movies that set out to do that. She adds the Oscar-nominated \u201cBrokeback Mountain\u201d to a lineup of \u201cproblem films\u201d like \u201cGentleman\u2019s Agreement\u201d (anti-Semitism), \u201cGuess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner\u201d (racism), and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMoving Mountains<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2006\/02\/moving-mountains.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Moving Mountains\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can movies change how we behave as a society? 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