Corruption of the film industry, run away and hide while you still have the chance, run before you're programmed to believe in a sugar coated life, the perfectly calculated offspring of the Hollywood Studios. Lets have a look at what we're running away from....
High Concept
The process of taking normal, everyday life; taking away the lows and mundane aspects then boosting the highs. What dreams are made of, when you're walking through town and imagine what it'd be like to be a vampire. Maybe that's just me. So an example would be Twilight, where Bella, her father, friends and the majority of the people she knows are completely normal and average. Then she gets involved with a family of vampires, which is completely unrealistic aspect in a completely realistic world.
Karma
The understanding of the cycle of cause and effect. Do bad things and bad things will happen to you. If you've been under the upper hand but have always done the right thing then one day you'll break free from that and receive your due. In The Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith has a hard time throughout pretty much the whole film, but he's always kind, he always does or tries his best to do the right thing and secure a good future for his son. In the end he succeeds and all his hard work pays off. Of course.
The American Dream
Practically any traditional gangster film. Through hard work and perseverance you will achieve success and have a good life in the land of the free. Goodfellas shows this well, following Henry from his early teen years to his retirement. It shows the rise of a man with a dream, with a goal, of which he achieves through hard work. Maybe this is the dark side of the American dream but it's probably the most common interpretation in Hollywood films.
Escapism
The majority of the developed, film watching world lead very dull, mundane lives. Hollywood knows this. Hollywood also knows that this is a sure fire way to making money. Hollywood allows the audience to escape in to the film by creating worlds where we can place ourselves in, characters that we can relate to and scenarios we only wish existed. This could be to distance ourselves briefly from our own problems, simply to feel excitement or even to escape into someone else's problems and realise that your problems really aren't as bad as they could be. Have you ever left the cinema and walked/drove home in the role of the main character of the film you just saw? Imagining the world you're in is the world you'd just escaped to for the last hour and 48 minutes? Recently I felt this after seeing Contagion. I don't think I've ever been more paranoid walking down an empty road at night, I kept thinking diseased people were going to run out at me and try steal my supplies of water and microwave meals. It induced fear, real fear within me, gripped me and held me above a pool of sharks.
Manifest Destiny
Any American war film, any American war film will show American prevailing and getting what it wants, getting what it believes it's entitled to by simply being America. A troop of well equip American soldiers ride in to a foreign war zone and butcher a group of foreigners with the most basic arms and protection, everyone cheers. One American soldier receives one bullet to the arm and the whole cinema is furious! That's Manifest Destiny working it's magic. However an example of this would be in Rocky IV where Rocky actually goes to Russia to fight Russian; Ivan Drago... Guess what... The American wins! It was even cheeky enough to include the tagline "When East Meets West, the Champion remains standing" clear evidence of Manifest Destiny, implying that there wasn't even a point of having the fight as the "Champion" was always going to win.
Capitalism
Through one mans gain will be anothers misfortune. Imagine a man literally climbing on the heads of others, pushing them down, to reach the sweetest apple on the tree. Erin Brockovich is a great example as it shows capitalism in the way that a big power company pollutes a whole towns water supply and doesn't bother doing anything to fix it as that would cost them money that could be used on expanding the company further. It heavily focuses on the effects the pollution has on the people of the town and quite rawly shows how this capitalist company has gained whilst causing other people misfortune.
