Dreaded Socialism
“Let’s create a luxury tax for Hollywood,” Marshall Fine has suggested, “comparable to the one Major League Baseball invokes whenever a team tries to buy itself a pennant by stocking up on expensive star players.
“Except, in the case of Hollywood, this would be a tax that Hollywood would charge itself every time it makes a movie that costs $100 million or more. There would be a tax of X amount of dollars — let’s say 10 percent — for every $10 million over the $99-million mark a movie’s budget goes (and I’m including the cost of advertising and marketing, which can double a movie’s price-tag). And we’d round up, from $101 million.
“That money, in turn, would go to a not-for-profit fund to help underwrite less affluent artists. It could be used for grants for low-budget independent films. Or perhaps — given Hollywood’s reputation as a hive of liberalism — it could be earmarked for the National Endowment for the Arts, which always has a bulls-eye painted on it by conservatives, targeting it for elimination.”
There’s no question about one thing: 93% of the time a smaller budget always results in greater creativity. Yes, 7% of the time an expensive movie will seem to be worth the cost with most of the the dough having been spent wisely and excitingly. Okay, make it 10% or 12% of the time. But the rest of the time big-budgets just smother the spirit.
This is foolish, and comparing Hollywood to the MLB luxury tax is equally foolish.
Only way to get that would be to have the unions willing to go on strike over it. And we’ve seen how those work out.
Forget about taxing big budgets. Not gonna happen, and 10% is too much.
Tax VIOLENCE!
V-Tax.
That’s right, the Violence Tax, or V-Tax.
Run by MPAA, it’ll work like this…
Movies that contain ANY actual or implied violence- RED Fiery Explosions, guns, fights, military battles, car chases/crashes, killings, robberies, murderous monsters, sexual assaults, vampires/zombies/terminators, thugs, knife fights, and all assorted & gratuitous violent mayhem that are the staple of 80% of movies-will be taxed 1% off their top gross.
MPAA will distribute the proceeds of all V-Taxes to fund scripts/movies that contain NO violence.
Tax violence, reward non-violence.
At 1% gross, the V-Tax is doable. Plus, violence-loving Hollywood producers/directors and ALL major studios will feel a little better about the mostly violent, socially deleterious movies/TV shows/ video games they routinely and rapaciously shit/spew upon our collapsing culture.
V-Tax exceptions: Documentaries featuring archived violent footage. However, movies “based on real events”, however well intended, which contain violence noted above, will still be subject to the V-Tax.
Violence in all forms destroys our culture, not 100+ million dollar movie budgets.
Hollywood violence blood money-the seemingly socially approved, yet psychologically pernicious marketing of violent movie imagery to 14-50 year old males, can’t be prevented in our pirate culture of free enterprise.
But it can be taxed.
The V-Tax…NOT socialism.
Progressivism.
BIG difference.
Rashad, I want to believe that you’re kidding, but your post doesn’t seem ironic to me. If you’re serious in your comments then your logic is just as poor as Nobu’s, which is really saying something. Blaming movies for teenage pregnancy, really?
You wanna know why teens have sex? BECAUSE A BILLION YEARS OF EVOLUTION HAS HARDWIRED THE HUMAN BRAIN TO WANT TO HAVE SEX. Lots of sex. As much sex as possible. You know…so we don’t go extinct?
Nobu’s comment reminds me of that episode of The Simpsons when Marge decides that cartoons are too violent and defangs Itchy and Scratchy into a bubbles and baby-coo fest with a theme song of “love love love/love love love/looooove”.
Nobu, violence has been a part of drama from the very beginning — or were you too busy counting the petals on the tulips outside while your high school english class was reading Medea (women kills her husband and kids) or Romeo and Juliet (spoiler alert, my rose of spring friend — it ends in death and bloodshed).
Go listen to a jam band with your hairy armpit girlfriend, hippie.
I’m 100% in favor of it. Anything that self-limits the franchise factory is a good thing, but sending the profits to the NEA? Even better.
Of course, this will never happen. I’m telling you guys: the wave of the future for Hollywood is films like Bridesmaids and the Lincoln Lawyer. Solid, entertaining doubles that can be done a limited budget. Every so often go big with an Avatar or a Dark Knight or an Iron Man, but the foundation of their financial strategy should be relatively inexpensive comedies and quasi-adult dramas. People are always looking for something to pass the time. Sometimes, it’s better to see something where people talk and do things instead of being assaulted by CGI and 3D. Just my two cents.
In addition to a violence tax, how about a profanity tax? we can call it The Swear Jar, and the proceeds can go towards youth education. And how about a sex tax, where the money can go towards helping young women get out of the sex industry and into respectable jobs?
Or how about none of those things, because Nobu is an idiot? Yeah, that one sounds like the best idea.
Hunterd: The evolution argument is really convenient when it comes to sex, but not violence? Aren’t we supposed beyond being compelled to do something because our genetics say so? Yeah, kids are having sex as early as 4th grade because there are no more boundaries for them. There’s sex in everything now. It started with hip hop videos and has permeated to the Disney channel. Hell even the Jonas Brothers shoot teenage girls in the audience with foam from a hose.
Idiotic idea. Where the fuck does Fine think a lot of that money goes on those bloated tentpoles? Since I know men and women working on some of them, I’ll tell you — into their paychecks. Longer gigs, more jobs, for techs and craft service and pullers, etc. Fuck you if you think the unions get to skate a bit — people are still getting paid at the end of the day. Is it good money pissed away in pursuit of lousy ideas? Hell yeah! Do some asshats line up at the trough who don’t belong there? Absolutely. And sometimes a lead walks off with a big check — but Sam Wassisname in “Avatar” and “Clash” ain’t getting 1992 Ah-nold money, and neither are nearly any of the actors in these prods.
Here’s the other thing: make it more expensive to produce domestically, and more and production work gets exported to East Buttphuca, Bulgaria, than already gets sent there.
It’d be great to support NEA and aspiring filmmakers, but these films are made by corporations run by sharks for the benefit of sharks, so forget seeing them ever countenancing an idea like this.
Rashad spends his time watching the Jonas brothers. His arguments are no longer valid.
Bluetide, people used to like to see movies where people talk and do things, but then they discovered television.
I’m all for the return of the big studio mid-budget potboiler, actually, but I don’t think even I’d be willing to make a special trip out and pay $12 for The Lincoln Lawyer. That sort of thing fits into the category of “cheap theater movie”, preferably at a poorly supervised half-price matinee where I can sneak into Limitless after it’s over.
The other problem for the studios with movies where people exchange smart dialogue and do adult things and truck in matters of social or artistic import is that you can’t make a million-selling action figure out of Kristen Wiig. Unless it’s lifesize, in which case I’ve cramming shekels into PayPal even as we speak.
Eddie, I heard about it in a South Park commentary, and saw the video on youtube.
Rashad watches Jonas brothers concerts on you tube. His arguments are no longer valid.
This tax isn’t going to bring any class to Hollywood. Sure, it’ll make studios stop spending ridiculous amounts of cash on projects, but it means less American work and more foreign work where wages are cheaper, in order to keep the costs below $100 million. And, as Peterzee said, that money isn’t thrown in a pile and burned, or given solely to the actors and director; it’s given to the grips and gaffers, the lighting guys, the guys doing the CGI. There’s a lot of people that need summer blockbuster studio money to live like regular person, not just to buy their 3rd private island in the Caribbean.
As for this young sex thing – puberty hits at 12 or 13. That’s when your body says “time to start having sex”. It’s only because of the morals instilled by religion and society in the last 500 years that we don’t do that (along with the fact we all don’t die by 30 and want to pass on our genes are soon as possible, and everyone is socially awkward at that age). Are they right by saying 13 year olds shouldn’t have sex? I don’t know. It’s up to the parents to decide how they should let their kid approach sex, and at what age. But I don’t think Hollywood or video games or whoever is the problem. The parents should be able to instill enough morals in the kid to let them know that what you don’t necessarily have to replicate what’s in the movies when you’re 13.
As for violence – we’re animals; we’re violent. We kill our food. We need a show of power, whether of will, intelligence, or strength, in order to get what we want. Violence is inherent in every human, just as sex is. Once again, society has said that violence is wrong. And once again, I have no idea if they’re right. It’s up to the parents to decide how much, if any, violence is integral to raising their child.
Same goes for anything else you want to ban/tax that is shown in movies. Only society is saying it’s wrong, and it’s up to each person to either agree with society, or go against it in some way.
Rashad, your completely hypothetical, made up, unsourced, arbitrary example of 4th graders having sex is irrelevant for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, even if there WERE an epidemic of 4th graders having sex, (which again, there isn’t, you just made that up for shock value), there would still be no way to tie that to media. So best case scenario, your argument is still correlation without causation.
Of course, I have heard of such things, 4th graders playing doctor and what have you. However, I would contend that the vast majority of 4th graders who engage in serious sex play are probably doing so, not because they saw it on TV, but because they had a shitty uncle, or parent, or older brother, or babysitter, or priest. There is a much stronger connection between abuse and abusers than there is between MTV and 4th-graders fucking.
Oh and HIP-HOP’s to blame? I’m not even going to get into the racial, cultural, socio-economic and political implications of blaming it on hip-hop. I’ll just assume you’re an old fuddy-duddy and not a closet bigot.
How about taxing reality shows to fund public television?
How about we keep the government out of media?
How about a Roland Emmerich tax?
hunter, just because you don’t hear of it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. It is taking place and more often than you think
And just because there’s no reason whatsoever to think that it’s connected to media or to Black American culture doesn’t mean that you’re going to stop claiming it is, I take it?
There is a very strong correlation between surviving sexual abuse and replicating the abuse in other forms. Often those forms involve self-loathing, self-injury, depression, hyper-sexuality, the inability to become sexually aroused, fetish behaviors, drug abuse, alcoholism, anger issues, ect. Sometimes the abuse victim with replicate the abuse in a more direct manner. I guarantee that if and when cases of 4th graders having sex occur, if they occur at all, it is because of previous sexual abuse or other significant trauma suffered by one or both parties.
luxe tax for movies is an idea, but it’s a dumb one.
Far and away one of the stupidest HE threads ever.
If there was ever an appropriate time to delete an entire story and its comments, this is it.
Also: who the FUCK is Marshall Fine?
“Far and away one of the stupidest HE threads ever.”
Amen to that. This was clearly a fantasy, never-gonna-happen “premise” that Jeff was throwing out there…and it was really getting analyzed as a “government program”? Was everyone on crazy pills last weekend?
That said, there is a clear winner in the stupid-off:
Rashad, you do realize that, of the overwhelming amount of films (and television shows, for that matter,) to which young children have access, and to which they are ACTUALLY EXPOSED…. a very tiny amount describe or “instruct” how sex is performed and virtually none actually portray sexual acts.*
Whereas a huge percentage actually instruct and/or portray how to critically injure or kill another human being.
And yet, murder rates are down…. and no one would make a “causational” connection with violence in films either way. Yet some idiots will still try to make a such a connection with sex in films. Its an entirely hollow argument, especially in the age of the internet with tons of such “instructional” material available to kids like Rashad (which, now that I think of it, may be the root of his problems…)
*When children are exposed to pornography or “sex instruction” videos, that is an entirely different matter. (Obvious point, but Rashad likely needs to read it.)
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