With a few notable exceptions, Hollywood reflects the culture we live in, creating products that sell to a mass audience — and that culture is influenced by academia, which is dominated by left-leaning politics and post-modernism. Celebrities whose views aren’t mainstream may find themselves without work, particularly in the age of cancel culture where anonymous mobs try to convince employers and fans to boycott celebrities for some perceived or manufactured slight. While Mark is undoubtedly a hugely talented actor, it is his integrity and courage in speaking out, and his ability to argue clearly and rationally for the truth, that I admire most of all.
Here’s what Mark had to say about Hollywood and politics as a guest on an episode of The Daily Objective earlier this year.
Q: Have the views you express hindered your career?
Mark: Up until two or three months ago, I would say no because people don’t know how to classify me in the typical spectrum that we get out there as being political left or right. The last three months, however, I’ve noticed a precipitous drop in my following on twitter: 15,000 followers GONE. I don’t know if that’s twitter trying to edit my message or if it’s people who are just tired of the liberty message right now and the reason message right now and they’re hopping on the status bandwagon. I don’t know, and I don’t know how that’s going to affect me in the future. I definitely passed on an article by Dr Michael Hurd critical of Black Lives Matter way back when they started exposing police brutality videos — I was posting these videos until they came out with their Marxist agenda and started building their reputation on a lie — I don’t know if that’s going to come back and bite me and jeopardize my job prospects in the future, but so far it’s affecting me on social media.
Q: It’s as hard to find a dissenting voice in Hollywood as it is in academia, which is not what you’d expect. How do you explain that?
Mark: I think that academia rejected reason a long time ago and Sydney Pollock said it best when he tried to describe actors’ politics as primarily leaning to the left when he said, you know actors are kids. They work with their emotions primarily. So you have an academic world that has rejected reason. And artists that live by their instincts and their feelings are not getting a correction from the academic world, or even the culture at large, that reason should be the standard by which they judge everything. Well, then they’re going to gravitate towards the political messages that emotionalism gravitates towards and that’s the collective. If you don’t have a brain of your own, you go by feelings; the collective becomes your brain, and you just immerse yourself in the feeling of oneness and of being with the group. So it’s not surprising to me that these artists have ingested the poison of the culture from the very top.
Q: Do you think Hollywood has a political agenda, or is it representative of what’s happening out there?
Mark: I think it’s a combination of the two. I think academia has a definite agenda, and their language permeates the culture, and then that language and orientation becomes by osmosis a part of that culture. I don’t think Hollywood intentionally projects a political agenda. Sometimes they do, but for the most part, I think they’re more or less reflecting an ethics, a sense of what is right, and they get that from what the culture is telling them. The culture gets that from what the intellectuals are telling them. They’re not independently evaluating these things, they’re just creating narratives around them, and I don’t know whether it’s because they think it’s going to be more popular or sell more of their product to people. Whatever their orientation, most of them aren’t sophisticated enough to project an agenda with a long-term goal of either undermining or overturning something in society. I just think they’re going along with the wave, whatever that wave is.
Source: The Daily Objective.
Very interesting insight from Mark!
You can watch The Daily Objective, which Mark now cohosts, weekdays at 6pm (UK time) on YouTube.
