Angels & Demons & Cowardice

Angels & Demons & Cowardice

There's a commentary by Kyle Smith over at PajamasMedia pointing out that Ron Howard's adaptation of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons de-Muslimed the lead bad guy--and in the process, made hm far less interesting of a character. Smith ascribes this to the Political Correctness that now runs Hollyweird. We saw something of the same thing when Tom Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears was turned into a movie--and the Islamic terrorists of the novel are turned into Russian nationalists.

Look, if Hollyweird is concerned about demonizing Muslims, that's legitimate. But take a look at the second season of 24. It had Muslim terrorists; it had Muslims who were not terrorists--and it wasn't done in a preachy or clumsy way. But anyone making a film about current events who simply insists that the bad guys will never be Muslims (as Hollyweird now apparently believes it is required to do) might as well pretend that the greatest danger to Americans today is rabid leprechauns.

A number of people have suggested that Hollyweird is operating on a very obvious model: if you insult Islam, you get stabbed to death (like Theo Van Gogh), or have to go into hiding (like Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses), or just accept the possibility that you may get to make the real life version of The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958). (Except that once detached, your head won't stay alive for hundreds of years.) But I think there are two much more direct explanations:

1. Hollyweird wasn't listening to Bush, and imagined that Bush declared war on Islam--even though Bush was very careful to emphasize that our war was with terrorists, not Islam. Therefore, since Bush is the enemy of Hollyweird, and Islam is the enemy of Bush, Islam must be the friend of Hollyweird.

2. I understand that Hollyweird is having trouble finding traditional sources of movie financing--and that even some very well known directors are having to go overseas to raise money. I wonder where some of that money is coming from--and if there are strings attached, or perhaps directors are self-censoring because they don't want to offend the puppet masters.

UPDATE: A reader points out that because of the release date of The Sum of All Fears, the script was almost certainly completed well before 9/11, and so it could not have been the theory I espouse above.