Libertas looks at the new Jake Gyllenhaal movie:

The film supposedly features nudity and explicit gay sex scenes between the two cowboys, played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger. New York Daily News critic Jack Mathews is quoted as saying that the film may be “too much for red-state audiences, but it gives the liberal-leaning Academy a great chance to stick its thumb in conservatives’ eyes.”

Great! That’s just was an industry in economic free-fall should be doing, isn’t it?

I can't comment on the movie itself, as I know nothing about it. But the above quote by Jack Mathews certainly speaks volumes doesn't it? Hollywood has spent most of the past two years sticking its thumb in Red State and conservatives’ eyes. It's certainly done wonders for the Academy Award show's ratings and Hollywood's domestic box office this year, something I wrote about way back in May, at the start of Hollywood's dismal summer season:

The New York Times recently ran an article wondering why Hollywood's box office is down this year. Could it be because of efforts similar this in so many other films over the last 15 year or so, sure to alienate moviegoers in, what after the 2000 election was dubbed the Red States--flyover country where films need to make the bulk of their money in the US to be a hit--have started to take their toil?

As Patrick Ruffini wrote in January, during yet another attempt by the liberal-leaning Academy to stick its thumb in conservatives’ eyes:

That so many people view Hollywood through this political prism is pretty remarkable in a country where people are more interested in the latest with Nick and Jessica than in the condition of Social Security.

And yet: liberals get all pissy when conservatives decide to tune out institutions that don't represent them and create new ones -- just look at the sneering at "Faux News" and Rush and homeschooling and values voters. In Hollywood as in mainstream media, there is a price to be paid when an institution decides to leverage its prestige to push a political position where none is warranted; it's a price that is paid in viewership, influence, and profit -- in this case, a 30% falloff in viewers.

And BTW: I see Chris Rock just lost the other sixteen conservative viewers with his monologue... Nice!

Narnia and King Kong represent a chance for Hollywood to turn the Titanic around at Christmastime; it will be interesting to see both how these films do commercially, and how they're viewed by Red State audiences.