Hollywood is slowly destroying America — as is evidenced by the remake of Friday the 13th. It is the No. 1 grossing movie, raking in $ 42.2 million over the Presidents Day weekend alone.
The film has no coherent plot or real suspense — just unbridled violence, gore, and nudity. The entire movie is a running blood­bath, with teenagers being massa­cred by the movie’s arch- villain Jason in the most heinous ways imaginable: axes through the head, bodies burned to a crisp over campfires, eyes gouged out, and throats slit.
Moreover, its portrayal of teen­age sexuality is graphic, vulgar, and obscene. Women are por­trayed as sluts and sexual objects. Topless women are butchered. There are numerous scenes glam­orizing teenage sex and drug use. One male character sports a T-shirt e mblazoned with: " F*** Christ­mas."
Throughout the film, the human body is systematically degraded for the audience’s entertainment. This is not mass art, but a form of pornography — a pornography that is pervading our culture, slow­ly eroding moral standards and poisoning our youth.
For decades, Hollywood has been waging a war against Mid­dle America. The country’s sup­posed best films are honored at the Academy Awards. Yet, behind the glamour and artificial hype, the juvenile hosts and silly obsession with the stars’ fashion, one need only look at this year’s top con­tenders to see the twisted values being peddled in Tinseltown.
Revolutionary Road is an assault on suburban family life, rational­izing abortion and adultery. The Wrestler is about a pathetic aging professional wrestler, who has abandoned his wi fe and daughter in pursuit of fame and fortune. He can’t hold down a regular job and spends his time in a strip club.
Milk celebrates the life of the first openly gay politician, Harvey Milk.
The only movie that espouses genuine romantic love between a man and a woman and the endur­ing values of heroism, self- sacri­fice, and family honor is Slum Dog Millionaire. And here’s the catch: It’s not American. The film is an Indian production with an Indian cast, depicting a couple’s desperate struggle to survive in the harsh slums of Mumbai. The movie has become a worldwide box office smash. Hollywood sees its recognition of the film as a sign of its multicultural sensitivity. In fact, it is writing its own obituary. The movie’s huge popularity shows that America’s decaying culture is being eclipsed — other countries are becoming better at the entertainment business. In­creasingly many people are dis­gusted by Hollywood’s celebra­tion of violence, promiscuity, abor­tion, homosexuality, drugs, and greed.
Slum Dog Millionaire is not a particularly exceptional film. Yes, it’s well- directed, has some very powerful scenes and the love sto­ry is gripping and touching. But it is the kind of film Hollywood routinely produced 50 or even 40 years ago: meticulously crafted, anchored in eternal themes, and seriously written — dramas, such as those starring the likes of Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, or Rich­ard Burton, which portrayed a morally ordered universe pitting good versus evil. Today, such films are an oasis in the cultural desert; hence, the movie’s appeal.
Since the 1960s, the United States has faced an onslaught from militant secularist forces. The most successful revolutionary of the 20th century was not Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin or Nazi dic­tator Adolf Hitler, but Hugh Hefner. The founder of Playboy
did more than simply publish a popular smut magazine. He estab­lished the " Playboy philosophy," which championed the sexual rev­olution, personal liberation, and the destruction of the nuclear fam­ily. Its doctrine can be boiled down to one principle: " If it feels good, do it." This individualistic hedo­nism not only dominates Holly­wood. It dominates our society.
Rather than ushering in a new utopia, it has unleashed a sea of misery. Our culture has become coarsened, cheapening the value and dignity of human life. Legal­ized abortion has led to the mur­der of nearly 50 million unborn babies. Sexually transmitted dis­eases, such as AIDS, have resulted in the deaths of millions. Divorce has skyrocketed. The family has broken down. Pornography is ubiquitous, especially on the In­ternet. Out- of- wedlock births and teenage illegitimacy rates have soared. Drugs and gang violence plague our inner cities — and are spreading into our suburbs.
More adolescents are engaging in sex with one another and with adults. Pedophilia is growing. Gay civil unions are supported by a majority of Americans. Attitudes toward polygamy are softening. Homosexuals, bisexuals, and the " transgender community" are part of the mainstream. Permissiveness and perversion are now rampant.
Traditional America is dying. Whether Hollywood is a primary cause or a symptom is irrelevant. The fact is that the dysfunctional world it reflects on the big screen is increasingly a social reality.
This is our face to the world. America’s biggest export is not food, cars, weapons, or computers, but its culture — especially, its popular culture as embodied in Hollywood films. People in Dubai, Islamabad , and Beijing know America primari­ly through movies. And the picture is not a pretty one. The famous Rus­sian dissident writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, rightly called it "cul­tural manure."
The Hollywood elite doesn’t understand that, more than our im­mense wealth and power, our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or our re­fusal to cozy up with dictators in Cuba and Iran, the greatest source of global anti- American hatred is our decadent popular culture.
The overwhelming majority of people in the world — whether it be the Mideast, Africa, Latin America, Asia, or Eastern Europe — are traditionalist. They deeply believe in God and family, hearth, and home. They understand the transcendental nature of man: Hu­man beings are created to serve a higher, nobler purpose, one root­ed in eternal moral laws. America’s MTV morality is not only superfi­cial and profoundly anti- human, but doomed. It cannot sustain or inspire a civilization of any mean­ingful consequence.
Like the murderous Jason, howev­er, Hollywood’s culture of death con­tinues to devour everything in its path. It may still sell tickets. But, like Jas­on, it is consumed by darkness.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a columnist at The Washington Times. This com­mentary is reprinted with permis­sion. Kuhner also serves as president of the Edmund Burke Institute, a Washington think tank.