High-Profile Guy Gets Low-Profile Job

Against the backdrop of in-your-face lobbying by the banking and financial industries, scant attention is being paid this week to the Motion Picture Association of America’s announcement that its new chief lobbyist will be the former Democratic senator from Nebraska, Bob Kerrey.

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Kerrey is the second person to step into the unfillable shoes of Jack Valenti, the high-flying MPAA head whose circle of intimates included everyone of note in both the nation’s capital and its dream factory. Valenti’s immediate successor, Dan Glickman, cut a less colorful figure, in part because he’s a less colorful guy, but also because during his tenure (he resigned in January) the MPAA was deliberately muting its presence in Washington.

The most obvious sign of this? Hollywood campaign donations are down, and the MPAA’s operating budget has been cut by 15 to 20 percent (roughly $20 million). As one former lobbyist told me, “A not-so-dirty secret is that Hollywood is cheap.” Of equal relevance, the six major studios comprising the MPAA (Disney, Paramount, Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros.) are no longer independent operators. Instead, each is part of a much larger entity (for example, Universal is part of General Electric) that is typically reluctant to expend political capital on the needs of a single, usually underperforming unit.

For all these reasons and more, the once glittering MPAA has become a relatively low-profile player in Washington.

All the more intriguing, then, to see the MPAA hire a high-profile figure like Kerrey. A former Navy SEAL who fought in Vietnam and was awarded the Medal of Honor, Kerrey has also been accused (but never charged) with committing a war crime during a 1969 raid on the Vietnamese village of Thanh Phong. Kerrey’s was an unpredictable vote in Congress, and in 1992 he lost a president bid to Bill Clinton.

In the last few years, Kerrey has been the target of controversy as president of New York City’s troubled New School. His efforts to shake up the place sparked super-heated ideological opposition from some of the pricklier faculty, and from a student cadre pathetically eager to re-enact, in double-farce mode, the upheavals of the late 1960s. But fueling the flames was Kerrey’s sharp-edged managerial style. He does not appear gifted at herding cats, never mind wart hogs and alligators.

If Kerrey wants to shake up the MPAA, one way might be to challenge a longstanding contradiction in its stance toward the rest of the world. In the first instance, the MPAA lobbies Congress, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), and the Department of Commerce to protect its global business, both in markets it already dominates, such as Western Europe, and in markets it hopes to penetrate, such as India and China. It also enlists the government’s aid in urging the suppression of global piracy (see previous post).

When discussing these issues, and especially when opposing any attempt by a foreign government to restrict the import of Hollywood movies in the name of cultural protectionism, the MPAA defines itself as an industry like any other, and its product as a commodity, pure and simple. This allows it to wave the banner of free trade — and to boast, as Glickman frequently did, that movies are America’s second biggest export, after aerospace.

But here’s the contradiction. When speaking out against censorship, either by its own government or by other countries, the MPAA switches to the other side of its mouth and begins talking about artistic expression protected by the First Amendment.

This is ironic, because the MPAA was founded in response to a 1915 Supreme Court decision, Mutual Film Corp. v. Ohio, which defined cinema as “a business, pure and simple” — and therefore not eligible for First Amendment protection. This ruling raised the specter of state censorship, so in 1922 the MPAA declared its intention to regulate itself. The result was the Production Code Administration, better known as the Hays Office, which restricted film content between 1934 and 1968.

When the MPAA replaced the Hays Office with today’s rating system, it was because a series of court decisions had re-defined cinema as artistic expression, and therefore as protected speech. As a result, Hollywood filmmakers have more liberty today than at any other time in history. They use that liberty to create wonderful things. But they also abuse it to create ugly stuff that offends many Americans, never mind audiences in more conservative countries. But whenever this issue comes up, the MPAA switches back to its film-as-commodity line.

Given the weakened stature of the MPAA, Bob Kerrey may be even less inclined to address this contradiction than his predecessors were. After all, some of the grossest material, such as “grindcore” horror films, does not come from MPAA members. But for anyone who worries about the way Hollywood portrays America nowadays, it is high time for a high-profile challenge.