By Christian Toto
Bombardier Books (2022)
Review by John Fraim
Miles Davis / In A Silent Way
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“What one sees now are scripts where race is the key driver of a character, as opposed to what the character’s function in the story might be.” Christian Toto
In the past few years, there have been a lot of books written about this period of woke culture we all live in, and through. I’m not an authority on these criticisms of the dominant symbol in our culture now – the symbol of wokeness. I’m not that interested in all the other criticisms of wokeness because I have my own criticism of it. Not informed by anything or anyone I see over the media. But only on people I see in real life.
Two of the key books criticizes our woke cultural meme today are by two of our most enlightening social and cultural critics. One book explores the wokism within our corporate system by Vivek Ramiswamy titled Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. (New York:Center Street. 2021.) It is the best insight into how the woke ideology has overtaken much of business today. Not a direct assault on politics as much as targeted towards business America. The best insight ever into the wokism that has infiltrated the business world. Private enterprise outside of the government. I will discuss this brilliant book in a later post.
The book Virtue Bombs: How Hollywood Got Woke and Lost Its Soul by Christian Toto. This book provides much incredible insight into modern Hollywood. Two years after it was published, things have only gotten worse and more authoritarian within Hollywood.
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Toto’s book Virtue Bombs is particularly of interest to me. I was born and grew up in LA of the 1950s. My parents had a number of actors and directors as friends since my father owned a Lincoln-Mercury car dealership right across Washington Boulevard from the main entrance to the MGM Studios. The Lincoln was popular with the film crowd and customers of the dealership became friends. On many Friday nights, my parents had a number of their movie friends over to our home to watch a film on a large screen in our living room.
There was an excitement and hope in the air. The war was over and the film industry was at the height of popularity. But under this excitement there was also a particular fear in the air. The Hollywood blacklist barred actors, screenwriters, directors and others in entertainment industry from work by the studios based on their membership or sympathy with the Communist Party.
The blacklist was somewhat of a secret list. Even during the period of its strictest enforcement (from the late 1940s through to the late 1950s) the blacklist was rarely made explicit or easily verifiable. It was the result of numerous individual decisions by the studios rather than any official legal action. Nevertheless, the blacklist quickly and directly damaged or ended the careers and income of scores of individuals working in the film industry.
Protestors to the Hollywood Blacklist of the 1950s
The first systematic Hollywood blacklist was instituted on November 25, 1947, the day after ten writers and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet entitled Red Channels was published identifying 151 entertainment industry professionals in the context of “Red Fascists and their sympathizers.” Soon, most of those named, along with a host of other artists, were barred from employment in most of the entertainment field.
The blacklist lasted until 1960, when screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a Communist Party member from 1943 to 1948 and member of the Hollywood Ten, was credited as the screenwriter of the film Exodus (1960) and acknowledged by actor Kirk Douglas as the screenwriter for Spartacus (1960). Many of those blacklisted, however, were still barred from work in their professions for years afterward.
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I’m reminded of the 1950s in Hollywood and the blacklist period of censorship when reading Christian Toto’s Virtue Bombs. There is no investigations of communist activity in the film industry today (some would argue there should be) but there is a list of those who adhere to the woke ideology and those who are anti-woke. Very similar to the blacklist of the 50s, those who are anti-woke are barred from advancement in Hollywood.
Toto has been a film reviewer for years with a huge knowledge of the film business. In chapters of Virtue Bombing, he discusses various examples of Hollywood wokeness. The book’s Table of Contents (below) gives readers a good idea of the subjects Toto focuses on.
Hollywoke or Bust; Virtue Signaling on Parade; The Hostage Apology; Progressive Stars Feel the Burn; How Taylor and Jimmy Got Woke; Oscars So Woke; Two Thumbs Down for Woke Critics; Believe All, Most, or a Fair Percentage of Women; The Ballad of Gina Carano; Insider Horror Stories; Those Lady Ghostbusters; Gender Reboot Mania; Canceling Classic Movies; From Freedom Rock to Woke Rock; That’s Not Funny; Comedians Fight Back; Hope in the Age of Woke.
The book offers the best explanation of the collective insanity that has ascended over modern Hollywood. Christian Toto is the leading critic of Hollywood and its wokeness bringing his trained journalist perspective to the investigation of modern Hollywood. He understands Hollywood better than most entertainment pundits and journalists, most who are part of the wokeness machine. In many ways, it offers the best access into the world’s greatest influencer of culture, Hollywood.
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Vivek Ramaswamy’s brilliant book on corporate wokism finds a powerful ally in Toto’s Virtue Bombs exploring wokeness in the entertainment business. Probably not much of surprise to many today who observe what’s happening in their real world instead of looking at screens and images.
Toto’s book on Hollywood wokism explores the dynamics underlying all aspects of the modern film business, from casting, to subject matter to a proper diversity required for films to get funded. There are many gold nuggets of truth to be extracted from this powerful exploration of wokism in Hollywood. Toto is excellent at attaching names to various types of Hollywood wokeness. And, not unknown names in Hollywood but rather names of major players.
The book is full of quotes from the various Hollywood people in his book. The writing is crisp and short and not flowery. Just to the point of the matter. Below, a few quotes from Virtue Bomb.
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A Few Quotes from Virtue Bombs
The 2024 Oscar Telecast
The Oscar telecast is a bloated, insufferable affair that gets worse every year. The dull, self-important showcase fails the one task it’s meant to achieve: sell us on loving movies. That’s no longer part of the Oscar mission statement. The modern telecast is about virtue signaling, far-left political speeches, laugh-free monologues (assuming they have any), and rage against half the country.
Increasingly, the ceremonies are less about entertainment honors and more about progressive politics, which inevitably annoys those in the audience who disagree. One recent producer of the Oscars, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential metrics, said minute-by-minute post-show ratings analysis indicated that “vast swaths” of people turned off their televisions when celebrities started to opine on politics … The modern Oscar ceremony actively pushes conservative (anti-woke) viewers away, and Hollywood wonders why the night’s ratings crash year after year.
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Dallas Sonnier makes it a habit of sticking his neck out in Hollywood. The indie producer behind mesmerizing films like Bone Tomahawk, Run Hide Fight, and Dragged Across Concrete says he saw the woke writing on the wall all the way back to President Barack Obama’s first term. Sonnier says the country’s first black president lacked a stirring record to run on in 2012, in part due to a recalcitrant Republican Senate. Obama needed a Plan B – giving rise to a combination of wokeism, Identity Politics, and victimhood as ways to recast his re-election hopes.
The film producer realized those sentiments would soon flood into the culture at large, including left-leaning Hollywood. It’s one reason why he eventually packed up his family and moved back to Texas to work on movies there, on his own terms. “By 2014 it was game on, in terms of just feeling like the tidal wave was coming,” he said, calling his move a “pre-emptive strike against the changing tides in Hollywood.
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Virtue Bombs is at once both a brilliant and unique book about Hollywood. Many things come together when one understands the encompassing tentacles of wokism. The grand path of cycles in America from the symbol of freedom in the years of westward expansion has changed in today’s symbol of equality, diversity and inclusion. Very different images are now created by the world’s great symbol maker of Hollywood.
It’s one thing to understand wokeness and anti-wokeness in Hollywood. However, it seems to me that the real challenge is escaping the woke rules for making films by turning out anti-woke films in some new genre. In effect, by finding a unity and commonality in anti-woke. Many want this change in Hollywood but Toto shows how there is a fear of speaking up, of being put on a modern blacklist for anti-woke values. It is a fear shared by all those who work in the film industry from the production crews to the leading stars and directors.
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Toto writes in Virtue Bombs, in the world of woke Hollywood “one sees scripts where race is the key driver of a character, as opposed to what the character’s function in the story might be.” Apart from race it might also be sex and sexual persuasion. More often than not, these characters don’t logically fit into the story theme or subject.
Love Scene in Dune: Part Two / Warner Brothers
An example is the hugely expensive Dune: Part Two. Carlos Dengler notes in the March 12, 2024 post to Compact of “Dune’s Girlboss Misstep.” He notes upfront that “The Dune universe, as conceived by the novelist Frank Herbert, has little space for progressive nostrums.” As he notes, “Set some 8,000 years into the future, it is defined by patriarchal feudalism and chiliastic messianism; having mastered interstellar travel, humankind has also forsworn computing technology. Yet progressive nostrums are just what the celebrated Canadian director Denis Villeneuve gives us in Dune: Part Two, the second film in his planned trilogy based on the saga.”
He notes “A particularly didactic and cringe-inducing political moment takes place during one of the on-the-hot-sand love scenes between Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his love interest, Chani (Zendaya).” Within this scene deeply hierarchical planetary system that Chani gives the audience lines like: “My people take care of each other, none of us think any one of us is better than the other. We are all equal. No man is above any woman, nor vice versa.” As Dengler notes, “It’s hard to accept that an elite indigenous warrior would mouth such liberal cant.”
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LA has always been a land of make-believe heroes and heroines. What it really needs these days are real heroes and heroines again, not make-believe ones. This group of artists will not be constrained by the politics for wokeness in their work to form a new type of film. The problem is that woke culture has created a new type of protagonist that doesn’t fit into traditional roles of hero and heroine. New anti-woke protagonists need to be created and gain general acceptance in culture. Right now, this seems far from being a reality.
This new type of film is hinted at by certain films that have used satire to criticize wokeness. One of the most successful was the 2024 Oscar winner American Fiction. The fact that it was given Oscar approval is a sign that wokeness is open to criticism. Toto mentions others in his book. It is these films that will show the way out of the present woke hold on Hollywood which often throws the rules of drama, character development and story telling out the window in adherence to political rather than artistic, ideas. Hollywood’s growth is stunted by this allegiance to politics and its army of woke enforcers. Virtue Bombs provides powerful evidence that this allegiance is greater than anyone has thought.
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