In “That’s Entertainment? Hollywood’s Contribution to Anti- Americanism Abroad”, Michael Medved explains why people abroad hate America; Hollywood movies reflect a misunderstood image of the American civilization to the people around the world. Medved graduated with a bachelor’s degree in American history from Yale school; later on he attended Yale Law School for a year or so. Afterwards, he became a Hollywood campaign speechwriter and a political advisor, built on that he wrote a lot of film critiques.
In addition, he became the Chief Film Critic for the New York Post. Currently he is a famous radio talk show entertainer and a successful author. Obviously, He has the credentials and qualification to write an article about Hollywood entertainment and how it influences people abroad. In this article Medved clarifies why do people overseas hate America.
Simply, anti- Americanism is caused by Hollywood entertainments. As a result, it reproduces a faulty and bad image to people’s visualizations. Hollywood movies misrepresent America in viciousness, criminal, harsh and dangerous way. Hence it represents a fake American life.
So it presents to the people overseas that the Americans are dangerous and violent. The audience of America won’t be influenced because it’s their life but the audience overseas will, it will affect the way they think of America and its people. As a consequence to the bad images that misrepresent the American society, it triggers people to be prejudice towards America. This influence is caused from the indefinite demand of Hollywood movies around the world.
Furthermore, Medved listed some examples of influenced people as well as a couple of expert’s opinion to support his argument or idea. To conclude his article, he recommended that the Hollywood franchise should present a well enhanced and a more appropriate image of the American civilization. In this article, Medved over relied on a couple of things that caused his essay to be an ineffective article. Initially, I object to his Logical fallacy especially generalization.
For instance, he generalized in the first sentence of the second paragraph. In addition to the one in paragraph 15 he said “1.5 billion people around the world watch …”. He used a hasty generalization in a quote by director Paul Verhoeven in paragraph 7, and in paragraph 18 he said that “all families are the same,…”.
Furthermore, he quotes lots of experts in his article. Nevertheless, he didn’t mention any qualifications nor credentials of the experts. In paragraph 13 he said“all scientific studies suggests that less than 3 percent of adults unequivocally see themselves as gays” this quote has a generalization, a statistical data and the study is not identified (might not be true). In addition, he used several statistics, and certain polls and survey’s in paragraph 9, 10, 14, 17 and a lot more.
Moreover, he used a couple of specific examples similar to the one in paragraph 14 “ in October 2001 …”.Finally, Medved is a bias since he mentioned his personal experience. For example, in paragraph 9 he gave a situation that he faced in England when he encountered with some Londoners that refused to travel across the Atlantic because of there fear of Americans and yet another when he participated in an international conference. Similarly when he referred to his book “Hollywood Vs.
America”. Using logical fallacies hides the logic in an article. The over use of generalization is an unsuitable idea since it’s not a fact and there are no evidence or support that confirms whether it is factual or not. For instance when he mentioned a scientific study without any evidence or support.
Statistical data are sometimes assumed to be not accurate or factual, and over relying on them will mislead the exact knowledge when it has no evidence, as well as the polls and surveys. Using one specific example is much more suitable than using generalizations. Using personal experience might not be factual which means he is taking a side in his argument.Hence, he’s being bias.
Therefore, Medved needs to support and state evidence to his examples, statistics and other types of logical fallacies so that his audience would know whether the information given is factual or not. He should also mention the credentials and qualifications of the expert he used to support his point. Whereas for logical fallacies, he needs to limit the use of non-factual evidence.
