Ryan Murphy's Hollywood: Too Pretty For Its Own Good

Netflix’s Hollywood rewrites history to show how “everything and nothing has changed in Hollywood,” according to director Ryan Murphy. But the real social criticism of the show lies in the fact that it’s not a revisionist history at all. It provides an accurate, although glamorized, a glimpse into the history of Hollywood that highlights instances of oppression that have been excluded from history to maintain the status quo.

The series name, Hollywood, is both a glorification and a takedown of the famous cinema city. On the one hand, it evokes nostalgia and lore, with its singularity forcing viewers to stake stock of the weight of that one word in American culture. However, when the show depicts the corruption of film executives, the one-word title also becomes ominous, alluding to all of the unspoken contracts of the film industry. At the end of the movie within the show, Peg, the main character, throws herself from the top of the Hollywood sign, encapsulating the doom and glamorousness that the show’s title seeks to capture.

Bastardizing veterans

From the beginning, Hollywood dismantles the mythology of traditional characters. The show’s protagonist, struggling actor Jack Costello (David Corensweet), becomes a male prostitute to support his growing family in the post-World War II era. Although Jack, a conventionally handsome white man, is in a position that America generally venerates, that of veteran and family man, Hollywood reveals that, like a movie itself, America sanitizes each of its epochs for the next generation. Gas station sex workers really did exist during this time in order to fulfill the desires of closeted movie stars. Although a grotesque exaggeration that mainly bolsters the show’s sex appeal, the involvement of a family man in sex work might not be totally inaccurate.

Hollywood’s emasculation of a hetero-normative archetype shows that in any era, sacrifices, often ones considered immoral, must be made to make the American Dream work. The highly stylized set of the show implies that even the most luxurious settings, conscious of their own perfection, have a dark side. However, the consistency of this camp throughout the show becomes detached from its original purpose: Hollywood remains a product of the institution that it seeks to criticize.

Historical parallels

When Jack becomes cast as the lead in Peg, alongside Camille Washington (Laura Harrier), they must lobby film executives to green-light the film, which initially comes across as too progressive. The conference room tables of business-minded white men, who dismiss a movie starring a minority, reflect the offices of the modern day as well. By presenting itself as nostalgia, Hollywood portrays images familiar to contemporary viewers as out of date. If homogeneous executive boards were out-of-touch and oppressive in the 1950s, they certainly are now.

Other parallels exist between the modern day and the events of Hollywood. Jim Parsons plays a fictionalized version of the film executive Henry Wilson, manager of Rock Hudson, depicted in this show by Jake Picking. In both real life and in the show, Wilson expected sexual favors from his young male clients. In the era of #MeToo, this portrayal reveals that not only have women been exploited, but a quid pro quo sexual culture permeated the film industry. However, the attractiveness of Wilson’s clients in Hollywood present a dilemma: is the show a social criticism of corrupt casting practices or a glamorization of abuse? At once a gay fantasy and a gay nightmare, Ryan Murphy makes a cartoon out of a serious premise, creating a show that can’t decide if it wants to be a satire or serious meditation.

An undeserved pat on the back

Hollywood’s tidy resolution matches its camp and, in doing so, fails to provide meaningful social criticism. The show’s final episode is a forty-five-minute rave review for Peg, which is really a forty-five-minute pat on the back for Hollywood itself, which aims to achieve many of the same goals.

The awards show in the final episode showers the cast of Peg with accolades, devoid of any suspense. It congratulates the characters for existing without requiring any emotional labor. Although it attempts to make the argument that diverse voices don’t need to give an explanation for the necessity of their representation, Hollywood winds up becoming an advertisement for Hollywood itself, portraying awards shows as the end-all-be-all that all under-represented actors should strive for.

Essentially, while marketing itself as a vessel for diversity and inclusion, the show attempts to market traditional goalposts to groups who have been excluded from them. The lack of plot in the final episode helps support the idea that these goalposts are worthy in and of themselves. Hollywood makes the case for Hollywood, as we know it today, to survive in the modern era.

Hollywood is about fantasies, and ultimately, the show becomes one. Ryan Murphy creates erotic scenes between conventionally attractive men and calls it social criticism because, on screen, it was happening at the request of a corrupt film executive. Murphy described Wilson as “a tormented gay man who preyed on other tormented gay men.” However, Murphy’s gratuitous portrayal of these men borders on romanticizing that abuse. It’s so visually appealing that it comes across as part of the performance. That’s Hollywood for you.