Stone, Fundamentalism, and the Myth of the Values Vote

Now that Oliver Stone's latest film Alexander has tanked at the US box office and has been universally panned by virtually all critics regardless of political affiliations, it appears that he is attempting to construct a new story to provide a reasonable explanation for his failure. Taking his cue from the NY Times editorial page (post Bush reelection) and quite a few pundits on the cable news networks, Stone has decided in a recent interview in London that his movie failed thanks to a growing surge in U.S. "moral fundamentalism." Stone continued:

"From day one audiences didn't show up," he said. "They didn't even read the reviews in the south because the Media was using the words, 'Alex the gay.' As a result you can bet that they thought, 'We're not going to see a film about a military leader that has got something wrong with him."

An interesting theory that seems to exonerate Stone for direct culpability in producing and directing an abysmal movie that the NY Times (hardly a bastion for moral fundamentalism) described as containing "puerile writing, confused plotting and shockingly off-note performances"

But if we examine for a moment the current cultural landscape I think it paints a different picture than Stone would have us believe. If we start with Television, the current #2 rated show (pulling in an average of 22.3 million individuals/week) is Desperate Housewives a show about adultery, murder, lying and cheating in the heart of red county suburbia. Howard Stern continues to have the #1 rated morning show in most of the country, and looks to revolutionize radio with his move to Sirius radio in 2006. In 2004 people spent as much money on pornography as they did going out to the moves to see Hollywood studio films. There has even been a significant move further into the mainstream by pornography with books appearing on Amazon and at your local Barnes and Nobles written by porn starlets.

So where does Stone derive his myth from (aside from the obvious selfish egotistical reasons that we can speculate about). Perhaps it is due to the misleading exit polls that the media over hyped as the key story of the 2004 election and the Bush victory. After the election was over and the press was still trying to figure out how Bush had managed to defeat Kerry and gain seats in the House and Senate, 2 divergent stories met to become the story of the 2004 election: Gay Marriage and Values. Gay Marriage had been voted down in 11 states and exit polls "revealed" that "values" had been more a important influence on the presidential election that the Iraq War and terrorism. Needless to say, the NY Times had a field day with this (here, here, and here). However, after the dust of the election had settled a cogent analysis could finally be undertaken.

David Brooks in his editorial "The Values-Vote Myth", debunks this issue nicely:

"As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily."

(That's right, Evangelicals made up the same proportion of the electorate as they had in 2000). Further:

"Much of the misinterpretation of this election derives from a poorly worded question in the exit polls. When asked about the issue that most influenced their vote, voters were given the option of saying "moral values." But that phrase can mean anything - or nothing. Who doesn't vote on moral values? If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result."

In the same issue of The Times, Gary Langer, director of polling for ABC news writes on the nature of the poll that lead to the "values" conclusion:

"The news media has made much of the finding that a fifth of voters picked "moral values" as the most important issue in deciding their vote - as many as cited terrorism or the economy. The conclusion: moral values are ascendant as a political issue.........This distortion comes from a question in the exit poll, co-sponsored by the national television networks and The Associated Press, that asked voters what was the most important issue in their decision: taxes, education, Iraq, terrorism, economy/jobs, moral values or health care. Six of these are concrete, specific issues. The seventh, moral values, is not, and its presence on the list produced a misleading result.............Moral values, moreover, is a loaded phrase, something polls should avoid. (Imagine if "patriotism" were on the list.) It resonates among conservatives and religious Americans. While 22 percent of all voters marked moral values as their top issue, 64 percent of religious conservatives checked it. And among people who said they were mainly interested in a candidate with strong religious faith (just 8 percent, in a far more balanced list of candidate attributes), 61 percent checked moral values as their top issue. So did 42 percent of people who go to church more than once a week, 41 percent of evangelical white Christians and 37 percent of conservatives."

Finally we have a follow-up Gallup Poll that puts this myth to rest once and for all with an astutely constructed study design:

"Another Gallup poll also released today showed that, contrary to many press reports, “values” ranked well behind the war in Iraq, terrorism and the economy as a prime concern of Americans."

What then is the take-home lesson of all of this?

1) The media will give the most basic and succinct analysis of a given event regardless of objective truth. The "values" vote poll coinciding with the Gay Marriage defeats is such an occurrence. The 2 stories were easily spun into one sub-story and then superimposed upon the election to provide one cohesive narrative that became an easily palatable designer story line to sum up the events of November 2004.

2) True analysis with rational criticism is found months after the story has passed from news into the popular vernacular and attained a level of cultural mythology.

3) Oliver Stone is a director whose time has passed and now makes 3 hour self-indulgent sandal and sword biopics that most people (regardless of the sexual identity of the protagonist) do not care to see (though I think we can deduce that he does read the NY Times op-ed section----at least----the authors who tell the story he is looking to read).