PERSPECTIVE ON HOLLYWOOD : A Sickness of the Soul Replaces the Tinsel : It’s reasonable that the industry assume greater responsibility for its pollution of American popular culture.

At the moment, Cardinal Roger Mahony is about as popular in Hollywood as a bad case of the seasonal flu.

He has challenged the entertainment industry to think about the unthinkable: to consider reinstituting the old production codes that guided the content of all feature films during Hollywood’s “Golden Age.”

One needn’t support the specific plan, nor endorse the details of the proposed code, to recognize that the cardinal has performed a courageous public service. After all, in his public statement, Mahony declared: “I do not propose that this is the only possible means of achieving the end of reforming movies and television, but I do ask the industry to consider that something must be done.”

An overwhelming majority of Americans clearly agree with him. In a watershed 1989 poll for the Associated Press by Media General Research, 82% of a scientifically selected sample felt that movies contained too much violence; 80% found too much profanity and 72% complained of too much nudity. By a ratio of more than 3 to 1, the respondents believed that “overall quality” of movies had been “getting worse” as opposed to “getting better.”

The same dissatisfaction shows up in the one poll that matters most: the sale of tickets at the box office. According to recent figures in Variety, the attendance at motion pictures in 1991 hit a 15-year low.

Even without statistics and surveys, ordinary Americans understand that Hollywood is in serious trouble. As a point of reference, ask yourself a simple question: When was the last time you heard someone that you know say that movies and TV are better than ever? On the other hand, how recently have you listened to complaints about the dismal quality of the movies at the multiplex and the trash on the tube?

While searching for scapegoats, the entertainment industry ignores the obvious: that Hollywood’s crisis is, at its very core, a crisis of values. What troubles people about the popular culture isn’t the competence with which it’s shaped, but the messages it sends, the view of the world it transmits.

Hollywood no longer reflects, or even respects, the values of most American families. On many of the important issues in contemporary life, popular entertainment seems to go out of its way to challenge conventional notions of decency. For example:

--Our fellow citizens cherish the institution of marriage and consider religion an important priority in life; but the entertainment industry promotes every form of sexual adventurism and regularly ridicules religious believers as crooks or crazies.

--Most of us deplore violence and feel little sympathy for the criminals who perpetrate it; but movies and television revel in graphic brutality, glorifying vicious and sadistic characters who treat killing as a joke.

--Americans are passionately patriotic and consider themselves enormously lucky to live here; but Hollywood conveys a view of the nation’s history, future and major institutions that is dark, cynical and often nightmarish.

--Nearly all parents want to convey to their children the importance of self-discipline, hard work and decent manners; but the entertainment media celebrate vulgar behavior, contempt for all authority and obscene language, which is inserted even in “family fare” where it is least expected.

If this summary seems overly harsh, consider the front-runners in this year’s Oscar race--technically brilliant movies that are touted as the best the industry has to offer. These candidates include two films about about sadistic thugs and murderers (“Bugsy” and “The Silence of the Lambs”); two movies about dysfunctional marriages and suicidal impulses, featuring graphic scenes of attempted rape (“Thelma and Louise” and “The Prince of Tides”); and one paranoid political saga that focuses on a vast assassination conspiracy that seems to involve every American institution or organization, except the Camp Fire Girls (“JFK”).

The only Academy Award contender that is entertaining or satisfying in the old-fashioned sense is “Beauty and the Beast”--a glorious fairy tale that seems able to buck the prevailing preference for the perverse only because it seems so obviously aimed at children.

Increasingly, a piece of popular entertainment must present a dark and disturbing view of the world in order to be taken seriously. We have enshrined ugliness as a new standard as we accept the ability to shock as a replacement for the old ability to uplift and inspire. What ails today’s films has nothing to do with the prowess or professionalism of the filmmakers. The true problem is a sickness of the soul.

That is the sickness that Cardinal Mahony hopes to address. In appropriately urgent and passionate terms, the cardinal is reminding us that messages matter, that before a company risks millions to create a piece of popular entertainment, it should consider the values that it is broadcasting to the world.

The industry can no longer plausibly insist that it is merely giving the audience what it wants when the people show so little enthusiasm for the entertainment they’ve been offered.

On one level, we are dealing with a question of corporate responsibility. We have recently accepted the notion that giant companies must pay more attention to what they are doing to pollute our air and water. At the same time, it seems reasonable to ask the entertainment conglomerates to assume greater responsibility for their pollution of our popular culture--for fouling the moral and social atmosphere that we all breathe.