Bonanza at the Box Office

The motion picture industry went into 2002 anxious about a few “end is nigh” scenarios that pundits had painted since 9/11: that fears would keep people at home rather than at the movies, that digital piracy would begin depressing box office revenues the way it had been eroding music CD sales and that rising anti-Americanism might erode Hollywood’s overseas revenues.

Instead, more Americans went to the movies than at any time since 1959, and box office revenues worldwide were up sharply over 2001, which was already a record year. Hollywood’s tinsel turned out to be the silver lining in an otherwise bleak U.S. holiday sales season. People flocked to films that provided comfort much as “The Wizard of Oz” and “Snow White” did in the Depression years before World War II.

All five of the top-grossing films since 9/11 -- “Spider-Man,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones,” “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” and “Monsters, Inc.” -- were more than merely escapist. They were movies that managed to make serious money off their belief in human potential. In all five, warmhearted protagonists managed to succeed because of their faith that human goodness would ultimately triumph over otherworldly (read: not inevitable) evil.

Hollywood even managed to profit from finding a bit of distinctly American optimism in the rapper Eminem, writer of misogynist, nihilist lyrics and star of the autobiographical movie “8 Mile.” Director Curtis Hanson managed to find in Eminem’s life a can-do pragmatism and a determination to reject the cynical racial tensions of his time.

It’s no secret that studio executives are less focused on bettering the human condition than on inventing marketing vehicles and spinoffs such as the toys that compel parents to purchase overpriced plastic for their children. Still, Hollywood’s success in 2002 can’t be attributed to relentless marketing alone, as the dismal failure of two aggressively marketed films -- the Madonna vehicle “Swept Away” and Disney’s “Treasure Planet” -- shows. Hollywood’s accomplishment was in spinning narratives that a world otherwise divided would be drawn to.

Of course, these narratives are not original. The industry adopted the sort of can-do, almost willfully sunny American pragmatism that intellectuals such as John Dewey and Oliver Wendell Holmes pioneered in the 19th century. But Hollywood’s success at popularizing this philosophy, in a world suspicious of big business and of the power of the United States, should not be dismissed.