“Real Time” host Bill Maher closed his show Friday by tearing into Hollywood for turning a blind eye on its “romanticization” of gun violence as liberals continue to call for gun control following a string of mass shootings in the United States.
“Now that we live in an age of uber-corporate responsibility where every large company in America bends over backwards to get on the politically correct side of every issue, Hollywood has to tell us- why does that not include gun violence?” Maher began. “When liberals scream, ‘Do something!’ after a mass shooting, why aren’t we also dealing with the fact that the average American kid sees 200,000 acts of violence on screens before the age of 18 and that according to the FBI, one of the warning signs of a potential school shooter is ‘a fascination with violence–filled entertainment?’”
“It’s funny, Hollywood is the wokest place on Earth in every other area of social responsibility. They have intimacy coordinators on set to chaperone sex scenes, they hire sensitivity readers to go through and edit scripts, Disney stood up to the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, another studio spent $10 million to digitally remove Kevin Spacey from a movie, but when it comes to the unbridled romanticization of gun violence, crickets. Weird. The only thing we don’t call a trigger is the one that actually has a trigger,” Maher told viewers.
The HBO star complained how “bad things” can’t be platformed like ethnic stereotypes and fat-shaming, but a hero in a movie “getting over a grudge by mowing down a multitude of human beings” is still allowed.
"Real Time" host Bill Maher called out Hollywood’s hypocrisy over gun control as it continues to produce movies and TV shows that glorify gun violence.
(HBO)
“Because no impressionable young man would ever imitate that,” Maher quipped showing the mugshots of infamous mass shooters on-screen.
Maher swiped the “usual suspects on the far-left” who will accuse him of going on a “conservative rant” to personal-freedoms, pointing to the “pie chart” that explains why mass shootings happen, which he listed were mental illness, easy access to guns, smartphones “and yes, crazy amounts of gun violence in movies and TV.”
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“We don’t show movie characters smoking anymore because it might look cool and influence children, but you’re telling me these cool dudes don’t influence them?” Maher asked before showing a montage of violent gun scenes from movies. “And it’s not just the idea presented over and over and over again that guns are the best solution to life’s problems. It’s why the hero is using a gun. They call them action movies. They should call them revenge movies. Because that’s the plot of every one of them. And there’s a sick similarity in the revenge fantasies Hollywood turns out and those of school shooters.”
A memorial is seen surrounding the Robb Elementary School sign following the mass shooting on May 26, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas.
(Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
“Getting revenge on them that wronged you is what happens. It’s all that happens in movies that are made for and loved by young men. It’s the male version of getting your groove back… Like every school shooter, our movie heroes are grievance collectors and when it comes to action movies, there’s one story. He was a nice guy, but they pushed him too far… all of which doesn’t just create a culture of violence, but a culture of justified violence,” Maher argued. “Liberals hated it when Kyle Rittenhouse — they hated him but somehow the liberal capital of the world is okay with making 500 movies about vigilantes! They hate it when gun people say, ‘It takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun,’ but then they endlessly produce movies with that exact plot.”
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“Now, am I saying don’t make these movies? No, not at all,” Maher added. “I’ve never forced censorship or organizing society around what crazy people might do, but don’t look me in the eye and tell me this isn’t a big part of the problem.”
