"Hollywood is more and more divorced from reality, its film offerings increasingly in the realm of escapist garbage."

But Hollywood has ALWAYS held up the fantasy image.  Escapism was ALWAYS its purpose. Which is one reason why, in the early and mid-1930s, Hollywood studio heads (mostly Jewish) avoided "green lighting" movies that attacked Hitler and Nazism. Very, very few movies did so--and, I repeat--most studio heads were JEWISH! Many books have dealt with this issue, and most conclude that, while personal fear may have played a part, the over-riding concern was that what was happening in Nazi Germany was too ugly, too horrible to present in a movie.  Better another (safe) western or addition to Mickey Rooney's Andy Hardy series, which, of course, featured no African-Americans...

This would tend to support the author's thesis--America has been "fantasy land" for generations and generations.