Some spoilers ahead
I've been rather interested in Slavoj Zizek's analysis of Hollywood, and in popular entertainment in general, to which he claims there is an awful regression happening under the guise of progressive themes, a provocative claim to be sure and worth looking at.
As he's written for films like Avatar (2009), the film acts as modern Kipling novel which is "ideologically a rather conservative, old-fashioned film" with the "brutal racist motifs" that a paraplegic white guy is good enough to become the king of a tribe of natives.
This is a classic example of a medium that seems to contradict the message, as a film about a beautiful native culture being destroyed by corporate imperialism, how come the natives are so dumb as to be duped by a paraplegic imperialist who (for humane reasons of course) becomes their leader?
The archetypal example of this medium-message paradox for Zizek, is The Sound of Music (1959), a film which, despite it's anti-fascist message, portrays the heroes as more or less perfect Aryans living in a white Utopia that is attacked by Nazis who are bureaucratic, "degenerate"-looking and, well frankly, Jews.
I agree quite a bit that this has been increasingly the norm in films. A good example is The Pursuit of Happyness (2006), the story of a black man who becomes homeless but overcomes the odds and progresses to be a wall street analyst.
The scale of the regression is almost unbelievable, Chris Gardner (Will Smith) is a salesmen of Bone density scanners, but when the company fails, he is laid off and becomes homeless. Struggling to feed his kid, he takes a chance in an unpaid job at an investment firm for a chance to get a paid position. That is, he provides unpaid labor to enrich his bosses, at a time when he's homeless, and acts as their lapdog heaping praise and making jokes at his own expense until he eventually gets the job as a financial analyst. His job of course, entails maximizing profit by cutting labor costs, or finding more "efficiency" by firing people and thus creating more homeless Chris Gardners in the process.
Another odd example of this regressive ideology is in the supposed kids show The Legend of Korra, which let me say I was mostly forced to watch by my younger sister.
The show takes place in a magical world where people control the "four elements" (earth, wind, water, fire) and is about the newest "avatar", Korra, who is able to control all four and through her powers, needs to save Republic City from a fascist movement, turning it into the egalitarian dream her grandfather, the previous avatar, wanted it to be.
Seeing two episodes I was mostly shocked by what I saw, everything was the opposite of what it portrayed to be showing. Lets start with Korra, as the latest avatar she is extremely powerful and arrogant about the power. In the begging it shows her destroying her opponents in an elemental duel, not exactly an underdog and not caring or egalitarian. If anything you see more of, and feel more sympathy for the people she is beating.
In fact, even as a narrative it doesn't work. Korra is shown to be overly identified with her role as the avatar (since she was a toddler) but suffers no real consequences for her damage. As a general rule, either a character is alienated by his or her extreme power (Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen) or their over-identification leads to tragedy (Andrew in Chronicle). Imagine if in Chronicle (2012), Andrew's disturbing activities with his powers, killing people, stealing etc. was channeled into a good cause (maybe fighting some bad guy) and all his past actions are forgiven.
The other aspect is the designated "fascist" movement Korra confronts is (as of yet) powerless and has real grievances. In the show, a movement of non-benders (or people without the power to manipulate the elements), organized as the Equalists, strive to destroy the (literally) powerful bending elite.
Or put even more simply: as a show about equality fighting fascism, Korra's genetic ancestry gives her supreme magical powers which she needs to use to put down a political movement agitating for their rights. If that's not like mixed message of The Sound of Music I don't know what is.
But back to the original question, are we experiencing a horrible regression? To an extent yes, but only in the context of the struggles won. Like Chomsky commented with the labor movement, the big worry is that labor laws are being violated and not enforced, but this is still better than in 1920, when there were no labor laws to speak of.
So while western imperialism is propped up by racist motifs, decades ago, you couldn't even talk about western imperialism without being contacted by the authorities. Take a film like Salt of The Earth (1954) which was blacklisted for it's message, the message was rather reformist where people went on strike to get better conditions. That's considered practically bougie now.
As I've written elsewhere, films like Office Space are more progressive than anything in decades including since the 50s.
In fact a good final comparison would be Salt of the Earth and a similar labor film, which luckily didn't get as much attention, called Made in Dagenham (2010). In Made in Dagenham a Ford Dagenham car plant factory goes on strike, which is considered a good progressive action but it's portrayed in the most regressive way imaginable. While in most strikes, and as Salt of The Earth portrayed rather well, there is a collective distraught which comes together and organizes itself into a strike, In Made in Dagenham, the heroine basically organizes the whole thing and becomes a kind of cult figure. The idea being, "strikes are good and progressive but you need a strong, possibly authoritarian, leader to do it."
While the regression is a step back, it's still a step further then what was allowed to be said, and can only move further on.