The movies are dead - long live the movies

[jake_fink]

Neil Gablr is not often the best writer on film - his book on Disney is cheap, sentimental, soft soap - but this op-ed from the LA Times makes some interesting points. Is our cultural consciousness changing? Are films on their way out?

From his article:

Today, movies just don't seem to matter in the same way — not to the general public and not to the high culture either, where a Pauline Kael review in the New Yorker could once ignite an intellectual firestorm. There aren't any firestorms now, and there is no director who seems to have his finger on the national pulse the way that Steven Spielberg or George Lucas did in the 1970s and 1980s. People don't talk about movies the way they once did. It would seem absurd to say, as Kael once did, that she knew whether she would like someone by the films he or she liked. Once at the center, movies increasingly sit on the cultural margins.

The full article:

The movie magic is gone:
Hollywood, which once captured the nerve center of American life, doesn't matter much anymore.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

I think that foreign films matter now more than ever. Hong Kong, China, Mexico, the Middle East, Africa ... pretty much everywhere, some amazing films are making their mark. Other countries (in the developing world, for instance), are catching up and building their own movie industries; cinema is becoming a viable and powerful form of expression for them.


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[Serial Hero]

Movies are not dead, just in a coma, but I have faith they will wake up.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Movies are not dead, just in a coma, but I have faith they will wake up.

More like a zombie than a coma victim.

.

 

[Fletch]

Mention Hollywood nowadays and people either think of the cultural elite or the gossip machine. The movies themselves are a poor third, altho the television shows seem to do OK.

Gabler is right on when he talks about the big-tent culture being a thing of the past. When was the last major US produced movie that wasn't an obvious piece of target marketing?

 

[Feraud]

Hustle & Flow?

 

[Novella]

The article makes a lot of good points, especially about narcissism and the internet. Although I question the idea that audiences were ever passive. Maybe segments of the moviegoing audience, but to call audiences passive seems like an overgeneralization to me. Didn't movie fans name Joan Crawford? What about the wide variety of fan magazines (can't say those didn't have elements of star worship and info gathering)? Although there was definitely image control at work in those magazines - something which I think our up to the second internet culture makes a more difficult task. Still, whether or not the images presented in magazines were anything near truth (which I'm sure they weren't), they were still a part of an active idol worshiping culture. If anything the internet seems to have just accelerated and amplified a star cult ideology that's always been around. It's an enabling drug! And oh how I love it.

 

[jake_fink]

The article makes a lot of good points, especially about narcissism and the internet. Although I question the idea that audiences were ever passive. Maybe segments of the moviegoing audience, but to call audiences passive seems like an overgeneralization to me. Didn't movie fans name Joan Crawford? What about the wide variety of fan magazines (can't say those didn't have elements of star worship and info gathering)? Although there was definitely image control at work in those magazines - something which I think our up to the second internet culture makes a more difficult task. Still, whether or not the images presented in magazines were anything near truth (which I'm sure they weren't), they were still a part of an active idol worshiping culture. If anything the internet seems to have just accelerated and amplified a star cult ideology that's always been around. It's an enabling drug! And oh how I love it.

Agreed. Gabler isn't always on point, but the stopped clock and all that.

The notion of active, even insane idol worship was brilliantly dealt with in Nathanial West's Day of the Locust (poor Homer J. Simpson).

Gabler is right when he notes this enormous shift in the cultural conversation away from the film and onto the lives of the stars. In the past the satrs were interesting because the movies made them so, and much of their lives was hidden or suppressed, where as now, as Cole Porter said, naything goes. We have cultural icons famous solely for being famous, and many who are famous for work of marginal (and often no) quality.

I do hear people talk about television though. That's better than it ever was. Maybe it's just the single, two hour narrative that we've lost interst in.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the whole notion of the multiplex has a lot to do with this fragmentation, too -- when you go to a show at a single-screen theatre, where a single film is the focus of the whole special moviegoing experience, it's a very different thing from walking into a twenty-screen multiplex where the film you see is just one of a whole array of choices, just another piece of product that's easily forgotten in the shuffle. There's just no sense of common shared experience in a multiplex.

 

[TaxMan1]

When the actors started opening their yaps and telling us about their politics,
as opposed to acting, I quit going to movies. I've been movie-free for going on 6 years now.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

The advent of sound is what really killed cinema. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

When the actors started opening their yaps and telling us about their politics, as opposed to acting, I quit going to movies.

John Wayne must have gotten your goat when he very publically supported Nixon.

Ronald Reagan must have driven you nuts too!

And didn't "Hanoi Jane" Fonda do this w-a-a-y back in the '60s?

Nothing new under the sun, folks.

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[jake_fink]

The advent of sound is what really killed cinema. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

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It definitely killed vaudeville.

Colour is the real culprit. Screens should be silver.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

The trouble all started when the nickelodeons died.

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[TaxMan1]

John Wayne must have gotten your goat when he very publically supported Nixon.

Ronald Reagan must have driven you nuts too!

And didn't "Hanoi Jane" Fonda do this w-a-a-y back in the '60s?

Nothing new under the sun, folks.

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THAT'S why I don't go to movies!

 

[Marc Chevalier]

THAT'S why I don't go to movies!

Yup, I hear ya lol

I try to disassociate the actor from his/her roles and films, but it's pretty tough. Wild horses couldn't drag me to see a new Woody Allen film. Not because of his politics, though ... it's just that I really disapprove of his choice in lovers.

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[TaxMan1]

.....and that's MY problem; I can't do that separation. 'Course, the money I save DOES go to buying hats, so it's ALL good.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

'Course, the money I save DOES go to buying hats, so it's ALL good.

:fedora: :cheers1: :cool2:

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[jake_fink]

I try to disassociate the actor from his/her roles and films, but it's pretty tough. Wild horses couldn't drag me to see a new Woody Allen film. Not because of his politics, though ... it's just that I really disapprove of his choice in lovers.

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I disapprove of the movies he's been making for over a decade now. Sad.

 

[jamespowers]

Yup, I hear ya lol

I try to disassociate the actor from his/her roles and films, but it's pretty tough. Wild horses couldn't drag me to see a new Woody Allen film. Not because of his politics, though ... it's just that I really disapprove of his choice in lovers.

.

Let's not be judgemeeeennnntal.
Sounds like the reason I don't go see movies with Ben Aflake in them. Not his love life. I just can't stand him. [huh]
I suppose the same goes for the stupid Adam Sandler movies too. I think its time for him to start waiting tables again. I might go the restaurant.

Regards,

J