Lately, particularly in book awards nominations but also very much in films and television, I have noticed a "race to the bottom". Authors and film makers contesting with each other to come up with THE most heinous, most injurious thing that's ever been produced. As if they want the people who read or watch to finish the thing and be catatonic at the end.
Well, apparently it isn't just me. Others have noticed."I'm concerned about the trajectory we're on," said Glenn Sparks, a professor at Purdue University who has studied the effects of media violence, and is one of a number of critics who come not from the more traditional ranks of conservative family groups but are instead academics, journalists and mental-health experts.
"If I worked at Netflix I might say, 'Well, this is what people want.' But that doesn't mean it should be provided," he said. "The research shows that escalating violence on-screen can make us more tolerant of it in real life; it can leave 'lingering fear' that can cause sleep disturbances and other problems."
"There is," he added, "an issue of social responsibility here."
There's a reason why comic-book movies are the biggest sellers out there right now, and this is it. They're the only movies you can watch to escape the horror.
I'm calling this "attacking the audience." The writer treats his audience as a group of criminals to be punished. This is very much on track with the general run of SJW journalism and "scholarship" (I use the term loosely) out there in universities these days. The Left side of the political spectrum considers Humanity to be a plague on the Earth, and seeks to chastise us all for the sin of being imperfect.
I'm not going to sit here and pretend I believe in the "escalating violence on-screen can make us more tolerant of it in real life" argument, it is 100% moral-panic horseshit. I've seen the odd bit of violence over the years, let me assure you that television does not make it more tolerable. I might go so far as to say that by watching violence on television one becomes inured to violence -on television- but beyond that, no.
However the "lingering fear", that's real. You can feel it, and it isn't a subtle thing. That's the whole point of a scary movie, to scare you.
Scary is a little different than what's going down lately though. These days they project horror, fear and hopelessness. They want you to lie down and die.
The cure for this sort of thing of course is to stop watching it. Stop reading it. I stopped years ago, and I feel WAY better.
The advanced course is to create uplifting and invigorating stories yourself. That's my present project.
The advanced course is to create uplifting and invigorating stories yourself. That's my present project.
The Phantom
The "Well, this is what people want" argument for making degrading movies is also bovine excrement. Overall, movies rated G and PG make more money than movies rated PG-13 and R. (And if you adjust for inflation, G-rated movies blow everything else out of the water). One could argue about why — e.g., a case could be made that there are fewer G and PG movies, so the audience who wants to see them concentrates their dollars more. But whatever the reason, if Hollywood actually cared about money, they'd be rushing to fill the family-friendly market niche first, and the PG-13 and R movies would be a minority of what they produce instead of the vast majority. The fact that they instead gravitate towards telling dark and depressing stories instead of light and optimistic ones tells you all you should need to know about the culture of Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteThe "dark depressing story" thing is deeply embedded in the publishing/film making culture. More than that, the stories are dark and depressing, and they make America look bad. European movies make the Americans look bad, American movies make America look bad, Japanese movies make America look scary.
ReplyDeleteIt's nearly a religion. If your story doesn't expose the hubris of Man and the venal nature of Humanity, then its trash and they mock it. The real Art is in despising humanity.
And yes, the culture of Hollywood is depraved, perverted and ultimately sterile hedonism. The notion of doing things for your children makes them angry. Children are viewed as a failure of birth control technology.
This would all be true if all mainstream movies from the USA were like this; actually, it's (IMHO) mostly the independent ones that are feted at the Sundance and Telluride film festivals, and whatever foreign movies get released in North America generally. Also, not all dark and depressing things are bad, although I fand myself only drawn to the 'dark' depictions seen in the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, the Nolan-inspired semi-dark movie Man Of Steel (which isn't all that 'dark' to beging with, just realistic about how somebody like Superman would be received, and which seemed to be based on the Superman: Earth One graphic novel), Star Trek: Discovery (which needed it a long time ago, IMHO) and anything else in sci-fi which has done that traditionally; most of that is balanced out by light depictions of sci-fi and fantasy. What I don't really care for is the kitchen sink dramas that many film critics love to give a lot of stars to-I've got bipolar disorder, and I don't need to be depressed any more than I need to be about life, as I've already got a lot of kitchen sink stuff of my own to deal with.
ReplyDeleteWth regards to PG and G-rated movies, there's already enough of that for kids, particularly as far as animation here in North America's concerned; I'd love to see animated movies dealing with real life and the issues of actual human beings or that are actually artistic rather than being completely commercial instead of all the talking animal/car/plane/toy stuff we get now (movies like Persopolis, Perfect Blue, Tokyo Godfathers, Millenium Actress. Akira, Steamboy, Metropolis, Grave Of The Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Only Yesterday, and last but not least, The Breadwinner)-movie that challenge animation to do better and go farther.
How the left regards popular culture and popular movies (especially science fiction/fantasy ones) reminds me of what Hugo Chavez said about them and how they corrupt people's minds, or some such thing back when he was president of Venezuela.
"This would all be true if all mainstream movies from the USA were like this; actually, it's (IMHO) mostly the independent ones that are feted at the Sundance and Telluride film festivals, and whatever foreign movies get released in North America generally."
ReplyDeleteWhy would they -all- have to be that way for the article to be true? The preponderance of new films and television made in the American industry are dark and violent, with increasingly disturbing scenes in them. There's really no question that that's true.
Personally the only movies I go to the theater to see are the Marvel ones. Because least amount of dark disturbing bullshit in them. Note I did not say -none-, just least. If you want a respite from the violence and torture, you're pretty much stuck watching little kid's cartoons like Oswald and Miffy.