I began writing professionally about 25 years ago. As was befitting to someone with no degree and little practical training, I started as a rock critic. And I was a man on a mission. I wanted to share my enthusiasms with the world. My first piece for the then still-fabled-as-a-“writer’s paper” The Village Voice was about the first solo album by the great singer and songwriter Peter Blegvad, a work I rather optimistically deemed “The Great Lost Pop LP Of 1983.” (Some might recall that Thriller was a rather big record in 1983.) And so for a couple of years I went my merry way, extolling the virtues of Tom Verlaine, They Might Be Giants, Robert Wyatt, The Golden Palominos, none of whom went on to conquer the charts as a result of my exertions (except, to a certain extent, They Might Be Giants, I guess, and yes, that is odd). I don’t think I published a negative review in the Voice until Doug Simmons sent me to cover a Tears For Fears show at Radio City Music Hall. (I don’t know why Doug thought they’d be up my alley; maybe on account that they’d dedicated one of the tunes on their album to Wyatt.) The twee-anguished synth rockers actually brought out that fucking chimp from the “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” video when they did that song. I slagged them, titling my review “Schlock Therapy,” and so began honing my alternate critical identity as a snarkster.
I had a lot of fun in those days, but I was frustrated, too, in that way that young men and women of particular enthusiasms can be frustrated. With all the great music out there that I was trying to bring to light, why did mass taste suck so bad? Why weren’t music fans beating a path to Peter Blegvad’s door? I decided the reason was lack of coverage. At a panel at the 1985 New Music Seminar, I laid out a “J’accuse” to Bob Guccione, Jr. of Spin, on account of the fact that he wasn’t putting the likes of Blegvad on any of Spin’s covers. Jon Pareles, then of Musician and The New York Times, was not unmoved by my impassioned gibberish, but he was also kind of amused. “I used to carry a big torch for that kind of dreck when I first started writing,” he told me. (I knew that—I had read his against-all-odds defense of Peter Hammill’s solo oeuvre in The Voice.) He assured me that I would get over it.
And so I did, up to a point. I learned that critic’s weren’t marketers, for one thing, and couldn’t function as such. I also learned that there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot that one could do about mass taste, particularly if you didn’t really share it. The best you could do was write honestly, champion stuff you loved/believed in, and hope that you’d attract the attention of like-minded individuals with which you could conduct at least some kind of virtual give-and-take.
Of course this was not the only approach a critic could take. A critic could also just say “fuck it,” and, to show that he or she was not entirely alienated from the zeitgeist, embrace popular taste. It didn’t hurt that the ’80s and ’90s were ripe with highbrow theorizers putting together substantial toolboxes for just such a product. In popular music criticism, the invention of this not-quite-but-might-as-well-be straw man called “rockism” (which holds, among other things, that admiration for such artists as listed above is a particularly pernicious form of elitism) achieved the aim of letting practitioners of such writing believe that they “mattered” again.It is the anti-rockist, pro-mass taste arm of popular music criticism that enables a thumbsucker in The New York Times, for instance, to refer to the eldest Jonas Brother as “the brooding auteur” of the group. Nice work if you can get it.
What I’m getting at, in my roundabout way, is why I can’t quite join Roger Ebert and Jeffrey Wells when they lament the paucity of young people seeing and/or enthusing over Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Ebert’s August 6 post has the portent-filled title “The gathering Dark Age,” while Well’s more, shall we say, straight-from-the-gut rumination is called “Eloi.” Both combine a frustration with their inability to shape mass taste with a disdain—more measured and mournful in Ebert’s reflection, more fear-and-loathing filled in Wells’—for these kids today, with their loud hair and long music.
I grant you—as the Rolling Stones once sang, things are different today. I saw In The Loop a couple of weeks ago and thought it was just splendid—hilarious, kind of chilling, boasting a script of magnificent structure and content.
And coming out of the theater, I thought, “You know, in the ’70s, there’s a good chance this would have been a major studio film, something like Network or The Hospital, featuring major movie stars in pretty much all the roles. It would have gotten nationwide distribution and marketing support and been up for a lot of awards. Now it’s an import from an indie and it’s gonna play maybe 50 theaters top nationwide before it goes to DVD, pay-per-view and cable.”
What would The Hurt Locker’s place be in the ’70s movie landscape? That’s a tougher question. I suspect, to be quite honest, that it might have ended up as one of those tough, under-the-radar B pictures of a not-quite-one-thing and not-quite-the-other ilk, sorta like Rolling Thunder. I’m not quite sure.
And I’m also not quite sure just why Ebert and Wells feel that the film’s middling profile among the 17-and-under crowd says such dire things about the lack of intellectual curiosity among contemporary teens. If I recall specific scenes and individuals of my own adolescence accurately—say, the long-haired kids who mocked me for carrying around books of Buñuel scripts before repairing to behind the football field to smoke dope while listening to Deep Purple’s Made In Japan on a portable 8‑track player—I can conclude that intellectual curiosity wasn’t all that much in vogue back in the day, either. Add to that the fact that The Hurt Locker was never aggressively marketed to a youth demographic anyway and you finally don’t really have too much to complain about.
Unless, that is, you just like complaining, wallowing in your own impotence, and concluding that said impotence is actually tied in with the soon-coming demise of Western Civilization itself. Ebert and Wells’ posts come hot on the heels of a controversial bunch of pronouncements by walking smirk Bill Maher, who has assembled not-unconvincing pieces of evidence to support his assertion that America is a “stupid” country. Here’s the thing, though—America might be a stupid country, but so’s every other damn country in the world. Paris Match’s cover last week was of Sharon Sto
né flashing her tits—how fucking smart is that?
né flashing her tits—how fucking smart is that?
I’m not arguing for a quiet acceptance of the status quo, nor, for that matter, for an anti-rockist analog one can apply to film criticism, wherein post-Derrida-theory can be distorted in order to posit that G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra is actually Teh Awesome. What I’m saying is, a man’s gotta know his limitations, and the limitations of his discipline…and then do all that he can nevertheless.(That goes for a woman, too. But I didn’t want to spoil the Magnum Force evocation.) Tearing one’s hair out and venting about how stupid everyone else is may have some short term therapeutic effect, but doesn’t get much done. The kids of today didn’t invent dumb. They inherited it.
That was honestly one of the best pieces of film-cultural criticism I’ve read in quite some time.
“… an anti-rockist analog one can apply to film criticism, wherein post-Derrida-theory can be distorted in order to posit that G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra is actually Teh Awesome”
No, Glenn.
YOU are Teh Awesome.
Also, happy [belated] birthday!
Yeah, Glenn, this is excellent stuff. I’m not a critic, but I have what I like to think of as “good taste”, and I can on occasion get all worked up about shit like “The Adventures of the Transforming Robots”, but when I take a breath, I’m able to see that, logically, all that should really matter to me is that the good stuff (or what I consider the good stuff) is available for me to enjoy, and everything else should be kept on a live-and-let-live basis. I’m good friends with people who like movies that I think are utter garbage. But they like them, it’s their life, and all that.
The thing that gets under my skin about pieces like the ones written by Wells and Ebert is the implication that those two guys are one of the very few that “get it”. They like the things that it is correct to like, and all others are part of the encroaching plague. It’s so self-righteous and self-aggrandizing.
The Ebert piece (I haven’t read the Wells piece) bothered me in some way that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, and your work here helped contextualize for me.
I can’t begin to express how much this article means to me, Glenn. Thank you for writing it and for sharing it.
Fantastic piece, Glenn. Should be nominated for some sort of year-end “Bloggy” award.
My attitude is similar to Bill’s, above: I’m just happy when stuff like The Hurt Locker and In The Loop (and Humpday, and Moon … this has been a great summer for indie film) actually manages to get made, and get released in some form, so that I can see it. This is admittedly somewhat selfish because I live in a big city, I’m plugged into the film blogosphere, and I have access to most every new film of note. Others make do with convincing themselves that “Star Trek” was one of the best movies ever – and if they honestly feel that way, God bless ’em. It’s a dysfunctional system, certainly…but as you say, wringing our hands over how the masses Just Don’t Get It is a pointless exercise in solipsism that I frankly outgrew when I was around 20 or so. I wonder if Ebert is coming back to it in some kind of full-circle twilight-years cycle type deal.
Most critics are lazy and unable/unwilling to seek out new films, but are all given the same scraps of meat to nibble and share similar sentiments about. It’s rather bland and pointless. In a day and age where 10 worthy shorts/features are completed every week, its a shame to see critics adopt the old “we’ll write about whatever the studio gives us” regarding indie/film festival darlings instead of actively looking “under the radar” to enthusiastically share with the world ala the early Village Voice days. Many critics have a “the filmmaker owes me” mentality when, if they really loved what they were doing, they would turn the table from time to time.
If I like movies like The Hurt Locker or Public Enemies or The Limits of Control, all movies which have been as pilloried as they’ve been lauded, it’s enough to know (as Bill implies above) it is fortunate that these even got made. It is enough to know I got to see them.
And all those stupid people? Twenty years from now they’ll be catching on to some of these titles, or proving they were right to ignore them in the first place.
Great piece, Glenn.
Welcome to the ’50’s, Glenn. I arrived seven years ago, so let me tell you of a moment in my youth that for some reason still sticks with me. A good friend shared with me and another his enthusiasm for the movie he had seen the night before.
It was “A Woman Under the Influence”. Now this friend was no budding cineaste, probably didn’t know Bunuel from Bergman, but he raved about what he’d seen. It was also playing at the local movie theater, not some art house venue.
Now jump cut to a few weeks ago and you’ll find me sitting down to lunch with a number of colleagues – ages ranging from 25 to 45 and what movie do they bring up and describe as ‘awesome’?
Transformers, natch.
Yeah, from time to time I get my dander up when pondering such things but it usually eases into ‘what the hell’ and a shrug of the shoulders. Life’s too short and, hell, I can see what I want and if I like it pass it on the to the few I know who may appreciate it as well.
Isn’t the difference between teenagers of today and those of yesteryear not their level of innate intellectual curiosity, but the position of importance their tastes and interests are given in the mass media marketplace?
“I’m good friends with people who like movies that I think are utter garbage.”
You’re talking about me aren’t you Bill? You’re talking about my love for SHORT CIRCUIT aren’t you? Well, fuck you Bill. Fuck you.
Oh, and, excellent piece. I’ve not read any Ebert blog entries yet but may read this one to which you refer. Got to start somewhere.
To pretend like this country isn’t currently undergoing a particularly virulent strain of anti-intellectualism is to be in denial. Yes, the French, to use your example, like to consume trash as much as we do, but they also balance out their junk food diet with healthy doses of intellectual wheatgrass, i.e., they still promote cultural artifacts that would never, ever get talked about, let alone marketed, in this country. Movies like Wall‑E and Idiocracy are being made for a reason. Some people see it, others don’t, and there are the people who see it but don’t want to talk about it. I have been a teacher in the California Private School system for over 25 years, and when I say that kids are getting dumber, I’m not just being an old coot. A majority of my students, all of them in the 15–18 year old range, read at a 5th grade level. In other words, they are about to enter into the adult world functionally illiterate. Every year there are 3 or 4 kids who have interests beyond texting and video games and taking pictures of themselves in their underwear, and these are the kids who get the best grades, who you can have an actual conversation with. They are also, subsuquently, the kids who get along best with the teachers. They don’t act like overgrown babies; they act like the adults they will one day become. I think the point that some people are trying to make is that we are becoming a nation of permanent children. If that’s not regressive, if that’s not poisonous, then I don’t know what is.
Outrage doesn’t go very far in this The Land Of The Free. After all that happened last fall, Wall Street still has its groove on. Likewise, if someone is still reeling from “Cloverfield”- alright, dude. You say Zach Synder is a genius auteur? That’s on you, brah.
However, I’m in total agreement with Bill Maher, smirk and all. I draw the line at these lumbering fiends who are creating havoc at various town hall meetings. Trying to bury what’s left of healthcare reform. Shouting with nothing to say. Screaming about euthanasia squads. Demanding Obama’s birth certificate in their next breath. Dutiful foot-soldiers, taking their marching orders from their masters at Faux News and from the sociopaths who broadcast and guide them over AM radio. George Romero’s zombies haven’t a thing on these hopeless fools. This may not be an entirely stupid country, but about one half of it is behaving like inbred morons. And proud of it.
Nice read. By the way, In the Loop is already available on pay-per-view. I, too, saw it in the theatre, but guess it must be one of those IFC simultaneous releases. I found it to be clever, and agree the script had decent structure and content, but don’t think I was quite as taken with it as our resident, 50-year old blogger. “Chilling” definitely doesn’t come to mind, lol. Then again, I’m the type who uses “lol” without irony, so what do I know? I do find taste to be an interesting thing, but can’t help but to cringe when the “good” variety seems more ego-driven than genuine. As in, so many poser types I encounter who seem more concerned with making sure everyone knows how smart they are than actually being smart. Or humble.
I am shocked to hear this kind of response coming from a teacher, Ms. Alessandro. It sounds to me like this says more about your inability or frustration with having to constantly adapt to the ever-changing demands being made on teachers to engage their students and/or parents in an exciting way.
The best teachers I’ve known in my life have done very little griping about the students. Instead, they do more soul-searching about how they can overcome their admittedly understandable ossification in the face of growing indifference by both young and old to the relevance of what passes for a good education in this mass media and consumer-driven culture.
@Yvette – “Yes, the French, to use your example, like to consume trash as much as we do, but they also balance out their junk food diet with healthy doses of intellectual wheatgrass”
The same French people? Because that’s sort of the point.
@Jim VB – “However, I’m in total agreement with Bill Maher, smirk and all.”
I don’t doubt it. Especially the smirk part.
“Faux News”
For God’s sake, get a new joke. For all the congratulations you give to yourself, you’d think there’d be a spark of originality in there somewhere. Alas.
Greg -
Yes, I was talking about you. Sorry!
Glenn, I seem to recall the Algonquin Round Table of my teenage youth in much the same way as you do, although before I made it behind the football field I’d usually get tagged by some jock or snoose-lipped rancher’s son for some stress-relieving abuse. If these were the intellectually curious teens Wells and Ebert remember, they sure seemed to have a mighty strong taste for ripping books up over actually reading them. And not many of them beyond my tight circle of three or four friends– hopeless dweebs one and all– took the movies of the day, which weren’t marketed specifically toward teens at all, any more seriously than a diversion or background noise for make-out sessions.
But I think Brian Darr might be right too that the real difference between teens of today as opposed to those of the past is indeed “the position of importance their tastes and interests are given in the mass media marketplace.” Suddenly teens are being told, forthrightly and subliminally, by the inescapable presence of content geared to them throughout the culture, that their interests, or what someone has decided are their interests, should be of primary importance. I don’t think it’s so much that THE HURT LOCKER is given no emphasis to the teenage market– were movies like NETWORK or DELIVERANCE or DOG DAY AFTERNOON marketed to teens? It’s just that movies with an obvious adolescent bent are the ones Hollywood has trained itself to make and market now. The parallel to something like G.I. JOE getting a $175 million budget and a huge marketing push might be if Disney, back in 1972, pulled out all the marketing stops to convince everyone that SNOWBALL EXPRESS was the can’t-miss movie of the summer.
It seems to me that, contrary to what Ebert and Wells seem to be worried about, THE HURT LOCKER is reaching exactly the audience for which it was intended. It’s an art-house hit, the first movie “about” Iraq to reach anything like a wide audience. So what’s the complaint? That the marketing machine for G.I. JOE is louder than the one promoting Bigelow’s movie? What’s new? Movies like G.I. JOE are disposable; they scorch the earth on opening weekend, but they usually end up meaning little. However, over time a movie with genuine worth (and this may be the eternal optimist in me speaking) tends to rise to the surface of the culture, as long as there are good writers around to continue the conversation. It ain’t instant gratification (another offense this generation of teens supposedly invented), but I’d rather run with that and pretend, in my tiny little mind, that movies like G.I. JOE don’t even exist, than take time to fret that they do.
“But I think Brian Darr might be right too that the real difference between teens of today as opposed to those of the past is indeed “the position of importance their tastes and interests are given in the mass media marketplace.”
I can’t argue with that at all. Having grown up through the ‘50’s and ‘60’s I can recall how ‘yon teens’ dressed – a reference to D.J. Jerry Blavat to those not from Philly – they dressed like Harvey Keitel’s Charlie in “Mean Streets”. The boys that is. The girls aspired to look like Audrey Hepburn, say, or Jackie Kennedy. In another words, as grown-ups. Not too many years later there’s my Dad sporting sideburns and wearing his first pair of jeans since grade school.
For the record, I hate suits and ties so I’m not arguing for a return to yesteryear. It’s all about what we’ll buy in order to fashion ourselves into what we think others want to see.
Hear, hear!
Although I think you give the “rockist” people far too short shrift. It’s easy to caricaturize them as Jonas-Brothers loving dupes, but there is a valid point to be made about rock, race and the old rock-critical consensus on what makes some music worthy of consideration and contemplation and some not, there.
Tears For Fears rule, and even jazz giants like Wynton Marsalis bow. “The Seeds of Love” is one of the greatest pop records ever. And “They Might Be Giants” is the very definition of nerd-college twee pop.
Otherwise, I’d say the big difference is that marketing has taken over everything, reducing all to its banal level, and for the first time, youth seems to have no cynicism about the marketing force-feeding them shit. Like when I hear people talking about how great so and so commercial is (and that’s not just teens). In my day, we made fun of ads. And that was healthy.
And Wells continues his spiral into acclerated decrepitude with his latest bizarro rant about how he’s now “bothered” by 90 percent of off-topic comments…on his blog. His insights on humanity are tainted, to say the least.
For me, I’d just like to see Ebert and Wells offer a decent explanation of how the vast majority of Americans, forget teenagers, are even going to see “The Hurt Locker” in theaters in the first place. According to Box Office Mojo, its widest opening was 525 screens. “G.I Joe” opened on, let’s see here…nearly eight times as many screens (4007, to be exact). For all we know, rural teens have a burning desire to see this movie (to be honest, I wouldn’t actually be surprised if “Hurt Locker” played like gangbusters in those areas), but the nearest theater playing it is three hours away.
Plus, it’s not really doing that badly. It’s seen as a plus on Kathryn Bigelow’s career, it’s made $10 million so far, which is pretty solid, and it’s gotten rapturous reviews. So what’s the big deal?
@Christian: Ha! Say what you will about TMBG, they never brought a chimp onstage with them. At least not in my experience. But I mostly saw them at Lower East Side “performance” dives way back in the day. Tears For Fears made some decent records (most of which I preferred in their incarnations as Beatles tunes), true. I was mostly turned off by their stagecraft, such as it was. (One of the artists I championed back in the day actually worked with TFF’s drummer on one record, and reported that the ensemble as a whole were really great guys. “Shame about the music, though,” he added. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
@Slutsky: “There is a valid point to be made about rock, race, and the old rock-critical consensus on what makes some music worthy of consideration and contemplation and some not.” Yes, that’s anti-rockism in theory. Anti-rockism in practice, more often than not, is some Ivy League asshole trying to convince New York Times readers that Toby Keith is a major artist. And the Jonas Brothers citation isn’t a concocted caricature. It’s a direct quote from Harvard graduate Jon Caramanica, writing in the Sunday Arts and Leisure section…
I do wonder sometimes what old Lester Bangs would have made of such fulminations!
What Dennis said basically. Back in them olden days Gi Joe and Transformers and the like – all movies based on TOYS – would have been cheapo b‑movies. Now there is a whole entertainment-industrial complex behind them with budgets bigger than the GDP of Albania and a tsunami of marketing that dominates the landscape. I don’t think people are any dumber these days just that idiocy is more visible and has a big megaphone.
I spent my rock-critic youth being indignant that the Ramones weren’t as big as the Beach Boys. But that mostly proves what an idiot I was even if Joey, Johnny and Dee Dee – Tommy, not so much, I’m guessing – were prey to the same delusion. Unless it’s just hotheaded and callow, attacking the mass audience for its moronic taste is almost always a sign that a critic has lost it. So I’m bummed to see Ebert even flirt with the idea – which I think is all he’s doing, since all sorts of well-reasoned qualifiers point to his ever-abiding good sense.
Even so, The Hurt Locker is a lousy pick to make that case with. For the life of me, I don’t see a whole lot there for fun-seeking 17-year-olds to connect with. A 17-year-old cinephile might be another story, but since when has a movie that’s primarily a pretty grim look at the psychological costs of masculinity attracted a teen audience? And why on earth should it? Unless a critic just wants to give up on pop culture outright, which is a legitimate stance but in my book not an attractive or especially interesting one, doesn’t it make more sense to learn to revel in the occasions when the big public gets it wondrously right – the Beatles, the Godfather movies, Thriller, J.K. Rowling – and otherwise more or less cheerfully accept our own eccentricity? After all, the Ramones are also great proof that posterity gets it right too, and if critics aren’t in it for the long haul, that just means they’re thinking like the studio execs we all ridicule for treating opening weekend like it’s Judgment Day combined with the Kentucky Derby.
That chimp tale is scary and very un TFF like, but TMBG did do a children’s song called “One Dozen Monkeys”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC5tNqiMIKo
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Attributed to Socrates, ~400 BC … 😉
Vivian Sobchak:
“The plots and stories of most popular feature films today have become pretexts or alibis for a series of autonomous and spectacularly kinetic ‘monstrations’ of various kinds of thrilling sequences and apparatical special effects…the raison d’etre of such films is to thrill, shock, stun, astonish, assault, or ravish an audience, now less interested in ‘developing situations’ than in ‘immediate’ gratification offered by a series of momentous – and sensually experience – ‘instants’ to which the narrative is subordinated…”
Don’t go to the movies if you want to be intellectually stimulated. Pretty simple. Movies don’t serve the purpose a lot of people want them too. They never have.
And bill: any chance you’re ever going to respond to the topic instead of what other people say about the topic? Seems kind of easy. And childish.
“Don’t go to the movies if you want to be intellectually stimulated.”
Geez. Speaking of Lester Bangs… That sounds like something mega-producer Mike Chapman once said: “If you can’t make a hit record then fuck off and go chop meat somewhere.” Which prompted the Bangs riposte, “So long, Leonard Cohen, been nice knowing you, I guess.” As for us, I suppose we should kiss Chris Marker, Raul Ruiz, Straub-Huillet, Godard, et. al., goodbye. Pretty simple, indeed.
Great post, and what a thread it’s spawned! See, Glenn, there isn’t an inverse relationship between length of post and length/depth of thread, after all.
As a relatively young person, I have to say that there are times when I feel as fogey-ish as Ebert and Wells must, so I don’t think it’s an attitude related entirely to age (as people have noted, here – the state of narcissistic dismay over perceived cultural taste is cyclical and circumstantial).
I’m in total agreement that we’re no dumber than any other culture on earth, and in some cases are quite a bit more savvy and sensitive and open (eg. this recent election thingy, with the black guy – say what you will about the French, that would not have happened over there at this point in history; by any reasonable measure we’re a less racist culture than most of Europe).
But on the other hand, the “virulent strain of anti-intellectualism” is indeed very real here, and it spells bad things for this country. Our literacy rates alone are astonishingly bad. Added to the fact that what passes for intellectualism in this era is most often, well.. that bilge about the Jonas kid.
And the Ivy-league grads that don’t go into sham criticism (or sham journalism, or sham education)? Well, they’re the same morally blinkered twerps who have been robbing America blind for the past couple decades, and are continuing to do so now.
And yet, in the next year or so, we will be graced with not one but two (2!!) new films by Terrence Malick. God has not yet forsaken us.
Mark – I already did. Second comment. It wasn’t earth-shattering, but I had a lot more to say than you did.
Great discussion, but my days of being outraged by the opinions of strangers is long behind me. And when critics whine about the taste of the public, they often do so because they lament their own diminished importance, which was likely a figment of their imagination in the first place. For once, I would like for a critic to stop opining about who likes what movies for what reasons, and to actually go out there and ask people why they like certain movies–study the problem from the consumer’s point of view, for a change. Purely speculative rambling about our collective anti-intellectualism is lame. Median cinematic taste in this country may be horrid, but only cinephiles assume that this translates into across-the-board stupidity. People are still smart about plenty of things. Am I too hopeful?
Glenn, I have to assume that the “brooding auteur” comment was delivered with at least a little bit of self-conscious irony. But I don’t think you should judge a whole school of thought because of something a rock writer published in the New York Times, of all outlets. I think the anti-rockist discourse has already permeated rockcrit in a more subtle way… it is harder to out and out dismiss hip hop or R&B, especially then non-college-radio-oriented artists, or electronic music, or anything that isn’t basically AOR, thanks to the anti-rockistas. And that’s a good thing.
@Joel: I don’t think you’re being too hopeful at all. The same audience whose dim taste at the multiplex is being lamented by Ebert and others has made broadcast-TV hits out of shows as complicated as Lost and cable successes out of critiques of America as innovative as Big Love and Deadwood. And let’s not even get into graphic novels, OK? Lots of people are as smart and curious as ever, they’ve just turned these days to other forms than movies for the buzz.
Slow clap.
Please. For the love of God. Snicker silently at the savages who thrill to the expansion of small domestic cars into mighty intergalactic warriors. But spare me the outrage that is only intellectual elitism wearing a clever Halloween costume.
Study history, Jeffrey. Ebert, you get a pass because you are you, and you’ve earned it a million times over.
Popular culture gets that way because it is freaking popular. Rage against it if you like, but it will do you no good. Love the things you love, and allow others the same luxury, and don’t ever, EVER, think that it makes you better. Just different.
g.
To build on Yann’s apt quote, and much of what has already been said here, let me propose what I call “the 20 year rule.”
Whatever year it is, twenty years before, people were smarter, streets were safer, the air was cleaner, children could walk the streets safely alone, and politicians were more statesmanlike. I heard this about the fifties in the seventies, and about the seventies in the nineties. I’m sure I’ll hear it about the ’00s in the twenties.
Every generation regurgitates that, that “Kids these days” sentiment that was old-hat 50 years ago. But in Ebert’s case, it’s kind of amusing considering the source; Ebert is certainly capable of pedestrian taste himself, and therefore encouraging that pedestrian taste in his readers (how many times does he give a pass to the latest piece of fluffy marketing?). He talks about how “marketing and CGI” win out every time, as though he didn’t champion “The Dark Knight” as some kind of cinematic masterpiece a little over a year ago. I don’t mind to come off as vitriolic to the guy, as he’s also done much to improve the tastes of moviegoers. But, at the same time, it’s disappointing hearing him throw out an argument so riddled with cliché.
And, you could classify TMBG as “nerd-twee”, but they’re also filled with heart, personality, and in terms of compositional inventiveness they’re as idiosyncratic as they come. John Linell is one of the best lyricists around, just listen to the way he plays with alterations, pins, and double meanings. You get major brownie points for championing them, Sr. Kenny. Have you listened to their newer stuff at all? Their latest non-kiddie album, “The Else”, is just about the best thing they’ve ever done I think.
@Ryan Kelly
Yeah, again, evoking “The Dark Knight” is really not going to help your case when there are plenty of other targets.
Just saying, yeah, you didn’t like it, you’re in the minority critically speaking. Let it go.
“Let it go.”
But… but…
Aww, fine.
Roger Ebert is a goddamned national treasure, but he also just gave _Orphan_ three-and-a-half stars.
I respectfully demand an explanation from him about how in the hell that rating comports with his latest post.
What really shocks me about all this is the simple fact that “The Hurt Locker” is the film that is being used to make this point. This film is as conventional, formulaic and (according to a vast number of actual Iraqi War Veterans and those still deployed) frustratingly unrealistic (to the point of “disrespect”, according to one viewer) as anything that is actually “spoon fed” (to use A.O. Scotts’words)to “the kids”, from Hollywood.
I actually think that if we had to bob and weave our way through kamikaze web ads for this film for the past month, and if it actually did open on 4K screens, it would really be received in the matter it deserves, as nothing special, and certainly not, embarrassingly, as a “great war film”. I think the phenomenon here is a result of a sort of Indie-hype snowball effect, originating from, quite simply, a false perception of it containing some actual realism. In the very least, it’s time critics stop calling it “realistic” when the FACT is that it is not. It’s getting kind of embarrassing.
Agreed about the good Ebert’s done, and during my semi-regular pokearounds on his site I’ve still found plenty of good writing. But that blog post (and other recent related ones) aren’t the only evidence of a dismaying trend in his thought processes:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090610/REVIEWS/906119986/1023
If someone praised my character in such a fashion I would be absolutely cringing.
@Peter Rinaldi, can you provide some links to those Iraq war veterans who feel the film is unrealistic to the point of disrespect? I’d be very interested to hear the details.
I enjoyed the hell out of the movie myself, though I don’t think my appreciation of it necessarily turns on its purported realism. Realistic or not, Renner and Mackie gave terrific performances and a number of sequences, including the opening with Guy Pearce, were simply amazing, as setpieces of remarkable technique if nothing else.
All I have to say is: I concur.
Here’s a link to the Metacritic user comments page. You’ll find a number of soldiers chiming in. Scroll down.
http://apps.metacritic.com//movie/usercomments.jsp?id_string=6301:$cjWjMyEromaFW90uVknwg**
“I’m in total agreement that we’re no dumber than any other culture on earth, and in some cases are quite a bit more savvy and sensitive and open (eg. this recent election thingy, with the black guy – say what you will about the French, that would not have happened over there at this point in history; by any reasonable measure we’re a less racist culture than most of Europe).”
As an european, this sentence left me puzzled, because while I’ve lived here for decades, I must have missed all the lynch mobs and hooded horsemen that must have been circulating around here, not to mention (to go for something more recent) all the email jokes about Obama eating watermelon. But I’ll be sure to look harder for them in the future.
In any event, let me point out that americans have been importing slaves for more than 200 years, while mass inmigration to Europe only started in the last 50. So if we manage to elect a moroccan-born president in the next 150 years, we’ll still be ahead of you guys…
(As for the topic of the post itself, I don’t have any clear answers. I have the same feeling of “kids these days” quite often, and yet, when I read this post, the first thing that came to my mind was that Socrates quote. I suppose that the most definitive answer was the one given by Orson Welles in “F for fake”: in 1000 years, nobody will remember anything of what we appreciate today, but in the meantime, that’s no reason to stop enjoying what we have).
Bill, When Fox begins to act as something other than a joke and a mouthpiece for all kinds of vile propagation, my characterization of it will then change. (Are you a shareholder, by chance?) Listen, while you’re bending over backwards to show everyone how fair you are, just be sure you don’t damage that weak spine of yours, ok?
@Jim – I don’t care if you stick to your guns about Fox. Your opinions are your opinions, and you’re welcome to them. But your way of expressing those opinions is very stale and tired. I guess if you still think “Faux News” is biting, that’s your lookout.
And no, I’m not a shareholder. Really funny joke, though.
Anyone who only talks about how Fox is “vile propation” without mentioning that every other news station is exactly the same (though in the other direction) is seriously misguided. I guess when that ‘vile propagation’ happens to be in line with one’s agenda, it’s not quite so vile.
@Peter Rinaldi, far be it from me to dismiss the movie-evaluation skills of our nation’s brave fighting men, but people really felt “disrespected” because the movie was unrealistic enough to make it seem like “a British merc is unable to use a .50 cal sniper rifle to kill an insurgent sniper who is 350 meters away”? or because some members of the infantry didn’t like being portrayed as waiting for a bomb disposal expert? Ooooohhkkkaaaay.
I agree the movie is being a bit over-hyped – as does Glenn, I suspect, since he does refer to it as basically a B‑movie – but I can’t say that the unrealistic elements alter my evaluation in any significant way. After all, the movie is partly an examination of the glamor and attractions of war, so making it seem movie-like (or video game-like) is perfectly in keeping with the theme. I suspect that the over-hyping has more to do with the fact that it’s a smart, fun action movie in stark contrast to the idiot behemoths Transformers and GI Joe.
@ DUH: When I put “Locker” in a position relative to a “B” picture I’m not commenting on its quality—I happen to love a lot of “B” pictures myself, and consider many to be no-excuses masterpieces.In fact, the picture the “Hurt Locker often brought to mind for me was Anthony Mann’s 1957 “Men In War”—a low budget, independently produced nember distributed by the smaller studio United Artists. In other words, a “B” picture. And I do believe that’s kind of how “Locker” would have been disseminated, and regarded, in the ’70s, only to be revived around this time for a Film Forum run as a rediscovered masterpiece! What’s happening now is that the picture’s being distributed in a kind of quasi-indie fashion and hailed as a neglected masterpiece!
“that every other news station is exactly the same (though in the other direction) is seriously misguided.”
Nice try. Maybe MSNBC is getting there. AFTER they sold us the Bush War (GE gotta eat!). But FOX exists in a world of media crazy all its own. Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, Wallace, Rove…no, FOX owns their crazy. No other networks come close. Yet.
Comment from Carl C. @ Metacritic. – “I think that the reason so many of the servicepeople are upset at the lack of realism in this film is not because of the technical inaccuracies (we don’t care much about that stuff), it is because it completely fails to capture what it is like in Iraq (or in any war). Lack of attention to detail is one thing, completely constructing reality is another. This director did the latter, and seems to have fooled a lot of people with it. Really people…this film DOESN’T show what war is like, nor what soldiers are like. Don’t be fooled…please.”
This is certainly off topic, but I opened the can of peas, so I’d better make an attempt to close it…
Without delving too deeply into “which culture is more racist,” I stand behind my assertion – and it is not an assertion based in hard science, but a well-understood and generally accurate cultural assessment. It is certainly a tricky matter, and there’s no easy equivalence. Snarky comments about the KKK could easily be countered with snarky comments about the Nazis. Not to mention a snarky comment about the 2005 riots in Paris – or the obvious flaw in equating immigration with slavery.
The simple fact is that Obama’s election, besides the hype and “image politics” and massive dissatisfaction with Bush II, did show a level of racial progressiveness that is hard to find in the rest of the so-called first world (several “developing nations” are way ahead of us on that count, but that’s another matter.)
This is not to say we are “colorblind” or free of racism. Just more so than many other wealthy western countries.
Say what you will about the kids – the next successive generations here are almost assuredly going to be more open/progressive when it comes to race, gender, and sexuality. And therefore more likely to despise Fox news (sorry, couldn’t resist.)
Well, there’s a lot of cross-cutting debates going on in the thread, but at the risk of contributing to the cacophony:
@Peter Rinaldi, I gotta say, that comment doesn’t exactly stand on its own. So, it’s not the lack of versimiltude, it’s the lack of realism? or what now? As I think the opening quote makes inelegantly clear, _The Hurt Locker_ is much more about a certain mentality than it is about Iraq or about the everyday experiences of most soldiers in any war. So I continue to think the reactions you’re citing are off-base.
I haven’t been sure veterans are necessarily the best critics ever since Bob Dole endorsed the design of the WW2 Memorial, but here’s a WashPost report on a Hurt Locker screening for Iraq vets and war correspondents:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071100562.html
They seem to have liked the movie fine, which doesn’t make their reaction any more definitive than the negative ones mentioned earlier in this thread. I just don’t want anyone getting the impression that veterans have been scoffing at HL’s authenticity en masse. Me, I think it’s got some obvious Hollywoodisms – the subplot with the winsome Iraqi kid, Ralph Fiennes pretending to be Lawrence of Fallujah – but I don’t mind those a bit. I’ve never thought it made much sense to evaluate a fiction film by how closely it approximates a documentary anyway.
Whenever I see people complaining about media bias, I always ask them if they’ve heard of confirmation bias.
Generally, they say no.
I explain this to them, and then I ask them what they think is more likely, that a bunch of competing corporations traded on the open market struggling for every advantage they can get are secretly coördinated with each other, or if each viewer is just taking away from what’s broadcast what they want to hear.
I used to do this in person, but that got me punched in the face a lot.
Ryan, grab a clue, please. The “other side” is attempting to expose the lies propagated by Fox and others. Lies, Ryan, lies. I’m sorry to break this to you, but no, Sarah Palin’s lie about “death panels” is not a point worth debating. It’s vile propagation. Why legitimize such insanity? By entertaining the crap that is oozing from the mouths of these fiends, do you think this will take us to some point in the middle where we will locate the truth? Is that what you believe? This tells me all I need to know about your agenda. Shameful.
“that a bunch of competing corporations traded on the open market struggling for every advantage they can get are secretly coördinated with each other”
Sure seemed that way in March of 2003…
@Christian
That’s a separate issue. I’m cheerfully willing to admit that news can be pushed in certain directions. But my main problem I have with the whole “corporate”/“mainstream” media argument is the same one I have with conspiracy theories: I’m handed a choice between believing a bunch of companies trying to kick each other’s asses are secretly colluding or a person standing right in front of me is at best a crybaby who can’t accept that alternate points of view might be valid and at worst completely UNABLE to accept alternate points of view, i.e. a blithering delusional.
Column B, on both the left and right, come up scarily often.
One Word: OPEC.
I have a few things to add…
I read Ebert’s take more as as if teens and young adults WERE to see “The Hurt Locker,” they would really love it, more so than the crap they’re already seeing in droves. And I realize, that’s also a marketing issue because the marketing for a very fine little film has been reallly bad. Maybe they’re saving the ad money for an Oscar push, who knows. I have a friend who’s into seeing “good” movies and he hadn’t even heard of it. But I think there’s something to the point Ebert raises about kids not wanting to seem uncool to other kids. But it’s always been that way. You are looked at as strange if you swim against the current.
Look at the representation of “cool kids” in movies.…like “Juno” or on that “United States of Tara” show. The cool kids are always depicted as nerds or dweebs. The kid on “Tara” is fricking cool as hell but of course is a nebbish gay because he like, digs Dr. Caligari. It reinforces the stereotype and makes being different out to be akin to being weird.
However I will totally and completely echo Yvette’s statements and give the bird to Tony D for thinking she has somehow let down her students. Kids these days (hah! Said without irony!!) are by and by completely unmotivated, lazy, parrots of commercials and TV shows.
I work with school aged kids daily in an afterschool program and have for over 18 years and this crop is laaaazy as hell. Want to know my theory on why? 24 hour TV. You can get cartoons or kids shows 24 hours a day on cable and there’s really no need to walk away from the TV ever. When I was younger and even my sisters who are younger than me, you would go play or ride bikes or do something UNTIL the show you wanted to see came on, then you watched it. Then you went and did something else.
This 24 hour kids TV is fairly new and I think the effects are obvious. Tie that in with video games that are endless in terms of play time (you don’t die, games are open ended with no real “levels” to conquer, just on and on and on)and you get lazy, easily entertained kids who are the fattest in the world. At least when I was a kid 24 hour TV was MTV so we were like, listening to music too.
I also attend some local junior colleges (note to fellow college grads: if you take part-time units, you don’t have to pay back your loans! Golf! Film! Ceramics! All of them count!)and these kids have no idea what they’re going to school for and damn near every one of them has said to me in one form or another, “C equals degree, dawg!” Barely sneaking by is the new American way. And in fact after Yvonne’s statements, I’m thinking these kids are functioning illiterates and not merely lazy. Although likely both.
Just last night as the wife and I were watching TV before bed I flipped my lid as those John and Kate idiots were on seemingly every channel. Crap is force fed to us at every turn and we gobble it up by and large. Any free thinking human being with an ounce of sense would not give a shit about John and Kate and their 8 kids or what that family is up to but when it’s on seemingly every channel at any time, someones watching it. We never dare look away…
“And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this tube?”
Zach: so, to summarize, what I take from your comment is a (presumably white) american congratulating himself about how little racism there is in his country, compared to other countries.
Okay then.
What this reminds me of, is of a strip of the great argentinan comic “Mafalda”, where the protagonist says: “if the teacher didn’t get mad at us, I’d write an essay only with questions.”
“Do the swedish love their country the most just because there were born there?”
“Do the french love their country the most just because they were born there?”
“Do we love our country the most just because we were born there?”
“I’d call it, ‘Patriotism and laziness’ ”.
I’ll leave it here. In the meantime, enjoy the spectacle of a black president covering up for CIA tortures, asserting the american right to detain foreigners without trial and publicly opposing gay marriage (which is already legal, BTW, in several european countries).
@don r. lewis
You are entitled to your opinion. Hell, sometimes I’m a pessimist and see things the way that you do. Like everytime I’ve heard “birther” or “death panel” in the last few days.
My point is that a teacher should try harder than the average layman to not give in to this way of thinking.
I’m sure all of us here looked up to a role model at some point in our life-whether it was parent, teacher or mentor-and were fortunate that this person hadn’t given in to the cynicism.
This “teacher” doesn’t sound much different than my eighth grade Algebra teacher 24 years ago, an old biddy who simply lost touch with the changing world and spent more time trying to correct our behavior than actually inspiring us to learn.
She should challenge herself and her students to reach beyond the negative thinking and societal crap that we all face every day. And if she can’t, she should stop griping and hang it up.
@ PaulJBis: Sure, feel free to summarize away. That’s a perfectly available option, rather than addressing the issue at hand.
Kinda reminds me of the Schulz comic where Lucy says to Charlie Brown: “Ad Hominem attacks are fun AND easy!”
As long as we’re firing off parting shots – enjoy, on a re-reading of your last sentence, the obtuseness of the way you use the term “black.” What on earth does that have to do with what follows? I’m assuming you didn’t realize the suggestion of racism, just as I’m assuming you’re not actually a racist. Just overly defensive and hasty with your words.
I wholeheartedly agree: All of the things you mentioned about Obama’s policies & positions are indeed reprehensible. None of them have anything to do whatsoever with the issue of racism in American vs. European culture.
Well, sure Tony. But I think you miss her point in that that ARE “cool kids” who are inspired to learn and think and enjoy life by searching out things outside the norm. I have probably 5–10 kids out of my normal 80 who fight against the rising tide of “normalcy,” and I encourage it. And defend them against kids who try to bully them or get them to conform.
But my point is (and I can’t speak for Yvonne but I’ll guess) that by and large, this new generation frankly sucks. The last 2 did too, but in a devolving kind of way. This one (9−20 year olds) wins. Bah humbug!
@Tony:
“…this says more about your inability or frustration with having to constantly adapt to the ever-changing demands being made on teachers to engage their students and/or parents in an exciting way.”
It seems you have bought into the notion that teachers are put in front of the classroom to entertain students. Sorry to have to point this out to you, but a teacher’s job is to teach, and a student’s role is to learn. The student needs to sit still, shut up, stop texting, turn off the iPod, keep their eyes on the teacher and pay attention.
Unfortunately, this ADD-driven culture of ours has given students the impression that if class time isn’t party time then they have the right to stand up in the middle of a screening of “Schindler’s List” being presented by a college professor and proclaim, as reported in the comments following Ebert’s article, “This movie is boring.”
How much you wanna bet this chucklehead thought Transformers was Teh Awesome?
Zach: there is a really amusing irony in watching all the american liberals, back in November, falling over themselves with joy and singing kumbayahs, repeating again and again that the election of the first black president proved that the USA was (just like “Transformers”) Teh Awesome… and seeing then said black president enact pretty much the same policies than all the white males that preceded him. As it was said in one of those boring european movies that Kids Today Don’t Watch Anymore, “the more things change, etc., etc.”
That’s the irony that I was hinting at in my last paragraph, and the fact that you decided to interpret it as racism just proves your bad faith. But then, that’s what I should have expected when somebody from the country that invented Jim Crow started lecturing other countries about racism.
@RudyV
“The student needs to sit still, shut up, stop texting, turn off the iPod, keep their eyes on the teacher and pay attention.”
Respectfully, RudyV, you are being even more Pollyanna-ish than I am. It is not a teacher’s job to entertain, true. But this ADD-driven culture cannot be simply wished away. It must be engaged on its own terms since this is a permanent reality.
Yes, a teacher’s job is to teach, but a good teacher will also ENGAGE their students.
Back to the subject that Glenn introduced here, I would say it is also the job of filmmakers (directors, screenwriters, studios, etc.) to make movies, but a good filmmaker will also ENGAGE their audience. As for Ebert and Wells, they should worry less about the sad state of our youth and continue to do their part in engaging their readers by making them informed consumers when they go to the box office, because the Hollywood marketers sure aren’t going to do it.
@Yann, thanks for the quote. I was thinking along those lines too, but was too lazy to think of it or look it up. And, Dan, I like your follow-up to it.
@our host, I’m an Ivy grad, but don’t consider myself an asshole. Then again, I don’t write for the NYT about the Jonas Brothers. Did you hear Lady Gaga wants to have a foursome with them? Did you hear Lady Gaga might be a guy?
@ Tess: Some of my best friends are/were Ivy Leaguers. I’m just saying Ivy League + asshole makes a potent combination.
I wouldn’t be all that surprised about Lady Gaga. Actually, I kind of like the idea. Although I’m so old I have to admit: when I saw her Rolling Stone cover, my first thought was, “Man, Bernadette Peters has still got it!”
@PaulBS: Round and round we go, it’s just too much fun to stop, no?
Delighted to hear that you’re not a racist. You’ll notice I suggested as much, pointing out instead only that you chose your words poorly. If you have a problem with that, be more precise when you write.
I made my original point only to chime in with those adding complexity to the issue at hand, which seems to be the possible decline of US movie culture, which in turn can be taken as part of the possible decline of US culture at large.
Such sweeping proclamations are always hasty and simplistic; I was only indicating that there are some areas in which culture here can be said to be doing well, even improving. Racial equality is one of them. Apparently, in making this point relative to Europe, I stepped on some sensitive European toes.
Well, my friend across the sea: grow up and deal with it. What I said was accurate, and still is. You want a special invitation to one of my “things that suck about America” parties – just give me your address, I have them biweekly. THEN we can talk about how bad Obama is screwing up.
(This is what I get for drawing explicit politics into a discussion about movie viewing…lesson learned.)
“Isn’t the difference between teenagers of today and those of yesteryear not their level of innate intellectual curiosity, but the position of importance their tastes and interests are given in the mass media marketplace?”
I think this is the heart of the matter, along with the way our culture’s elevation of youth has morphed into a approval for arrested adolescence.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately as a result of rewatching the first two seasons of Mad Men. In the 60s, people in their late 20s and up were expected to act like adults. Today, in the professional services firm where I work, the likes of Pete Campbell would never even think he could be head of accounts, and if he did, he’d be laughed out of the room. Similarly, after watching the Ted Kennedy doc that HBO has been running, I was floored to think that the fact that he was only 30 years old did disqualify him from being a Senator. (Maybe not the best example, him being a Kennedy and all, but still.)
Instead, today nobody questions the fact that there are adults with rooms full of $200 collectible Batman action figures.
Or glass shelfs of baseball memorbillia. But that’s different!
And PaulJBis, this is one liberal still okay with Obama, seeing how America made the smart strategic decision to keep Sarah Palin far from a nuclear trigger. And the president is one dude and he’s made enough substantitive changes to warrant his election. I don’t have any faith that the government is going to end its wars or collusion of corporate greed, but I believe Obama would like that. He’s trying. Look at the folks that form his opposition here: McVeigh nutters taking guns to his healthcare meetings. American Idiocracy.
Here’s the thing: most people, in most areas of their life, participate in – and to a certain extent, like – whatever they’re told to. What’s the big movie this weekend? Let’s go see that. That the big movie 35 years ago was The Godfather and today in Transformers says a lot about the studios but I’m not sure how much it says about the public. Mind you, I’m not saying viewers come out of the theater as satisfied – or perhaps provoked is a better word – by Transformers as they were by The Godfather (though honestly, many probably are) but their reasons for going to see either one are probably fundamentally the same.
This is not a finger-pointing accusation. I do much the same thing with clothes, food, etc. – there’s too many choices, too little time to take loving care over every “consumerist” decision, so I end up going with the flow.
Hell, I usually end up doing that with movies in the theater, too, and cinema’s what I actually care about! Until a few years ago I would go see all the big releases (the one-two punch of Fantastic Four and King Kong finally did me in in that regard). Even when I became more selective, I still trudged off to see all the Oscar nominees, even knowing there were probably better ones to see. The marketplace orients your choices; that’s just how it is. Movies are a social activity (even when partaken alone) for most people rather than an art form – though the importance of said social activity is not as high as it used to be – more on that in a moment. (Anyway, at this point I don’t go to theater at all unless I feel the movie’s something I should be writing about online; which doesn’t have all that much to do with quality and is in some ways another version of the earlier decision-making process. I have not seen The Hurt Locker but this discussion has encouraged me to make it the 1 film I actually go to see around this time…)
The real issue is what the marketplace provides. “Difficult” movies like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood found relatively wide audiences (I recall sitting behind a college student on a bus, a frat type, who was raving about how “mad weird” Blood was, and hence how good). If the studios were pumping good entertainment into theaters, less expensive than Transformers and the like, they could definitely find audiences for them. It just takes smart advertising is all. That they don’t is partially because of what was discussed a few weeks ago on this very blog, that studio heads no longer have even the slightest pretense of caring about prestige; to them, the product is no different than soap or any other commodity.
Frankly, I’m more concerned than anything else with the slippage movies overall are taking in the public consciousness. They are being eclipsed in cultural importance by television, video games, comic books (but especially television). There was a time when film was a mass experience as well as an art – it had the rare privilege of having its cake and eating it too. Now I fear they’re slipping into becoming something a small niche cares about, while the majority has no more interest in movies than in bowling night. That this is in part a result of coming out from the theaters less satisfied or provoked than in the past probably plays a big part in that.
I’ll return to this post and ruminate a bit more when I’ve read Ebert’s and Well’s pieces. I wrote this last bit first, thinking I’d offer up a few lines of thought and leave it at that. Oops.
Jim, first of all, let me thank you for not ranting like a raving lunatic.
Second of all, if you want to be taken in by a corporate mindset that makes BUSINESS decisions to pander to shallow partisan thinkers who don’t analyze an issue at all beyond only the shallow, deceptive surface, be my guest. Myself, I don’t care what direction that ideological pandering goes in – these labels of ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ media distort the real issue – I resent it either way, because ALL the corporate news is painfully trivializing and reductive, and never approaches anything resembling ‘truth’. If you wanna still bicker about Sarah Palin when her political career is virtually over, then far be it from me to deprive you of the joy you must get throwing out complete strawman arguments.
Some of Ebert’s points are valid, but did he actually expect The Hurt Locker to be a blockbuster? With audiences of any age? Has any Iraq war movie been a major financial success?
Like it or not, most people are sick of this subject and don’t want to hear about it. Nor do they want to see movies about it. And I know how they feel. Twice in recent weeks, I’ve gone to a local theater to see Hurt Locker, only to end up buying tickets for silly thrillers (Orphan and Perfect Getaway) that I thought might provide 90 minutes of entertainment, instead of a depressing experience.
Eight years ago, I was publicly lamenting that Ghost World and The Royal Tenenbaums were not the big hits of 2001 (instead of Ocean’s Eleven, or whatever). Now I realize that the mass audience does not care for the quirky and the offbeat, and probably never has. It’s not like Godard films were playing small-town theaters in the heartland in the ’60s. Those theaters were showing Elvis movies.
So when G.I. Joe opens at No. 1, I shrug it off. Since I don’t work in the movie industry, it has no affect on me.
Dumb is not the problem, never was. Dumb is forever. The real problem is that dumb has finally, perhaps irrevocably, infiltrated the one aspect of filmmaking craft that could not afford to lose its good sense: the editing. Professional film editors have abandoned their craft in favor of utterly random newsmagazine pastiche. Some say, “fuck it, no looking back.” I say that any critic who goes chasing the “anti-intellectualism” thread is dropping the ball. Movies today are smarter and more complex than ever, textually, but who cares if, in terms of picture editing (what Tarkovsky called a director’s “handwriting”) they are senseless and weightless?
Mainstream movies have deranged their relationship with screen time, and that’s why they are so unsatisfying, confounding and forgettable. Many critics seem to think this phenomenon is inevitable at the multiplex; that sensible and sensitive construction is only the province of your festival faves. When an Anderson or Tarantino or Soderbergh bust out with popular entertainment that moves sensually and not spastically, the work is treated as a curious anomaly that has more to do with the individual filmmakers’ special talents than the fact that they simply followed rules any studio hack circa 1960 would have known well enough to heed. Today, critics and filmmakers are conceding editorial innovations that are about as revolutionary as a keytar. Put down your goddamn books and start looking at what’s going on before and after the cut. That’s where we’re losing everything.
@MovieMan – it’s an interesting point you bring up. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing that “serious” filmmaking (by which I mean intellectually & emotionally substantive) becomes more of a niche audience medium. This has happened, essentially, to literary fiction, and it’s still doing okay – it hasn’t died the grisly death people were predicting.
Don’t get me wrong, I would prefer it if things didn’t go that way. You’re right – NCFOM and TWBB did remarkably well financially, and that was only a year ago. I have faith that the cinema experience will never disappear entirely, even if right now the upswing in ticket sales is connected more to Transformorons than, say, Two Lovers.
I don’t think cinema is on the verge of becoming what literature is today (which, coming from someone who admittedly does not read much contemporary fiction, looks a bit grim from the outside: the most acclaimed books seem to loudly pronounce their unworthiness of sitting next to Melville or Dickens on the shelf, even wearing this as a badge of postmodern pride. Too much is made of rehashing or “riffing” on past works and pop culture, and the tone struck seems altogether too light and self-effacing, as if seriousness equalled pretension every time. This seems the heritage of Vonnegut – whom I quite like – by way of John Irving, down the line, the seriousness further diluted by the airiness with each generation. But again this is the view from very much outside, of a non-literateur who can’t even spell that damn word apparently.)
But maybe a closer analogy would be to theater after movies came along. Masterpieces were still produced, including some that seized national attention (think Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams). But those were the exceptions to the rule and the energy and attention was flowing more and more to movies – the great novelists and playwrights were soon writing for Hollywood or having their works adapted, and becoming therefore more famous. And even that phase WAS a forerunner to the decline where – if there are still great plays being produced (and there must be, right?) – they are hardly household words. It seems like Angels in America was the last play even to come close to that status – and really only among the cultural élite even then. I don’t know if the movies will get to that point, but it’s a bit sad to see them even slip as a, well, not folk art exactly, but at least something the masses were engaged with intensely the way those kids in Pather Panchali look with awe and wonder upon the village paegent.
On the flip side, and on that very note, perhaps increased participation with the Internet and cheaper technology will open up a new epoch in filmmaking, and bring about engagement a new way. We’ll see. Again, best to remain optimistic. But then, I’m much younger than Ebert or Wells…
What, you’re not going to give us a link to see Sharon Stone’s tits? I don’t want to do all the work myself. Lazy bastard.
I’m a bit puzzled by the flood of critical superlatives for “In The Loop.” Sure, it had some hilarious moments. I’ll be quoting “Difficult, difficult, lemon difficult” until the day I die. And sure, it was intelligent, and I have no doubt that much of it is thinly veiled truth. But mostly I found it exhausting and boring; my patience for ten-minute-long wittily profane excoriations ran out after the first, oh, 972 such scenes. Was there something I was missing?
Thank you sir for yet another insightful posting.
I usually get nervous once people, critic or otherwise,
decides that the death of cinema is finally upon us.
It’s like they can forget that when they were teenagers they
most likely were interested or intrigued by something that
they would now look down their noses at, or at least no longer
have an interest in. I don’t think the 13 year old me would have had the maturity to sit through, much less appreciate, The Decalogue, but the 20 year old me was thankful to finally get the chance to see it and fell in love with it. This has happened on more than one occasion. When I was younger I sat down to watch Shortcuts, I had heard about this Altman guy, I think Anderson mentioned something about him in an interview. Needless to say it was lost on me. I thought it looked like a tv show and was just plain boring. So I just wrote off Altman as a boring director that critics praised probably just to seem smart. Thankfully I discovered the works of both Raymond Carver and Altman around freshman year of college. I rented Nashville from the school library and said, “Ehh, how bad could it be?” I was blown away, got my hands on as much Altman as I could and have been grateful to the mental process that led me to pick up that wonderful film. So notwishstanding the end of all that is I would say wait for the generation to grow up a bit and discover these films. If they don’t then they would be in the majority who see film as entertainment only. Luckily these are not the people who make great films. So if you love something truly than there’s probably like minded people out there, they just won’t be in the majority.
Lately I’ve been combing the internet archives for old concert reviews for a fan site in honor of the late, great guitarist, Rory Gallagher. What I’ve noticed is that New York Times critics will generally pan anything that isn’t the latest fad. If the crowd gave standing ovations, they will begrudgingly state that the crowd had a good time but will lament the “same old same old” aspect of the show, or any other show that seeks to entertain the crowd. Their theory I’m sure is that with so many people enjoying the show the music must be seriously lacking in good taste. Reviews from Chicago, Philly, LA, or, gasp, the smaller newspapers will generally take the crowd into account when writing a review, not so with the holier than thou New York critics.
uhm, isn’t “The Foot Locker” an independent film? And wasn’t that Katherine Bigelow on the cover of Filmmaker Magazine last month? Or was that the cover of Nickoledeon or Star Magazine I saw her on? I’m pretty sure it was Filmmaker.
Interestingly enough, in all the blogs no one has mentioned, as far as I know, the fact that non-horror, thoughtful independent films Never make more than summer blockbusters, even if they’re thoughtful action films.
Even independent horror films don’t make that much. Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween, two films that appealed to the audiences that Ebert and Scott wish would flock to Hurt Locker, combined, made less than 75 million. To Date!
And Il Postino, Miramax’s film that ran, unbelievably, for over a year, has made, to date, domestically, under 22 million dollars. The most theaters it ever ran in was 430. It’s opening weekend it made $95,000. Are film critics not also film historians? Maybe not all of them.
@ Roberto: The reason it didn’t occur to me to mention such facts is because I took it as a billboard-sign-obvious given that to cite “Hurt Locker” in such a “O tempora! O mores!’ context constituted AT LEAST two varieties of categorical errors.…
Now see, I totally thought The Naked Shakespeare paled next to the later King Strut and Other Stories, but I guess the kids ignored them both, didn’t they?
Rock critics, film critics, any kind of critic gets lost when emphasis is switched to trying to convince people to like something instead of trying to get people to understand something new about what they may or may not already like. Every individual brings different baggage to the experience of a work of art – the critic’s job is to drop another tie into the luggage (or something like that – this metaphor just came to me, and it could probably use some work).
Are people getting stupider? I doubt it? Is there rampant anti-intellectualism out there. Probably, and maybe it’s worse than it’s been, but I don’t know how to measure it. Can we all benefit from thinking more about the art we see and hear? Well, go ahead, make me.
@ Steve Pick: Well, yeah, “Strut” is a flat-out masterpiece, really the best-realized solo LP with the highest number of killer songs. I think that PB himself feels the same way. But “Shakespeare” was the first…
A lot of people on this thread have brought up anti-intellectualism, and it makes me think of this old “Father Knows Best” episode I saw in reruns in the early ’70s but haven’t been able to track down, although I think it might be “The Country Cousin” from ’57 or so. Wherein the titular cousin visits the Anderson household and is a real nerdy bookworm drag, name-dropping Sartre’s “Nausea,” which makes Jim look at her as if she’s from outer space or something. It’s later determined that she’s really not into all that “weird” stuff and just needed a makeover so that boys would like her. All very very Eisenhower-era stuff, and a reminder of nothing new being under the sun…
This has been quite an entertaining read! Even got some movie titles out of it (and a TMBG album!), but I will treasure the drama and ideas the most 🙂 So this is what web 2.0 is all about 😀
I probably don’t need to add to the echo chamber here, but I also find these generational diatribes utterly frustrating. Yann’s citation of Socrates shows that the complaint about Kids Today is an ancient lament.
There are certainly generational differences, some of them connected to new media and new distribution models, but one could easily point to some elements of contemporary youth culture and say that today’s teens show just as much intellectual curiosity as ever (look, for example, at contemporary graphic novels compared to those of the 1970s). The box office of The Hurt Locker has nothing to do with anti-intellectual kids and more to do with an R‑rating and a difficult film to market, especially to teens.