peripathetic

Hollywood and Art
My friend Giles's comment on Russian Ark (see yesterday's posts) was illuminating not because he thought it was a crap film, but because it wasn't a crap film in itself, but had been judged to be, all the same.

I'll try to keep this brief.

Cinemas around the world are permanently flooded with what I'll call Hollywood Product. The result of an entertainment-based studio system which exists to make money by trying to fuse producers', actors' and directors' powerhouse careers with art, Hollywood Product is the perfect partner for popcorn.

Similarities between popcorn and Hollywood Product: it is right in front of you, attractively packaged, you can eat it without having to think about the taste because the taste is always the same with each bite. It is a simple thing-in-itself, and you can't get anything out of it other than what it offers as a thing-in-itself in the first place. -- What? You're thinking I'm unfair? Think again. I'm talking about art. Name 10 Hollywood Products you'd put in your top ten list, and I guarantee that, aside from occasional plot twists (which are only formula), you could appreciate the entire 'message', the entire 'sense', of every single film by watching it - with attention - only once.

And that's what we're fed. Film after film after film, Hollywood Product is a one-bite wonder. Required intellectual participation: around 0-1%. If you thought over and over and over again about what is actually contained in Gladiator or LA Confidential or The Insider or Minority Report, you'd be none the wiser. Because there's no more wisdom to get after the first screening. We go back and see Hollywood Product a second time not to understand it better, but to be entertained.

With easy entertainment taking up around 90-100% of our local cinemas, Hollywood Product has us over a barrel. We're meant to get used to it to a massive extent - and we do. I can think of no other so-called artform which has become the locus of such a worldwide dearth of truly artistic endeavour. It's so pervasive that we've stopped being critical about film in the same way we are about music.

Giles loves Tori Amos and hates Europoppy, dancey stuff. Europop: directly comparable to the one-bite Hollywood Product. Tori Amos: repeated listenings, attention to the lyrics - and some additional research - are essential to get the 'central message' contained within each song. And, after you've done that 'legwork', there is a second step. Your additional emotional/artistic engagement will also be repaid by the song, because the content is just impressionistic enough to allow you to form a relationship between it and your own feelings and experiences. Ergo, there's art. I've picked Tori, but there are many others.

We are critical of crap shallow music, and we praise artistic effort in music. Giles does, for example. Let's call Giles Everyman for a moment. Everyman, like all of us, including myself, praises some artistically crap and shallow films. Everyman, however, duped by the pervasiveness of Hollywood Product in film, has actually been manipulateed by it as far as to say that one particular art film is the worst he's seen in his life. Everyman doesn't just say "There wasn't much action, no plot, I didn't like the lack of music I'm used to hearing or understanding". If anyone, not just Everyman, said that, they'd actually be engaging with why they felt alienated - and therefore providing themselves with a first step towards understanding.

Let me repeat that: after seeing Hollywood Product all his life, Everyman says that Russian Ark (but we could pretty much choose any art film here) is the worst film he's ever seen.

Effort and music? Acceptable and enjoyable. Effort and film? Unacceptable, apparently, and unenjoyable. But that's wrong, and inconsistent with how we all approach music and reading. Hollywood Product has spread a dearth of film art and a deification of film apathy into the minds of millions of people worldwide. What a dud we're being sold. How easily we swallow it. And how effortlessly it deadens our ability to think. And to enjoy what we could enjoy if we thought.

It's almost terrifying.

- - - - - -

Addition: The above post contains all of this. Nothing is changed. But I'll repeat myself in a different way here, since this post in its original form caused some argument in the comments list. READ THE POST CAREFULLY. Do not imply that I think what I do *not* state in the first place.

I am not saying that Giles or anyone else who doesn't like art film is unintelligent. Nor did I even suggest this. Like I say, read the post.

The reason I rail against the spread of Hollywood film in this post is that people are intelligent, and that if nobody ever used that intelligence to further their own experience, they'd only end up liking one band, or one book, or one film, for the rest of their life. There would be no adaption to new experience. There would be no inner growth. Nothing would change.

Hollywood film is so 'everywhere' that all other types of film are marginalised, so people like Giles et al don't get the opportunity to see them. Therefore, when they do for the first time, they're predictably confused or bored because Hollywood's aforementioned influence unjustly makes art film completely alien to them. However, in choosing not to apply their undoubted intelligence to it, they are doing themselves out of a heck of a lot of potential enjoyment.

That frustrates me on their behalf. And it also pisses me off - I've always been willing, for example, to listen to other types of music in an unjudgmental way. And even when I haven't liked it personally, I haven't generalised.