All of this makes it tough not only for old movies to survive but for movie history to matter. There is a sense that if you can't tweet about it or post a comment about it on your Facebook wall, it has no value. Once, not so long ago, old and new movies, middle-aged audiences and young audiences, happily coexisted. Movies brought us together. Now a chasm widens between the new and the old, one aesthetic and another, one generation and another. It widens until the past recedes into nothingness, leaving us with an endless stream of the very latest with no regard for what came before. Old movies are now like dinosaurs, and like dinosaurs, they are threatened with extinction.
From Perspective: Millennials Seem to Have Little Use for Old Movies in The LA Times.
What a load of horseshit. Just more alarmist baloney about how the new generation and new technology and whatever else new we can all get terrified about is going to destroy civilization, and history, as we know it. It's not true. It never is. People age and as they do their curiosity about and appreciation for the past grows. Most people in their tens and teens couldn't give two shits less about the past. Most people older than that deride them for it. And every year someone writes an article about how, this time, it's for real and all of the past will be forgotten or ignored and we will all be drugged and carted off to an "Over 30" concentration camp just like in Wild in the Streets. And it never happens. Why? Because it's horseshit. A big load of it.
10 comments:
Preach.
Church, yo.
"Just more alarmist baloney about how the new generation and new technology and whatever else new we can all get terrified about is going to destroy civilization, and history, as we know it."
You're the one who's full of baloney. There was nothing 'alarmist' about Gabler's piece. It was despairing but accepting of new realities.
And in more ways than one, Gabler is right. If we are talking about the taste of mass audiences, most of what comes out of Hollywood these days are superhero comic book movies and worse. If you go to movie theaters, most are teens whose entire experience of culture revolves around pop music, twitter, videogames, and the like.
Camille Paglia said she can't get her students interested in the films of Antonioni.
But it's true enough that this is nothing new. With the rise of TV, many people--even the educated--read less. With the rise of pop music, very few people listened to classical music. Does it spell the end of civilization? No, but it seems future civilization will be more about technology itself than what can be done with that technology.
You're the one who's full of baloney. There was nothing 'alarmist' about Gabler's piece. It was despairing but accepting of new realities.
Yeah, taking the whole article, I admit it, you're right. It's not exceptionally clear but I'm taking issue with the paragraph I quoted. I get where Gabler is coming from, but going from "kids these days don't care about old movies" to "they're going to become extinct" is a hell of a leap. That's the alarmism I was going after.
Visit this post by The Self-Styled Siren for a more evenhanded view (and she calls me out a bit, too).
Camille Paglia couldn't get her students interested in Antonioni's movies because Antonioni's movies are oblique and difficult. It takes a pretty dedicated film lover, or at least someone who appreciates that particular kind of modernist style to really get what Antonioni was doing. The guy wasn't exactly making movies for the masses. If the students were showing The Philadelphia Story or The Wizard of Oz, she would have better luck.
Articles like Gabler's always bother me because the fact of the matter is Gabler doesn't really know a significant portion of people from my generation. There aren't many people in my generation clamoring to find a reasonably priced copy of the Criterion print of L'avventura, but you can bet most of them have seen The Wizard Of Oz and Breakfast At Tiffany's. You can bet most of them know Marilyn Monroe. You can bet most of them think Sean Connery was the best James Bond, and that a good portion of them have seen Psycho. Film is a young art form, and it is only in the last few decades that there has been an attempt to study and preserve it for future generations. Considering there is only one channel that consistently shows older films on TV, and only a few older film stars and directors who get explicitly referenced in print, what do you expect from my generation? We don't exist in a vacuum. People only value what they are taught to value.
And in defense of television over print, have you seen some of the shows that are on television? There are shows being produced that are comparable to the tradition of "Great American Novels" in quality, in emotional truth, in density, and thematic power. Look at The Wire. Look at The Sopranos or Mad Men or Breaking Bad or The Good Wife. Parks And Rec and Girls too. People are getting the same connections they used to get from printed fiction on television now. It's just a different way to process the same thing.
Phew rant over. All of this is just a big pet peeve of mine.
I believe there is now, and most likely always will be, a small percentage of people engaged in the past due to a passion. Whether it be film, literature, music, art or a passion for history itself, there will always be a small percentage who love it and get it. Most everyone else won't. Depressingly, throughout my life, people young and old know very little about the past but even more depressing, very few have any real passion for art. Books are just something to look at every now and then, who cares how good the story is or how well they're written. Movies are those things they see for fun when they shut their brain down. Art? That something in a museum or something you get from Ikea to decorate your house. But passion? Very few of us, really. We may be small in number but there's enough of us to keep it going and every new generation will produce a new crop of people passionate about the arts and that new crop will be as small as the one that came before it.
Camille Paglia couldn't get her students interested in Antonioni's movies because Antonioni's movies are oblique and difficult. It takes a pretty dedicated film lover, or at least someone who appreciates that particular kind of modernist style to really get what Antonioni was doing.
-- So true, and thanks for pointing this out, TB. Some of my film students LOVE Antonioni's films, but most do not. Virtually ALL of them, however, adore REAR WINDOW, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, CASABLANCA, and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. And at least 60% of them like (appreciate?) CITIZEN KANE. Several students have even informed me -- after the courses were over -- that they've purchased Gene Kelly and Hitchcock films on DVD. So, as Greg points out, there's (always) hope.
Virtually ALL of them, however, adore REAR WINDOW, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT, CASABLANCA, and SINGIN' IN THE RAIN.
I swear, so many people who "hate" old movies just don't realize how damn entertaining so many of them are. They think they're all either static, parlor room black and white oddities or arcane, symbolic art-film exercises. Lack of education on the past is a big part of it but with more options available now, with DVDs and streaming, hopefully that could slowly, and slightly, change. A small hope but better than three decades ago when the only way to see an old movie was to happen across it on tv.
I believe there is now, and most likely always will be, a small percentage of people engaged in the past due to a passion. Whether it be film, literature, music, art or a passion for history itself, there will always be a small percentage...
As so often these past few months you reflect my thinking perfectly.
Congratulations, one more time.
(Together we can rule the world...Well, maybe not such a great idea.)
Thank you, Esco, much appreciated.
Post a Comment