*Note: Best wishes to Roger Ebert, who I sincerely hope gets a good voice as discussed here, not for the film and general community’s benefit but so that such an articulate, witty man can communicate without frustrations to his loved ones and friends. Bless him.
Also, I know that I am preaching to the choir here, but bear with me.
A few days ago, Roger Ebert posted a journal entry titled “The gathering Dark Age”, inspired by a blog entry from Patrick Goldstein. Goldstein’s piece describes how The Hurt Locker, a critically acclaimed film from Kathryn Bigelow, is not doing that well amongst folks in my age range (18-30, I’ll say, for argument’s sake) even with stellar word of mouth. (Word of mouth has long been touted, according to Ebert, as something that will help drive box office totals up and up.) Ebert laments this fact and then goes on to state that my generation exhibits a decline in education and intelligent thought. I am reluctant to disagree.
Ebert also points out that studio marketing and publicists have leashed the real thoughts of actors and actresses; the studio hype machine has lead to boring and predictable marketing that is a dog-and-pony show.
You can read Ebert’s entry here. Something about it stuck in my grey matter for days and I kept coming back to his thoughts over and over again. I thought I would write about it here, if only to see the discussion that may surface over it. I am certainly no peer of Roger Ebert’s, but what I felt and thought about this subject spanned far more than a simple comment left on Ebert’s journal.
Some may have heard about “The Hurt Locker,” but simply lack the nerve to suggest a movie choice that involves a departure from groupthink.
With regard to Ebert’s critique of my generation’s failure to come out for The Hurt Locker, I don’t know if that’s the best movie to use as an example. Iraq war movies have not done stellar box office in the past, so I find myself surprised that The Hurt Locker has done as well as it has. Secondly, I do think you have to take into account that a chunk of that 18 – 30 demographic has loved ones fighting in that war. Watching something like The Hurt Locker may be too uncomfortable and too close to home for some folks. The nostalgia of certain properties like G.I. Joe and Transformers is small but not discounted, I don’t think, since the subject of Transformers killing at the box office is brought up. With a major recession in play, I also believe that people are going to trend towards more lighthearted, ‘simpler’ fare.
That being said, none of that is a great explanation for why The Hurt Locker is failing to draw in some of my peers. I don’t like swallowing any of those explanations, though they’re valid for some folks. By my own logic, (500) Days of Summer should be trampling over the competition at the box office … and it isn’t.
Ebert’s warning that my generation is headed into dire straits is not unfounded. We are a generation that is, in my opinion, less educated and less knowledgeable than the generations that came before us. Those of us in our twenties cannot abdicate personal responsibilities because our education system taught us only to take exit tests; we may have to – as a generation – spend less time watching the exploits of those two nitwits Heidi and Spencer Pratt and read some books or go to a museum. Those of you reading this are probably one of those ‘educated’ types, so I’m going to say that it’s difficult to change another person unless they want to change. At the moment, most people my age see nothing wrong with not at least attempting to be an educated, articulate person.
Do I hold out any hope for this? Not really.
It is not just the teenagers and the twentysomethings. My advice to anyone who wants to see a cultural decline in general and in film – go work a few weeks in a suburban video rental store. Watch what the forty to sixty-ish age people are renting. There is a reason your local Blockbuster gets three hundred copies of The DaVinci Code in; if people aren’t clutching their pearls at that scandalous movie’s subject matter, that’s what they want to watch. It’s not the teenagers renting that crap (they’re renting seasons of The Hills or whatever reality show’s on MTV these days). Ignorance is something that I see being taught, not randomly accepted by my generation.
We, as a society, have become lazy. I will hold myself accountable for my own personal laziness, as I am no saint incapable of such a thing. My generation is particularly visible in this regard. As a culture, we export American movies to the rest of the world but refuse to watch their cinematic endeavors because reading subtitles is hard. God forbid we learn another language.
This, I think, is why the remake is popular. It’s a win for the studios and a win for the public. The studios churn them out probably faster than they can original properties, viewers get a sense of nostalgia (or are ignorant enough of the original, like The Taking of Pelham 123, that it feels new) and everyone’s happy. Lazy.
We watch big budget blockbusters because they are comforting and because change is scary and unfamiliar. We only want to watch what’s advertised on TV or what film’s got the prettiest poster.
It is going to take effort to revive interest in good movies. It will require effort on everyone’s part which is why it will take a good, long time for the pendulum to swing back to the less lazy side, because this requires work and thought. Good movies require some involvement on the viewer’s part, some sort of emotional investment, thought process or question that the viewer is left pondering. Movies like Transformers do not. That is part of their appeal.
I myself am guilty of a bad movie fetish. I am willing to admit my own hypocrisy here because there’s not really a leg to stand on with that issue when you love Predator as much as I do. But I acknowledge that there’s a different feeling I get, a different level of brain activity I experience when I watch something like The 400 Blows versus Predator. They are two different levels of liking, two different planes of my brain. Movies are like food; you don’t want to eat one meal for the rest of your life, and so it goes with movies. Predator is fast food. The 400 Blows is some gourmet, four star, high end stuff. Every movie has a time and a place, but the awareness in our culture that the two are not similar just because they are both movies, that perhaps you may involve your brain in a different way for the two seems to get lost in the shuffle. More and more we are losing the cultural connotations of movies so that when Transformers beats out The Hurt Locker in dollars and cents, when we see more advertisements on TV and more fawning pull quotes on the DVD box, this somehow adds up to not necessarily a depiction of the movie’s quality but we have given so much space in our brains to the more talked-about film that we gravitate toward that. This is only allowing ourselves to cede some small measure of thought to hype and advertising instead of working a bit to discover which is the better movie.
As long as we are willing to be told instead of willing to do some small part of investigation on our parts as a whole – and not just as teenagers and thirty year olds and retirees or whatnot, but as people – then we will continue to get the kind of cinematic “experiences” that studios know will produce a bigger bottom line.
There will always be a market for the bad movie, the drive-in flick that we seem to have evolved into the “popcorn flick”, but quite a few people have forgotten that sometimes it’s not the destination, but the getting there that’s the most fun… the process of learning, of educating oneself, the broadening of horizons and the opening of the mind… that can be so much fun.
Are we forgetting that?
*Note: Best wishes to Roger Ebert, who I sincerely hope gets a good voice as discussed here, not for the film and general community’s benefit but so that such an articulate, witty man can communicate without frustrations to his loved ones and friends. Bless him.
Also, I know that I am preaching to the choir here, but bear with me.
A few days ago, Roger Ebert posted a journal entry titled “The gathering Dark Age”, inspired by a blog entry from Patrick Goldstein. Goldstein’s piece describes how The Hurt Locker, a critically acclaimed film from Kathryn Bigelow, is not doing that well amongst folks in my age range (18-30, I’ll say, for argument’s sake) even with stellar word of mouth. (Word of mouth has long been touted, according to Ebert, as something that will help drive box office totals up and up.) Ebert laments this fact and then goes on to state that my generation exhibits a decline in education and intelligent thought. I am reluctant to disagree.
Ebert also points out that studio marketing and publicists have leashed the real thoughts of actors and actresses; the studio hype machine has lead to boring and predictable marketing that is a dog-and-pony show.
You can read Ebert’s entry here. Something about it stuck in my grey matter for days and I kept coming back to his thoughts over and over again. I thought I would write about it here, if only to see the discussion that may surface over it. I am certainly no peer of Roger Ebert’s, but what I felt and thought about this subject spanned far more than a simple comment left on Ebert’s journal.
Some may have heard about “The Hurt Locker,” but simply lack the nerve to suggest a movie choice that involves a departure from groupthink.
With regard to Ebert’s critique of my generation’s failure to come out for The Hurt Locker, I don’t know if that’s the best movie to use as an example. Iraq war movies have not done stellar box office in the past, so I find myself surprised that The Hurt Locker has done as well as it has. Secondly, I do think you have to take into account that a chunk of that 18 – 30 demographic has loved ones fighting in that war. Watching something like The Hurt Locker may be too uncomfortable and too close to home for some folks. The nostalgia of certain properties like G.I. Joe and Transformers is small but not discounted, I don’t think, since the subject of Transformers killing at the box office is brought up. With a major recession in play, I also believe that people are going to trend towards more lighthearted, ‘simpler’ fare.
That being said, none of that is a great explanation for why The Hurt Locker is failing to draw in some of my peers. I don’t like swallowing any of those explanations, though they’re valid for some folks. By my own logic, (500) Days of Summer should be trampling over the competition at the box office … and it isn’t.
I’d tell you to see it but you wouldn’t listen to me, would you? WOULD YOU?
Ebert’s warning that my generation is headed into dire straits is not unfounded. We are a generation that is, in my opinion, less educated and less knowledgeable than the generations that came before us. Those of us in our twenties cannot abdicate personal responsibilities because our education system taught us only to take exit tests; we may have to – as a generation – spend less time watching the exploits of those two nitwits Heidi and Spencer Pratt and read some books or go to a museum. Those of you reading this are probably one of those ‘educated’ types, so I’m going to say that it’s difficult to change another person unless they want to change. At the moment, most people my age see nothing wrong with not at least attempting to be an educated, articulate person.
Do I hold out any hope for this? Not really.
It is not just the teenagers and the twentysomethings. My advice to anyone who wants to see a cultural decline in general and in film – go work a few weeks in a suburban video rental store. Watch what the forty to sixty-ish age people are renting. There is a reason your local Blockbuster gets three hundred copies of The DaVinci Code in; if people aren’t clutching their pearls at that scandalous movie’s subject matter, that’s what they want to watch. It’s not the teenagers renting that crap (they’re renting seasons of The Hills or whatever reality show’s on MTV these days). Ignorance is something that I see being taught, not randomly accepted by my generation.
We, as a society, have become lazy. I will hold myself accountable for my own personal laziness, as I am no saint incapable of such a thing. My generation is particularly visible in this regard. As a culture, we export American movies to the rest of the world but refuse to watch their cinematic endeavors because reading subtitles is hard.
It is going to take effort to revive interest in good movies. It will require effort on everyone’s part which is why it will take a good, long time for the pendulum to swing back to the less lazy side, because this requires work and thought. Good movies require some involvement on the viewer’s part, some sort of emotional investment, thought process or question that the viewer is left pondering. Movies like Transformers do not. That is part of their appeal. While there have always been bad movies, we’ve been seeing a glut of mega-hyped crap here recently and people seem to be gravitating towards those films.
I myself am guilty of a bad movie fetish. I am willing to admit my own hypocrisy here because there’s not really a leg to stand on with that issue when you love Predator as much as I do. But I acknowledge that there’s a different feeling I get, a different level of brain activity I experience when I watch something like The 400 Blows versus Predator. They are two different levels of liking, two different planes of my brain. Movies are like food; you don’t want to eat one meal for the rest of your life, and so it goes with movies. Predator is fast food. The 400 Blows is some gourmet, four star, high end stuff. Every movie has a time and a place, but the awareness in our culture that the two are not similar just because they are both movies; moreover, that perhaps you may involve your brain in a different way for the two seems to get lost in the shuffle. More and more we are losing the cultural connotations of movies so that when Transformers beats out The Hurt Locker in dollars and cents, when we see more advertisements on TV and more fawning pull quotes on the DVD box, this somehow adds up to not necessarily a depiction of the movie’s quality but we have given so much space in our brains to the more talked-about film that we gravitate toward that. This is only allowing ourselves to cede some small measure of thought to hype and advertising instead of working a bit to discover which is the better movie.
As long as we are willing to be told instead of willing to do some small part of investigation on our parts as a whole – and not just as teenagers and thirty year olds and retirees or whatnot, but as people – then we will continue to get the kind of cinematic “experiences” that studios know will produce a bigger bottom line.
There will always be a market for the bad movie, the drive-in flick that we seem to have evolved into the “popcorn flick”, but quite a few people have forgotten that sometimes it’s not the destination, but the getting there that’s the most fun… the process of learning, of educating oneself, the broadening of horizons and the opening of the mind… that can be so much fun.
Are we forgetting that? … Or did we, as Americans, ever learn it in the first place?
*Note to non-Americans in particular: I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
Like this:
Like Loading...
Related
1416 and Counting 
I live in Guyana and essentially it’s the same here. Perhaps worse. At least in USA there are a small group of film enthusiasts who would actually sit down and enjoy The English Patient, perhaps there are some here but they’re certainly not my age. [I’m 18].
All the trends that Ebert referred to in his article are more or less spot on regardless of country. I don’t think this generation is necessarily more stupid, it’s just that they lack an appreciation of art. And not only in film, but even traditional artistic work like paintings, literature, music they’ve all become somewhat obsolete. There isn’t a feeling of respect anymore.
It’s very depressing actually. And I really don’t understand the escapist argument. If I’m depressed the only thing that Transformers would do is get me raving mad.
Just out of curiosity, I want to see some actual numbers on these trends. Is it really all that different than years past? I’m not saying that I enjoy most of the summer blockbusters that come out (I never saw Transformers 1 or 2), but I’d like to see someone take the time give me a chart or some numbers or something that definitively show these trends. I’m just not convinced that audience attendance in the past has always lined up with critics.
Anyway, it’s not like television stations broadcast classic cinema for people to watch anyway. I had to make a conscious effort to seek out old classics because I was curious. But most people just watch whatever is on TV, so they never expand their ability to read cinema.
A couple ideas as to why people might not see The Hurt Locker:
1. It’s rated R. Most teenagers (the big spenders of the country) can’t get in, so are we surprised it’s not doing as well? Solution: stop giving kids money?
2. Rampant stereotyping, but half the country is women and how many women are interested in a movie like this? I’m a woman and I enjoyed the movie, but I’ve been on a military movie kick lately. Just saying, the film doesn’t exactly have wide appeal.
This post reminds me of some people I used to know. Years ago, two girls I used to hang with were dropping me off at a theatre (I was seeing something without them…probably something foreign).
On the front of the theatre, was a three story ad for SORORITY BOYS. One of the girls looked up at it and said “I wanna see that!”. I couldn’t hide a wince, thinking to myself that I was surrounded by cinematic morons.
She caught my expression and said “Oh, that’s right…there’s probably no WAY you’d see that right? Why’s that? It’s not serious enough??”
I’d like to thank that the mass market of “our generation” disagrees with what that girl says…but sadly, I’m pretty sure I’d be wrong.
“The Hurt Locker” is becoming synonymous with the problem of this summer’s flaccid output at the box office. While it’s a fantastic movie, I don’t know if it deserves to be made a martyr the way it is.
It’s funny. I was just watching “My Dinner with Andre” yesterday, and they share a conversation about the laziness of westerners when it comes to many facets in their daily lives. Thirty years on from that movie, not much has changed. There’s a resistance in the general population to engage with things that require deep thought.
I had been thinking about writing a column on that very same Ebert article. What do you think of his mention of film criticism going extinct? I’d like to think that as long as there are certain people out there who aren’t afraid to put down a few hundred words on how a movie made them feel, all hope isn’t lost. We just have to be willing to seek out those words in turn.
I’m still new at this. I enjoy your page a lot. Thanks for putting some of my own recent concerns into words.
First off, I’m Canadian and 32 (slowly hitting 33 but putting it off as long as possible) and I, personally, have no interest in seeing The Hurt Locker. The only reason is that I don’t have much interest in any war film.
I love mindless action as well as a deep thinking film so it’s not that I’m more into brain dead flicks. I think that film viewing is greatly influenced by what goes on in the world around us. In times like these with money hard to come by and people losing jobs, homes and family, I would assume that someone going to see a movie really just wants an escape from the world.
Judging by the amount of complaining that goes on at film studios, do they even make their money when it’s in the theater? Isn’t that what the onslaught of DVD is for? And aren’t the greatest movies the ones that are never really appreciated in the first place?
If the movie is that great then the buzz will build and build. Oscar will come calling and suddenly the movie is a classic. Of course everything is wrong with the movie industry, where films are built on 3D effects and how to get the tweens into the cinema. I don’t think all the blame should be laid at the feet of the movie going audience.
When movie studios stop treating us all like idiotic children, we’ll stop acting like it.
A lot of it, I think, is cultural. The American culture does not value things like education. It values money. Intellectualism, elitism, they’re dirty words. Liberal Arts degrees are ridiculed. As soon as you start showing an interest in English or Math or Science, you’re labeled a ‘nerd’, and even though kids don’t know what it means at first, they figure out pretty quickly that people consider it a bad thing.
Art is a reflection of culture. And, in a culture that is as vapid as ours, is it any surprise that the popular movies reflect that?
Thanks, everyone, for your comments!
And I really don’t understand the escapist argument.
I don’t get it either, because movies that are often described as “escapist” are crap like Transformers, which is essentially two hours of pretty pieces of metal shambling around on screen. That’s not escapist, that’s just a distraction. Escapism actually involves your brain a bit.
I’m just not convinced that audience attendance in the past has always lined up with critics.
Nor do I; I am not proposing that at all – I am proposing that we are moving away from less hyped movies toward the Michael Bay and Brett Ratner productions simply because they are thrown at us so much. I think the level of marketing is much higher than it ever has been.
With regard to audience attendance in regard to critics, I think people paid more attention to critics in the past than today.
My thoughts on this are that if you look at the dreck of the ’50’s, some of the bad drive-in flicks, those have more substantial storylines than something like Transformers 2. And yet I hear time and time again from people I know in real life that Transformers 2 was “amazing”, that Wolverine was “awesome” even though both those movies made relatively little sense, had no regard for the general viewer’s intellect and assumed (rightly) that audiences would buy whatever bullshit they presented on screen hook, line and sinker.
I don’t have numbers for you, but even then, I don’t know if they would work. The working movie theater model has changed so much from the older days that I don’t know if your box office totals would even be an accurate reflection to compare and contrast.
how many women are interested in a movie like this? I’m a woman and I enjoyed the movie, but I’ve been on a military movie kick lately. Just saying, the film doesn’t exactly have wide appeal.
How many women were interested in Saving Private Ryan? Just because a movie is about war/military does not mean that women are automatically not interested.
Why in the world would women not go see a war movie? (And I too am a woman and I watch an awful lot of war movies.)
She caught my expression and said “Oh, that’s right…there’s probably no WAY you’d see that right? Why’s that? It’s not serious enough??”
I’m blessed to have friends that are genuinely willing and interested to go see whatever kind of movie, whenever. But yes, you have encapsulated a lot of what’s wrong in that sentence right there.
I don’t know if I am the demographic that you are looking for as I slid past forty a year ago, but I’ll take a crack at it. This is just an observation on my part and I’ve got no stats to back it up, but the generation after mine seems to be fixated on belonging more than my generation did. My generation liked to go off on wierd tangents and do our own things. Dungeons and Dragons was a great example of this. We D & D’ers were king dorks, but we didn’t care about that. Sure there were the pressures to fit in, but there was also a cache to being the odd one as well.
This current generation seems to be looking to belong to something big instead breaking down into small niches. This manifests itself in good ways when it comes to political causes (Yes We Can), and the positve aspects of social networking, but it also has a negative side which is everyone wants to have seen and/or done the things that the most people have seen and/or done.
I read a fascinating book called Generations that theorizes that America goes through a repeating four part generational cycle, and that there is always a “Lost Generation”, like mine, like Hemingways that usually fails to produce great things collectively, but has some of the best thinkers, artists and entrepreneurs in history. The next generation is almost always a “Joiner Generation” like the current one and the “Great Generation” that followed Hemingway’s and “won WWII” as they like to say. This generation often accomplishes great things collectively, but not so much individually.
Oversimplification? Absoultely. Still, I think that is about right to describe what is going on here.
I’m not entirely sure what to say… again, “The Hurt Locker” probably wasn’t the best movie to base this on, but there’s a good point in what you’re saying.
In a past class, we got on the discussion of what snobbery is. It’s pasted on as the overly pomp, the drinker of wines and and watcher of foreign movies. But maybe it is the snobbery of groupthink that drives our age group to the multiplexes instead of the independent theaters? It’s absolutely correct that we are getting lazy with our movies, just like we’re getting lazy with our literature. The fact that Transformers beats out a more intellectually stimulating movie is like how Twilight and vampires are gobbling up the YA market.
I think sometimes it’s the studios though. They see what sold well once and then repackage it, raise prices and then pass up on a new, edgy script. They could wonder why not as many people go back to the movies anymore, but instead they just raise prices again! It’s a broken system of immediate gratification and what gets leftover as “good films” gets taught to the next generation: leaving a low expectation for cinema.
“I am proposing that we are moving away from less hyped movies toward the Michael Bay and Brett Ratner productions simply because they are thrown at us so much.”
…they always have been haven’t they? Star Wars has always played on more screens, the Friday night crowd has always liked a good splatter pic (remake, sequel, clone whatever – never understood how a platinum dunes remake of film with 8 or so sequels is somehow sacrilege), studios have always churned out unremarkable genre pictures.
Every few years cinema kicks into gear and delivers a shot of challenging and inventive films that everyone goes for – the rest of the time films like The Hurt Locker get lost between the tent pole releases that keep the cinema open.
Film is safe, art is doing fine, literature and music are still kicking ass and taking names… I’ve read plenty of articles in the past couple of years reporting the rise of cinema as a whole and, encouragingly, showing increases in art cinema attendance / DVD watching. Moon, a low budget Solaris-like sci-fi movie, was on just 40 odd screens but still managed to crack the cinema top ten for a couple of weeks – smile people.
…as a side note I do think that the concept of ‘word of mouth’ is changing due our reliance on automated ‘recommendations’ that offer more of the same and technology that increasingly breaks down viewers into smaller groups (via time shifting, size etc) – plus the advent of the ipod and other devices that mean more films, music and books are hidden away. All of these things decrease the chance of stumbling across something new and broadening one’s horizons.
…also it is undeniable that film is generally safer. Death Race 2000 and Death Race were made for the same audience but the former was actually about something whilst the later was fun but empty. The original (and its contemporaries) created an environment that taught people to deal with new things whilst the remake was made for a smaller world where all market have to be considered things get flattened out and surprise / risk ain’t good for business… what I’m trying to say is ‘if you build it they will come’.
I don’t think things have gotten much worse recently, there’s always been crap and its always been popular.
I want to see The Hurt Locker and probably will soon. Problem is my usual movie buddy is an Iraq vet and has no desire to relive it.
I read an excellent article by the controversial critic Armond White titled “What we don’t talk about when we talk about movies” over at nypress.com that talked about how criticism itself has been more about promotion in the last 25 years, ever since the box office figures have been considered newsworthy. I sort of agree.
I wanted to see The Hurt Locker, but it wasn’t playing anywhere near where I live. I would’ve had to drive over an hour to see a movie. I’d rather just wait and watch it on DVD.
It’s even harder for us in the third world (I’m from the Philippines). Local film distributors bombard us with Hollywood blockbusters while the really good LOCAL or foreign films get shown in 1-2 theaters (out of 7, on average), if they’re lucky to get someone to distribute their films, if at all. The sad part is that we see these movies anyway because nothing else is shown!
Which is why piracy is such a lucrative business here. Because how else would we be able to watch movies like The Wackness or Rachel Getting Maried if not from our personal, movie pirates. People in the US at least get to see a variety of movies.
It certainly is the eternal question: Why are people stupid?
Just kidding, but seriously…people will watch anything. The question is where do you lay the blame? The education system in the U.S. is a joke, churning out dumb kids left and right. The studios are in it for one thing: money. They’re only going to promote films that will bring in the dough. Entertainment as an industry is so widespread now that the teenage dollar can go to any number of vices, not just movies. Everyone has a hand in this problem.
But I agree with cinemascream, in that art and film are doing fine. Yeah Transformers and GI Joe may be killing it at the box office, but I can go down the street and see Moon, In the Loop, or (500) Days of Summer at this very moment, if I choose to. That’s a great thing.
That’s not escapist, that’s just a distraction. Escapism actually involves your brain a bit.
Seriously! Shaun of the Dead is escapism, Transformers is mind numbing shit.