Thursday, March 09, 2006
Oscars For The Media Trapped
I like watching movies; but I don't watch many of the latest greatest releases. Some movies are great entertainment and keep me fascinated; some are great soporifics and keep me well-rested. I like being able to pick and choose to suit my moods and needs. NETFLIX , with it's 50,000 DVD titles, works much better for me than movie theaters.
I never thought much about any "cultural message" to be found in my lack of interest in most new movies or the Oscars, which I never watch. I just accepted it as a personal preference. Nor did I ponder much about the news items that most (all?) leading nominees for the Oscars had relatively poor box office returns. Although it seems an odd culture that gives awards to the least successful, I ascribed that to the importance of show in show business.
But Peggy Noonan has thought more seriously about these things and has an interesting perception that she writes about in OpinionJournal :
"You don't have to be a genius to figure out that viewership of the Oscars is down because movie attendance itself is down, and that movie attendance is down because Hollywood isn't making the kind of movies that compel people to leave their homes and go to the multiplex.
There are those who think Hollywood hates America, and they have reason to think it. ..... I don't think it is true that studio executives and producers hate America. ..... I think they find it hard to find America, ..... What they care about a great deal is status, and in their community status is bestowed by the cultural left. ........ Which gets us to George Clooney, and his work. George Clooney is Hollywood now. ....... (and regarding his Oscar speech) I don't think he was being disingenuous in suggesting he was himself somewhat heroic. He doesn't even know he's not heroic. He thinks making a movie in 2005 that said McCarthyism was bad is heroic.
How could he think this? Maybe part of the answer is in this: The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they've experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven't experienced life; they've experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.
Most Americans aren't leading media, they're leading lives."
I think this is a good point about the dis-connect between Hollywood film makers and many of us film viewers; and it may apply equally well to many of the highly PR'ed "must read" books that are so hard to finish reading. Maybe the Oscars are the reward for good behavior in the Media Trap.
I never thought much about any "cultural message" to be found in my lack of interest in most new movies or the Oscars, which I never watch. I just accepted it as a personal preference. Nor did I ponder much about the news items that most (all?) leading nominees for the Oscars had relatively poor box office returns. Although it seems an odd culture that gives awards to the least successful, I ascribed that to the importance of show in show business.
But Peggy Noonan has thought more seriously about these things and has an interesting perception that she writes about in OpinionJournal :
"You don't have to be a genius to figure out that viewership of the Oscars is down because movie attendance itself is down, and that movie attendance is down because Hollywood isn't making the kind of movies that compel people to leave their homes and go to the multiplex.
There are those who think Hollywood hates America, and they have reason to think it. ..... I don't think it is true that studio executives and producers hate America. ..... I think they find it hard to find America, ..... What they care about a great deal is status, and in their community status is bestowed by the cultural left. ........ Which gets us to George Clooney, and his work. George Clooney is Hollywood now. ....... (and regarding his Oscar speech) I don't think he was being disingenuous in suggesting he was himself somewhat heroic. He doesn't even know he's not heroic. He thinks making a movie in 2005 that said McCarthyism was bad is heroic.
How could he think this? Maybe part of the answer is in this: The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they've experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven't experienced life; they've experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.
Most Americans aren't leading media, they're leading lives."
I think this is a good point about the dis-connect between Hollywood film makers and many of us film viewers; and it may apply equally well to many of the highly PR'ed "must read" books that are so hard to finish reading. Maybe the Oscars are the reward for good behavior in the Media Trap.
