But the effects-driven blockbuster, more than its 1980s antecedents, empowered a fandom culture that offered built-in audiences to studios, but at the price of subordinating traditional aspects of cinema to the demands of the Jedi religion or the Marvel cult. And all these shifts encouraged and were encouraged by a more general teenage-ification of Western culture, the extension of adolescent tastes and entertainment habits deeper into whatever adulthood means today.
Over time, this combination of forces pushed Hollywood in two directions. On the one hand, toward a reliance on superhero movies and other “presold” properties, largely pitched to teenage tastes and sensibilities, to sustain the theatrical side of the business. (The landscape of the past year, in which the new “Spider-Man” and “Batman” movies between them have made over a billion dollars domestically while Oscar hopefuls have made a pittance, is just an exaggerated version of the pre-Covid dominance of effects-driven sequels and reboots over original storytelling.) On the other hand, toward a churn of content generation to feed home entertainment and streaming platforms, in which there’s little to distinguish the typical movie — in terms of casting, direction or promotion — from the TV serials with which it competes for space across a range of personal devices.
Under these pressures, much of what the movies did in American culture, even 20 years ago, is essentially unimaginable today. The internet has replaced the multiplex as a zone of adult initiation. There’s no way for a few hit movies to supply a cultural lingua franca, given the sheer range of entertainment options and the repetitive and derivative nature of the movies that draw the largest audiences.
The possibility of a movie star as a transcendent or iconic figure, too, seems increasingly dated. Superhero franchises can make an actor famous, but often only as a disposable servant of the brand. The genres that used to establish a strong identification between actor and audience — the non-superhero action movie, the historical epic, the broad comedy, the meet-cute romance — have all rapidly declined.
i am begging you to test this hypothesis and going and watching every release from [any period in the past] not just the ones which are beloved enough to warrant rereleases and streaming contracts. film is a graveyard of creative bankruptcy and low effort exploitation.
even the USSR has a backcatalogue of cheap imitation and trendfollowing bullshit
Honestly this is a Reddit tier take I’ve heard a million times from Reddit neolibs and it’s a fact that we are lucky to get even a single good film per year now yet we got dozens per year in the 80s and 90s.
Things are getting worse. This is not just nostalgia. This trend can be seen across all cultural and artistic mediums - especially prominent in capital intensive ones such as video games and films
directly compare 2019 with 1994.
spoiler
2019 awful films: joker, endgame, once upon a hollywood, spirderman 2, captain marvel, star war 10, the irishmen, it 2, glass, lion king, aladdin, klaus, the king, alita, dark pheonix, dead don't die, cats, ma, escape room, men in black...4?, 6 underground,lets peruse the complete shit 94 shat out: Forest Gump, the Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, Ed Wood(fight me), Santa Clause, The Crow, the Flintstones, Naked Gun iii, bottle rocket, junior, street fighter, beverly hills cop iii, mighty ducks 2, the next karate kid, leprechaun 2, city slickers 2.
this is not close to extensive, these are films millions of people watched and some millions quite liked or thought was decent.
i don't think i've ever been accused of neoliberalism for watching way too many movies before but that's a good bit
The neoliberalism comes from the forced optimism and the “things aren’t getting worse” denialism. In my experience, neoliberals entire ideology rests on things staying the same or getting better. Culture and art are intrinsically linked to the economy in capitalist nations. When economic forces get worse, culture gets worse.
The economy has gotten worse, and the culture has too. Falling rate of profit is why everything is homogenized, bland, soulless and committee designed
im not going to pretend US culture was ever anything so high as to be able to experience 'decline'. film sucks, art sucks, mostly because capitalism fucks it up but some of it don't work in ideal conditions either
we've never had communism. why do we need to fetishise art from a capitalist past with the same conditions making it awful that make it awful today?
Someone who thinks American film, music and literature “sucks” and cannot decline has nothing to add to a cultural conversation with me. We have no overlap whatsoever in cultural outlook.
It’s not fetishizing art to admit it exists and is in decline