When’s the last time you saw a good movie? No, I mean a good movie. Yeah, and once you got that down, let me eliminate it to a good movie. Not a musical, or book.
We live in an age of horrible movies. We live in a world of remakes and sequels. The question is why and the answer is simple: Risk-aversion. Giant studios spend so much money on one flick that they want to make sure it’s a success. So, they see that if one movie has worked, they better make a sequel. Even though we all know the sequel is always worse than the original, we all see it anyway, otherwise they wouldn’t keep making sequels. It’s because we all know that movie studios keep putting out shit, so we watch the sequels because they’re a lesser evil.
The giant studios, increasingly consolidated, stifle creativity, put out commercial movies that no one likes, and is bewildered when we don’t like them. Instead of encouraging creativity, they’ve learned to further crush it by making sequels, remakes, and basing movies off books and, a recent trend, musicals.
What’s happening with movies is symptomatic of a larger trend in America. Risk-aversion and the consolidation of companies. And it’s destroying America just like it has destroyed the movie experience. Movie audiences decline more and more each year.
How many tries did it take for Edison to get the lightbulb right? Hundreds. What if he had just been a cog in a large multi-national corporation and they told him it wasn’t worth it to pursue this lightbulb business?
Granted, this example is quite a stretch. Companies still spend money on AIDS research, for example. However, I believe that we need a modern day trust-buster, like Theodore Roosevelt. Instead, we have theories of neo-liberalism that say globalization is good for everyone. Giant corporations are proponents of the status quo. The gas companies have every stake in maintaining our current infrastructure and no real reason to invest in petroleum alternatives. And, they have the money, because they’re so big, to seduce the government into doing its bidding. Look where it has got us: Leading to a major energy crisis. Large corporations won’t give us radical change.
What we need are small businesses. Small businesses that have flexibility. Small businesses that have the possibility to fail. Yes, that’s what we want. We need market pressures to put out wide varieties of products, and we need the losers to fail. There’s no such thing as competition is no one loses. What it does do is keep people on their toes, and it forces further innovation, instead of maintaining the status quo, as we saw with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Before IE had totally dominated the browser market, innovation was occuring, and Netscape and IE were updating their software. After IE won the browser wars, we still are waiting on IE 7. If the browser market consisted of competition between small businesses instead of one giant company using its might to maintain the status quo, imagine the innovations we could’ve seen.
We also need colleges to encourage innovation, entrepreneurship, and, most importantly, risk. Instead, we are given an environment where students have little opportunity and time to experiment. They’re lectured at and forced to memorize material, instead of being taught and learning anything. Or (not in college) when they are given an opportunity to do something, it’s something dumb like an egg-drop that doesn’t have anything to actually do with applying the material.
All students experiment with in college are sex, drugs, and alcohol. You know why? Because you’re not teaching us anything useful! We learn not to learn. We learn to game the system and skid by without putting forth any effort. We’ll do the exact same things in our jobs. We’ll be inefficient lawyers and doctors. This is the future, America!
We’re learning that money is everything! You go to college to get a good job and there are only certain types of jobs you should have. Whatever happened to the American Dream? It’s become “be upper middle-class,” and the corporations helped do it to us. Most Americans would like to be their own boss, but entrepreneurship is not encouraged anymore. And whatever happened to the day and age when parents would’ve liked to have seen their kids become president? What weak aspirations have they for their children now?
We look at China and wonder how they’re doing so well. We think our kids would learn more in such a harsh school environment. Our education lags, and we think, “Oh, it would be nice to do that, but our kids would hate it and it would stifle creativity.” Let America be America! Truly encourage creativity and individualism, not this facsimile of it where all kids get is more free time to waste. They have nowhere else to put their creative energy except into their vacuous Xanga’s and MySpace’s. Internships/apprenticeships have become playgrounds for the rich and privileged… just another thing for their college application.
America has kept its edge in the global market because of constant innovation. If other countries catch up in manufacturing, well, then, we can’t have a manufacturing economy anymore, can we? And so, we’ve strayed from that. Unfortunately, the edge in innovation is going away. We’ll see our schools become more like other countries, and yet we’ll still be behind. You know why? Because we’re not other countries! We’re America! We have our values and our values work, when they’re allowed to flourish. Our children needn’t become automatons to succeed in the global market. Our children need to be taught that risk is okay (grading needs to be completely overhauled), or else all we’ll see the next (my) generation produce are commercial equivalents of sequels and remakes, and watch other countries speed by as they make better sequels and better remakes.
Some people may say the issue is more complicated than this, but you’re missing the point. Innovation is what will keep America ahead in the global market, and that can only occur when children are taught that risk is okay. And if you disagree, tell me, when’s the last time you saw a good movie?
I disagree at a very fundamental level with your statement. I think we are in a golden age for independent film. It has become much easier in recent years with the advances in technology for anyone with the will to make a film.
I think the core of Hollywood has always been pretty mucht the same. Blockbuster films today are little worse than they have been in past few decades. They’re bad, and have always been pretty bad.
Check out Requiem for a Dream if you want to see a good movie. There was no risk aversion in the making of that film. There are dozens of other quality filmmakers out there at this moment making extremely creative and powerful films.
It’s just a matter of uncovering them.
Thank you for your comment, Nate. You make a very good point. However, I think you have to consider market share. I don’t think we are in a golden age for independent film any more than I think, because of Opera and FireFox, we exist in a golden age for browsers.
(followed link from lloyd’s log)
I don’t think the situation is as dire as you point it out to be. First, I have seen a lot of really good movies these days. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Lost in Translation”, “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead”, “Batman Begins”, “Saving Face”. Not all of those are mere remake/sequel movies. Yes, independent films do not have much market share. But I would believe (although I’ve done absolutely no research on it) that they have a larger market share than they did in the past when it was harder/more expensive to buy equipment, advertise, etc.
I also don’t believe that all creativity is gone or stiffled in the American university system. I do agree that if you want to succeed by the standards of the univeristy sytem (aka get good grades) you do have to stifle creativity a bit to just get the job done. Oh boo hoo. You have to conform a little bit so that professors don’t have to work as hard ranking you. Oh no, you have to put off your cool pet project to make this other required thing work. It’s life and it’s what most people’s jobs are like. People need to learn to work in an organized environment for the greater good of the project/company/humanity. The alternative is utter chaos and no project bigger than what a single person can do.
Anyway, people who are really motivated and talented often do not worry about succeeding by the standards of the university. There are people I know who are barely passing their classes but are pouring all of their energy and intellect into some side project or start-up company for some new idea that they believe in. It’s risky, but there has always been risk involved in things like creativity and entrepenuership. Artists starve. A few make it big. I don’t think it is any worse than it has been in the past.
I’m also not sure why you feel that entrepreneurship is not encouraged in college. (By the admins at least) it is certainly more encouraged than experimenting with sex, drugs, and alchohol. You don’t think classes are challenging? Go out there and learn something then! There is the internet. There is probably a library. There are rich people discarding all sorts of neat equipment that a curious person can play with and make interesting things out of. There is community service and social causes and a government to yell at.
I don’t think the problem is in the system. Perhaps the people do not have enough motivation? Perhaps you think it would be better if people in general were less risk adverse? Unfortunately, dealing with people who are incompetent and not risk-adverse is worse than dealing with people who are merely incomptent.
I believe startups should be about good ideas, not risk. People in startups should KNOW that their idea will work… it might just appear risky to bystanders because they do not have the understanding about the market/product.
Just my 2+ cents.
i agree with you in the most part in terms of the lack of creativity in film or in anything of today. there are people that i meet that say that we have more choices that any era of time, but that explanation alone isn’t enough to justify why we have little choices due to recyled material. Why? Because of the potential of ides developed today and the less social barriers than those of the past, there should be more to offer on the plate.
The movies that Mr. Nate has mention are good, and not to mention quite independent/indie. Although we shouldn’t have less faith in progressiveness in terms of creativity. There are abundance of it everywhere despite what the public will have you believe. i’m a filmmaker ( well filmmaker to be) , and when I started out in film , I though I was part of the rare breed that wanted to change and experiment things with film. That I have a taste of ideas that has not yet been explored… well that was very naïve of me to think so.
This is where the film industry and cinematic art separates. Those who survive in the film industry are not the ones who raid and challenges the producers and money-holders with their ideas, but the ones that either sacrifices their point of view and creativity. Of course they’re those who don’t’ even have ideas, that know people, and who just follow the rules and make things that have been successful before.
Though you solution is a bit radical, and I hope not to offend , but also a bit premature. Meaning , incomplete. There is something there, but there needs to be more explanation to it. Like having smaller business can have it’s faults. Small business’s objective is to be bigger, so even in the beginning when the competition is about ideas, once the business grow, it then objectify the customers with prices as an attraction. To change this pattern is to change sociologically , and that my friend is big stuff. First world culture especially , worship economical gain as oppose to aesthetic gain. You also point this out by saying , “We’re learning that money is everything!â€
but we can’t solve that by changing colleges alone. Sex and drugs in prevail in colleges are due to curiosity and excess privileges because we are not a generation with responsibility, or at least we think so. Ethics shouldn’t be just taught in college , but in a younger stage. Come on, we are a culture that doesn’t frown upon food fights. The food fighters don’t think twice at who is going to clean the mess, who took time to cook the food, and who labor to plan the raw materials. If we compare the state of things now metaphorically with an essay. The essay definitely lacks ethos and pathos , with an excess of logos.
“not this facsimile of it where all kids get is more free time to waste.†– that comment is spot on. I love the ‘facsimile’, is that a real work or is that a combination of facism+smile or face+smile?
ps. sorry for grammar , spellings, etc. english is not my strong area