The problem with the entertainment media today is too much empty space filled with vacuity

 

The other day while web surfing I came upon a commentary by Melanie McFarland, a film and television critic for Salon. I generally don’t trust reviewers like McFarland, because they approach their subjects from a political viewpoint (in her case, gender) that judges a film or television show by the way it satisfies their political perspective. In this particular commentary, McFarland claimed that “cancel culture” is not the reason for today’s films and television programming not being particularly worthwhile, but because of the “Endless franchising of culture and pursuit of the same…that’s what’s knifing originality to death.”

Comic book movies are increasingly redundant, surviving on "cool" CGI rather than story. Of course, for McFarland programming that is narrowly-tailored to appeal to the female audience’s self-obsessions is what qualifies as “originality,” since in the same article she praises programming that is produced/and or focused on women. But frankly, portraying women as either “superhuman” or perpetual “victims” is getting a bit “old” as well, and doesn’t interest viewers like me, anyways.

I have my ideas about why much of today’s entertainment media “sucks.” It isn’t that there is nothing at all that I have seen in the past 20 years that I “like”; Curb Your Enthusiasm, Archer and Arrested Development I think were kind of “OK,” and the Starz’s Spartacus series I’m happy to have in my video collection. But we live in a time where there is too much empty space that has to be filled with something, even vacuity. Before cable television there were just three television networks, PBS and a few public access and UHF channels, the latter which in the early days was limited due to poor reception. The “big three” dominated original programing, and they competed with each other for the best available product. Sure, there was a “captive” audience given the limited number of outlets, but back then, programing that would be canceled mid-season would likely be number one in the ratings today.

There are no “original” story lines, just different ways of telling them with different actors providing their own personal “spin.”  Television in the 1970s aimed for “normal” people with typical working class lives; today, you see very little of that, with a focus on characters who are well-to-do with problems that seem alien to working people. In order to placate them, they are fed the circus sideshow of comic book fare.

That is in contrast to certain shows produced in the 1960s, even those that lasted just two or three years, yet became bigger “hits” in syndication in the 70s and 80s than they ever were in their first runs (Star Trek being the most successful at reincarnating itself), because many shows of that period benefited from both memorable characters and their appeal to elemental features in human psyche. Of course, when I was a kid The Three Stooges was must-see viewing, and there is just something to be said about a show in which cartoon violence and stupidity has a lot more relevance in today's political and social environment than it did back then.

Cream usually rises to the top, but not so today. Back in the day, a true “star” was someone who didn’t need to act “great,” they just had that certain personal charisma that “sold” whatever role they were in. Today, programing needs requiring dredging the bottom for any actor who looks good and can read lines.  Of course you can’t just blame the actors entirely, since writers have to write what comes out of their mouths; dialogue so often sounds like people trying to impress each other with grandiloquent bullshit. And let's face it: screen writers used to be stars in their own right; today they are just faking it.

Grounding life in reality is probably too much to ask of an industry which creates lives in a make-believe world that most of us do not recognize. Political pretentiousness that satisfies the self-obsession and self-deception of particular interest groups appeals to a very limited audience, and such shows would have died a quick death back in the day. It’s amazing to me how I watch movies even from 1930s and people just seem more “normal” than what you see today. But for the past decade or two, I watch movies and television and it’s a world I neither understand nor like. Gender politics and “white-washing” the black experience are especially eye-rolling for me; yeah, you are allowed to portray Hispanics as either violent drug dealers or illegal immigrant day laborers, but it is politically-incorrect to show the reality that white women are not the morally “pure” people they pretend to be, nor the perfect “victims”:

 

Nor, on the other hand, do all black people behave in an “innocent” fashion:

It isn’t just current film and television that I simply have little liking of, save for those that recycle the old hands. I dislike current popular “music” in its various forms (we used to call them “genres”), for which there is an almost entire absence of that common thread that tied together musical forms from the earliest times, through musical instrumentation, melody, and even actual singing. Today, rap and hip-hop have almost entirely discarded the elements that made music a reason people wanted to live and gave them positive energy. Instead, what we get is negative vibes that promote incivility and sometimes even violence. Peace, love, just getting along—who wants that anymore? Even “white” music today is mostly tinny, whiny noise.  Whatever happened to people singing in their natural voices? That shares the same issue with films and television: what kind of “personality” and immediacy do you get from computerized auto-tune “singing”?

Well, of course this is all my personal opinion. The ironic thing is that people have more viewing choices than when I was young, yet they seem to see much less. I suppose it must say something for people like me who are avid collectors of videos and records that what is “new” these days is usually old. Every time I think I have everything I “need,” I discover “lost” gems (at least in this country) like Jerzy Skolimowski’s film Deep End and Kiki Dee’s Motown album, Great Expectations; both are 50 years old, yet as “ancient” as they are, finding such as this still make life worth living instead of crawling in a hole, hoping to drown out today’s noise.