In regard to film at least, "culture" is something that only oldtimers want

 

What exactly do people mean when they talk about “culture”? How people behave? What they believe in? Is it a nation’s “history”? Is it “art,” as in literature, film and music? Or just some undefined “environment” that someone exists in or creates to justify abhorrent or bigoted beliefs?  Or what is "acceptable" within some hypocritical, narrow-minded religious fanaticism?

I’ll just stick to “art,” and specifically the place of film as an increasingly “disposable” form of “culture.” I guess someone’s age has something to do with it, when your knowledge of the past was once your present, which the latest generation only knows what they have been exposed to in the current present. Today’s generation seems to believe that “culture” is more “disposable” than ever, if you read comments about how print books and disc-based media are a “thing of the past” and are being replaced by “Ebooks” or streaming services. 

Perhaps they have a “point”—people are more apt to go to the library not to read books but to use free public Wi-Fi or just as an excuse to get out of the weather.  If they get an inch to watch something, just get a subscription and find whatever they’ve haven’t seen out in the past year; old movies are just "old."

But then again, if you think of yourself as the “cultured” type, you know that the “classics” are never just "old." Unfortunately, they are rarely available at the touch of a button on television; of course you could go to a Russian website that deals in pirated or public domain films from the past, like ok.ru, to find virtually every film that has ever made it to digital format for free. 

But then there is the issue of “quality” and “control,” which is where owning “hard” media comes in. People who actually have large collections of films on “hard” media like video discs naturally consider themselves more “cultured” than people for whom “culture” is just something that they only care about as a few hours or less diversion in their daily lives.

I have read people suggesting that “hard” media is “disposable” too, that video discs “rot” after a few years or decades and become unplayable. While there might be some justification in that belief in regard to Laserdiscs and CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs—as long as there are no manufacturing defects—can last a lifetime or longer if people handle and store them like they actually mean something. 

For me, the 10x10 storage unit I rent that is stocked up with video discs constitute the only possessions that mean anything to me, although admittedly when I can’t find a film on any of the 100 or so external hard drives I should have copied it to, it’s a slog to try to find the original disc.

Like for most videophiles, if a story is good, “special effects” and CGI are not important. I look at music today—and “music” is a term that can only be applied in the broadest possible way today—and I hear almost nothing that defined songcraft for thousands of years. For example, orchestration in popular music was a way for “contemporary” musicians to add classical music pretensions to their “art.” 

I’m not particularly into “classical” music, but I do hear the connection between the classical tradition and “pop” music until around the mid 1990s, when the “music” scene was taken over by rap/hip-hop and “pop” music that was nothing more than words with someone trying to shoe-horn in unmelodic and dull arrangements and call them “songs.” 

That wasn’t always the case, of course; I think Katy Perry’s “Firework” and “Teenage Dream” could have found a place in at least the Eighties music scene, while Maroon 5’s “Sugar” sounds like 70s Earth, Wind and Fire.  But those were exceptions to what is “ruling” today.

So I am a fan of cinema because I like films that relied on telling good stories first. Not that I dislike films that are just a “canvas” for CGI or special effects, but that I can appreciate the artistry of older films and actors with real charisma and personality. I mentioned the silent film The Unknown the other day; Lon Chaney was one of the greatest actors in cinema history, and that despite the fact that all but one of his films was made in the silent era. 

And that is our loss, because in his only “talkie” before he died of throat cancer exacerbated by the intake of fake snow—The Unholy Three, a remake of his silent version—it was demonstrated that Chaney had a great future going forward, as his powerful voice was as versatile as his makeup artistry to transform himself into any character, even as an old woman (hence his reputation as “the man of a thousand faces”).

But while there are some people younger than I am who collect films, I notice that on Blu-ray.com people who review films rate their “quality” not necessarily because they like a film, but the quality of the transfer and special features; if they actually think it has “cultural” relevance is not at issue unless the reader thinks it does. 

I was reading an article in The Guardian written by Zach Schonfeld concerning the “death” of “arthouse” films that even the French are giving up on in a world where the current breed of moviegoer is only interested in the instant gratification that mass CGI-enhancement is used to mask the lack of adult-level story-telling. He suggests that it is not that filmmakers don’t want to make films that tell a story, but that movie-goers today don’t want to see films that make them “think” too much.

Schonfeld writes that

In 2018, the film-maker Paul Schrader made some controversial remarks about how the business has changed since his 1970s heyday, when he wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull.  “There are people who talk about the American cinema of the 70s as some halcyon period,” Schrader said at a Bafta Screenwriters event in London. “There’s probably, in fact, more talented film-makers today than there was in the 70s. What there was in the 70s was better audiences.” The director added, “We now have audiences that don’t take movies seriously, so it’s hard to make a serious movie for them.”

Schonfeld notes that “Schrader’s words seem like a grim portent of an era when art films and character-driven dramas struggle to find an audience in cinemas. Though much of the blame lies with the major studios and entertainment companies, who’ve all but eliminated risk and originality from theatrical releases, the pandemic also got viewers hooked on streaming instead of movie-going.”

Sure, there are still people out there who look for “meaning” in films, but that is more likely to be those who want their own prejudices, narcissism and politics confirmed, and not to be “disturbed” by real life or the gray areas in between morality and ethics. Schonfeld goes on to say that

The present state of moviegoing in the States should serve as a warning. Try visiting a multiplex outside major markets like New York or Los Angeles, and corporate-moulded franchise movies are often your only option. That’s a problem not because such movies are unanimously bad (though often they are), but because, as Martin Scorsese argued in 2019, they are “perfect products manufactured for immediate consumption”, lacking in “the unifying vision of an individual artist”. What’s gone is the excitement, the risk, of seeing something new. The cinema becomes a theme park rather than a site of discovery.

Mentioning Scorsese is ironic, given his most recent film, Killers of the Flower Moon, tells the story of the murder of Osage Indians by whites for their oil “headrights” in the 1920s. In its opening weekend it finished second in the box office. What did filmgoers prefer to see—again? Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour film, which I’m sure she is taking in a healthy cut of the $160 million gross as of last week by conning millions with her main “selling point": her Aryan-Nordic appearance and the “MeToo” politics of most of her songs. We see where this country is at when the narcissistic “music” of a narcissist who speaks to other narcissists still tops of the box office ahead a movie that actually has a serious story to tell.

So much for “culture” of the “artistic” kind. Old geezers like Scorsese  only have so much time left to make films that actually matter to those who appreciate real art as part of the "culture," and what will follow is only what an increasingly shallow and narcissistic “audience” is willing to subject itself to. So much for "culture," then.