We Have Glimpsed Our Streaming Future, and It Sucks
November 22, 2020 1:57 PM Subscribe
With Wonder Woman 1984, Hamilton, and Soul all launching away from movie theatres this year, Sam Adams worries that smaller movies will be drowned out by online blockbusters and the algorithmically-recommended firehose of mediocre content from streaming giants.
I enjoy all different kinds of movies but I have to say I am really missing the blockbusters this year. It's bad enough that I am not even using the free DVD credits I get for Redbox via T-Mobile Tuesdays because the machines are just filled with dreck. I am really looking forward to Wonder Woman.
posted by srboisvert at 2:23 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 2:23 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
This seems like a business opportunity for a streaming platform that just shows a hand-curated list of the best N first-run movies with no search function or long tail effects to deal with. I can't be the only person who feels the Paradox of Choice anxiety when scrolling through Netflix and Hulu, and it's not enough to just have a "what's popular" or "our top choices" page -- sometimes you just want a Denny's sized menu instead of a Cheesecake Factory sized menu.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:28 PM on November 22, 2020 [12 favorites]
posted by tonycpsu at 2:28 PM on November 22, 2020 [12 favorites]
I am not even using the free DVD credits I get for Redbox via T-Mobile Tuesdays because the machines are just filled with dreck
this sentence is seriously like something out of chapter 1 of a dystopian sf novel
posted by um at 2:29 PM on November 22, 2020 [104 favorites]
this sentence is seriously like something out of chapter 1 of a dystopian sf novel
posted by um at 2:29 PM on November 22, 2020 [104 favorites]
This is the Slate-iest of Slate pitches, and pure junk.
Disney is estimated to loose a billion dollars putting WW84 on streaming. There is no such thing as an 'online blockbuster.' There are just 'desperate moves to deal with a pandemic.'
posted by Frayed Knot at 2:35 PM on November 22, 2020 [19 favorites]
Disney is estimated to loose a billion dollars putting WW84 on streaming. There is no such thing as an 'online blockbuster.' There are just 'desperate moves to deal with a pandemic.'
posted by Frayed Knot at 2:35 PM on November 22, 2020 [19 favorites]
Disney is estimated to loose a billion dollars putting WW84 on streaming.
WW84 is WB which means AT&T and HBO Max. Disney ain't losing shit.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:39 PM on November 22, 2020 [15 favorites]
WW84 is WB which means AT&T and HBO Max. Disney ain't losing shit.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 2:39 PM on November 22, 2020 [15 favorites]
Disney doesn't own WW84. Wondy is a DC property. Disney has the Avengers from Marvel, not the Justice League.
posted by sardonyx at 2:40 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by sardonyx at 2:40 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
Well, there's a lot of money to be spread around when people are going to movie theaters...
Not so much when everyone is drinking their own coke and making their own popcorn, (with real butter!).
Id rather be Disney right now than Regal, or the other movie house chains.
posted by Windopaene at 2:42 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
Not so much when everyone is drinking their own coke and making their own popcorn, (with real butter!).
Id rather be Disney right now than Regal, or the other movie house chains.
posted by Windopaene at 2:42 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
I haven't been to a movie since February 8 when I saw Parasite for the second time. This may be the longest time I've gone without going to the movie theater since I started going to movies in 1967 and while I'll admit that it's low on the list of things to get upset about in the year 2020, I can't wait to for it to be safe enough to go back. Even at 4k on a 60" screen, home viewing is just not the same.
posted by octothorpe at 2:48 PM on November 22, 2020 [15 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 2:48 PM on November 22, 2020 [15 favorites]
Sorry, my bad, typed Disney when I meant AT&T. Source
posted by Frayed Knot at 2:49 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Frayed Knot at 2:49 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
I'm sad about movie theaters and miss them.
I am excited enough for WW84 that if it doesn't suck, I will happily go to a theater to see it big if I get the chance.
Theater chains should work with the studios to plan a series of What You Missed special runs (on weeknights?) for 2020 blockbusters after it's safe again
posted by emjaybee at 2:52 PM on November 22, 2020 [16 favorites]
I am excited enough for WW84 that if it doesn't suck, I will happily go to a theater to see it big if I get the chance.
Theater chains should work with the studios to plan a series of What You Missed special runs (on weeknights?) for 2020 blockbusters after it's safe again
posted by emjaybee at 2:52 PM on November 22, 2020 [16 favorites]
“Online blockbuster” is my term, not one from the Slate article. I used it to refer to what would widely be considered a blockbuster (i.e. a very popular movie) being moved online. It does not make a judgment about the profit made by that movie.
posted by adrianhon at 2:54 PM on November 22, 2020
posted by adrianhon at 2:54 PM on November 22, 2020
"[T]heaters act as a filter, a way of separating out a small handful of the hundreds of movies released every year, and although the system by which they end up there is riven with biases and blind spots, on balance, the movies that end up there are better than the ones that don’t, and their limited runs create a sense of occasion and urgency that the boundless availability of streaming can’t match."
This is a thesis that goes mostly undefended. Is it true? Who knows. And when the author lists the sorts of films that are being crowded out by "ambient padding" or overlooked by the streaming crowds (e.g. "American Utopia, Dick Johnson Is Dead, First Cow, Wolfwalkers, and Da 5 Bloods"), it's reasonable to be confused at the sort of theater he's referring to: I'm not sure if First Cow would've played anywhere but at the Lightbox in Toronto (TIFF headquarters), where its audience would likely already be on the lookout for interesting programming and interesting films.
Is the argument that Netflix sucks and is full of schlock? Sure, ok. (Da 5 Bloods--which is excellent--was a Netflix production, no?) Disney+ and Netflix are (seemingly increasingly) full of junk, but 90% of everything is junk. If he's arguing that theaters were useful gatekeepers by highlighting niche films that you'd likely have to be pretty tuned in to your local art house/festival/rep cinema to know about in the first place, yeah, ok, I'm fine researching films on my own now, too! And luckily other, better streaming services exist. It's also not as if the schlock wouldn't still be on Netflix if theaters were still open.
Do I miss interesting programming? Yes! Do I miss going to the theater? Yes! Anywho, this article is facile on one level, question-begging on the other, and doesn't even broach the high art low art debate. Not that we should expect much from slate dot com
posted by tummy_rub at 2:59 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
This is a thesis that goes mostly undefended. Is it true? Who knows. And when the author lists the sorts of films that are being crowded out by "ambient padding" or overlooked by the streaming crowds (e.g. "American Utopia, Dick Johnson Is Dead, First Cow, Wolfwalkers, and Da 5 Bloods"), it's reasonable to be confused at the sort of theater he's referring to: I'm not sure if First Cow would've played anywhere but at the Lightbox in Toronto (TIFF headquarters), where its audience would likely already be on the lookout for interesting programming and interesting films.
Is the argument that Netflix sucks and is full of schlock? Sure, ok. (Da 5 Bloods--which is excellent--was a Netflix production, no?) Disney+ and Netflix are (seemingly increasingly) full of junk, but 90% of everything is junk. If he's arguing that theaters were useful gatekeepers by highlighting niche films that you'd likely have to be pretty tuned in to your local art house/festival/rep cinema to know about in the first place, yeah, ok, I'm fine researching films on my own now, too! And luckily other, better streaming services exist. It's also not as if the schlock wouldn't still be on Netflix if theaters were still open.
Do I miss interesting programming? Yes! Do I miss going to the theater? Yes! Anywho, this article is facile on one level, question-begging on the other, and doesn't even broach the high art low art debate. Not that we should expect much from slate dot com
posted by tummy_rub at 2:59 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
Living on an island with one Regal Cinema, I would say 2/3 of the time zero out of six movie options are good. Or at least remotely interesting to me. Often the most appealing film is some kind of Transformers sequel or something in the teens on Rotten Tomatoes.
posted by snofoam at 3:06 PM on November 22, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by snofoam at 3:06 PM on November 22, 2020 [4 favorites]
I subscribed to The Criterion Channel and The Arrow Video Player and would therefore argue that the "Streaming Future" is in fact really great. When I'm not streaming I'm checking out new releases from Severin and Vinegar Syndrome and wow, I can't imagine caring less about the lack of big studio target audience projects. Worrying that the pandemic hurt the ticket sales for the live action version of "Mulan" is like worrying about Big Mac sales going down at McDonalds forever hurting dining out.
I do miss theatres and the group experience especially. Don't get me wrong. I'm just not going to feel too bad about the garbage that was overloading those experiences suffering and being treated as the disposable background noise that it really is.
posted by Kinski's Ghost at 3:06 PM on November 22, 2020 [32 favorites]
I do miss theatres and the group experience especially. Don't get me wrong. I'm just not going to feel too bad about the garbage that was overloading those experiences suffering and being treated as the disposable background noise that it really is.
posted by Kinski's Ghost at 3:06 PM on November 22, 2020 [32 favorites]
This. This is why I never stopped rampant piracy. It was always clear that if they couldn't have it their way via cable TV, they were going to do their damnedest to turn the internet into the same damn thing.
This was evident in the early 2000's. This is just the culmination of what anyone who was paying attention could see coming.
It started with exporting US copyright prosecutions to other countries, mostly Sweden in prosecuting the founders of the Pirate Bay.
It was obvious within months of Netflix moving from ordering DVDs online to streaming that the corporate giants weren't just going to take that lying down and would follow suit, with intent to kill Netflix. (Give it time, they will.)
See also the desire to kill Section 230. It all adds up into making the internet the one-way-informational shitshow that was cable TV.
Frankly, I wouldn't have put it past traditional media institutions to have been part and parcel to why social media got so bad, happy to sew the seeds of evil in a competing product just so they can go on air and put down the competing product as evil and spreading falsehoods. "Only we get to do that," they say.
posted by deadaluspark at 3:09 PM on November 22, 2020 [24 favorites]
This was evident in the early 2000's. This is just the culmination of what anyone who was paying attention could see coming.
It started with exporting US copyright prosecutions to other countries, mostly Sweden in prosecuting the founders of the Pirate Bay.
It was obvious within months of Netflix moving from ordering DVDs online to streaming that the corporate giants weren't just going to take that lying down and would follow suit, with intent to kill Netflix. (Give it time, they will.)
See also the desire to kill Section 230. It all adds up into making the internet the one-way-informational shitshow that was cable TV.
Frankly, I wouldn't have put it past traditional media institutions to have been part and parcel to why social media got so bad, happy to sew the seeds of evil in a competing product just so they can go on air and put down the competing product as evil and spreading falsehoods. "Only we get to do that," they say.
posted by deadaluspark at 3:09 PM on November 22, 2020 [24 favorites]
I was never into seeing the latest movies at the big movie theater, so the pandemic hasn't changed my attendance at all. That sense of urgency
What I do miss is small, independent theaters that show curated selections of older or independent movies, often organized around a theme (like schlocky horror around Halloween, etc). I can watch some of these movies at home, but it's not the same.
Of course, with the way that streaming services are fractured and companies are optimizing their selection toward the exactly right balance between cheap and popular, streaming selection is getting worse. I still get Netflix DVDs so I can watch some of these things, but it's only a matter of time until that's discontinued.
Capitalism destroys the dream of the internet once again, I guess.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:11 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
What I do miss is small, independent theaters that show curated selections of older or independent movies, often organized around a theme (like schlocky horror around Halloween, etc). I can watch some of these movies at home, but it's not the same.
Of course, with the way that streaming services are fractured and companies are optimizing their selection toward the exactly right balance between cheap and popular, streaming selection is getting worse. I still get Netflix DVDs so I can watch some of these things, but it's only a matter of time until that's discontinued.
Capitalism destroys the dream of the internet once again, I guess.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 3:11 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
Worrying that the pandemic hurt the ticket sales for the live action version of "Mulan" is like worrying about Big Mac sales going down at McDonalds forever hurting dining out.
Sure, that holds up. They're comparable so long as McDonald's is the only restaurant in your town and has five different seating areas, up to four of which sell some kind of cuisine that isn't hamburgers.
In my town if the cinema that usually sells Mulan goes bust then the cinema that sells Oscar winners, and the cinema that sells film festival standouts and the cinema that sells little word-of-mouth films all go bust too.
posted by biffa at 3:16 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
Sure, that holds up. They're comparable so long as McDonald's is the only restaurant in your town and has five different seating areas, up to four of which sell some kind of cuisine that isn't hamburgers.
In my town if the cinema that usually sells Mulan goes bust then the cinema that sells Oscar winners, and the cinema that sells film festival standouts and the cinema that sells little word-of-mouth films all go bust too.
posted by biffa at 3:16 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
[AT&T] is estimated to lose a billion dollars putting WW84 on streaming.
This is that Orwellian corporate definition of "lose" that means "earn less than they expected / feel entitled to." WW84's budget was $200 million, so there's no way AT&T is going to lose a billion on it with a streaming focused release, even if the film is a complete flop, which it almost certainly won't be.
posted by jedicus at 3:19 PM on November 22, 2020 [39 favorites]
This is that Orwellian corporate definition of "lose" that means "earn less than they expected / feel entitled to." WW84's budget was $200 million, so there's no way AT&T is going to lose a billion on it with a streaming focused release, even if the film is a complete flop, which it almost certainly won't be.
posted by jedicus at 3:19 PM on November 22, 2020 [39 favorites]
Agree about the definition of "lose" except the contractual obligations were certainly signed prior to the pandemic and are unlikely to have too much crisis language, so one corp entity defaulting on a distribution agreement with another international entity may have significant ramifications. Weep for them. Or at least weep for the low level accountants whose lives must be hell unraveling the details. ;-)
posted by sammyo at 3:27 PM on November 22, 2020
posted by sammyo at 3:27 PM on November 22, 2020
What would be great if they realized that a bunch of interesting midlevel dramas could be financed and sent direct to streaming and the few million profit each would add up to close to a blockbuster. A resurgence of great 80's classic like plot, character heavy and smart idea films would make the streaming experience less dreary.
posted by sammyo at 3:31 PM on November 22, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by sammyo at 3:31 PM on November 22, 2020 [4 favorites]
(oh and actually accountants are generally nice folks so good that they got work ;-)
posted by sammyo at 3:33 PM on November 22, 2020
posted by sammyo at 3:33 PM on November 22, 2020
Disney doesn't own WW84. Wondy is a DC property. Disney has the Avengers from Marvel, not the Justice League.
I know the typo/brain fart has now been corrected, but I thought of all the shady creative accounting tricks I have ever heard of in Hollywood (e.g. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix still being nominally in the red after grossing a billion dollars), this must surely be the most brazen: writing off another studio’s performance against your bottom line.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:15 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
I know the typo/brain fart has now been corrected, but I thought of all the shady creative accounting tricks I have ever heard of in Hollywood (e.g. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix still being nominally in the red after grossing a billion dollars), this must surely be the most brazen: writing off another studio’s performance against your bottom line.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:15 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
Kanopy is pretty great too. You just need a library account, and you can stream 10 movies a month for free.
posted by ishmael at 4:27 PM on November 22, 2020 [14 favorites]
posted by ishmael at 4:27 PM on November 22, 2020 [14 favorites]
I actually think the budgets on movies for at least the next year or so are going to be ratcheted down until audiences feel safe going to theaters.
posted by drezdn at 4:28 PM on November 22, 2020
posted by drezdn at 4:28 PM on November 22, 2020
For anyone looking for a more curated viewing approach that avoids blockbusters, there are options.
If you want to primarily support current filmmakers and newish productions,
Oscilloscope Laboratories, teh producers of The Love Witch among many others, is one of the best indie production/distributions houses and offers a fair amount of their selections online and others for sale on DVD. Supporting them helps provide a home for talented non-mainstream filmmakers.
a24 films is the company behind The VVitch and many other of the most talked about non-mainstream films of recent years, they offer links to where you can see their films on their site.
Mubi offers a curated selection of a different film every day, that stays available for a month in addition to a library of other options that are available for longer periods. They help distribute works by some new filmmakers from around the world in addition to showing movies from throughout film history, with a decided international slant to the selections as Mubi is a worldwide service, though the selections vary by location with their different jurisdictional rules and costs.
[T]heaters act as a filter, a way of separating out a small handful of the hundreds of movies released every year, and although the system by which they end up there is riven with biases and blind spots, on balance, the movies that end up there are better than the ones that don’t
Utter bullshit. At best it could be said that theaters offer the public the things they are most familiar with, which to some surely is what is desired
their limited runs create a sense of occasion and urgency that the boundless availability of streaming can’t match.
in part because this is closer to true, where the excitement of seeing a movie comes as much from knowing others have/are going to see it and it will be talked about as the qualities of the movies themselves. It's only when a unexpected film, like The VVitch, achieves a certain word of mouth fame that it becomes fit for consideration. It's a self-perpetuating system benefiting major studios and money, not a quality filter.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:53 PM on November 22, 2020 [15 favorites]
If you want to primarily support current filmmakers and newish productions,
Oscilloscope Laboratories, teh producers of The Love Witch among many others, is one of the best indie production/distributions houses and offers a fair amount of their selections online and others for sale on DVD. Supporting them helps provide a home for talented non-mainstream filmmakers.
a24 films is the company behind The VVitch and many other of the most talked about non-mainstream films of recent years, they offer links to where you can see their films on their site.
Mubi offers a curated selection of a different film every day, that stays available for a month in addition to a library of other options that are available for longer periods. They help distribute works by some new filmmakers from around the world in addition to showing movies from throughout film history, with a decided international slant to the selections as Mubi is a worldwide service, though the selections vary by location with their different jurisdictional rules and costs.
[T]heaters act as a filter, a way of separating out a small handful of the hundreds of movies released every year, and although the system by which they end up there is riven with biases and blind spots, on balance, the movies that end up there are better than the ones that don’t
Utter bullshit. At best it could be said that theaters offer the public the things they are most familiar with, which to some surely is what is desired
their limited runs create a sense of occasion and urgency that the boundless availability of streaming can’t match.
in part because this is closer to true, where the excitement of seeing a movie comes as much from knowing others have/are going to see it and it will be talked about as the qualities of the movies themselves. It's only when a unexpected film, like The VVitch, achieves a certain word of mouth fame that it becomes fit for consideration. It's a self-perpetuating system benefiting major studios and money, not a quality filter.
posted by gusottertrout at 4:53 PM on November 22, 2020 [15 favorites]
Thanks Ishmael! I assumed it would be US only but my UK uni login got me in to kanopy and it looks like an excellent resource.
posted by biffa at 4:55 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by biffa at 4:55 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
I actually think the budgets on movies for at least the next year or so are going to be ratcheted down until audiences feel safe going to theaters.
I have doubts about this. In the first place, it takes so many years to get from "movie idea" to "film in theater" that an awful lot of the planned 2020 & 2021 releases have already spent millions in development & production, even if the pandemic has put productions (especially shooting with live actors) on hold. And in the second place studios and theaters will be desperately hungry for big tentpole big budget releases to put butts in seats - one of the last remaining "reasons" to go to a theater in the first place was to see something like WW84 that (arguably) is better for seeing it 20 feet high with 120db surround sound. Those films cost money to make. They're probably only releasing WW84 at all now because there are contractual & accounting obligations.
It wouldn't surprise me if '22-'24 releases suffer from some belt tightening as everyone tries to regain profit margins, but I think the first year of "back in theaters" isn't going to look too different.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:05 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
I have doubts about this. In the first place, it takes so many years to get from "movie idea" to "film in theater" that an awful lot of the planned 2020 & 2021 releases have already spent millions in development & production, even if the pandemic has put productions (especially shooting with live actors) on hold. And in the second place studios and theaters will be desperately hungry for big tentpole big budget releases to put butts in seats - one of the last remaining "reasons" to go to a theater in the first place was to see something like WW84 that (arguably) is better for seeing it 20 feet high with 120db surround sound. Those films cost money to make. They're probably only releasing WW84 at all now because there are contractual & accounting obligations.
It wouldn't surprise me if '22-'24 releases suffer from some belt tightening as everyone tries to regain profit margins, but I think the first year of "back in theaters" isn't going to look too different.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:05 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
And as far as theater's are concerned? My couch is a hell of alot more comfortable than a theatre's seats, and we have a 1080p projector, with a servicable, decent stereo system. When there's something weird and sticky on the floor, I at least know which dog it probably came from, the food is way better and the managers here at cinema de la furnace don't seem to give a shit if you smoke weed during the feature.
I'm gonna want to go out when all this is over, but not to sit in a theatre I'm gonna want to look at fucking humans in the face and hug them and throw them up in the air and dance with them and give them high fives and play games with them and interact with them. There might be some titles I catch back in theatres eventually, but...meh, probably not?
I mean, unless some movie exec wants to make me eat my fucking words and start doing the new 2020 Dune treatment to the Hainish cycle, be my guest. Please, I beg you.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:25 PM on November 22, 2020 [9 favorites]
I'm gonna want to go out when all this is over, but not to sit in a theatre I'm gonna want to look at fucking humans in the face and hug them and throw them up in the air and dance with them and give them high fives and play games with them and interact with them. There might be some titles I catch back in theatres eventually, but...meh, probably not?
I mean, unless some movie exec wants to make me eat my fucking words and start doing the new 2020 Dune treatment to the Hainish cycle, be my guest. Please, I beg you.
posted by furnace.heart at 5:25 PM on November 22, 2020 [9 favorites]
So some people prefer to watch the telly rather than go to the cinema? Interesting.
posted by biffa at 5:34 PM on November 22, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by biffa at 5:34 PM on November 22, 2020 [5 favorites]
I watch a good number of movies. I used to try to go see movies in theaters to support the smaller ones (the last movie I saw in theaters was Gretel & Hansel) and I will probably do that again once theaters are safe. But I'm just as happy to pay $10 to sit on my couch with my own snacks and be able to pause to take bathroom breaks or whatever if I can support a smaller movie on a streaming service. And I do that a lot!
I get I'm not everyone but I really don't see anyone thinking "well, I was going to watch this small indie movie but since WW84 is streaming, I will never ever watch that other movie." Likely, that person wasn't going to watch that small indie movie anyway. (And if you're someone like me, you'll probably watch both.)
Streaming has a lot of flaws (especially in that there are some movies that aren't streaming and they're effectively "gone") but I think it also allows a lot of movies to find an audience that would not have otherwise, or at least find them a lot sooner. It's been great for smaller-budget, inventive horror and sci-fi movies and also romantic comedies.
Maybe it's time to rethink "blockbusters" instead.
(I will agree that Netflix's algorithm is crap & it's mostly "Here are the same 25 movies just rearranged into different categories!" but I've found that's mostly limited to Netflix. I don't have too much of a problem with other streaming services, although I supplement looking for things with sites like JustWatch. But once again, I'm not everyone.)
posted by edencosmic at 5:42 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
I get I'm not everyone but I really don't see anyone thinking "well, I was going to watch this small indie movie but since WW84 is streaming, I will never ever watch that other movie." Likely, that person wasn't going to watch that small indie movie anyway. (And if you're someone like me, you'll probably watch both.)
Streaming has a lot of flaws (especially in that there are some movies that aren't streaming and they're effectively "gone") but I think it also allows a lot of movies to find an audience that would not have otherwise, or at least find them a lot sooner. It's been great for smaller-budget, inventive horror and sci-fi movies and also romantic comedies.
Maybe it's time to rethink "blockbusters" instead.
(I will agree that Netflix's algorithm is crap & it's mostly "Here are the same 25 movies just rearranged into different categories!" but I've found that's mostly limited to Netflix. I don't have too much of a problem with other streaming services, although I supplement looking for things with sites like JustWatch. But once again, I'm not everyone.)
posted by edencosmic at 5:42 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
The algorithmically-recommended firehose of mediocre content from streaming giants?
Yeah, no. The pre-streaming algorithm that filled three screens of the local 4plex with the blockbuster and the fourth with a flick I equally had no interest in could die for all I care. Modern streaming is leaps and bounds better than the movie houses ever were when it comes to indies and smaller movies. Even Netflix alone, being full of crappy content, has more good stuff I want to see than I actually have time for. From my vantage point, this streaming future has been a boon for independent, small movies. Technology has made it easier to produce and exhibit movies for all tastes at every step of the way. Do I miss the movie theater experience? Sure. I've been missing it since I was 14. The ritual is almost always lacking in some way. I'm sure I'll be going back when the coast is once again clear. But do I prefer the blockbuster/movie theater pre streaming model? No fucking way.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:59 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
Yeah, no. The pre-streaming algorithm that filled three screens of the local 4plex with the blockbuster and the fourth with a flick I equally had no interest in could die for all I care. Modern streaming is leaps and bounds better than the movie houses ever were when it comes to indies and smaller movies. Even Netflix alone, being full of crappy content, has more good stuff I want to see than I actually have time for. From my vantage point, this streaming future has been a boon for independent, small movies. Technology has made it easier to produce and exhibit movies for all tastes at every step of the way. Do I miss the movie theater experience? Sure. I've been missing it since I was 14. The ritual is almost always lacking in some way. I'm sure I'll be going back when the coast is once again clear. But do I prefer the blockbuster/movie theater pre streaming model? No fucking way.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:59 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
Yes, I, for one, miss all the independent movies that would be shown at my friendly neighbourhood multiplex.
*cough*
I mean, c'mon.
posted by rhooke at 6:17 PM on November 22, 2020 [11 favorites]
*cough*
I mean, c'mon.
posted by rhooke at 6:17 PM on November 22, 2020 [11 favorites]
This seems like a business opportunity for a streaming platform that just shows a hand-curated list of the best N first-run movies with no search function or long tail effects to deal with
Streaming platforms don’t go to the stream wholesaler to pick up next weeks streams and put them on the shelves for their customers. First-run movies are either going to the platforms owned by the studios themselves (WW84 to HBO Max, Hamilton to Disney+, etc) or are getting sold for fees with seven to nine zeros in them. While Sony sold the Hanks film Greyhound to Apple for “only” $70m, word on the street MGM wanted $600m for the latest Bond movie.
posted by sideshow at 6:31 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
Streaming platforms don’t go to the stream wholesaler to pick up next weeks streams and put them on the shelves for their customers. First-run movies are either going to the platforms owned by the studios themselves (WW84 to HBO Max, Hamilton to Disney+, etc) or are getting sold for fees with seven to nine zeros in them. While Sony sold the Hanks film Greyhound to Apple for “only” $70m, word on the street MGM wanted $600m for the latest Bond movie.
posted by sideshow at 6:31 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
on balance, the movies that end up there are better than the ones that don’t, and their limited runs create a sense of occasion and urgency that the boundless availability of streaming can’t match."
This is a thesis that goes mostly undefended. Is it true? Who knows.
In the context of pre-internet-streaming, the claim holds up. "Direct to video" release was code for "not good enough to advertise & get into theaters." If a studio thought they had a real money-maker on their hands, they pushed for a theater release.
But it hasn't been true since the streaming movie sites started producing their own content. I'm not sure it's been true since the SciFi network started producing things - although most of those were, at best, direct-to-video quality.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 6:34 PM on November 22, 2020
This is a thesis that goes mostly undefended. Is it true? Who knows.
In the context of pre-internet-streaming, the claim holds up. "Direct to video" release was code for "not good enough to advertise & get into theaters." If a studio thought they had a real money-maker on their hands, they pushed for a theater release.
But it hasn't been true since the streaming movie sites started producing their own content. I'm not sure it's been true since the SciFi network started producing things - although most of those were, at best, direct-to-video quality.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 6:34 PM on November 22, 2020
Yeah, no. The pre-streaming algorithm that filled three screens of the local 4plex with the blockbuster and the fourth with a flick I equally had no interest in could die for all I care.
Seven years ago this month the new release that was getting a lot of positive attention was 12 Years A Slave My city offered zero showings of that, but sixty-three opportunities a day to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:37 PM on November 22, 2020 [9 favorites]
Seven years ago this month the new release that was getting a lot of positive attention was 12 Years A Slave My city offered zero showings of that, but sixty-three opportunities a day to see Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:37 PM on November 22, 2020 [9 favorites]
I love seeing movies in theaters. Always have. I love being with an audience to hear and see their responses. I love the big screen and huge sound. Plus the ritual space of a theater, even a bad one, and the ritual of popcorn etc. consumption. I miss these very much. (My family is renting an Alamo this week to watch Casablanca. Can't wait.)
But the article, man, as usual Salon gives me that science fiction feeling of encountering an alien life form. Curious how they approach the world, isn't it?
it’s been a terrible year for movie-watching, as people have (understandably) fallen back on comfort-viewing favorites or just letting the algorithm pick whatever low-stakes series is next in the queue...
Without theaters, we’re drowning in options, grabbing whatever flotsam is nearest to hand, and while that firehose keeps getting bigger, it hasn’t made it any easier to find a good drop to drink.
Speak for yourself, mac. I haven't had much time due to months of overwork (being an independent futurist in a global pandemic isn't easy), but I've been working through things I haven't seen, albeit often while answering emails at the same time. I do use the algo to surface some suggestions, yes, although the only service it really works on is Netflix - and also create viewing lists by using this brand new tech called "search."
Then again, I also keep screening Netflix DVDs, because that's where a big chunk of the stuff I want to see lives.
posted by doctornemo at 7:43 PM on November 22, 2020 [4 favorites]
But the article, man, as usual Salon gives me that science fiction feeling of encountering an alien life form. Curious how they approach the world, isn't it?
it’s been a terrible year for movie-watching, as people have (understandably) fallen back on comfort-viewing favorites or just letting the algorithm pick whatever low-stakes series is next in the queue...
Without theaters, we’re drowning in options, grabbing whatever flotsam is nearest to hand, and while that firehose keeps getting bigger, it hasn’t made it any easier to find a good drop to drink.
Speak for yourself, mac. I haven't had much time due to months of overwork (being an independent futurist in a global pandemic isn't easy), but I've been working through things I haven't seen, albeit often while answering emails at the same time. I do use the algo to surface some suggestions, yes, although the only service it really works on is Netflix - and also create viewing lists by using this brand new tech called "search."
Then again, I also keep screening Netflix DVDs, because that's where a big chunk of the stuff I want to see lives.
posted by doctornemo at 7:43 PM on November 22, 2020 [4 favorites]
I'm not really buying it. The ultimate currency of entertainment—all entertainment—is time. Audiences only have so much of it, it's precious, and (with some exceptions) it's a perfectly rival good: if you spend your time watching one movie, you can't spend that same time watching something else.
I suspect people spend less time overall watching a big-ticket movie on their couch via streaming, than they would spend going to a theater and watching it. That leaves more time, not less, for other media. (All the time that would otherwise be spent driving to the theater, parking, buying tickets, watching previews, etc. etc. is time that can be spent watching something else via streaming.) Heck, I can probably watch two full movies—if I'm so inclined—at home, in the time that it would take to see one at the theater, when you count the full door-to-door time.
Is it exactly the same experience? No, not precisely. If we weren't living through a plague, I'd probably still take the time to go see things in theaters, because it's fun. But I can watch more if I stay home and stream things, and I probably watch more diverse content at home too, because the commitment is a lot lower.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:25 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
I suspect people spend less time overall watching a big-ticket movie on their couch via streaming, than they would spend going to a theater and watching it. That leaves more time, not less, for other media. (All the time that would otherwise be spent driving to the theater, parking, buying tickets, watching previews, etc. etc. is time that can be spent watching something else via streaming.) Heck, I can probably watch two full movies—if I'm so inclined—at home, in the time that it would take to see one at the theater, when you count the full door-to-door time.
Is it exactly the same experience? No, not precisely. If we weren't living through a plague, I'd probably still take the time to go see things in theaters, because it's fun. But I can watch more if I stay home and stream things, and I probably watch more diverse content at home too, because the commitment is a lot lower.
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:25 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
I feel like Palm Springs is a counterpoint to this whole argument
posted by TheShadowKnows at 8:29 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by TheShadowKnows at 8:29 PM on November 22, 2020 [2 favorites]
Yeah, as a person who watches (more commercial) indies and what used to be mid-list movies (the sort of thing Miramax used to do a lot of, before we all learned they suuuuuuuuuucked), Netflix and Amazon getting into making movies and distributing foreign movies in the US has been LEAPS AND BOUNDS better than movie theaters, especially now that US movie theaters are like 95% superheroes, Star Wars, and remakes. I find superhero movies dull (I get why other people like them, they're just not for me), I loved Star Wars for most of my life but I'm kinda over it now, and I just don't have any urge to see animated classics turned into live action movies or whatever.
But Netflix and Amazon is where you go now for beautifully-acted adaptations of 19th-century novels, and passion projects from big directors, and well-financed flicks from up-and-comers, and stellar foreign-language movies that I otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to see, and stories considered too "niche" to be blockbusters (read: stories about women or minorities), and shorts. The shorts! And I'm not a big documentary person, but I know Netflix and Amazon have been a massive boon for documentaries and have put tons of eyes on them that never would have had a chance to see them before (how many documentaries did your cineplex show? How many did your local Blockbuster carry? Not many). And the limited series! Things like "The Queen's Gambit," which was stellar. In the 90s, that could have been a midlist movie (and too short) or it could have been a BBC costume drama, but otherwise it never would have gotten made, and certainly not with the length and lushness of the Netflix production.
Most things I would have been excited to see in a movie theater in the 90s wouldn't get made by the big studios anymore and would never make it into a cineplex, but Netflix and Amazon have vastly expanded that type of movie after they almost disappeared with the rise of the Marvel movie and the worldwide blockbuster. I like going to the movies and I've made an effort in my adult life to support small theaters and to come out for local runs of those non-blockbusters and for things like the "see all the Oscar shorts." And I don't fault the theaters! The economics of movie theaters is super-fucked-up, and that balance of power leans towards the studios, and I know they're chasing disappearing dollars and have to maximize revenue and it's not like everyone who manages a movie theater is like, "I ONLY WANT TO SHOW MEDIOCRE BLOCKBUSTERS MADE FOR TEENAGED BOYS, THAT'S WHY I WORK AT A MOVIE THEATER!"
But the fact is that the "studios" catering to my tastes and preferences -- which admittedly include a lot of female-focused historical costume dramas -- are the streaming services. And yeah, there's a shit-ton of crap on the streaming services -- some of it hilariously bad -- but it's not like I lack for places to read about movies, TV, and streaming and to get recommendations for things that are worth seeking out. (Honestly the Netflix algorithm is pretty decent now for me, it suggests to me literally every non-war, non-detective costume drama that Netflix gets the rights for PLUS anything that's surprisingly well-acted involving teen girl angst that would have aired on the CW last decade or starred Winona Ryder in the 90s. Prime is more hit-and-miss for me, it does not seem to be able to differentiate between "good" and "searingly terrible" costume dramas, nor between female-focused and male-focused ones. Not interested in war movies! Redcoats only in ballrooms, please.)
I watch a lot MORE movies than I used to, not because I have so much pandemic free time, but because the stuff I wanted to see wasn't in the theaters in the 2000s and by the time it was on video, I would have forgotten I wanted to see it, and there wouldn't be anything to remind me because it didn't get a three-panel display at Blockbuster.
I do feel kind-of bad that theaters as we knew them are disappearing and dying. But I felt bad when the second-run theater near me closed due to the rise of Blockbuster -- going to see $1.50 second-run flicks with all your friends was the bomb! -- but the movie business changed and on balance I probably saw more movies once Blockbuster came to town and made getting my hands on them easy. Plus any more at movie theaters I have to wear earplugs because they're SO FUCKING LOUD I frequently can't understand what's being said in the film, and when I'm trying to watch something like Little Women, I can literally 100% of the time hear the giant explosions from the Marvel movie in the theater next door. GOD. (It's clearly an OSHA violation but whatever.)
Anyway, movies are dead, long live movies.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:37 PM on November 22, 2020 [26 favorites]
But Netflix and Amazon is where you go now for beautifully-acted adaptations of 19th-century novels, and passion projects from big directors, and well-financed flicks from up-and-comers, and stellar foreign-language movies that I otherwise wouldn't have had a chance to see, and stories considered too "niche" to be blockbusters (read: stories about women or minorities), and shorts. The shorts! And I'm not a big documentary person, but I know Netflix and Amazon have been a massive boon for documentaries and have put tons of eyes on them that never would have had a chance to see them before (how many documentaries did your cineplex show? How many did your local Blockbuster carry? Not many). And the limited series! Things like "The Queen's Gambit," which was stellar. In the 90s, that could have been a midlist movie (and too short) or it could have been a BBC costume drama, but otherwise it never would have gotten made, and certainly not with the length and lushness of the Netflix production.
Most things I would have been excited to see in a movie theater in the 90s wouldn't get made by the big studios anymore and would never make it into a cineplex, but Netflix and Amazon have vastly expanded that type of movie after they almost disappeared with the rise of the Marvel movie and the worldwide blockbuster. I like going to the movies and I've made an effort in my adult life to support small theaters and to come out for local runs of those non-blockbusters and for things like the "see all the Oscar shorts." And I don't fault the theaters! The economics of movie theaters is super-fucked-up, and that balance of power leans towards the studios, and I know they're chasing disappearing dollars and have to maximize revenue and it's not like everyone who manages a movie theater is like, "I ONLY WANT TO SHOW MEDIOCRE BLOCKBUSTERS MADE FOR TEENAGED BOYS, THAT'S WHY I WORK AT A MOVIE THEATER!"
But the fact is that the "studios" catering to my tastes and preferences -- which admittedly include a lot of female-focused historical costume dramas -- are the streaming services. And yeah, there's a shit-ton of crap on the streaming services -- some of it hilariously bad -- but it's not like I lack for places to read about movies, TV, and streaming and to get recommendations for things that are worth seeking out. (Honestly the Netflix algorithm is pretty decent now for me, it suggests to me literally every non-war, non-detective costume drama that Netflix gets the rights for PLUS anything that's surprisingly well-acted involving teen girl angst that would have aired on the CW last decade or starred Winona Ryder in the 90s. Prime is more hit-and-miss for me, it does not seem to be able to differentiate between "good" and "searingly terrible" costume dramas, nor between female-focused and male-focused ones. Not interested in war movies! Redcoats only in ballrooms, please.)
I watch a lot MORE movies than I used to, not because I have so much pandemic free time, but because the stuff I wanted to see wasn't in the theaters in the 2000s and by the time it was on video, I would have forgotten I wanted to see it, and there wouldn't be anything to remind me because it didn't get a three-panel display at Blockbuster.
I do feel kind-of bad that theaters as we knew them are disappearing and dying. But I felt bad when the second-run theater near me closed due to the rise of Blockbuster -- going to see $1.50 second-run flicks with all your friends was the bomb! -- but the movie business changed and on balance I probably saw more movies once Blockbuster came to town and made getting my hands on them easy. Plus any more at movie theaters I have to wear earplugs because they're SO FUCKING LOUD I frequently can't understand what's being said in the film, and when I'm trying to watch something like Little Women, I can literally 100% of the time hear the giant explosions from the Marvel movie in the theater next door. GOD. (It's clearly an OSHA violation but whatever.)
Anyway, movies are dead, long live movies.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:37 PM on November 22, 2020 [26 favorites]
(And I am not a sophisticated consumer of movies, nor do I think I have very good taste in movies, so please don't read me as being a movie snob -- I cheerfully admit I know nothing and films that critics I respect rave about frequently go entirely over my head. But I prefer character-driven movies to action-driven ones, and I vastly prefer the ones with pretty clothes, especially if they're old-fashioned clothes, so my tastes are not well-suited to the current crop of blockbusters. I did like Black Panther and Wonder Woman, though -- great costumes in both.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:51 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:51 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
-- They're probably only releasing WW84 at all now because there are contractual & accounting obligations.
"Unfortunately, Wonder Woman 1984's merchandise has been a topic of conversation this year primarily because some of it offers spoilers on a movie that hasn't been released." -- Wonder Woman 1984 Toys & Merchandise Deals Impacted By Movie Delays. Example: Wonder Woman 1984 Tie-In Novel Reveals How Steve Trevor Returns. [Distribution in the US on Christmas - Mattel's WW84 tie-in dolls (including a pair of collectible Barbie dolls) were available in July, in anticipation of an August premiere date.]
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:54 PM on November 22, 2020 [1 favorite]
"Unfortunately, Wonder Woman 1984's merchandise has been a topic of conversation this year primarily because some of it offers spoilers on a movie that hasn't been released." -- Wonder Woman 1984 Toys & Merchandise Deals Impacted By Movie Delays. Example: Wonder Woman 1984 Tie-In Novel Reveals How Steve Trevor Returns. [Distribution in the US on Christmas - Mattel's WW84 tie-in dolls (including a pair of collectible Barbie dolls) were available in July, in anticipation of an August premiere date.]
posted by Iris Gambol at 8:54 PM on November 22, 2020 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure the article has described anything of value being lost. In the abstract, there'll be something nice to as many would-be films getting killed off as possible. It's peaceful that way.
posted by CrystalDave at 9:39 PM on November 22, 2020
posted by CrystalDave at 9:39 PM on November 22, 2020
There was a point, a generation ago if not longer, where word of mouth influenced what was in movie theatres. In this week in 2019, there were only two movies that had been in theatres for more than two months in any sort of release; Downton Abbey (9 weeks, in 303 theaters) and Hustlers (10 weeks, 118 theaters) -- note the biggest movie was in around 3,500 theaters. Twenty years earlier, there were 6, including Runaway Bride (17th week, 651 theaters), American Beauty (11th week, 815 theaters), Double Jeopardy (9th week, 1340 theaters) and The Sixth Sense (16th week, 1219 theaters). These aren't necessarily classics and some have aged better than others, but they were actually available -- there was a pretty good chance you could still catch one of them in a theater near you. In that sort of environment, there was a chance for a crowd-pleasing decent movie to stick around, and playing in a movie theater was an actual mark of quality.
I used the Internet Archive, and was able to see what was available in 5 of the 10 multiplexes in my city this very week last year. You could go to any of the five of them and see Charlie's Angels, a movie I watched on an airplane and forgot existed until I was halfway through looking it up to write this comment, which screened 20 times a day. You could go to any of the five and see Last Christmas, story from a Wham! single, which screened 15 times. You could go to four of the five and see the Malificent sequel, which screened 18 times; or three of the five to see Roland Emmerich's Midway (great week for Ed Skrein stans) or the John Cena family comedy Playing With Fire; screening 10 times each.
There was only one of the five (the oldest and shabbiest one) that screened Parasite (in it's third week of wide release), twice.
posted by Superilla at 9:52 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
I used the Internet Archive, and was able to see what was available in 5 of the 10 multiplexes in my city this very week last year. You could go to any of the five of them and see Charlie's Angels, a movie I watched on an airplane and forgot existed until I was halfway through looking it up to write this comment, which screened 20 times a day. You could go to any of the five and see Last Christmas, story from a Wham! single, which screened 15 times. You could go to four of the five and see the Malificent sequel, which screened 18 times; or three of the five to see Roland Emmerich's Midway (great week for Ed Skrein stans) or the John Cena family comedy Playing With Fire; screening 10 times each.
There was only one of the five (the oldest and shabbiest one) that screened Parasite (in it's third week of wide release), twice.
posted by Superilla at 9:52 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
I went to the movies at least a couple of times a month pre-pandemic, but I live in a pretty good market theatre-wise. Oftentimes I'd go by myself. Sometimes I'd get an overpriced pint. If I drove all the out to Alamo, sometimes I'd get a milkshake. I loved it. I love movies.
You guys, I have like 5-6 streaming services.
And I really, really miss going to the movies.
posted by thivaia at 9:55 PM on November 22, 2020 [11 favorites]
You guys, I have like 5-6 streaming services.
And I really, really miss going to the movies.
posted by thivaia at 9:55 PM on November 22, 2020 [11 favorites]
Thirty-five years ago I was a teenager and my hometown had 18 theatres with 25 screens total. Two years ago it had one theatre with six screens, plus a couple of megaplexes way outside the old city limits with another twenty or so screens at two locations. Over the winter of 2018-2019 two defunct single-screen places were refurbished and reopened, independent of each other. One opened on Feb 14 last year and the other one on the first of March. They each show an eclectic mixture of classics (Lawrence of Arabia on the big screen!), arthouse films, and second-run Hollywood stuff*. During the Current Situation, they have been shut when local government requirements demanded it and otherwise very stringent about cleaning, minimal occupancy, and so forth.
I will be heartbroken if these places both turn out to have a lifespan of a year.
*One of them ran the traditional rep house staple The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween this year. As well as the low numbers of audience members allowed, there was no singing, no dancing and no projectiles. I thought my own rep cinema days had left me with too many showings of RHPS under my belt to ever enjoy it again, but it might have been fun to see a screening unfold in grim, fraught silence, like an experimental Russian student film.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:01 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
I will be heartbroken if these places both turn out to have a lifespan of a year.
*One of them ran the traditional rep house staple The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Halloween this year. As well as the low numbers of audience members allowed, there was no singing, no dancing and no projectiles. I thought my own rep cinema days had left me with too many showings of RHPS under my belt to ever enjoy it again, but it might have been fun to see a screening unfold in grim, fraught silence, like an experimental Russian student film.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:01 PM on November 22, 2020 [8 favorites]
Agree about the definition of "lose" except the contractual obligations were certainly signed prior to the pandemic and are unlikely to have too much crisis language, so one corp entity defaulting on a distribution agreement with another international entity may have significant ramifications.
They all likely have some sort of force majeure clause to let them break the deals, which will likely be a totally hot area of the law for the next 2-15 years as all the contractual fallout from the pandemic slowly work their way through the legal system.
posted by jmauro at 10:20 PM on November 22, 2020 [1 favorite]
They all likely have some sort of force majeure clause to let them break the deals, which will likely be a totally hot area of the law for the next 2-15 years as all the contractual fallout from the pandemic slowly work their way through the legal system.
posted by jmauro at 10:20 PM on November 22, 2020 [1 favorite]
but I have to say I am really missing the blockbusters this year.
I'm not. Not even slightly. Not even infinitesimally.
this new normal isn't all bad
posted by philip-random at 10:51 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
I'm not. Not even slightly. Not even infinitesimally.
this new normal isn't all bad
posted by philip-random at 10:51 PM on November 22, 2020 [3 favorites]
please don't read me as being a movie snob
Ya gotta love movies. In almost any other area of consumption, the people who only indulge in the top brand names, made with the most expensive materials and only crafted by the highest paid artisans would be the snobs, not the people who are willing to enjoy the wider range of things, without consideration for cost or fame of those who make it, but not movies.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:38 PM on November 22, 2020 [6 favorites]
Ya gotta love movies. In almost any other area of consumption, the people who only indulge in the top brand names, made with the most expensive materials and only crafted by the highest paid artisans would be the snobs, not the people who are willing to enjoy the wider range of things, without consideration for cost or fame of those who make it, but not movies.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:38 PM on November 22, 2020 [6 favorites]
(I think Rocky Horror Picture Show is a legitimately great film outside of its rep theater legacy—which is incredible as well—and I would be absolutely stoked to attend a big-screen showing without audience participation.)
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:11 AM on November 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:11 AM on November 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
Ya gotta love movies. In almost any other area of consumption, the people who only indulge in the top brand names, made with the most expensive materials and only crafted by the highest paid artisans would be the snobs, not the people who are willing to enjoy the wider range of things, without consideration for cost or fame of those who make it, but not movies.
This is a kind of a fun take, but - it's the same for any sort of mass-market art, no? Expensively-produced physical goods are scarce, and their production is justified by the ability to sell to connoisseurs at a premium. An expensively-produced film or record only has to be produced once, and its production is justified by the ability to sell to the broadest possible audience.
posted by atoxyl at 12:23 AM on November 23, 2020
This is a kind of a fun take, but - it's the same for any sort of mass-market art, no? Expensively-produced physical goods are scarce, and their production is justified by the ability to sell to connoisseurs at a premium. An expensively-produced film or record only has to be produced once, and its production is justified by the ability to sell to the broadest possible audience.
posted by atoxyl at 12:23 AM on November 23, 2020
An expensively-produced film or record only has to be produced once, and its production is justified by the ability to sell to the broadest possible audience.
That's true of course as to the reason big budget movies and top "stars" get their money, which is what it is being a capitalist endeavor and all. It's not so much that I object to that exactly, more that the claim or worry that snobbery is associated with the willingness to look beyond the money to all the other works being created. The narrower taste is somehow the more egalitarian while the eclectic is more snobbish.
That such a dynamic also severely limits who gets to determine what and who gets onscreen and the values portrayed only makes the the snobbery claim worse for being fit to a commodity driven ideal of "open mindedness".
posted by gusottertrout at 12:34 AM on November 23, 2020
That's true of course as to the reason big budget movies and top "stars" get their money, which is what it is being a capitalist endeavor and all. It's not so much that I object to that exactly, more that the claim or worry that snobbery is associated with the willingness to look beyond the money to all the other works being created. The narrower taste is somehow the more egalitarian while the eclectic is more snobbish.
That such a dynamic also severely limits who gets to determine what and who gets onscreen and the values portrayed only makes the the snobbery claim worse for being fit to a commodity driven ideal of "open mindedness".
posted by gusottertrout at 12:34 AM on November 23, 2020
I just don't understand the thesis here. The author points to Parasite going "from film festival favorite to art house hit to cultural phenomenon" and says that could never happen in a world where most people are seeing movies streaming at home. But why?
What exactly was involved in the process by which Parasite went from film festival to cultural phenomenon that can't happen online? Shouldn't it be more likely when it's so much easier for people who hear about an interesting movie to just sit down and watch it instead of hoping it comes to a theater near them?
Is the problem that we're not holding film festivals? Surely it would be easy to organize such a thing online? You give a select group of people private access to watch some upcoming movies for a limited time and offer a private forum for those people to talk about them online. Then make them available more widely. Netflix or one of the other big streamers seems more likely to pick up a movie based on some critical buzz than a suburban multiplex would be.
posted by straight at 2:03 AM on November 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
What exactly was involved in the process by which Parasite went from film festival to cultural phenomenon that can't happen online? Shouldn't it be more likely when it's so much easier for people who hear about an interesting movie to just sit down and watch it instead of hoping it comes to a theater near them?
Is the problem that we're not holding film festivals? Surely it would be easy to organize such a thing online? You give a select group of people private access to watch some upcoming movies for a limited time and offer a private forum for those people to talk about them online. Then make them available more widely. Netflix or one of the other big streamers seems more likely to pick up a movie based on some critical buzz than a suburban multiplex would be.
posted by straight at 2:03 AM on November 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
I miss going to the movies, but not movie audiences, who ruined a lot of the movies I went to.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:13 AM on November 23, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:13 AM on November 23, 2020 [10 favorites]
I think a virtual festival on one of the big services could work well. All of them can do time-limited content and setting up a package of a few dozen films all shown once over a week shouldn't be technically challenging.
It's mostly a marketing and customer acceptance problem.
posted by bonehead at 5:34 AM on November 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's mostly a marketing and customer acceptance problem.
posted by bonehead at 5:34 AM on November 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
Theater chains should work with the studios to plan a series of What You Missed special runs (on weeknights?) for 2020 blockbusters after it's safe again
If they do that, I hope that there's a pass that I can buy so I can just spend the entire weekend in the theater watching them all.
posted by octothorpe at 6:25 AM on November 23, 2020
If they do that, I hope that there's a pass that I can buy so I can just spend the entire weekend in the theater watching them all.
posted by octothorpe at 6:25 AM on November 23, 2020
I am curious about the production side. How do you create a film or tv show during a pandemic?
One response I'm hearing is for production teams to form up COVID pods during the time when they're working together. So get tested, get cleared, then only interact with each other, sealed off from the world. (Which reminds me of Cecil B. Demented (2000).) Given scaling issues, perhaps this means no more epics, but a lot more small dramas and comedies.
Another is to get creative, working the pandemic into the story and process. One example is Host, a little horror film taking place during a lockdown.
We could also see a boom in animation of all sorts, since that requires much less in the way of in-person interaction.
I'm also hoping for more remix work, based on careful editing of preexisting media, along the lines of Adam Curtis' projects. (Credit to Errol Morris for the insight)
posted by doctornemo at 6:43 AM on November 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
One response I'm hearing is for production teams to form up COVID pods during the time when they're working together. So get tested, get cleared, then only interact with each other, sealed off from the world. (Which reminds me of Cecil B. Demented (2000).) Given scaling issues, perhaps this means no more epics, but a lot more small dramas and comedies.
Another is to get creative, working the pandemic into the story and process. One example is Host, a little horror film taking place during a lockdown.
We could also see a boom in animation of all sorts, since that requires much less in the way of in-person interaction.
I'm also hoping for more remix work, based on careful editing of preexisting media, along the lines of Adam Curtis' projects. (Credit to Errol Morris for the insight)
posted by doctornemo at 6:43 AM on November 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
on balance, the movies that end up there are better than the ones that don’t, and their limited runs create a sense of occasion and urgency that the boundless availability of streaming can’t match."
> This is a thesis that goes mostly undefended. Is it true? Who knows.
I can see the "sense of occasion" part I guess? The movies were one of the last remaining bastions of nationwide pop culture events that we ALL shared... in our era when literally the whole country watching Walter Cronkite every day at 6 pm is a distant memory.
Avengers: Endgame was one universal cultural touchstone event we all did together. Game of Thrones finale, too, perhaps, but there's something to be said for all of us trooping into theaters together physically en masse, right? Like being at a protest march but not so shouty, and not in fear for our lives. It's nice. And I'm sure big movies will be back after the pandemic for this exact reason.
posted by MiraK at 6:49 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
> This is a thesis that goes mostly undefended. Is it true? Who knows.
I can see the "sense of occasion" part I guess? The movies were one of the last remaining bastions of nationwide pop culture events that we ALL shared... in our era when literally the whole country watching Walter Cronkite every day at 6 pm is a distant memory.
Avengers: Endgame was one universal cultural touchstone event we all did together. Game of Thrones finale, too, perhaps, but there's something to be said for all of us trooping into theaters together physically en masse, right? Like being at a protest march but not so shouty, and not in fear for our lives. It's nice. And I'm sure big movies will be back after the pandemic for this exact reason.
posted by MiraK at 6:49 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
For me the cinema is about more than the sense of occasion. Its sitting with a screen that takes up most of my vision, of being entirely focussed on what's in front of me and being absorbed into that world for two hours. Watching the same film on TV is not the same. Its both the art but also I think being separate form the world for that period, very much an escape from outside worries is part of it.
posted by biffa at 7:31 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]
posted by biffa at 7:31 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]
(I think Rocky Horror Picture Show is a legitimately great film outside of its rep theater legacy—which is incredible as well—and I would be absolutely stoked to attend a big-screen showing without audience participation.)
The first time I ever saw it was maybe 1980, when it weirdly turned up for a week in a runty little cineplex not far from where I live now: six screens, ranging from 48 to 80 seats. It is located in a wealthy bedroom community*, where residents — then or now — are not known for being especially savvy about alternative culture.
There were possibly twenty people there, most of them genteel suburbanites who seemed to have been hoping for an evening at the movies but they had already seen Stardust Memories and Ordinary People. There were about three or four audience members (me definitely not among them) who were happily shouting ASSHOLE and SLUT and throwing confetti and all the rest.
I do recall some of the less-committed viewers departing partway through. I can only imagine the conversations that they had with the manager.
*Note: I am not wealthy, and it turns out “bedroom community” is not quite as risqué as it sounds. Sadness.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:46 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
The first time I ever saw it was maybe 1980, when it weirdly turned up for a week in a runty little cineplex not far from where I live now: six screens, ranging from 48 to 80 seats. It is located in a wealthy bedroom community*, where residents — then or now — are not known for being especially savvy about alternative culture.
There were possibly twenty people there, most of them genteel suburbanites who seemed to have been hoping for an evening at the movies but they had already seen Stardust Memories and Ordinary People. There were about three or four audience members (me definitely not among them) who were happily shouting ASSHOLE and SLUT and throwing confetti and all the rest.
I do recall some of the less-committed viewers departing partway through. I can only imagine the conversations that they had with the manager.
*Note: I am not wealthy, and it turns out “bedroom community” is not quite as risqué as it sounds. Sadness.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:46 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
previously
also, why not 'period drama a-z by director'?
'everything over 90% on RT'
'sci-fi 3.5-4 stars between 2000-2005 on ebert'
data mining is at an apex, and each of these is simple 30 year old sql query tech.
i am frustrated to the point of frequent cancellation by paid 'services' whose principle goal is to hide available content. at least if i drive by my local arthouse, there's four films on the the marquee and they're all available right. now. and it takes less time for me to drive by the theatre than to sidescroll through recommended, new, comedy, trending, drama, crime, and sci-fi that all have the same nine films.
narrative is truly the shittiest categorization method.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:47 AM on November 23, 2020 [4 favorites]
also, why not 'period drama a-z by director'?
'everything over 90% on RT'
'sci-fi 3.5-4 stars between 2000-2005 on ebert'
data mining is at an apex, and each of these is simple 30 year old sql query tech.
i am frustrated to the point of frequent cancellation by paid 'services' whose principle goal is to hide available content. at least if i drive by my local arthouse, there's four films on the the marquee and they're all available right. now. and it takes less time for me to drive by the theatre than to sidescroll through recommended, new, comedy, trending, drama, crime, and sci-fi that all have the same nine films.
narrative is truly the shittiest categorization method.
posted by j_curiouser at 7:47 AM on November 23, 2020 [4 favorites]
Even at 4k on a 60" screen, home viewing is just not the same.
That's nothing a good surround sound system and a few friends (the latter post-pandemic of course) can't fix, at least if your display has a true 24hz mode and you aren't sitting twenty or thirty feet away.
posted by wierdo at 7:52 AM on November 23, 2020
That's nothing a good surround sound system and a few friends (the latter post-pandemic of course) can't fix, at least if your display has a true 24hz mode and you aren't sitting twenty or thirty feet away.
posted by wierdo at 7:52 AM on November 23, 2020
j_curiouser, there's a chrome extension called Better Browse for Netflix which takes advantage of the fact that Netflix has literally thousands of insanely specific categories for films. Why netflix hides this from people is beyond me, but it's there if you want it.
posted by nushustu at 8:05 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by nushustu at 8:05 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
" In almost any other area of consumption, the people who only indulge in the top brand names, made with the most expensive materials and only crafted by the highest paid artisans would be the snobs, not the people who are willing to enjoy the wider range of things, without consideration for cost or fame of those who make it, but not movies."
I more meant that I'm not like, "I only watch sophisticated high-concept French experimental films you've never heard of, peasant." I think my taste in movies is quite "commercial" and not particularly sophisticated, it's just a different sort of commercial than the marketplace currently rewards with blockbuster status. I'm totally willing to try a high-concept French experimental art film if a friend of mine who knows a lot about movies encourages me to see it and explains to me why it's cool, but I wouldn't seek it out myself and I probably wouldn't "get" it without someone walking me through it.
And I do think highly commercial films can be artistic and sophisticated. I'm just not really the person to make those kinds of determinations. I know what I like in film and TV, and I can tell when something's broadly good or bad, but I have only hazy ideas about what makes them good or bad. Similarly, I like going to see live ballet, and I saw Darcy Bussell dance and it was obvious the instant she came on stage that she was something special, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about what makes her spectacular and other dancers just okay. I just like watching it. Whereas when I listen to music, I can talk a lot more about what's happening in the music to make it good or bad or indifferent, boundary-pushing or workmanlike, interesting or intriguing or discordant, what ideas the composer is putting across, what the music is referencing, what dialogue the composer and conductor and musicians and audience are having, etc.
So it's not that I think Pride & Prejudice is objectively better than Avengers: End Game; it's just that I want to watch Pride & Prejudice and I'm pretty shruggo about Avengers: End Game, and I'm glad streaming services mean there's more P&P-type stuff for me out there!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:07 AM on November 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
I more meant that I'm not like, "I only watch sophisticated high-concept French experimental films you've never heard of, peasant." I think my taste in movies is quite "commercial" and not particularly sophisticated, it's just a different sort of commercial than the marketplace currently rewards with blockbuster status. I'm totally willing to try a high-concept French experimental art film if a friend of mine who knows a lot about movies encourages me to see it and explains to me why it's cool, but I wouldn't seek it out myself and I probably wouldn't "get" it without someone walking me through it.
And I do think highly commercial films can be artistic and sophisticated. I'm just not really the person to make those kinds of determinations. I know what I like in film and TV, and I can tell when something's broadly good or bad, but I have only hazy ideas about what makes them good or bad. Similarly, I like going to see live ballet, and I saw Darcy Bussell dance and it was obvious the instant she came on stage that she was something special, but I couldn't tell you the first thing about what makes her spectacular and other dancers just okay. I just like watching it. Whereas when I listen to music, I can talk a lot more about what's happening in the music to make it good or bad or indifferent, boundary-pushing or workmanlike, interesting or intriguing or discordant, what ideas the composer is putting across, what the music is referencing, what dialogue the composer and conductor and musicians and audience are having, etc.
So it's not that I think Pride & Prejudice is objectively better than Avengers: End Game; it's just that I want to watch Pride & Prejudice and I'm pretty shruggo about Avengers: End Game, and I'm glad streaming services mean there's more P&P-type stuff for me out there!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:07 AM on November 23, 2020 [2 favorites]
Watching the same film on TV is not the same. Its both the art but also I think being separate form the world for that period, very much an escape from outside worries is part of it.
I can’t recall who wrote it, but maybe ten years ago I read a piece reacting to news that found Kids Today were ever more platform-agnostic, just as happy watching a movie on their phone as on an IMAX screen. The writer suggested that watching The Last Emperor on a phone was akin to viewing the Sistine Chapel ceiling by looking through a toilet paper roll.
But yes, there is an element of sacred space to it. In normal years, I probably see forty or fifty movies a year in cinemas, and now it has been since February since I set foot in one (I think Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen may have been the last). This is a longer stretch than I have gone since probably age seven or something.
Yes, at home you can control the volume and pause while you get a sandwich. Yes, other audience members can be annoying. But bar none the best movie experiences of my life have been in movie theatres. Seeing Drunken Master II with a packed crowd of 400 people totally into it, all bursting into cheers and applause at the right moments. Sitting in a gorgeous thousand-seat movie palace on its final night of operation with maybe thirty other people there to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to send it off. The time in Israel when I bought a ticket to see some Benigni movie but realized once I sat down that Italian dialogue with Hebrew subtitles was going to blunt my comprehension considerably, so I relocated to the adjacent twin cinema and saw young unknown actors Russell Crowe and Hugo Weaving in Proof, which was much more enjoyable. Seeing the Borat premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, when the projector broke down fifteen minutes into the film; the audience assumed it was part of the low-tech shtick but it wasn’t, of course. SBC was present and in character and he stood at the front of the auditorium and improvised his way through a delaying action while the theatre tried valiantly to restore the projector (and weirdly, Michael Moore headed up from the audience to help out).
None of these things ever would have happened watching Netflix in my living room.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:16 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]
I can’t recall who wrote it, but maybe ten years ago I read a piece reacting to news that found Kids Today were ever more platform-agnostic, just as happy watching a movie on their phone as on an IMAX screen. The writer suggested that watching The Last Emperor on a phone was akin to viewing the Sistine Chapel ceiling by looking through a toilet paper roll.
But yes, there is an element of sacred space to it. In normal years, I probably see forty or fifty movies a year in cinemas, and now it has been since February since I set foot in one (I think Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen may have been the last). This is a longer stretch than I have gone since probably age seven or something.
Yes, at home you can control the volume and pause while you get a sandwich. Yes, other audience members can be annoying. But bar none the best movie experiences of my life have been in movie theatres. Seeing Drunken Master II with a packed crowd of 400 people totally into it, all bursting into cheers and applause at the right moments. Sitting in a gorgeous thousand-seat movie palace on its final night of operation with maybe thirty other people there to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to send it off. The time in Israel when I bought a ticket to see some Benigni movie but realized once I sat down that Italian dialogue with Hebrew subtitles was going to blunt my comprehension considerably, so I relocated to the adjacent twin cinema and saw young unknown actors Russell Crowe and Hugo Weaving in Proof, which was much more enjoyable. Seeing the Borat premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, when the projector broke down fifteen minutes into the film; the audience assumed it was part of the low-tech shtick but it wasn’t, of course. SBC was present and in character and he stood at the front of the auditorium and improvised his way through a delaying action while the theatre tried valiantly to restore the projector (and weirdly, Michael Moore headed up from the audience to help out).
None of these things ever would have happened watching Netflix in my living room.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:16 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]
Anyway, movies are dead, long live movies.
this is ultimately my take. I mean, we still have operas (and operettas). Social, economic, technological, cultural evolutions and disruptions have massively rearranged things since the end of the 19th century when, apparently, opera (and operettas) were THE THING, such that they're certainly no longer THE THING ... but we still have them, maybe not everywhere, maybe not a cheap ticket on a Thursday night, but the option is still there.
So it's going to go with the theatrical moviegoing experience, eventually, one way or another ... because that's just how things go. Don't they? Change happens.
Due to an injury that makes prolonged sitting ultimately quite painful, I've personally already lost the ability to enjoy going to movies (pretty sure Life of Pi was my last, seven years ago now). And even at home, I usually don't get all the way through something in one sitting. It's sad, I guess, but the pain is worse. So I've adapted. Which, I suspect, is what the overall culture is doing right now with the moviegoing experience for various reasons, due to various hits from various angles (not just covid, ie: the gaming biz was already much more successful in terms of pure dollars and cents and had been for years).
But nothing ever really goes away, culturally speaking. Back in the 1950s, jazz was all the rage, seemed unstoppable. And it's not as if it ever stopped being a passion for some, but pop and rock sure sure rose up and elbowed it out of the way in terms of market share etc. But we still have jazz ... as we still have opera (and operettas).
Change keeps changing things, but if we're doing it right, the culture just keeps getting richer. Keep on rockin' in the free world and all that.
posted by philip-random at 8:45 AM on November 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
this is ultimately my take. I mean, we still have operas (and operettas). Social, economic, technological, cultural evolutions and disruptions have massively rearranged things since the end of the 19th century when, apparently, opera (and operettas) were THE THING, such that they're certainly no longer THE THING ... but we still have them, maybe not everywhere, maybe not a cheap ticket on a Thursday night, but the option is still there.
So it's going to go with the theatrical moviegoing experience, eventually, one way or another ... because that's just how things go. Don't they? Change happens.
Due to an injury that makes prolonged sitting ultimately quite painful, I've personally already lost the ability to enjoy going to movies (pretty sure Life of Pi was my last, seven years ago now). And even at home, I usually don't get all the way through something in one sitting. It's sad, I guess, but the pain is worse. So I've adapted. Which, I suspect, is what the overall culture is doing right now with the moviegoing experience for various reasons, due to various hits from various angles (not just covid, ie: the gaming biz was already much more successful in terms of pure dollars and cents and had been for years).
But nothing ever really goes away, culturally speaking. Back in the 1950s, jazz was all the rage, seemed unstoppable. And it's not as if it ever stopped being a passion for some, but pop and rock sure sure rose up and elbowed it out of the way in terms of market share etc. But we still have jazz ... as we still have opera (and operettas).
Change keeps changing things, but if we're doing it right, the culture just keeps getting richer. Keep on rockin' in the free world and all that.
posted by philip-random at 8:45 AM on November 23, 2020 [5 favorites]
That's nothing a good surround sound system and a few friends (the latter post-pandemic of course) can't fix, at least if your display has a true 24hz mode and you aren't sitting twenty or thirty feet away.
Nope. Still not the same as sitting in a theater.
posted by octothorpe at 8:47 AM on November 23, 2020 [3 favorites]
Nope. Still not the same as sitting in a theater.
posted by octothorpe at 8:47 AM on November 23, 2020 [3 favorites]
there's a lot to the 'sacred space' concept upthread.
posted by j_curiouser at 8:52 AM on November 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by j_curiouser at 8:52 AM on November 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
Hard agree that watching on a TV at home just is not the same. The immersion of being in a theater where the one thing you're there to do is watch a movie. OK, two things -- watch a movie and eat popcorn. Watching a movie at home is fine -- but when I watch a movie at home with my family it's rare that everyone is watching the same way you watch a movie in a theater. Phones are out, people get up (and expect the movie to be paused) and get snacks or use the restroom, the dogs bark at a passing squirrel... Even if we had a literal home theater with nothing in the room but recliners and a screen/sound system, it wouldn't be quite the same.
One of the things I used to love doing was taking in an afternoon movie when the theater would be nearly empty and seeing a picture alone. That's pure escapism and utterly free of worrying about whether anyone else is enjoying the movie or whatever. I hope to be able to do that again in 2021.
posted by jzb at 9:49 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]
One of the things I used to love doing was taking in an afternoon movie when the theater would be nearly empty and seeing a picture alone. That's pure escapism and utterly free of worrying about whether anyone else is enjoying the movie or whatever. I hope to be able to do that again in 2021.
posted by jzb at 9:49 AM on November 23, 2020 [7 favorites]
As businesses, movie theaters are obviously worried about the short-term, simply surviving the pandemic and being able to reopen in any fashion afterwards, and then building business back up once we can go to movies in person again.
But what's more interesting to me are the downstream effects of the complete disruption of a very common cultural behavior, going to the theater itself. Us olds in this thread have already-established habits of going to see movies in theaters, and understand how it's distinct from watching at home, etc. But for kids now, and even some young adults, the times in their lives when basic cultural behaviors are being habituated or imprinted are passing without going to the theater at all--so when things start to return to "normal", their normal will not include going to see movies in theaters, and indeed that might come to seem weird to them at some point downstream (why would you pay a ton extra to see something that you can watch at home?).
These kinds of cultural discontinuities are what create the most obvious and immediate generation gaps, and I expect that those of us who were already adults with established behavior patterns before our annus horribilis will find ourselves feeling a lot older, a lot sooner than we may expect in the first several years following all this.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:50 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
But what's more interesting to me are the downstream effects of the complete disruption of a very common cultural behavior, going to the theater itself. Us olds in this thread have already-established habits of going to see movies in theaters, and understand how it's distinct from watching at home, etc. But for kids now, and even some young adults, the times in their lives when basic cultural behaviors are being habituated or imprinted are passing without going to the theater at all--so when things start to return to "normal", their normal will not include going to see movies in theaters, and indeed that might come to seem weird to them at some point downstream (why would you pay a ton extra to see something that you can watch at home?).
These kinds of cultural discontinuities are what create the most obvious and immediate generation gaps, and I expect that those of us who were already adults with established behavior patterns before our annus horribilis will find ourselves feeling a lot older, a lot sooner than we may expect in the first several years following all this.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:50 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
Nope. Still not the same as sitting in a theater.
It is (was, actually, all that shit got left behind when I moved states) at my house, at least when I'm having one of my bad months and the floor is sticky and there are discarded snacks everywhere and I'm too lazy to reset the amplifier so that the audio is correctly balanced and I invited the wrong group of people so there are phone screens lighting up everyone's face and my next door neighbor is also having a movie night so you still get the booms from the film playing on the next screen over.
Less flippantly, I do actually get the appeal of going to the cinema, but it very much depends on the quality of the theaters one has access to. I very much enjoyed the triple feature Indiana Jones showing some years back. Real (film) IMAX on the spherical screen can't be recreated at home on any reasonable budget.
When you're stuck in the tiny screening room with a screen that has the same apparent size as your TV set at home because you aren't interested in whatever is playing on five screens with showings 15 minutes apart that week, not so much.
Back when I lived there, Tulsa had some pretty decent theaters. The AMC multiplex nearest my house had some pretty niche stuff and did not have any of those screens that can't even match a fancy home theater in the McMansion basement. Cinemark had a true IMAX theater. There was an indie theater that showed oldies and the really obscure stuff. We even had a good drive in except for the couple of years it was out of commission after the screen structure burned down.
The modern recreations of the movie palace where they have the extra plush seating and will bring you actual food and drink are pretty cool, too, but I'd have to drive an hour and a half to get to that place from where I live now, so it may as well not exist. Come to think of it, I'd literally have to drive at least half an hour to get to any theater. They are all either way out in the suburbs or on the other side of the bay where all the tourists stay.
posted by wierdo at 10:24 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
It is (was, actually, all that shit got left behind when I moved states) at my house, at least when I'm having one of my bad months and the floor is sticky and there are discarded snacks everywhere and I'm too lazy to reset the amplifier so that the audio is correctly balanced and I invited the wrong group of people so there are phone screens lighting up everyone's face and my next door neighbor is also having a movie night so you still get the booms from the film playing on the next screen over.
Less flippantly, I do actually get the appeal of going to the cinema, but it very much depends on the quality of the theaters one has access to. I very much enjoyed the triple feature Indiana Jones showing some years back. Real (film) IMAX on the spherical screen can't be recreated at home on any reasonable budget.
When you're stuck in the tiny screening room with a screen that has the same apparent size as your TV set at home because you aren't interested in whatever is playing on five screens with showings 15 minutes apart that week, not so much.
Back when I lived there, Tulsa had some pretty decent theaters. The AMC multiplex nearest my house had some pretty niche stuff and did not have any of those screens that can't even match a fancy home theater in the McMansion basement. Cinemark had a true IMAX theater. There was an indie theater that showed oldies and the really obscure stuff. We even had a good drive in except for the couple of years it was out of commission after the screen structure burned down.
The modern recreations of the movie palace where they have the extra plush seating and will bring you actual food and drink are pretty cool, too, but I'd have to drive an hour and a half to get to that place from where I live now, so it may as well not exist. Come to think of it, I'd literally have to drive at least half an hour to get to any theater. They are all either way out in the suburbs or on the other side of the bay where all the tourists stay.
posted by wierdo at 10:24 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
more that the claim or worry that snobbery is associated with the willingness to look beyond the money to all the other works being created. The narrower taste is somehow the more egalitarian while the eclectic is more snobbish.
I think I actually read your argument a bit backwards. I thought you were proposing that it was unusual that film “snobs” might look down on the most elaborate productions, and I was thinking that just comes from the basic critique of mass culture, right? But I think the thing you are really talking about originates in reaction to an assumed snobbery on these grounds that is now actually fairly marginal. Mainstream criticism incorporated the position years ago that the true eclectic would be able to appreciate any type of film, from indie to mass-market. But certain fans of certain mass-market films still have a chip on their shoulder about the idea that somebody somewhere doesn’t think the movies they like are respectable.
posted by atoxyl at 10:57 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
I think I actually read your argument a bit backwards. I thought you were proposing that it was unusual that film “snobs” might look down on the most elaborate productions, and I was thinking that just comes from the basic critique of mass culture, right? But I think the thing you are really talking about originates in reaction to an assumed snobbery on these grounds that is now actually fairly marginal. Mainstream criticism incorporated the position years ago that the true eclectic would be able to appreciate any type of film, from indie to mass-market. But certain fans of certain mass-market films still have a chip on their shoulder about the idea that somebody somewhere doesn’t think the movies they like are respectable.
posted by atoxyl at 10:57 AM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
it might have been fun to see a screening unfold in grim silence
I'd love that. Remembering when they showed Rocky Horror on TV and broke away now and again to (lamely) simulate the cinema experience. Just show the damn film!
I miss going to the movies, but not movie audiences, who ruined a lot of the movies I went to.
Exactly. Disregarding the current blight of cell phones inside, the worst is all you goddamn eaters, with your popcorn, crinkly wrappers and rustling sacks of take-out you've smuggled in. Why not enjoy the nice meal after the movie? But no.
Anyway, movies are dead, long live movies.
I think it's really the cinemas that will close and be repurposed. Too bad, but I'm okay with the death of this system where the concession pays the major percentage of the screening costs.
posted by Rash at 11:27 AM on November 23, 2020
I'd love that. Remembering when they showed Rocky Horror on TV and broke away now and again to (lamely) simulate the cinema experience. Just show the damn film!
I miss going to the movies, but not movie audiences, who ruined a lot of the movies I went to.
Exactly. Disregarding the current blight of cell phones inside, the worst is all you goddamn eaters, with your popcorn, crinkly wrappers and rustling sacks of take-out you've smuggled in. Why not enjoy the nice meal after the movie? But no.
Anyway, movies are dead, long live movies.
I think it's really the cinemas that will close and be repurposed. Too bad, but I'm okay with the death of this system where the concession pays the major percentage of the screening costs.
posted by Rash at 11:27 AM on November 23, 2020
So I've worked in bottom end of film distribution for much of my adult life (from the last few years of VHS to now), I watch a lot of movies for professional and personal reasons, I've dealt with small studios and big ones, I have met many executives and have had pretty candid conversations about product (which is what they call movies) and have helped filmmakers of varying ability to get their films released. So reading this article, to me, is like reading someone from a different reality as it bears almost no basis in the reality I have experienced. In my experience, there's a huge disconnect between the business end (studios and streaming providers), the creatives, the critical classes and the consumer. Sometimes those can be in sync (like in the case for Parasite) but it is very rare and unpredictable.
In terms of films slated for theatrical that have been shifted to streamers, I'm not sure if there is really a lot going on other then studios trying to mitigate their loses, reduce the potential legal issues with contracts and maintain brands in a deeply uncertain time. So from my perspective some of the author's ideas about theatrical release are puzzling. A film released in a cinema, in my experience, generally only means one thing - the corporation that owns it thinks it could make money. There's no magically bestowing of taste or quality because it is a theatrically released film versus one directly released to the consumer. For a major studio (or even the so-called mini majors) quality, in the sense of whether a movie is perceived as "good" rather than simply competently made, is not something they care about in the release of a film. Yeah it helps, sure, especially in the marketing, but generally it doesn't matter because they see "quality" as ephemeral and they know from experience that audiences are extremely fickle so they stack the deck via actors you recognise, a well-defined & easily marketable genre, narrative beats that audiences understand. My business partner was utterly flabbergasted when an executive told him point blank that they didn't want their movie to garner too much "prestige" (critical praise from high brow critics) because they were concerned that it'd affect box office negatively. I've spoken to executives who've told me that the product that does the best for them on Netflix was overwhelmingly the junk that they got for a song, released as a favour for a filmmaker and it was consistently the product they promoted the least. And these small producers all say the same thing - they are consistently screwed over for revenue by the major streaming companies.
As for the streaming future, did Sam Adams just encounter streaming like a week ago? Aside from major studio films being released on streaming rather than theatrical its been this way since day one (with only a handful of actual incremental improvements over the years). When the major streaming services started they were desperate for content but not that interested in promoting it. This was even more pronounced in smaller markets (i.e. in countries other than the US or the UK). And, then as now, they have no interest in promoting product that isn't theirs so they actively make it difficult to find things. That's why Netflix, despite having a complex genre structure, doesn't make that easily available to the consumer. The last major revision for Prime, at least the Canadian version, removed some of the search abilities in some versions of their app. You can still sort of find things if you have some well honed searches but not very well. Or try finding films from a specific country or language. For Prime you have to rely on the "what other films people who watched this watched" category which is a terrible way to search or you have to use outside search engines like Justwatch.com. Utterly ridiculous.
In terms of streaming, I think what reassures me somewhat is the emergence of services in the last few years that cater to the wider world of cinema (Criterion, Mubi, and others mentioned above). I don't have numbers on these services but the fact that they exist at all indicates at least there is more than a passing interest in wider cinematic offerings. Also Netflix and other big services do seem to be interested in making product for local markets with little studio intervention. They still have their issues of course - you may only get 2 seasons, it can still be a mixed bag quality wise, promotion can be sketchy, finding that content can be harder than it should be or it can be region locked and only available in some areas. I've also been seeing some relaxing of prohibitions on non-cis oriented product and less reticence to release product containing nudity (especially sexualised male nudity). My problem with these streamers (small or otherwise) though continues to be that the services are not always available internationally, they don't promote smaller or niche films all that much, terrible search engines and they don't pay much in return.
So I can't take much of this article terribly serious. Yeah it will suck for theatres and some of our beloved cinemas will be gone when we come out the other side of this pandemic. And theatrical attendance will likely take longer to fully recover. Film festivals will be certainly different but how exactly? Who knows? But I don't think its going to directly change the type of releases we see from major studios, at least not for another 3 to 5 years. Consider this - in the next 2 years we're getting something like a dozen superhero films the last time I checked. Its going to take a bit of time before we truly see the direct impact of the pandemic on the content of studio releases because Hollywood is a slow moving train. And we can only guess how audiences will respond to that product especially post-pandemic.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:02 PM on November 23, 2020 [12 favorites]
In terms of films slated for theatrical that have been shifted to streamers, I'm not sure if there is really a lot going on other then studios trying to mitigate their loses, reduce the potential legal issues with contracts and maintain brands in a deeply uncertain time. So from my perspective some of the author's ideas about theatrical release are puzzling. A film released in a cinema, in my experience, generally only means one thing - the corporation that owns it thinks it could make money. There's no magically bestowing of taste or quality because it is a theatrically released film versus one directly released to the consumer. For a major studio (or even the so-called mini majors) quality, in the sense of whether a movie is perceived as "good" rather than simply competently made, is not something they care about in the release of a film. Yeah it helps, sure, especially in the marketing, but generally it doesn't matter because they see "quality" as ephemeral and they know from experience that audiences are extremely fickle so they stack the deck via actors you recognise, a well-defined & easily marketable genre, narrative beats that audiences understand. My business partner was utterly flabbergasted when an executive told him point blank that they didn't want their movie to garner too much "prestige" (critical praise from high brow critics) because they were concerned that it'd affect box office negatively. I've spoken to executives who've told me that the product that does the best for them on Netflix was overwhelmingly the junk that they got for a song, released as a favour for a filmmaker and it was consistently the product they promoted the least. And these small producers all say the same thing - they are consistently screwed over for revenue by the major streaming companies.
As for the streaming future, did Sam Adams just encounter streaming like a week ago? Aside from major studio films being released on streaming rather than theatrical its been this way since day one (with only a handful of actual incremental improvements over the years). When the major streaming services started they were desperate for content but not that interested in promoting it. This was even more pronounced in smaller markets (i.e. in countries other than the US or the UK). And, then as now, they have no interest in promoting product that isn't theirs so they actively make it difficult to find things. That's why Netflix, despite having a complex genre structure, doesn't make that easily available to the consumer. The last major revision for Prime, at least the Canadian version, removed some of the search abilities in some versions of their app. You can still sort of find things if you have some well honed searches but not very well. Or try finding films from a specific country or language. For Prime you have to rely on the "what other films people who watched this watched" category which is a terrible way to search or you have to use outside search engines like Justwatch.com. Utterly ridiculous.
In terms of streaming, I think what reassures me somewhat is the emergence of services in the last few years that cater to the wider world of cinema (Criterion, Mubi, and others mentioned above). I don't have numbers on these services but the fact that they exist at all indicates at least there is more than a passing interest in wider cinematic offerings. Also Netflix and other big services do seem to be interested in making product for local markets with little studio intervention. They still have their issues of course - you may only get 2 seasons, it can still be a mixed bag quality wise, promotion can be sketchy, finding that content can be harder than it should be or it can be region locked and only available in some areas. I've also been seeing some relaxing of prohibitions on non-cis oriented product and less reticence to release product containing nudity (especially sexualised male nudity). My problem with these streamers (small or otherwise) though continues to be that the services are not always available internationally, they don't promote smaller or niche films all that much, terrible search engines and they don't pay much in return.
So I can't take much of this article terribly serious. Yeah it will suck for theatres and some of our beloved cinemas will be gone when we come out the other side of this pandemic. And theatrical attendance will likely take longer to fully recover. Film festivals will be certainly different but how exactly? Who knows? But I don't think its going to directly change the type of releases we see from major studios, at least not for another 3 to 5 years. Consider this - in the next 2 years we're getting something like a dozen superhero films the last time I checked. Its going to take a bit of time before we truly see the direct impact of the pandemic on the content of studio releases because Hollywood is a slow moving train. And we can only guess how audiences will respond to that product especially post-pandemic.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:02 PM on November 23, 2020 [12 favorites]
It must be nice to live in a place with enough space for a proper entertainment center.
I rent a room. I don't mind streaming most movies (dramas and comedies) on my laptop hooked up to a desktop screen, so this streaming-based future looks ... passable. I'll live.
posted by fatehunter at 12:20 PM on November 23, 2020
I rent a room. I don't mind streaming most movies (dramas and comedies) on my laptop hooked up to a desktop screen, so this streaming-based future looks ... passable. I'll live.
posted by fatehunter at 12:20 PM on November 23, 2020
Disregarding the current blight of cell phones inside, the worst is all you goddamn eaters, with your popcorn, crinkly wrappers and rustling sacks of take-out you've smuggled in. Why not enjoy the nice meal after the movie?
Lol you’re really railing against the affront of people eating popcorn at a movie theater?? That’s some next level cinephile snobbery—congrats!
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:15 PM on November 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
Lol you’re really railing against the affront of people eating popcorn at a movie theater?? That’s some next level cinephile snobbery—congrats!
posted by Atom Eyes at 1:15 PM on November 23, 2020 [6 favorites]
For me the cinema is about more than the sense of occasion. Its sitting with a screen that takes up most of my vision, of being entirely focused on what's in front of me and being absorbed into that world for two hours.
For me also, but it's because of the misophonia, Atom Eyes -- can't concentrate and become absorbed in the feature, if you're sitting behind me eating. But I do realize others go to the movies for the group aspect, where the quality of the film isn't as important as the group experience.
posted by Rash at 1:31 PM on November 23, 2020
For me also, but it's because of the misophonia, Atom Eyes -- can't concentrate and become absorbed in the feature, if you're sitting behind me eating. But I do realize others go to the movies for the group aspect, where the quality of the film isn't as important as the group experience.
posted by Rash at 1:31 PM on November 23, 2020
I remember seeing Sorry to Bother You in a non-arthouse theater in Dallas and thinking "I cannot believe this got released in theaters." Last year Netflix released Marriage Story and I remember watching it and thinking "oh man, this is like all of the movies from the 70s I used to watch. Family dramas with real, non-super-heroic people doing mostly ordinary things. I sure am glad Netflix exists." Would I have rather seen that in a theater? Absolutely. Did it come out in theaters? For like a week in select cities.
Movie theaters gave up on showing a lot of good stuff before 2020. They had winnowed and winnowed until we were left w/ a handful of gigantic punching/explosion movies, a couple of rom-coms, a few "cheap" (meaning budget of $50 million) horror films, and then a spattering of Oscar bait films every year. There wasn't any place for the mid-budget non-genre film any more. That's fine, there are streaming services to take up the slack.
Who knows? Maybe the backlash will lead to studios not tying all that money to something that you have to pay $15/ticket to see. Maybe they'll see less risk in some of those smaller films. Probably not, but a guy can dream...
posted by nushustu at 2:11 PM on November 23, 2020
Movie theaters gave up on showing a lot of good stuff before 2020. They had winnowed and winnowed until we were left w/ a handful of gigantic punching/explosion movies, a couple of rom-coms, a few "cheap" (meaning budget of $50 million) horror films, and then a spattering of Oscar bait films every year. There wasn't any place for the mid-budget non-genre film any more. That's fine, there are streaming services to take up the slack.
Who knows? Maybe the backlash will lead to studios not tying all that money to something that you have to pay $15/ticket to see. Maybe they'll see less risk in some of those smaller films. Probably not, but a guy can dream...
posted by nushustu at 2:11 PM on November 23, 2020
One response I'm hearing is for production teams to form up COVID pods during the time when they're working together. So get tested, get cleared, then only interact with each other, sealed off from the world.
This involves podding all the other than talent people that are involved in the process - electricians, grips, craft services, etc. Doable but much harder.
Production/stories are already changing though. I noticed it on one of the office/legal dramas my spouse watches which suddenly features shared meals at the office - spread a few take out containers around and you have a natural out to skip wearing a mask for that scene.
posted by Mitheral at 2:38 PM on November 23, 2020
This involves podding all the other than talent people that are involved in the process - electricians, grips, craft services, etc. Doable but much harder.
Production/stories are already changing though. I noticed it on one of the office/legal dramas my spouse watches which suddenly features shared meals at the office - spread a few take out containers around and you have a natural out to skip wearing a mask for that scene.
posted by Mitheral at 2:38 PM on November 23, 2020
> Yes, I, for one, miss all the independent movies that would be shown at my friendly neighbourhood multiplex.
Not only do I have independent movies being shown at my friendly neighborhood multiplex, but it's in walking distance of my house and it costs $4. Oh, and they sell wine and cider. I really hope it survives COVID; I don't see how it can.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:54 PM on November 23, 2020
Not only do I have independent movies being shown at my friendly neighborhood multiplex, but it's in walking distance of my house and it costs $4. Oh, and they sell wine and cider. I really hope it survives COVID; I don't see how it can.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:54 PM on November 23, 2020
Lol you’re really railing against the affront of people eating popcorn at a movie theater?? That’s some next level cinephile snobbery—congrats!
I used to watch movies at the Warner Bros lot during their weekly afterwork employee (and apparently cousins of employees, since my cousin and his father-in-law were security dudes there) screenings in a room that was exactly like what they used for "...and then the director showed his movie to the studio big wigs..." scenes in movies. When I went, it was made extremely clear to me that if anyone in that room did something that caused others to be forced to to acknowledge that other human beings existed, someone who could really follow through with the threat of "..and you'll never work in this town again!!!!" would become your personal enemy. Eating popcorn would have gotten you murdered before the end of the first reel.
posted by sideshow at 5:45 PM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
I used to watch movies at the Warner Bros lot during their weekly afterwork employee (and apparently cousins of employees, since my cousin and his father-in-law were security dudes there) screenings in a room that was exactly like what they used for "...and then the director showed his movie to the studio big wigs..." scenes in movies. When I went, it was made extremely clear to me that if anyone in that room did something that caused others to be forced to to acknowledge that other human beings existed, someone who could really follow through with the threat of "..and you'll never work in this town again!!!!" would become your personal enemy. Eating popcorn would have gotten you murdered before the end of the first reel.
posted by sideshow at 5:45 PM on November 23, 2020 [1 favorite]
Mainstream criticism incorporated the position years ago that the true eclectic would be able to appreciate any type of film, from indie to mass-market. But certain fans of certain mass-market films still have a chip on their shoulder about the idea that somebody somewhere doesn’t think the movies they like are respectable.
There's an interesting (well, interesting to some of us anyway) essay to be written, or post to be made on how criticism and ideas around aesthetics have changed over the past couple decades, because the change has been large, though perhaps also subtle for people who don't read a lot of it. Critics, by and large, have incorporated the position that the boundary between so called "high" and "low" art is, more or less, gone and all movies, or whatever else, is to be judged by some other definitions.
In doing that though there is an argument that they overcorrected, that by saying there is no difference, they've simply allowed for the best "liked" works to be seen as entirely equivalent to more, let's say, challenging works. That causes problems of a sort by suggesting anything that isn't immediately appealing to a mass audience needn't really be engaged with because there is no significant difference in quality involved, even though there quite obviously is something that makes some works easily relatable and others more of a niche appeal.
In bending towards mass culture, critics haven't done a very good job in explicating what it is that mass culture does that niche or audience challenging works aren't doing and why that difference has importance, failing to delineate well the distinction between intensity and complexity of emotional effect and where each is coming from, or in just noting the importance we place on the film equivalent of conspicuous consumption, where spectacle both requires and reflect an importance of money that audiences are drawn to. We like to see it in the stories, wealthy characters evil and good, expensive gadgets, and mass destruction of expensive things. That is central to Hollywood spectacle and also informs the lazy UScentric attitude people have towards movies and the arts.
Along with the rise in acceptance of mass market works as representing the heights of the medium, there have been countervailing trends towards a new examination of morality and the arts, with in the vital and necessary look towards representation and challenging the values associated with white male dominance of art history, and in the often less successful demands for art to conform to the world as it should be prescriptive view rather than more complex (allowing that those two ideals often conflict and can be difficult to unravel), as well as the emergence of a glut of dubious "scientific" examinations of art and aesthetics, evo-art, cognitive studies, and so on, which are so focused on the mechanics of how art allegedly works that they operate more like coroners than physicians looking at living patients.
It's all led to a new kind of "nowism" that has some real value, but also some real problems involved. But, as I say, that's more a subject for another post someday more than this one, even though it all figures into our changing values around movie appreciation fed by changing technology and culture.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:37 AM on November 24, 2020 [5 favorites]
There's an interesting (well, interesting to some of us anyway) essay to be written, or post to be made on how criticism and ideas around aesthetics have changed over the past couple decades, because the change has been large, though perhaps also subtle for people who don't read a lot of it. Critics, by and large, have incorporated the position that the boundary between so called "high" and "low" art is, more or less, gone and all movies, or whatever else, is to be judged by some other definitions.
In doing that though there is an argument that they overcorrected, that by saying there is no difference, they've simply allowed for the best "liked" works to be seen as entirely equivalent to more, let's say, challenging works. That causes problems of a sort by suggesting anything that isn't immediately appealing to a mass audience needn't really be engaged with because there is no significant difference in quality involved, even though there quite obviously is something that makes some works easily relatable and others more of a niche appeal.
In bending towards mass culture, critics haven't done a very good job in explicating what it is that mass culture does that niche or audience challenging works aren't doing and why that difference has importance, failing to delineate well the distinction between intensity and complexity of emotional effect and where each is coming from, or in just noting the importance we place on the film equivalent of conspicuous consumption, where spectacle both requires and reflect an importance of money that audiences are drawn to. We like to see it in the stories, wealthy characters evil and good, expensive gadgets, and mass destruction of expensive things. That is central to Hollywood spectacle and also informs the lazy UScentric attitude people have towards movies and the arts.
Along with the rise in acceptance of mass market works as representing the heights of the medium, there have been countervailing trends towards a new examination of morality and the arts, with in the vital and necessary look towards representation and challenging the values associated with white male dominance of art history, and in the often less successful demands for art to conform to the world as it should be prescriptive view rather than more complex (allowing that those two ideals often conflict and can be difficult to unravel), as well as the emergence of a glut of dubious "scientific" examinations of art and aesthetics, evo-art, cognitive studies, and so on, which are so focused on the mechanics of how art allegedly works that they operate more like coroners than physicians looking at living patients.
It's all led to a new kind of "nowism" that has some real value, but also some real problems involved. But, as I say, that's more a subject for another post someday more than this one, even though it all figures into our changing values around movie appreciation fed by changing technology and culture.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:37 AM on November 24, 2020 [5 favorites]
There's an interesting (well, interesting to some of us anyway) essay to be written, or post to be made on how criticism and ideas around aesthetics have changed over the past couple decades, because the change has been large
Books on this have been a steady stream since ~2000 (easy starting points are mass market-oriented books like Nobrow: the Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture; When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow: the Culture of Nobrow; or From Lowbrow to Nobrow). In music, the absolute best, totally frame-altering book I know is Lydia Goehr's The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, which not only destroys any reference frame of 'high' and 'low', but also challenges the idea of a thing called a musical 'work' in the first place. (This broad topic was part of my dissertation a while back, so apologies for rambling about something in my wheelhouse.)
It's all led to a new kind of "nowism" that has some real value, but also some real problems involved
It's a false dilemma to choose between the old high/low framing on one hand, and total cultural relativism and ephemerality on the other. Part of what's happened over the last couple of decades is an opening of access along with a noticeable increase in substance in many mass-market creative works, owing in large part to the nature of new media access (i.e., streaming, and the concurrent ability rewatch, study, read about, and so on). My undergraduate students are innate scholars of popular culture in ways that I never was (and couldn't have been in the 1990s), and the popular creative culture that they're binging and dissecting has far more substance than most entertainment I grew up with--and they're actively doing curative work, watching and listening back along the mass media timeline, discovering what's interesting and worth keeping from the before times. Alongside that, for the past few decades--in the wake of active postmodernism I suppose--artists have been creating really substantial works that are intended to be more open and accessible to a larger audience, without being dumbed-down at all.
So the move beyond a high/low framing in our creative behaviors has not been toward its opposite, some kind of indiscriminate, mushy middle, but has rather been just that, beyond it, toward a sense where any kind of creative work--subtle existential parable or zombie comedy--can have real craft and thoughtfulness and even deeper meaning or resonance; great art can be made from literal trash, and utter garbage can be made from the finest materials. This sense has ebbed and flowed throughout creative culture for a long time, in different ways, but what's new now are the larger cultural patterns of behavior strongly engaged with such work.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:32 AM on November 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
Books on this have been a steady stream since ~2000 (easy starting points are mass market-oriented books like Nobrow: the Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture; When Highbrow Meets Lowbrow: the Culture of Nobrow; or From Lowbrow to Nobrow). In music, the absolute best, totally frame-altering book I know is Lydia Goehr's The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, which not only destroys any reference frame of 'high' and 'low', but also challenges the idea of a thing called a musical 'work' in the first place. (This broad topic was part of my dissertation a while back, so apologies for rambling about something in my wheelhouse.)
It's all led to a new kind of "nowism" that has some real value, but also some real problems involved
It's a false dilemma to choose between the old high/low framing on one hand, and total cultural relativism and ephemerality on the other. Part of what's happened over the last couple of decades is an opening of access along with a noticeable increase in substance in many mass-market creative works, owing in large part to the nature of new media access (i.e., streaming, and the concurrent ability rewatch, study, read about, and so on). My undergraduate students are innate scholars of popular culture in ways that I never was (and couldn't have been in the 1990s), and the popular creative culture that they're binging and dissecting has far more substance than most entertainment I grew up with--and they're actively doing curative work, watching and listening back along the mass media timeline, discovering what's interesting and worth keeping from the before times. Alongside that, for the past few decades--in the wake of active postmodernism I suppose--artists have been creating really substantial works that are intended to be more open and accessible to a larger audience, without being dumbed-down at all.
So the move beyond a high/low framing in our creative behaviors has not been toward its opposite, some kind of indiscriminate, mushy middle, but has rather been just that, beyond it, toward a sense where any kind of creative work--subtle existential parable or zombie comedy--can have real craft and thoughtfulness and even deeper meaning or resonance; great art can be made from literal trash, and utter garbage can be made from the finest materials. This sense has ebbed and flowed throughout creative culture for a long time, in different ways, but what's new now are the larger cultural patterns of behavior strongly engaged with such work.
posted by LooseFilter at 8:32 AM on November 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
Heh. Glad to know someone else is really interested in this. I'm aware of books on the subject, or more accurately I suppose books seeking to redefine the subject, less music than other arts which are more my thing, but I know of it's happened/ing in music too. The suggestion about an essay was more in finding a nice source that summarizes some of the trends in criticism into short form rather than the more involved arguments around whys the books often lay out.
My argument, as necessarily abbreviated as a few paragraphs required, is definitely not standing up for high/low or any like framing, nor is it claiming full relativism and ephemerality, just that there is in many of the arguments about the arts and aesthetics a kind of muddle that has come form ditching the old frame works that hasn't been, to my eyes, satisfactorily resolved in part because there is an acceptance of multiple frame being viable.
Which is great to an extent, but always circling problems that accompany the overthrow of old models of authority in terms of how value claims are established, or chosen to be set aside, and in comparing works from different methods, viewpoints, and mediums in something more than mechanistic measures of explanation or falling back on reception as sufficient measure alone. The loss of some old school aesthetic approaches to concepts of meaning and beauty, even if not in the same exact form, haven't been replaced with anything better in some important ways in how art is discussed I think.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:51 AM on November 24, 2020
My argument, as necessarily abbreviated as a few paragraphs required, is definitely not standing up for high/low or any like framing, nor is it claiming full relativism and ephemerality, just that there is in many of the arguments about the arts and aesthetics a kind of muddle that has come form ditching the old frame works that hasn't been, to my eyes, satisfactorily resolved in part because there is an acceptance of multiple frame being viable.
Which is great to an extent, but always circling problems that accompany the overthrow of old models of authority in terms of how value claims are established, or chosen to be set aside, and in comparing works from different methods, viewpoints, and mediums in something more than mechanistic measures of explanation or falling back on reception as sufficient measure alone. The loss of some old school aesthetic approaches to concepts of meaning and beauty, even if not in the same exact form, haven't been replaced with anything better in some important ways in how art is discussed I think.
posted by gusottertrout at 8:51 AM on November 24, 2020
that there is in many of the arguments about the arts and aesthetics a kind of muddle that has come form ditching the old frame works that hasn't been, to my eyes, satisfactorily resolved in part because there is an acceptance of multiple frame being viable
I see, thanks for your clarification! Not to derail this thread too much, but you very succinctly mention the problem as:
something more than mechanistic measures of explanation or falling back on reception as sufficient measure alone
I totally get this, and personally checked out of most of our contemporary cultural framings and discussions a while ago, as a result. It seems like the whole issue is that aesthetics has been pursued as some kind of objectively definable set of qualities that a given creative work is able to have varying degrees of, when actually there is no objective way to define an intrinsically subjective experience like (e.g.) beauty--beauty isn't a noun really, it's more like a description of the sensation (verb) that the beholder experiences. So as long as the framing is 'what is objectively aesthetically good or desirable,' I think the question is unanswerable because any sensory/sensual experience is subjective to the person having it, and besides, isn't really a thing at all, it's an experience, and ultimately "I like it so it's good" is an irrefutable argument.
But if aesthetics (broadly speaking) is instead considered to describe the kinds of subjective responses typically elicited by a given work, I think it's a more meaningful and discussable idea. This seems to me to resolve the dilemma you describe (between objective frames and more diverse or mutable ones that endlessly proclaim their subjective truths) by saying that, yes, a kind of subjective relativism is inherent in aesthetics, because aesthetics describes the relationship between a creative work and the person(s) experiencing it; however, it also allows for discussion of the objective aspects of made things--one has to define metrics, or provide some kind of explanation of what merits 'good' or 'successful,' but those things can be explained and discussed fairly clearly. This allows for some degree of objective argument around things, phenomena, and experiences that are, ultimately, subjective in nature.
So I guess to the degree that aesthetic evaluation of creative work is considered in any way to be fundamentally objective, the idea of aesthetics is question-begging on an absurd scale: a creative work offers an experience to human beings who read/watch/listen to/taste/feel it, and literally all experience is subjective; thus the subjectivity inherent in the experience of creative work must be meaningfully included in any framing that seeks to discuss it. Paradoxically, I think that allows for robust discussion of more objective aspects of creative works, too.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:16 AM on November 24, 2020
I see, thanks for your clarification! Not to derail this thread too much, but you very succinctly mention the problem as:
something more than mechanistic measures of explanation or falling back on reception as sufficient measure alone
I totally get this, and personally checked out of most of our contemporary cultural framings and discussions a while ago, as a result. It seems like the whole issue is that aesthetics has been pursued as some kind of objectively definable set of qualities that a given creative work is able to have varying degrees of, when actually there is no objective way to define an intrinsically subjective experience like (e.g.) beauty--beauty isn't a noun really, it's more like a description of the sensation (verb) that the beholder experiences. So as long as the framing is 'what is objectively aesthetically good or desirable,' I think the question is unanswerable because any sensory/sensual experience is subjective to the person having it, and besides, isn't really a thing at all, it's an experience, and ultimately "I like it so it's good" is an irrefutable argument.
But if aesthetics (broadly speaking) is instead considered to describe the kinds of subjective responses typically elicited by a given work, I think it's a more meaningful and discussable idea. This seems to me to resolve the dilemma you describe (between objective frames and more diverse or mutable ones that endlessly proclaim their subjective truths) by saying that, yes, a kind of subjective relativism is inherent in aesthetics, because aesthetics describes the relationship between a creative work and the person(s) experiencing it; however, it also allows for discussion of the objective aspects of made things--one has to define metrics, or provide some kind of explanation of what merits 'good' or 'successful,' but those things can be explained and discussed fairly clearly. This allows for some degree of objective argument around things, phenomena, and experiences that are, ultimately, subjective in nature.
So I guess to the degree that aesthetic evaluation of creative work is considered in any way to be fundamentally objective, the idea of aesthetics is question-begging on an absurd scale: a creative work offers an experience to human beings who read/watch/listen to/taste/feel it, and literally all experience is subjective; thus the subjectivity inherent in the experience of creative work must be meaningfully included in any framing that seeks to discuss it. Paradoxically, I think that allows for robust discussion of more objective aspects of creative works, too.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:16 AM on November 24, 2020
But I can watch more if I stay home and stream things, and I probably watch more diverse content at home too, because the commitment is a lot lower.
You would think that, but for me my movie consumption has gone down to 2-3 movies this year vs 2-3 a month. I was thinking about this and the main advantage a theater screen has over my home computer screen is that the theater is relatively distraction free. When I'm at home, a movie competes with literally everything else on the internet (and of course, at home there's always chores nagging at me). In contrast when I decide to go to the movies, me buying a ticket is pretty much making an appointment to be there for 2-3 hours so I make sure I'm not going to be doing anything else. Then I go to the theater, shut off my phone and sit in a darkened room. For you finding parking and buying tickets are annoyances and not having do them saves time, but for me I think these were kind of like rituals that reinforced my theatergoing behavior.
posted by FJT at 10:48 AM on November 24, 2020 [3 favorites]
You would think that, but for me my movie consumption has gone down to 2-3 movies this year vs 2-3 a month. I was thinking about this and the main advantage a theater screen has over my home computer screen is that the theater is relatively distraction free. When I'm at home, a movie competes with literally everything else on the internet (and of course, at home there's always chores nagging at me). In contrast when I decide to go to the movies, me buying a ticket is pretty much making an appointment to be there for 2-3 hours so I make sure I'm not going to be doing anything else. Then I go to the theater, shut off my phone and sit in a darkened room. For you finding parking and buying tickets are annoyances and not having do them saves time, but for me I think these were kind of like rituals that reinforced my theatergoing behavior.
posted by FJT at 10:48 AM on November 24, 2020 [3 favorites]
So I guess to the degree that aesthetic evaluation of creative work is considered in any way to be fundamentally objective, the idea of aesthetics is question-begging on an absurd scale: a creative work offers an experience to human beings who read/watch/listen to/taste/feel it, and literally all experience is subjective; thus the subjectivity inherent in the experience of creative work must be meaningfully included in any framing that seeks to discuss it. Paradoxically, I think that allows for robust discussion of more objective aspects of creative works, too.
Right, that does get towards the core issue I see in regards to talking about art, not so much making it. Some need to attempt to better quantify the experience so it can be better shared, otherwise the dynamic leads towards simplification and reward for emphasizing the easier to communicate emotions, which are often "bigger" for the being simpler to express. One only need look to how well Disney/Marvel has done with repeatedly emphasizing things like friendship and its potential absence to see that, like when offered near godhood Peter Quill whines "What about my friends?" as if he was a sixth grader whose dad told him they were moving for his new job, as if people don't regularly leave their friends behind to go to college or other adult activities, or when Iron Man offers a pouty "I thought we were friends" to Captain America at the end of Civil War, as if that, not the convoluted and ultimately dropped questions of responsibility didn't matter as much as being picked last for a grade school team, or even Endgame's "On your left" as if the 23 films were just a long build up to a Fort/Da game.
It can't just be like Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic from the NYT once had it, where he claimed Eleanor Rigby and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony were "equally profound" and thus unable to be meaningfully differentiated, making Mahler a useless vestige since you could have an equal experience in less than three minutes with The Beatles. It's not that Eleanor Rigby isn't "good" or that it doesn't carry meaning or significance to people, but that it's a shirking of critical response to leave it at "equally profound" without even trying to explicate the different emotional scales and weights involved. I guess I'm not too far from asking, like Sontag did, for a poetics of interpretation, since we've got the "how" art gets made down pat and the internet is overflowing with people who have the definite answers on the "one true meaning" a work has when you assemble the puzzle pieces just so. Ugh.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:54 AM on November 24, 2020
Right, that does get towards the core issue I see in regards to talking about art, not so much making it. Some need to attempt to better quantify the experience so it can be better shared, otherwise the dynamic leads towards simplification and reward for emphasizing the easier to communicate emotions, which are often "bigger" for the being simpler to express. One only need look to how well Disney/Marvel has done with repeatedly emphasizing things like friendship and its potential absence to see that, like when offered near godhood Peter Quill whines "What about my friends?" as if he was a sixth grader whose dad told him they were moving for his new job, as if people don't regularly leave their friends behind to go to college or other adult activities, or when Iron Man offers a pouty "I thought we were friends" to Captain America at the end of Civil War, as if that, not the convoluted and ultimately dropped questions of responsibility didn't matter as much as being picked last for a grade school team, or even Endgame's "On your left" as if the 23 films were just a long build up to a Fort/Da game.
It can't just be like Anthony Tommasini, the chief classical music critic from the NYT once had it, where he claimed Eleanor Rigby and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony were "equally profound" and thus unable to be meaningfully differentiated, making Mahler a useless vestige since you could have an equal experience in less than three minutes with The Beatles. It's not that Eleanor Rigby isn't "good" or that it doesn't carry meaning or significance to people, but that it's a shirking of critical response to leave it at "equally profound" without even trying to explicate the different emotional scales and weights involved. I guess I'm not too far from asking, like Sontag did, for a poetics of interpretation, since we've got the "how" art gets made down pat and the internet is overflowing with people who have the definite answers on the "one true meaning" a work has when you assemble the puzzle pieces just so. Ugh.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:54 AM on November 24, 2020
Critics, by and large, have incorporated the position that the boundary between so called "high" and "low" art is, more or less, gone and all movies, or whatever else, is to be judged by some other definitions.
Well, you have that version - which, being more of a music person than a movie person, I identify as related to the term “poptimism” though I’m sure some people will say “poptimism” was only meant to be a response to the specific problems of “rockism.” There’s also the Roger Ebert philosophy of movie reviewing - that one takes blockbusters seriously by comparing them to Steven Spielberg, not Terrence Malick. I’m more in the second camp.
Paradoxically, I think that allows for robust discussion of more objective aspects of creative works, too.
I think one of the main problems with the current atmosphere is that people forget that the old critique of mass culture was tied to a critique of the conditions of its production. Now so much criticism basically functions as an extension of the promotional apparatus of the biggest media companies on Earth.
posted by atoxyl at 11:01 AM on November 24, 2020
Well, you have that version - which, being more of a music person than a movie person, I identify as related to the term “poptimism” though I’m sure some people will say “poptimism” was only meant to be a response to the specific problems of “rockism.” There’s also the Roger Ebert philosophy of movie reviewing - that one takes blockbusters seriously by comparing them to Steven Spielberg, not Terrence Malick. I’m more in the second camp.
Paradoxically, I think that allows for robust discussion of more objective aspects of creative works, too.
I think one of the main problems with the current atmosphere is that people forget that the old critique of mass culture was tied to a critique of the conditions of its production. Now so much criticism basically functions as an extension of the promotional apparatus of the biggest media companies on Earth.
posted by atoxyl at 11:01 AM on November 24, 2020
he claimed Eleanor Rigby and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony were "equally profound" and thus unable to be meaningfully differentiated, making Mahler a useless vestige since you could have an equal experience in less than three minutes with The Beatles
One gets into a lot of problems of commensurability here. I’m pretty into Mahler and I still have no trouble intuitively saying “Eleanor Rigby” is, in some sense, equal to Mahler, partly because of what it does in a short length. But they don’t do the same thing, and it’s pretty difficult to closely compare what they do at all. And most pop songs are not on a level with “Eleanor Rigby.”
posted by atoxyl at 11:08 AM on November 24, 2020
One gets into a lot of problems of commensurability here. I’m pretty into Mahler and I still have no trouble intuitively saying “Eleanor Rigby” is, in some sense, equal to Mahler, partly because of what it does in a short length. But they don’t do the same thing, and it’s pretty difficult to closely compare what they do at all. And most pop songs are not on a level with “Eleanor Rigby.”
posted by atoxyl at 11:08 AM on November 24, 2020
One gets into a lot of problems of commensurability here.
Yeah, that's really the point in a way. It's how we discuss the works in criticism, not the works themselves that's the problem. Eleanor Rigby is excellent at what it does, but the emotions it works off of are more readily tweaked, they're "bigger" for being easy to identify and associate with for most audiences than what Mahler was working with. That's not a problem for Eleanor Rigby, but it needs explicating in some sense to aid audiences in better appreciating Mahler. Making Eleanor Rigby wasn't easy, but appreciating it is for the sort of tripled play off loneliness it works with. Providing a mix of distance, pulling the listener into detailed accounting of its characters solitary existences, then pulling back as if the narrator was driving past at some speed looking at them in a moment of idle curiosity soon to pass, before the chorus joins in almost tauntingly echoing the brief wonder.
It's a lovely bit of weighting of emotion, but nonetheless such that most audiences will be feel easily and readily. It, in that sense, becomes something like revenge as an animating emotion in a movie, an easy hook for the audience to latch on to. That's why certain emotions are so frequent in popular art, the audience feels them easily and deeply for the lack of complication around their basic form. There's nothing at all wrong with that per se, though many uses are pretty dreadful and allow a lot of subsidiary crap to be hung on the same hooks by association and weight of feeling, but that isn't the issue with Eleanor Rigby, nor is it that it's a pop song, as one could find a lot of cliched classical music that lacks the emotional complexity or weight of some pop music, just that failing to even attempt to delineate or discuss the differences is a major critical failure.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:36 AM on November 24, 2020
Yeah, that's really the point in a way. It's how we discuss the works in criticism, not the works themselves that's the problem. Eleanor Rigby is excellent at what it does, but the emotions it works off of are more readily tweaked, they're "bigger" for being easy to identify and associate with for most audiences than what Mahler was working with. That's not a problem for Eleanor Rigby, but it needs explicating in some sense to aid audiences in better appreciating Mahler. Making Eleanor Rigby wasn't easy, but appreciating it is for the sort of tripled play off loneliness it works with. Providing a mix of distance, pulling the listener into detailed accounting of its characters solitary existences, then pulling back as if the narrator was driving past at some speed looking at them in a moment of idle curiosity soon to pass, before the chorus joins in almost tauntingly echoing the brief wonder.
It's a lovely bit of weighting of emotion, but nonetheless such that most audiences will be feel easily and readily. It, in that sense, becomes something like revenge as an animating emotion in a movie, an easy hook for the audience to latch on to. That's why certain emotions are so frequent in popular art, the audience feels them easily and deeply for the lack of complication around their basic form. There's nothing at all wrong with that per se, though many uses are pretty dreadful and allow a lot of subsidiary crap to be hung on the same hooks by association and weight of feeling, but that isn't the issue with Eleanor Rigby, nor is it that it's a pop song, as one could find a lot of cliched classical music that lacks the emotional complexity or weight of some pop music, just that failing to even attempt to delineate or discuss the differences is a major critical failure.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:36 AM on November 24, 2020
failing to even attempt to delineate or discuss the differences is a major critical failure
Criticism hasn't done this for decades (save for the occasional Ebert-type), but there is a fair-sized body of academic work that does what you're describing. Is your complaint that more accessible versions aren't available? Because such writing has been and is being produced (at least, it is in my field of music), just not in popular-facing ways.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:29 PM on November 24, 2020
Criticism hasn't done this for decades (save for the occasional Ebert-type), but there is a fair-sized body of academic work that does what you're describing. Is your complaint that more accessible versions aren't available? Because such writing has been and is being produced (at least, it is in my field of music), just not in popular-facing ways.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:29 PM on November 24, 2020
Criticism hasn't done this for decades (save for the occasional Ebert-type), but there is a fair-sized body of academic work that does what you're describing. Is your complaint that more accessible versions aren't available? Because such writing has been and is being produced (at least, it is in my field of music), just not in popular-facing ways.
Heh. Well, yeah, that was part of my complaint, the loss of that kind of criticism is of some importance, both to the arts and the culture. Ebert, by all accounts a lovely man, was more an enthusiast than critic in that way, where he could sometimes provide insight into a work, but was more concerned with his audience and in encouraging them to see the things he loved. Nothing wrong with that at all of course, the arts needs enthusiasts, but, some of Ebert's claims on his method notwithstanding, centered the experience of a movie around the audience, both in "selling" the movie to them and in explaining it in terms of response.
That's maybe a bit better than, say, Kael's approach of treating her reaction as audience surrogate and speaking in the equivalent of a royal "we", though Kael was generally more insightful in her disapprovals, and maybe even a bit better than fanboy Sarris forever seeking to better categorize and rank movies and their makers.
All of those have some rough, though often lesser, equivalents today, the idea of categorzing and ranking obviously has found its sometimes obnoxious supporters, the snarky disapprovals to some cause aren't hard to find, and many would love to be the next Ebert, providing a well regarded buyer's guide to movies, and they all have their part to play, but the thing that's far less common is the approach that isn't that interested in whether something is going to be "liked" by an audience or not, but instead seeks to capture what the essence of the work is and let whoever reads it decide what they do with that information.
Someone more like Edmund Wilson but mixed with bell hooks, who can look at the work in detail but place it within a cultural context that isn't necessarily the dominant one. There's been so much important writing on the arts that is either not known or maybe quoted out of context rather than being absorbed as a concept and adapted to today's use that the writing on the arts should reflect that and be able to relay the ideas to a general audience much better than it does.
To be sure, with so much writing on the subject nowadays, one can occasionally come across a piece that does do some of that, but not all that often. There are books that are better, mostly those looking at a body of work, either from an artist, genre, or era, less often with individual works since we like to still categorize the works with the artist as personality to a large degree. Even writers like John Berger and Alex Ross fall into that pattern at times, sometimes to useful effect, sometimes to banality.
There may well be better writing that I haven't read, but a lot of what I do read tends to fall more into the mechanically descriptive method of talking about how something is put together, or in the more popular writing, talking about narrative effect in a TV Trope like manner or proper classification of type. We're all so saturated with mass market media now that we've become shallowly sophisticated. We almost instinctively know the patterns of mass media and how and where our response is supposed to be shaped, so that anything we see or hear that doesn't fit is often "corrected" by writers to better match the desired beats or rejected out of hand for failure.
The occasions where that doesn't happen, as when a movie like Parasite gains some interest despite being somewhat outside the standard norm, then we can see there is an interest in having the work better explicated, that's the case even with something like Black Panther, so it isn't that the audience can't be interested in that kind of writing, just that relying on a system designed for pandering and/or patronizing an audience isn't going to provide it and without being better challenged people aren't going to look for it. That's why we end up with this lazy US mass market dominance. It's easy, repeatable and people know what they are getting, but that's not good for anyone in the long run.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:04 AM on November 25, 2020
Heh. Well, yeah, that was part of my complaint, the loss of that kind of criticism is of some importance, both to the arts and the culture. Ebert, by all accounts a lovely man, was more an enthusiast than critic in that way, where he could sometimes provide insight into a work, but was more concerned with his audience and in encouraging them to see the things he loved. Nothing wrong with that at all of course, the arts needs enthusiasts, but, some of Ebert's claims on his method notwithstanding, centered the experience of a movie around the audience, both in "selling" the movie to them and in explaining it in terms of response.
That's maybe a bit better than, say, Kael's approach of treating her reaction as audience surrogate and speaking in the equivalent of a royal "we", though Kael was generally more insightful in her disapprovals, and maybe even a bit better than fanboy Sarris forever seeking to better categorize and rank movies and their makers.
All of those have some rough, though often lesser, equivalents today, the idea of categorzing and ranking obviously has found its sometimes obnoxious supporters, the snarky disapprovals to some cause aren't hard to find, and many would love to be the next Ebert, providing a well regarded buyer's guide to movies, and they all have their part to play, but the thing that's far less common is the approach that isn't that interested in whether something is going to be "liked" by an audience or not, but instead seeks to capture what the essence of the work is and let whoever reads it decide what they do with that information.
Someone more like Edmund Wilson but mixed with bell hooks, who can look at the work in detail but place it within a cultural context that isn't necessarily the dominant one. There's been so much important writing on the arts that is either not known or maybe quoted out of context rather than being absorbed as a concept and adapted to today's use that the writing on the arts should reflect that and be able to relay the ideas to a general audience much better than it does.
To be sure, with so much writing on the subject nowadays, one can occasionally come across a piece that does do some of that, but not all that often. There are books that are better, mostly those looking at a body of work, either from an artist, genre, or era, less often with individual works since we like to still categorize the works with the artist as personality to a large degree. Even writers like John Berger and Alex Ross fall into that pattern at times, sometimes to useful effect, sometimes to banality.
There may well be better writing that I haven't read, but a lot of what I do read tends to fall more into the mechanically descriptive method of talking about how something is put together, or in the more popular writing, talking about narrative effect in a TV Trope like manner or proper classification of type. We're all so saturated with mass market media now that we've become shallowly sophisticated. We almost instinctively know the patterns of mass media and how and where our response is supposed to be shaped, so that anything we see or hear that doesn't fit is often "corrected" by writers to better match the desired beats or rejected out of hand for failure.
The occasions where that doesn't happen, as when a movie like Parasite gains some interest despite being somewhat outside the standard norm, then we can see there is an interest in having the work better explicated, that's the case even with something like Black Panther, so it isn't that the audience can't be interested in that kind of writing, just that relying on a system designed for pandering and/or patronizing an audience isn't going to provide it and without being better challenged people aren't going to look for it. That's why we end up with this lazy US mass market dominance. It's easy, repeatable and people know what they are getting, but that's not good for anyone in the long run.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:04 AM on November 25, 2020
I would just like to say that you guys talking about what movie criticism does and doesn't do and how it does and doesn't cope with the present moment has been my fave thread on MetaFilter all week SO KEEP GOING, THIS IS GREAT.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:28 PM on November 25, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:28 PM on November 25, 2020 [1 favorite]
I, too, wish to subscribe to your newsletter thread!
posted by adrianhon at 2:49 AM on November 26, 2020
posted by adrianhon at 2:49 AM on November 26, 2020
Ooh, you don't have to ask me twice to go on about this subject, I'll take any excuse I can get.
My take is that criticism is something that often seems pretty straightforward, and in practice often is just that, a summary judgement of good/bad, like/dislike, and maybe some supporting evidence justifying one's feeling, but it should be something more than that because our relationship to the arts is far more complex and important than any summary judgement can provide.
The difficulty is that ideas of subjectivity/objectivity and in how we approach the works in the mix of investment and distance or disinterest we rely on in establishing or evaluating our response. The idea of critical distance, of approaching a work with an attitude of disinterest, judging the work solely on its own merits, or so the belief went, held in criticism for a long time, and while it had some real benefits, the drawbacks became more and more noted in how that attitude allowed for dominant values to be perpetuated at the expense of alternatives. A work of art, in more current terms, isn't just a thing with aesthetic attributes to be appreciated, but carrier of values and "meaning" as well and needs to be addressed as such. Shifts in how critics look at art aren't new, there have been other times where balances have been redrawn over ideas of content and expression and how we should think of them and there's always been a moral element around those ideas.
What's changed a bit in recent times is a more concerted denial of disinterest as an acceptable stance at all, or maybe more accurately, a widespread acceptance of investment as the more important element in appreciation and criticism. While some of that change, to my mind, has been a necessary adjustment, it also carried with it a new set of problems in how it has been adapted to differing ends. At the extreme of an ideal of critical disinterest is something of the notion that "beauty" exists in an artwork and the critics job is to recognize it and communicate that recognition, without concern over what the artwork may otherwise represent. The critic's job, in that way, isn't to judge "content" but formal expression basically. That obviously had problems when placed against the history of various "isms" that accompany the Western history of art being dominated by white men, so it was challenged for its failings.
Right now we appear to be approaching an opposite end, where discussion about art centers more on its representational elements, but also through the same discarding of disinterest as an organizing view, audience "pleasure", how deeply they invest themselves in the works as the apparent conceptual understanding is more that "beauty" exists only as apprehended with limited regard for who or how that comes about. The audience determines merit alone, the work is almost incidental to the response. This is likewise framed from a perspective of "now", where all works need fit the values of the moment, so old works are judged from how well they predict current belief and reward it, while new works are often judged by how well the ideal of how things should be. But that necessarily flatters ourselves with the perspective that our ideal will hold, which might seem fine as we live in the moment, but seems to frequently allow "us" to escape our own judgement. If we like it, a work is good because we are good and wouldn't like it otherwise. We seem to think of this as the work is good, therefore I like it, rather than I like it therefore the work is good, which would apply a different sort of pressure on our response.
In movies, for example, this allows us to judge older movies harshly when there are blatantly unacceptable behaviors/beliefs shown judged by current standards. Buster Keaton placing his character in The General as part of the Confederacy flips a circuit breaker of unacceptability. That's fine to some extent, no one should have to watch The General who would be disturbed by that, but the readiness of objection to the role appears to be based primarily on comfort, where it's just the films that directly show something objectionable that are to be discarded, even as the conditions and people that allowed those films to be made can still be enjoyed as long as the viewer can ignore the surrounding context. Buster Keaton, and Hollywood in general, didn't care about race all that much or at all beyond how it impacted box office. That's why they ignore the subject so totally most of the time. Watching almost any old movie, (old meaning up to even, what, a few years ago?) is watching a racist movie in a more complete sense for how the sense regarded PoC, but we allow our pleasures to complicate that understanding.
The issue though isn't one of either accepting or rejecting "old" movies out of hand, but in how that relates to how we see and talk about current films and shows. There's been a marked improvement in calling out depictions and narrative elements that fit well understood, among certain circles anyway, problematic histories of representation. That's a plus, but there much more difficulty in talking about the aspects of movies that aren't quite so obvious for still being an accepted element of filmmaking/storytelling. We find pleasure in the works that contain those elements and are bothered when they are pointed out because, it seems, that calls us into question ourselves for liking the work by dint of investment having become so central to how we think about the arts.
Stepping away from movies for example, think of Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, not a current song exactly but still a currently relevant one to many as recently reaffirmed as the "greatest song of all time" in a Rolling Stone list, to no one's surprise. At its most basic, Like a Rolling Stone is perhaps the ultimate misogynist diss track. It's about a woman losing her status and a male singer absolutely reveling at length and elaborate detail in her downfall. But already I can feel the objections arising, the desire to justify the song because it is held as deeply meaningful or just a favorite by so many. People do not want what they like to be deemed as containing unacceptable values because they are so invested in the work, but were you to say the same thing a work they don't care about or has less cultural cachet, like say, You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine, the same people might join in on the condemnation.
That points to the essence of what criticism should be about, by my thinking, better delineating the tension within different works or between the works and the times and all other aspects that provide a better refined appreciation of the work. In the case of Like a Rolling Stone, for example, the critic would need to deal with why it is that song has such a hold on so many people by looking at how it relays a sense of feeling, its locus of meaning, not just a simple "message", and ways in how that effect is understood in differing cultural contexts. Something more than Bob Dylan says it's his best song and that good enough for us would be a good start.
One of the ways critics tend to do this is by linking the work to the artist, something that has become increasingly fraught in recent times with so-called "cancel culture" where many artists have been rightly found to be dicks and had their own standing accordingly diminished. That isn't good criticism in itself though, because it is inadequate explanation of how their works hold significance and as it often only has orthogonal relationship to understanding the work itself. Biography might help give context to intent and the why of something being made when and how it was, but the work is the work and often doesn't carry clear indications of that intent nor is generally appreciated for it.
People, for example, try to link Like a Rolling Stone to some specific person in Dylan's life, which might be interesting to rock historians, but does absolutely nothing to explain the song's power for most who like it. Biography, in that way, will be used to attack or defend some interpretation of the work, by trying to show the artist as an ass or how they were justified in their creation. It's also a way hardcore fans often like to invest in the artist as special entity. Speculation on whether Taylor Swift's latest song is about her current boyfriend can lend a sense of making the artist almost a artwork to be invested in themselves, and is something some writing on the arts will do, to little good end result. Much better is trying to look at the song as a thing in itself from some distance, in order to get a feel for how it creates an effect and of what sort, by, say, noting how one might listen to Like a Rolling Stone without a conception of any specific relationship and understand the "you" of it as speaking to them, as if framing the song around the listener, even as they simultaneously know it is not addressed to them.
Whether that is the case for that song or not, the issue of importance is that the critic needs to locate the tension the work creates, or more accurately perhaps the tension felt between the specific an limited qualities of the work and the world of the listener. That requires the ability to look at the work in its entirety, not just, say, the lyrics, and temporarily set aside summary judgement in order to come to an understanding of the works elements, including how it might likely be responded to from as wide a range of likelihoods as possible. With that then the critic can apply a contextual understanding of the work, placing it in an era, along other works in a genre, or the artist's body of work if there is some sense of it communicating with other works in those areas. One can, for example, find a different type of appreciation for the films of John Ford by seeing how his body of work addressed similar themes over time, but to changing ends. Any individual work can be seen from multiple perspectives in that way, and often needs to be to be best appreciated.
The contextual element is where the critic can best address any problematic aspects, not by saying they were irrelevant because of changing times, that's lazy crap, but by enriching the understanding of the work by addressing the possible references or ideas of that it might touch on. The discussion of Dune, in another thread, goes back and forth with some of these things, placing the work in a context and arguing that context isn't sufficient. That's always going to be an issue with any criticism.
There is no final say, the work remains what it is, unchanging. (well, mostly, Hans doesn't always shoot first, but he did in one version, and the alterations can be addressed in that regard.) while the perspective of the audience is not fixed. The critical judgement can attempt to bridge that divide, but that's the less important element than locating where the tensions exist in the first place, as the need is to move away from summary judgement to something a bit more complex that gets beyond gainsaying. Art is best served and appreciated when it is dealt with as something of importance beyond audience reaction, but can't be left to stand above the audience as if not intersecting with the real world as that is where so much of our understanding of the arts resides.
In regards to things like streaming movies, the question then becomes one of trying to maintain the things of value in the arts while calling out the things that are or potentially might be conflict with that, which might well be convenience and a certain type of work increasing its foothold in the culture by the way streaming platforms limit choice, or could be a path to a broader array of options if the potential viewer would want them. The question relies as much on what it is viewers want, mass market entertainment as the majority of their "diet" or something more diverse.
There are a number of legitimate concerns over a choice of the former in how that shapes the culture, but there of course are equally legitimate reasons any individual viewer might have for wanting something familiar and relatively easy to digest. Not everyone is going to care about the arts the same way, we all have our own things that drive us, so it isn't about some people being uncooth or whatever, but that doesn't mean there aren't more and less involved ways to think about and appreciate the arts any more than there are more and less involved ways to appreciate anything else. It shouldn't be that greater involvement in something that most casually appreciate should be seen as a threat in that way, but perhaps as an alternative perspective worth considering for the more energy spent in contemplating it, worthy of some consideration.
(Sorry, I guess this is a good "be careful what you wish for" example. That's much too much I fear.)
posted by gusottertrout at 3:32 AM on November 26, 2020
My take is that criticism is something that often seems pretty straightforward, and in practice often is just that, a summary judgement of good/bad, like/dislike, and maybe some supporting evidence justifying one's feeling, but it should be something more than that because our relationship to the arts is far more complex and important than any summary judgement can provide.
The difficulty is that ideas of subjectivity/objectivity and in how we approach the works in the mix of investment and distance or disinterest we rely on in establishing or evaluating our response. The idea of critical distance, of approaching a work with an attitude of disinterest, judging the work solely on its own merits, or so the belief went, held in criticism for a long time, and while it had some real benefits, the drawbacks became more and more noted in how that attitude allowed for dominant values to be perpetuated at the expense of alternatives. A work of art, in more current terms, isn't just a thing with aesthetic attributes to be appreciated, but carrier of values and "meaning" as well and needs to be addressed as such. Shifts in how critics look at art aren't new, there have been other times where balances have been redrawn over ideas of content and expression and how we should think of them and there's always been a moral element around those ideas.
What's changed a bit in recent times is a more concerted denial of disinterest as an acceptable stance at all, or maybe more accurately, a widespread acceptance of investment as the more important element in appreciation and criticism. While some of that change, to my mind, has been a necessary adjustment, it also carried with it a new set of problems in how it has been adapted to differing ends. At the extreme of an ideal of critical disinterest is something of the notion that "beauty" exists in an artwork and the critics job is to recognize it and communicate that recognition, without concern over what the artwork may otherwise represent. The critic's job, in that way, isn't to judge "content" but formal expression basically. That obviously had problems when placed against the history of various "isms" that accompany the Western history of art being dominated by white men, so it was challenged for its failings.
Right now we appear to be approaching an opposite end, where discussion about art centers more on its representational elements, but also through the same discarding of disinterest as an organizing view, audience "pleasure", how deeply they invest themselves in the works as the apparent conceptual understanding is more that "beauty" exists only as apprehended with limited regard for who or how that comes about. The audience determines merit alone, the work is almost incidental to the response. This is likewise framed from a perspective of "now", where all works need fit the values of the moment, so old works are judged from how well they predict current belief and reward it, while new works are often judged by how well the ideal of how things should be. But that necessarily flatters ourselves with the perspective that our ideal will hold, which might seem fine as we live in the moment, but seems to frequently allow "us" to escape our own judgement. If we like it, a work is good because we are good and wouldn't like it otherwise. We seem to think of this as the work is good, therefore I like it, rather than I like it therefore the work is good, which would apply a different sort of pressure on our response.
In movies, for example, this allows us to judge older movies harshly when there are blatantly unacceptable behaviors/beliefs shown judged by current standards. Buster Keaton placing his character in The General as part of the Confederacy flips a circuit breaker of unacceptability. That's fine to some extent, no one should have to watch The General who would be disturbed by that, but the readiness of objection to the role appears to be based primarily on comfort, where it's just the films that directly show something objectionable that are to be discarded, even as the conditions and people that allowed those films to be made can still be enjoyed as long as the viewer can ignore the surrounding context. Buster Keaton, and Hollywood in general, didn't care about race all that much or at all beyond how it impacted box office. That's why they ignore the subject so totally most of the time. Watching almost any old movie, (old meaning up to even, what, a few years ago?) is watching a racist movie in a more complete sense for how the sense regarded PoC, but we allow our pleasures to complicate that understanding.
The issue though isn't one of either accepting or rejecting "old" movies out of hand, but in how that relates to how we see and talk about current films and shows. There's been a marked improvement in calling out depictions and narrative elements that fit well understood, among certain circles anyway, problematic histories of representation. That's a plus, but there much more difficulty in talking about the aspects of movies that aren't quite so obvious for still being an accepted element of filmmaking/storytelling. We find pleasure in the works that contain those elements and are bothered when they are pointed out because, it seems, that calls us into question ourselves for liking the work by dint of investment having become so central to how we think about the arts.
Stepping away from movies for example, think of Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, not a current song exactly but still a currently relevant one to many as recently reaffirmed as the "greatest song of all time" in a Rolling Stone list, to no one's surprise. At its most basic, Like a Rolling Stone is perhaps the ultimate misogynist diss track. It's about a woman losing her status and a male singer absolutely reveling at length and elaborate detail in her downfall. But already I can feel the objections arising, the desire to justify the song because it is held as deeply meaningful or just a favorite by so many. People do not want what they like to be deemed as containing unacceptable values because they are so invested in the work, but were you to say the same thing a work they don't care about or has less cultural cachet, like say, You're Sixteen, You're Beautiful, and You're Mine, the same people might join in on the condemnation.
That points to the essence of what criticism should be about, by my thinking, better delineating the tension within different works or between the works and the times and all other aspects that provide a better refined appreciation of the work. In the case of Like a Rolling Stone, for example, the critic would need to deal with why it is that song has such a hold on so many people by looking at how it relays a sense of feeling, its locus of meaning, not just a simple "message", and ways in how that effect is understood in differing cultural contexts. Something more than Bob Dylan says it's his best song and that good enough for us would be a good start.
One of the ways critics tend to do this is by linking the work to the artist, something that has become increasingly fraught in recent times with so-called "cancel culture" where many artists have been rightly found to be dicks and had their own standing accordingly diminished. That isn't good criticism in itself though, because it is inadequate explanation of how their works hold significance and as it often only has orthogonal relationship to understanding the work itself. Biography might help give context to intent and the why of something being made when and how it was, but the work is the work and often doesn't carry clear indications of that intent nor is generally appreciated for it.
People, for example, try to link Like a Rolling Stone to some specific person in Dylan's life, which might be interesting to rock historians, but does absolutely nothing to explain the song's power for most who like it. Biography, in that way, will be used to attack or defend some interpretation of the work, by trying to show the artist as an ass or how they were justified in their creation. It's also a way hardcore fans often like to invest in the artist as special entity. Speculation on whether Taylor Swift's latest song is about her current boyfriend can lend a sense of making the artist almost a artwork to be invested in themselves, and is something some writing on the arts will do, to little good end result. Much better is trying to look at the song as a thing in itself from some distance, in order to get a feel for how it creates an effect and of what sort, by, say, noting how one might listen to Like a Rolling Stone without a conception of any specific relationship and understand the "you" of it as speaking to them, as if framing the song around the listener, even as they simultaneously know it is not addressed to them.
Whether that is the case for that song or not, the issue of importance is that the critic needs to locate the tension the work creates, or more accurately perhaps the tension felt between the specific an limited qualities of the work and the world of the listener. That requires the ability to look at the work in its entirety, not just, say, the lyrics, and temporarily set aside summary judgement in order to come to an understanding of the works elements, including how it might likely be responded to from as wide a range of likelihoods as possible. With that then the critic can apply a contextual understanding of the work, placing it in an era, along other works in a genre, or the artist's body of work if there is some sense of it communicating with other works in those areas. One can, for example, find a different type of appreciation for the films of John Ford by seeing how his body of work addressed similar themes over time, but to changing ends. Any individual work can be seen from multiple perspectives in that way, and often needs to be to be best appreciated.
The contextual element is where the critic can best address any problematic aspects, not by saying they were irrelevant because of changing times, that's lazy crap, but by enriching the understanding of the work by addressing the possible references or ideas of that it might touch on. The discussion of Dune, in another thread, goes back and forth with some of these things, placing the work in a context and arguing that context isn't sufficient. That's always going to be an issue with any criticism.
There is no final say, the work remains what it is, unchanging. (well, mostly, Hans doesn't always shoot first, but he did in one version, and the alterations can be addressed in that regard.) while the perspective of the audience is not fixed. The critical judgement can attempt to bridge that divide, but that's the less important element than locating where the tensions exist in the first place, as the need is to move away from summary judgement to something a bit more complex that gets beyond gainsaying. Art is best served and appreciated when it is dealt with as something of importance beyond audience reaction, but can't be left to stand above the audience as if not intersecting with the real world as that is where so much of our understanding of the arts resides.
In regards to things like streaming movies, the question then becomes one of trying to maintain the things of value in the arts while calling out the things that are or potentially might be conflict with that, which might well be convenience and a certain type of work increasing its foothold in the culture by the way streaming platforms limit choice, or could be a path to a broader array of options if the potential viewer would want them. The question relies as much on what it is viewers want, mass market entertainment as the majority of their "diet" or something more diverse.
There are a number of legitimate concerns over a choice of the former in how that shapes the culture, but there of course are equally legitimate reasons any individual viewer might have for wanting something familiar and relatively easy to digest. Not everyone is going to care about the arts the same way, we all have our own things that drive us, so it isn't about some people being uncooth or whatever, but that doesn't mean there aren't more and less involved ways to think about and appreciate the arts any more than there are more and less involved ways to appreciate anything else. It shouldn't be that greater involvement in something that most casually appreciate should be seen as a threat in that way, but perhaps as an alternative perspective worth considering for the more energy spent in contemplating it, worthy of some consideration.
(Sorry, I guess this is a good "be careful what you wish for" example. That's much too much I fear.)
posted by gusottertrout at 3:32 AM on November 26, 2020
(In the interest of more-manageable conversation, I’ll try to reply to primary ideas, this is fun)
We're all so saturated with mass market media now that we've become shallowly sophisticated. We almost instinctively know the patterns of mass media and how and where our response is supposed to be shaped, so that anything we see or hear that doesn't fit is often "corrected" by writers to better match the desired beats or rejected out of hand for failure.
Absolutely, this is a problem that both educationists and media theorists have been describing for some time (mass schooling and mass media, as systems, have some overlapping effects), the most pithy term that I’ve found for this particular phenomenon is “pre-thought thoughts,” where people have stopped actually thinking for themselves, and instead sort of media shop for opinions/worldviews that they agree with, and parrot those thoughts.
However, there is an upside: collectively, we’re much more sophisticated viewers/listeners/readers than ever before, and that we can identify and discuss things like writing tropes means that there is a basic perception of creative elements like narrative form; and that is a foundation upon which more sophisticated understanding of made things is built. Effective criticism does do as you describe, separates the art from the artist in meaningful ways, but also can discuss a given work in its context, and the past few decades have seen some really interesting scholarship about the differences and overlap between those parallel but separate streams, and even about the differences between the work itself and how it is rendered in any given performance or version (e.g.).
That's why we end up with this lazy US mass market dominance. It's easy, repeatable and people know what they are getting, but that's not good for anyone in the long run.
Hard disagree on this one—I think we end up with easy, repeatable mass market creative works because of a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with laziness, e.g. and not limited to: mass production is hard, and formulas make things easier (just ask Mozart); people more often prefer cultural comfort food than challenge and unfamiliarity, which is an emotional reaction not an intellectual one; creators cannot control reception by audience; creatively, if progressive work is a goal, there is often more room for innovation or play within familiar frameworks or tropes; capitalism has commodified creative work, so that all market forces come to bear; etc.
Much of what you describe as volitional is not, and that’s really important to keep in mind—like it or not, creative culture has been thoroughly commodified, and if one’s work is part of the marketplace at all, merely intrinsic creative goals and values will not help with success in that regard at all. So from any critical perspective, I think it’s important not to apply creative value judgments to decisions that are made because of practical need or societal realities, or to confuse one kind of decision with the other.
(I say this from a personal perspective of genuine sadness at what commodification has done to music as a creative medium and human cultural practice, we are collectively bereft in some important ways because we no longer make music together in our homes and communities…we listen to music together, but it is profoundly different when you actually music together. I sort of believe that if we still actively made music together in our communal spaces that we would listen to one another far better, in all aspects of society, than we currently do. The loss of ubiquitous, everyday musicking is an ongoing tragedy from my perspective, and I notice every day how people in general fail to notice and listen to one another, skills that I personally learned and cultivated in musical contexts but that now make me a much, much better friend, partner, citizen, community member than I would have been otherwise.)
That points to the essence of what criticism should be about, by my thinking, better delineating the tension within different works or between the works and the times and all other aspects that provide a better refined appreciation of the work. In the case of Like a Rolling Stone, for example, the critic would need to deal with why it is that song has such a hold on so many people by looking at how it relays a sense of feeling, its locus of meaning, not just a simple "message", and ways in how that effect is understood in differing cultural contexts.
To me, this is looking to popular writing for what has become academic criticism, because writing about Bob Dylan's music like you describe does already exist. As a music specialist, I don’t ever read any populist music writing or journalism, for all the reasons you outline (it really is mostly shallow and beside the point: if you’re writing about someone’s new album, don’t make 75% of the article a lifestyle piece, write about the damn music, please) and more besides. But I don’t think that bad, shallow writing about music is really a choice if number of eyeballs reading it matters: our culture doesn’t know enough about music for anyone who can write about it lucidly, to really say anything meaningful. (I know how hard it is, I’ve tried for years in podcast format but still end up with something that only dedicated listeners will really get into, because to talk about music in any detail means making sure that certain concepts are clear—intellectually and perceptually—before you can actually talk about the thing itself, and that quickly becomes too much information for most folks' casual interest. But now this whole conversation--and your own passionate desire for substantial, popular-facing criticism--makes me think that maybe I should revisit that effort.)
It wasn’t always thus, music criticism used to be fantastic, and the easiest example I can point to would be Olin Downes, who wrote multi-thousand word essays (with score excerpts as examples!) to introduce interesting new works to New York audiences, championing composers like Sibelius or Gershwin, and urging composers and listeners to take up Dvorak’s challenge to look to our American roots for musical inspiration, or railed against those who violated his taste, like Webern or Berg, and who—for good or ill—used the vehicle of thorough, detailed criticism to shape American musical taste for decades. The only contemporary American example I can think of, in music, would be Alex Ross, and I recommend all of his books to you if you haven’t read them, because his writing does what you describe.
So I think it’s important to recognize that cultural conversation and writing, in the U.S. at least, separated into two primary streams decades ago, populist and academic. (And I apologize for not responding more directly to your thoughts about movies and TV, but I can only speak to those media as an audience member, and so have only mostly read consumer-level criticism.) For some substantial music writing and criticism that should be accessible to a non-specialist reader, I recommend Ross’ books, and also maybe try Richard Crawford (America’s Musical Life is absolutely seminal) or Nicholas Cook or Richard Taruskin.
In regards to things like streaming movies, the question then becomes one of trying to maintain the things of value in the arts while calling out the things that are or potentially might be conflict with that, which might well be convenience and a certain type of work increasing its foothold in the culture by the way streaming platforms limit choice, or could be a path to a broader array of options if the potential viewer would want them.
There are maybe three streams that are being mixed here, and I think it’s important to separate them in any conversation about culture, and especially creative works within our culture: 1) the artists who are making things are mostly (and best) concerned with just making them--categories and genres and naming and etc. are mostly beside the point from the creatives’ perspective, and are best left to the rest of us, the audience; 2) the commodification that is necessary to convert creative work to product, which is the domain of business; 3) the audience, those of use who watch/listen to/read/etc. the creative work that comes downstream to us. Each of those spheres have their own needs and constraints and demands and etc., that are often conflicting or disconnected-but-inter-related, but should be considered discretely when discussing culture and creative work within a culture, because they exert differing constraints and effects, for different reasons.
I guess I just don’t think that culture is at all ‘shaped’ at its source, but is only described downstream, as aggregate, collaborative human behavior. As a musician, I have often been disappointed by music’s role in our culture, which I think is greatly limited and diminished from what it has been and could be, even while I’ve been thrilled at the new aspects we’ve invented—but I always try to put my energy into working with the river as it flows, rather than standing on the bank and worrying over how it could be or maybe ought to be, and thus have learned that any sense of ‘culture’ is at best descriptive. However I engage with it is simply ‘adding to,’ and it will be received however it will be received.
Art is best served and appreciated when it is dealt with as something of importance beyond audience reaction, but can't be left to stand above the audience as if not intersecting with the real world as that is where so much of our understanding of the arts resides.
I totally agree, though my sense is that you’re still maybe looking for oranges in the tomato patch? I know that there is good, substantial criticism along the lines you describe, for TV and movies, but am not enough into those media to be able to recommend without research. I can say with some confidence, though, that you won’t find it in mass market publications, even "smarty” ones like the NYT. (And ugh, FYI, Tommasini should be no benchmark for musical criticism, especially when he ham-fistedly engages with recorded/popular music.)
But also, as an artist myself, I don't think that I need to, or should, or ought to, serve art in any way, and I don't expect appreciation (as a dispassionate, aesthetic practice) of my work or anyone else's--instead, what I hope for is some focused time, attention and engagement from anyone who listens to music I make, or who reads words I write or speak. If that happens, the work and its effect on the person experiencing it should be catalyst for the rest, and will provide fertile ground for critical engagement of all kinds.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:45 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
We're all so saturated with mass market media now that we've become shallowly sophisticated. We almost instinctively know the patterns of mass media and how and where our response is supposed to be shaped, so that anything we see or hear that doesn't fit is often "corrected" by writers to better match the desired beats or rejected out of hand for failure.
Absolutely, this is a problem that both educationists and media theorists have been describing for some time (mass schooling and mass media, as systems, have some overlapping effects), the most pithy term that I’ve found for this particular phenomenon is “pre-thought thoughts,” where people have stopped actually thinking for themselves, and instead sort of media shop for opinions/worldviews that they agree with, and parrot those thoughts.
However, there is an upside: collectively, we’re much more sophisticated viewers/listeners/readers than ever before, and that we can identify and discuss things like writing tropes means that there is a basic perception of creative elements like narrative form; and that is a foundation upon which more sophisticated understanding of made things is built. Effective criticism does do as you describe, separates the art from the artist in meaningful ways, but also can discuss a given work in its context, and the past few decades have seen some really interesting scholarship about the differences and overlap between those parallel but separate streams, and even about the differences between the work itself and how it is rendered in any given performance or version (e.g.).
That's why we end up with this lazy US mass market dominance. It's easy, repeatable and people know what they are getting, but that's not good for anyone in the long run.
Hard disagree on this one—I think we end up with easy, repeatable mass market creative works because of a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with laziness, e.g. and not limited to: mass production is hard, and formulas make things easier (just ask Mozart); people more often prefer cultural comfort food than challenge and unfamiliarity, which is an emotional reaction not an intellectual one; creators cannot control reception by audience; creatively, if progressive work is a goal, there is often more room for innovation or play within familiar frameworks or tropes; capitalism has commodified creative work, so that all market forces come to bear; etc.
Much of what you describe as volitional is not, and that’s really important to keep in mind—like it or not, creative culture has been thoroughly commodified, and if one’s work is part of the marketplace at all, merely intrinsic creative goals and values will not help with success in that regard at all. So from any critical perspective, I think it’s important not to apply creative value judgments to decisions that are made because of practical need or societal realities, or to confuse one kind of decision with the other.
(I say this from a personal perspective of genuine sadness at what commodification has done to music as a creative medium and human cultural practice, we are collectively bereft in some important ways because we no longer make music together in our homes and communities…we listen to music together, but it is profoundly different when you actually music together. I sort of believe that if we still actively made music together in our communal spaces that we would listen to one another far better, in all aspects of society, than we currently do. The loss of ubiquitous, everyday musicking is an ongoing tragedy from my perspective, and I notice every day how people in general fail to notice and listen to one another, skills that I personally learned and cultivated in musical contexts but that now make me a much, much better friend, partner, citizen, community member than I would have been otherwise.)
That points to the essence of what criticism should be about, by my thinking, better delineating the tension within different works or between the works and the times and all other aspects that provide a better refined appreciation of the work. In the case of Like a Rolling Stone, for example, the critic would need to deal with why it is that song has such a hold on so many people by looking at how it relays a sense of feeling, its locus of meaning, not just a simple "message", and ways in how that effect is understood in differing cultural contexts.
To me, this is looking to popular writing for what has become academic criticism, because writing about Bob Dylan's music like you describe does already exist. As a music specialist, I don’t ever read any populist music writing or journalism, for all the reasons you outline (it really is mostly shallow and beside the point: if you’re writing about someone’s new album, don’t make 75% of the article a lifestyle piece, write about the damn music, please) and more besides. But I don’t think that bad, shallow writing about music is really a choice if number of eyeballs reading it matters: our culture doesn’t know enough about music for anyone who can write about it lucidly, to really say anything meaningful. (I know how hard it is, I’ve tried for years in podcast format but still end up with something that only dedicated listeners will really get into, because to talk about music in any detail means making sure that certain concepts are clear—intellectually and perceptually—before you can actually talk about the thing itself, and that quickly becomes too much information for most folks' casual interest. But now this whole conversation--and your own passionate desire for substantial, popular-facing criticism--makes me think that maybe I should revisit that effort.)
It wasn’t always thus, music criticism used to be fantastic, and the easiest example I can point to would be Olin Downes, who wrote multi-thousand word essays (with score excerpts as examples!) to introduce interesting new works to New York audiences, championing composers like Sibelius or Gershwin, and urging composers and listeners to take up Dvorak’s challenge to look to our American roots for musical inspiration, or railed against those who violated his taste, like Webern or Berg, and who—for good or ill—used the vehicle of thorough, detailed criticism to shape American musical taste for decades. The only contemporary American example I can think of, in music, would be Alex Ross, and I recommend all of his books to you if you haven’t read them, because his writing does what you describe.
So I think it’s important to recognize that cultural conversation and writing, in the U.S. at least, separated into two primary streams decades ago, populist and academic. (And I apologize for not responding more directly to your thoughts about movies and TV, but I can only speak to those media as an audience member, and so have only mostly read consumer-level criticism.) For some substantial music writing and criticism that should be accessible to a non-specialist reader, I recommend Ross’ books, and also maybe try Richard Crawford (America’s Musical Life is absolutely seminal) or Nicholas Cook or Richard Taruskin.
In regards to things like streaming movies, the question then becomes one of trying to maintain the things of value in the arts while calling out the things that are or potentially might be conflict with that, which might well be convenience and a certain type of work increasing its foothold in the culture by the way streaming platforms limit choice, or could be a path to a broader array of options if the potential viewer would want them.
There are maybe three streams that are being mixed here, and I think it’s important to separate them in any conversation about culture, and especially creative works within our culture: 1) the artists who are making things are mostly (and best) concerned with just making them--categories and genres and naming and etc. are mostly beside the point from the creatives’ perspective, and are best left to the rest of us, the audience; 2) the commodification that is necessary to convert creative work to product, which is the domain of business; 3) the audience, those of use who watch/listen to/read/etc. the creative work that comes downstream to us. Each of those spheres have their own needs and constraints and demands and etc., that are often conflicting or disconnected-but-inter-related, but should be considered discretely when discussing culture and creative work within a culture, because they exert differing constraints and effects, for different reasons.
I guess I just don’t think that culture is at all ‘shaped’ at its source, but is only described downstream, as aggregate, collaborative human behavior. As a musician, I have often been disappointed by music’s role in our culture, which I think is greatly limited and diminished from what it has been and could be, even while I’ve been thrilled at the new aspects we’ve invented—but I always try to put my energy into working with the river as it flows, rather than standing on the bank and worrying over how it could be or maybe ought to be, and thus have learned that any sense of ‘culture’ is at best descriptive. However I engage with it is simply ‘adding to,’ and it will be received however it will be received.
Art is best served and appreciated when it is dealt with as something of importance beyond audience reaction, but can't be left to stand above the audience as if not intersecting with the real world as that is where so much of our understanding of the arts resides.
I totally agree, though my sense is that you’re still maybe looking for oranges in the tomato patch? I know that there is good, substantial criticism along the lines you describe, for TV and movies, but am not enough into those media to be able to recommend without research. I can say with some confidence, though, that you won’t find it in mass market publications, even "smarty” ones like the NYT. (And ugh, FYI, Tommasini should be no benchmark for musical criticism, especially when he ham-fistedly engages with recorded/popular music.)
But also, as an artist myself, I don't think that I need to, or should, or ought to, serve art in any way, and I don't expect appreciation (as a dispassionate, aesthetic practice) of my work or anyone else's--instead, what I hope for is some focused time, attention and engagement from anyone who listens to music I make, or who reads words I write or speak. If that happens, the work and its effect on the person experiencing it should be catalyst for the rest, and will provide fertile ground for critical engagement of all kinds.
posted by LooseFilter at 9:45 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Now so much criticism basically functions as an extension of the promotional apparatus of the biggest media companies on Earth.
Also wanted to quote this from earlier, because SO VERY TRUE. Substantial criticism was co-opted as marketing and promotion, and audiences eventually forgot that it even used to exist, it seems, let alone have a desire for it.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:07 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
Also wanted to quote this from earlier, because SO VERY TRUE. Substantial criticism was co-opted as marketing and promotion, and audiences eventually forgot that it even used to exist, it seems, let alone have a desire for it.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:07 AM on November 26, 2020 [1 favorite]
There are maybe three streams that are being mixed here... 1) the artists who are making things are mostly (and best) concerned with just making them--categories and genres and naming and etc. are mostly beside the point from the creatives’ perspective, and are best left to the rest of us, the audience; 2) the commodification that is necessary to convert creative work to product, which is the domain of business; 3) the audience, those of use who watch/listen to/read/etc. the creative work that comes downstream to us
I agree with that am mostly talking about the audience's part, as it responds to the market, especially in regards to the commodification of criticism, as the earlier quote you highlighted points out. I get a bit frustrated when we talk about culture as something beyond us rather than something we shape as audience members or, more bluntly, consumers. I'm focusing on criticism because that seems to me to be the path most susceptible to beneficial change, but the end point is in considering how the audience thinks about the arts, which is shaped by those who write about them.
It isn't that I'm bothered by escapism per se, that's always going to be a major component of popular art, nor am I bothered by people talking about that part of the artworld with whatever enjoyment they might find, that kind of involvement is a positive thing, I just would like to also see it in more refined terms spread more to discussing works that aren't major corporate releases. (Refined not as a value judgement, but in a sense meaning more discussion about works not centered around spectacle and "big" emotions. I know this can be done by seeing people discussing "small" moments in big films, for example, but less frequently in discussing works that are more consistently "about" that sort of dynamic rather than the explosive, literally or metaphorically.) That requires getting beyond the popular notion that Ebert subscribed to in judging a movie (or any work) by what it tries to do and do better at illuminating the frames.
I don't mean by that just more griping or narrow complaint about something like, for example, superhero movies ala Scorsese, most of that doesn't work well, even if coming from a reasonable place, because the complaints are often structured in the same terms as the approvals from fans, leaving it to read as an issue of taste alone. It's not like there's a shortage of griping about superhero movies or Disney and so on, that's all fine too, but still something different than trying to look more closely at the underlying emotional/aesthetic structures of those films without it being a screed against anti-intellectualism or whatnot, as there's no surer way to alienate people than, essentially, call them stupid. I don't think audiences are stupid, though some individuals can certainly be pigheaded or jerks about their favored media. Which is why the critical element, to me, is important.
The problem is that mainstream criticism has largely ceded the field to being another marketing arm of major corporations and take their revenue from page views pandering to their audience or contrarianesque trolling and that is filtering into some of the arts themselves as well because there is no major vanguard staking out better claims for them. It's not just Tommasini but things like how Dan Kois, the editor of the film section at Slate, was hired after the viral success of his "Cultural Vegetables" article where he admits to regularly dozing off during the "slow sections" of some films, but instead of using as a sign he should seek out a different career, doubles down on it as making him somehow more suitable for criticism by his lack of attention allegedly matching the audiences. Slate of course snapped him up after seeing that as that's pretty much their ideal.
I read a lot of criticism and books about it, and it is certainly true there is good criticism out there, mostly but not exclusively in book form, I wouldn't be able to talk about what criticism should be without such examples, there is also a strong and seemingly increasing trend in writing about the arts that almost purposefully seeks to shift those ends. The rise of "cognitive" art study and its close kin Evo-art history, for example, is worrying, the former has some value along certain limited lines of inquiry, but reaches for far more than it can possibly hold, while the latter is almost entirely vacuous, but "important" for being "science"! It's the equivalent of a techbro "fix" for the arts that goes along with all that cutesy AI generated work.
Universities aren't necessarily any better, not only for employing some of the quacks like Jordan Peterson's Evo-art buddies, but for their own shift from education as an aspirational end to education as employment necessity with the attendant need to please students and develop exciting new paradigms to get published and get tenure. Some of the writing is of course still excellent, but there are trends towards more "audience friendly" ideals that are troubling in aesthetics generally and in different branches of study of the arts. (It would take considerable detail to try and describe it all, so I just mention it as another source of my concern.)
At the same time, I should indeed reemphasize what you mention about there being good writing on the arts. There is and not just in book form even though it isn't always easy to find and thus doesn't often speak to an audience not already dedicated to seeking it out. There has in most ways never been a better time to find greater variety of meaningful thoughts on the arts than there is now, and certainly never been a better time for cultural criticism. Much of this is coming from younger people deeply interested in a wider range of artistic efforts than was possible not that long ago....I hesitate over whether I want to finish that thought with an "and" or a "but", as the ability of young people to engage with the arts and their seriousness of appreciation is fantastic in every way but as they are often shaping their ideas from other young writers, either professional or amateur, the distinction itself never meaning less, the thoughts are often brilliant in fragments, but weaker in totality for lacking some foundational considerations that a better critical environment should be providing.
Media orgs tend to hire arts writers less for any credentials they might have around the arts they'll be covering and more for how the audience engages with them as writers. The latter isn't unimportant of course, but without the former the foundation of ideas can become quite weak, which, given their alleged authority, can spread by being believed for coming from a media source. The organizations don't take arts seriously, and while many of the writers do, they are basically making it up as they go along for not having necessary experience or sometimes sources from which to provide a sturdier foundation.
This all might mean that we are just in a lull period and as the internet ages the foundations will too. There is, after all, a lot of writing that doesn't have much usable past history to reference, at least outside mass market primarily US perspective, so that history needs to be built, which some of these younger writers are doing in exceptional detail. From that then there can be better conceptual framing to address a wider variety of art than ever before perhaps. I'm excited by the possibility, just worried about the encroachment of opposition from "liking" and its ready supporters.
(I meant that to be more conversational, but I kinda suck at that obviously.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:39 AM on November 27, 2020
I agree with that am mostly talking about the audience's part, as it responds to the market, especially in regards to the commodification of criticism, as the earlier quote you highlighted points out. I get a bit frustrated when we talk about culture as something beyond us rather than something we shape as audience members or, more bluntly, consumers. I'm focusing on criticism because that seems to me to be the path most susceptible to beneficial change, but the end point is in considering how the audience thinks about the arts, which is shaped by those who write about them.
It isn't that I'm bothered by escapism per se, that's always going to be a major component of popular art, nor am I bothered by people talking about that part of the artworld with whatever enjoyment they might find, that kind of involvement is a positive thing, I just would like to also see it in more refined terms spread more to discussing works that aren't major corporate releases. (Refined not as a value judgement, but in a sense meaning more discussion about works not centered around spectacle and "big" emotions. I know this can be done by seeing people discussing "small" moments in big films, for example, but less frequently in discussing works that are more consistently "about" that sort of dynamic rather than the explosive, literally or metaphorically.) That requires getting beyond the popular notion that Ebert subscribed to in judging a movie (or any work) by what it tries to do and do better at illuminating the frames.
I don't mean by that just more griping or narrow complaint about something like, for example, superhero movies ala Scorsese, most of that doesn't work well, even if coming from a reasonable place, because the complaints are often structured in the same terms as the approvals from fans, leaving it to read as an issue of taste alone. It's not like there's a shortage of griping about superhero movies or Disney and so on, that's all fine too, but still something different than trying to look more closely at the underlying emotional/aesthetic structures of those films without it being a screed against anti-intellectualism or whatnot, as there's no surer way to alienate people than, essentially, call them stupid. I don't think audiences are stupid, though some individuals can certainly be pigheaded or jerks about their favored media. Which is why the critical element, to me, is important.
The problem is that mainstream criticism has largely ceded the field to being another marketing arm of major corporations and take their revenue from page views pandering to their audience or contrarianesque trolling and that is filtering into some of the arts themselves as well because there is no major vanguard staking out better claims for them. It's not just Tommasini but things like how Dan Kois, the editor of the film section at Slate, was hired after the viral success of his "Cultural Vegetables" article where he admits to regularly dozing off during the "slow sections" of some films, but instead of using as a sign he should seek out a different career, doubles down on it as making him somehow more suitable for criticism by his lack of attention allegedly matching the audiences. Slate of course snapped him up after seeing that as that's pretty much their ideal.
I read a lot of criticism and books about it, and it is certainly true there is good criticism out there, mostly but not exclusively in book form, I wouldn't be able to talk about what criticism should be without such examples, there is also a strong and seemingly increasing trend in writing about the arts that almost purposefully seeks to shift those ends. The rise of "cognitive" art study and its close kin Evo-art history, for example, is worrying, the former has some value along certain limited lines of inquiry, but reaches for far more than it can possibly hold, while the latter is almost entirely vacuous, but "important" for being "science"! It's the equivalent of a techbro "fix" for the arts that goes along with all that cutesy AI generated work.
Universities aren't necessarily any better, not only for employing some of the quacks like Jordan Peterson's Evo-art buddies, but for their own shift from education as an aspirational end to education as employment necessity with the attendant need to please students and develop exciting new paradigms to get published and get tenure. Some of the writing is of course still excellent, but there are trends towards more "audience friendly" ideals that are troubling in aesthetics generally and in different branches of study of the arts. (It would take considerable detail to try and describe it all, so I just mention it as another source of my concern.)
At the same time, I should indeed reemphasize what you mention about there being good writing on the arts. There is and not just in book form even though it isn't always easy to find and thus doesn't often speak to an audience not already dedicated to seeking it out. There has in most ways never been a better time to find greater variety of meaningful thoughts on the arts than there is now, and certainly never been a better time for cultural criticism. Much of this is coming from younger people deeply interested in a wider range of artistic efforts than was possible not that long ago....I hesitate over whether I want to finish that thought with an "and" or a "but", as the ability of young people to engage with the arts and their seriousness of appreciation is fantastic in every way but as they are often shaping their ideas from other young writers, either professional or amateur, the distinction itself never meaning less, the thoughts are often brilliant in fragments, but weaker in totality for lacking some foundational considerations that a better critical environment should be providing.
Media orgs tend to hire arts writers less for any credentials they might have around the arts they'll be covering and more for how the audience engages with them as writers. The latter isn't unimportant of course, but without the former the foundation of ideas can become quite weak, which, given their alleged authority, can spread by being believed for coming from a media source. The organizations don't take arts seriously, and while many of the writers do, they are basically making it up as they go along for not having necessary experience or sometimes sources from which to provide a sturdier foundation.
This all might mean that we are just in a lull period and as the internet ages the foundations will too. There is, after all, a lot of writing that doesn't have much usable past history to reference, at least outside mass market primarily US perspective, so that history needs to be built, which some of these younger writers are doing in exceptional detail. From that then there can be better conceptual framing to address a wider variety of art than ever before perhaps. I'm excited by the possibility, just worried about the encroachment of opposition from "liking" and its ready supporters.
(I meant that to be more conversational, but I kinda suck at that obviously.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:39 AM on November 27, 2020
Oh, and thanks for the book recs. I appreciate them. I'm always looking for new stuff to read on this subject for any of the arts. I'm familiar with a couple of them, I really liked Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise, for example, though found his Listen to This somewhat disappointing, but not so much as to not want to read other stuff by him or the others you mention. (The "vocabulary" issue in music is the tough part, having a score to follow is a big plus, while just reading about key changes, movements and the like can be a tougher road as it's a more abstract understanding that not playing music myself makes difficult to follow at times.)
posted by gusottertrout at 1:49 AM on November 27, 2020
posted by gusottertrout at 1:49 AM on November 27, 2020
Sorry to triple post, but I wash going to address this part:
To me, this is looking to popular writing for what has become academic criticism, because writing about Bob Dylan's music like you describe does already exist. ...
But I don’t think that bad, shallow writing about music is really a choice if number of eyeballs reading it matters: our culture doesn’t know enough about music for anyone who can write about it lucidly, to really say anything meaningful.
When I was interrupted by some guy wielding a machete in the parking lot I had to go deal with. (Really! My job is loads of fun during this pandemic.)
I was trying to agree and encourage you to get into the podcast game. I have a good friend who's a modern classical/art music/we really don't have a good name for this type of music anymore composer and we would discuss music frequently, but had to translate our thoughts a bit into mutually understandable terms. If you can point to the area in the music you're talking about so the other person can hear the example, then explaining the ideas can work well, I think, using the correct terminology and analogy. The difficulty is mostly in not being able to "hear" the idea expressed translate into music even when the terminology and ideas are understood.
(My reference to Dylan came from the Rolling Stone post someone made here a while back, where the writers did basically just justify their ranking by saying Dylan says so. I've tried to keep my examples to things referenced on Mefi in hopes of keeping the conversation understandable.)
posted by gusottertrout at 8:32 AM on November 27, 2020
To me, this is looking to popular writing for what has become academic criticism, because writing about Bob Dylan's music like you describe does already exist. ...
But I don’t think that bad, shallow writing about music is really a choice if number of eyeballs reading it matters: our culture doesn’t know enough about music for anyone who can write about it lucidly, to really say anything meaningful.
When I was interrupted by some guy wielding a machete in the parking lot I had to go deal with. (Really! My job is loads of fun during this pandemic.)
I was trying to agree and encourage you to get into the podcast game. I have a good friend who's a modern classical/art music/we really don't have a good name for this type of music anymore composer and we would discuss music frequently, but had to translate our thoughts a bit into mutually understandable terms. If you can point to the area in the music you're talking about so the other person can hear the example, then explaining the ideas can work well, I think, using the correct terminology and analogy. The difficulty is mostly in not being able to "hear" the idea expressed translate into music even when the terminology and ideas are understood.
(My reference to Dylan came from the Rolling Stone post someone made here a while back, where the writers did basically just justify their ranking by saying Dylan says so. I've tried to keep my examples to things referenced on Mefi in hopes of keeping the conversation understandable.)
posted by gusottertrout at 8:32 AM on November 27, 2020
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