It's too much work for one day to beat up on the notion of Progress in general. Let's focus in on the movies. One of my Christmas presents was the dvd movie, All About Eve, 1950, starring Betty Davis, Anne Baxter (Frank Lloyd Wright's granddaughter), George Sanders, and Celeste Holm.
There are two kinds of directors: 1) the camera-oriented (such as Sergio Leone and his spaghetti westerns) and, 2) the script/dialogue-oriented. All About Eve was directed by Joseph Mankiewicz, who started as a script writer and belonged to the second group naturally. Well, this introduction will have to suffice; this blog isn't imdb dotcom.
How would this movie affect a young person who has grown up with video games and with movies that imitate video games? In one scene two of the main characters are walking down the sidewalk in a big city's downtown. The camera only catches them walking from the knees up. Clearly it was shot in a studio, with a screened image in the background; they were probably walking on a treadmill. It must have looked fake even to a viewer in 1950.
But of course I don't really care, because I'm interested in the intelligent dialogue that permeates the movie. Let's pause for a second and think about the momentous significance of this: a movie that has interesting characters portrayed in depth, conversing intelligently with other adults.
But what would a young person think of this sidewalk scene? Or the fact that the movie looks like it's a filmed theatre play? Boring, huh? Betty Davis looks like a middle-aged harpie. There's no nudie bedroom scene; married couples on the screen had to sleep in twin beds in those days! There was no car chase, culminating in driving off a cliff and turning into a fireball. All that talk without using the f-word in every other sentence. And don't even think about gory murders, CGI special effects, Dolby stereo, etc. I wonder what a movie ticket and a bag of popcorn cost in 1950.
Comments
Perhaps I shouldn't even comment here since I haven't seen a movie in seven years and then three years before that. The art flick theaters which showed independent and foreign films is where I spent my money.
Give me a good book. I make up the screen play in my own imagination.
There is quite a difference, I think, in the character movie of several decades ago and what exists today. How do you perceive the mood and climate in the 50's.....I think there was a false image of society put forth....I guess the Ozzie and Harriet or Father Knows Best image is the best way to describe it. Today's character movies are willing to deal with the darkness of relationships and society, etc. which I find much more interesting.
Yet I think this also takes its toll. Movies are powerful influences to be sure. The movies of several decades ago had the effect, I believe, of encouraging innocent young people to believe in society's norms and in the goodness of mankind. It helped cement them into a sort of conformity. But the movies nowadays, when viewed by young people, would not encourage them to align themselves with conventional values and lifestyle. And, of course, what is happening out there now in this regard?
Movies are quite reflective of the undercurrent of the society which produces them. I think it's fair to say that many of the producers of the contemporary character-study movies are of the baby boomer generation, brought up on Ozzie and Harriet and who perhaps feel quite betrayed by the messages of the 50's?
I suppose that's why in the 50's married people slept in separate beds, etc, as you mentioned.....so we could present a fictionalized version of real life. Set up an ideal I guess, in the hopes of repeating the same in the next generation.
I mean this with all sincerity.
At the same time that movies portrayed married life in that way back in the 50's, priests were molesting children by the thousands and no one would believe them because it just could not be true, could it? Must be some childish misinterpretation of things or a bad dream or whatever. Priests were way too holy for that.
There is a reason things come crashing down.
You know, Boonie, there ARE lots of very respectable young people today.
PS I guess we're not in the 15 minutes of perfect weather. Are we freezing as in the night there in NM or baking as in the day? Whatever, but this is not Goldilocks.
Modern movies don't encourage conformity? I think they do, but to the standards of the ghetto/gutter.
However, it appears you also enjoy the "vice of reading". Among many others, you quote deToqueville and Thoreau. Or this from your post of 11/12/10: "From a history book I'm enjoying..."
Never thought of reading as a vice. Perhaps there is a twelve step program.
But I consider the act of reading to be unpleasant, and tolerate it merely for the informational content. That is less depraved than someone enjoying the act itself.