Over the past few weeks, there have been a huge number of complaints about how depressing the Oscar contenders are. Bill Maher said that the nominees made him want to step in a bathtub with a toaster. Maureen Dowd has a similar column in the Times today, showing her problems with the film industry and other critiques.
I don’t normally defend the Oscars; I’ve had many problems with their choices just in the past twenty years. But seeing as a lot of these critiques have people in my profession (and both Maher and Dowd) talking out of both sides of their mouths, I think there are some things that need to be made clear.
Let’s start with the most obvious. The film industry doesn’t, and never has, exist to make art. The fact that it often does is a side effect. Hollywood is, and always be, a business. From the days of the studio system, the men who ran the film industry were interested in one thing and one thing only: putting asses in the seats. The whole reason Louis B. Mayer basically created the Oscars was to get more attention for his films and make more money as a result.
Second of all, as long as I have been alive, there has been a constant nostalgia from people all across the political spectrum and every cultural type for the ‘Golden Age of Hollywood.’ What never seems to be asked is just how happy the filmmakers and actors were when it came to making these classics. The studio heads would constantly be saying their scripts weren’t good enough, the directors were over budget and the actors were chattel. They didn’t want art to be produced, and in many cases when it was, they would say it was too expensive and that B-pictures were cheaper and made more money. And that was before censors came into the picture.
Does anyone seriously still believe that people from 1920 to, say, 1967 never swore, never shed blood and never had sex? The only reason it looks that way is because the government, pressed by religious functions, said that if they dared show anything involving language or sex – particularly the latter – they would boycotts the films and destroy the studio? Back then, these people had even more power then they do today, so Hollywood gave in. They didn’t suddenly allow all these things to be put in movies in the 1960s because they were hippie-dippies, either. By then the audience was younger and the government had less power. So again, Hollywood followed the money.
And for all the talk that Hollywood has also been a bastion of liberalism, the studios for most of the twentieth century were overwhelming by conservatives. They didn’t care about whether minorities or women had accurate representation; they just didn’t want to put off their viewers who were mostly white. May I remind everyone that the biggest box office film for much of the twentieth century was Gone With the Wind. That epic love letter to the Confederacy that said that slaves preferred slavery and women didn’t mind being raped. The movie that the Klan used for recruiting tactics. The favorite film of our last President. That movie. Hollywood would never cast a minority actor before when a white one would do just as well. Witness The Good Earth and Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Year of Living Dangerously. The film that won Linda Hunt an Oscar for playing an Asian male photographer.
And the main reason that Hollywood has changed so much in the last forty years is that the system now realizes it can make more money appealing to one demographic – teenage boys – rather than all of them. That’s the real reason we’re deluged by Star Wars films and comic book movies every summer. That’s the reason so many great directors have been limited to making DC and Marvel movies. You really think Ang Lee would make a Hulk film given his druthers? That Kenneth Brannagh would’ve voluntarily wanted to direct Thor? You go where the money is.
Paradoxically, one of the few things that both sides can agree on is that films are not being made the way they want. This has left Hollywood in a place with no wriggle room at all. The people who want art are sick of comic books that don’t tell real stories. The people who want box office don’t want movies that do anything at all to infringe on the source material. When a black storm trooper and a woman Jedi showed in the last Star Wars trilogy, you’d think that the filmmakers had shown twenty minutes of Darth Vader urinating on the American flag.
And that’s the problem. Minorities now have more than enough clout to be legitimate angry when the lion’s share of studio films barely show any one who likes them. But if you even think of trying altering the gender or race of any comic book hero, the Internet erupts that its PC crap. And don’t try to tell them that there have been black, female or gay characters in comic books; they’ve already sworn off those franchise because that was PC crap. And of course, they won’t go to the kind of movies the original complainers bitch about because it’s not their kind of movie.
But of course, there’s no winning with those people who long for a better Hollywood. Bill Maher, whose comments I mentioned at this article’s beginning and who I’ve railed against constantly in this column, shows no empathy or even consistency. For years, he railed against the amount of comic book movies and TV that Hollywood produces. Then two weeks ago on his show, he blames Hollywood for not producing ‘escapism’. And when Martin Scorsese got torched by the Internet for daring to suggest that Marvel and DC movies weren’t really original, did Maher even bother to agree with him? Of course not. He turned it into a joke that Scorsese was remaking the same kind of films.
So what kind of Hollywood actually make in this world? Escapist movies that tell real stories that feature minority people but not in critical roles that aren’t depressing? Who the hell would make that? If critics all refuse to accept blockbusters as films and teenage boys won’t go to art, what kind of film can anybody expect to make?
I’m just as pissed at the way the blockbuster system works these days and how the Academy Awards more and more resembles the Independent Spirit awards. But Hollywood long ago reached on a variation on Lincoln’s famous phrase. “You can satisfy some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t satisfy all of the people all of the time.” The difference is, right now, the last part is the only part that’s still valid. And of course, everyone would prefer to look to this mythical past instead of trying to create a future that could work.
This may be the real reason that TV has gotten so much better over the last twenty years. Yes, the mass hit is basically gone, but by trying to pitch to a single audience, there has been far better imagination and art produced. That’s the reason so many great film actors are working in cable and streaming. That’s where the great roles and stories are.
Ever since TV became available, the film industry was terrified of it, and for awhile was willing to go in to let more creative people work in it and have a lot more freedom. But around the time films started to getting dumber, TV started getting smarter. When movies stopped trying to be blockbusters and art, TV decided to let some of its best creators work entirely on art. TV is a business too, of course, but over the past twenty years, cable and streaming have been more willing to give that kind of freedom. It’s hurt the business as well – more than one executive has said there’s too many TV shows now – but it’s definitely more creative and imaginative than the biggest blockbuster or the smallest indie film. The same things that have hindered the film industry can be worked around because there are entire networks pitching to one particularly graphic or one network willing to make individual series for different demographics. (It probably helps that the awards shows for TV consider Drama and Comedy equal in the eyes of awards. The Oscars decades ago decided only the former was worthy.)
Films, of course, care more about box office, but it’s worthy how much the last years has forced a certain level of change upon them. I don’t think Netflix and Amazon can save movies the same way they helped TV (they probably did some damage to TV when they were trying to help it), but the one thing everyone can agree on is that the film industry has to change. I’d prefer trying to go back to some kind of films for everybody rather than just for one particular audience, but our culture is so fractured that may no longer be possible. What I do hope those who have been so harsh on the industry for awhile realize is the movies have always been trying to take your money before entertaining you. Don’t say it’s suddenly changed.
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