Pontifications on a Kind of Art

... Is my most hipster title ever. Anyway, on with the show!

Even though I’ve never eaten it in my life, I’ve started saying ‘Branston’ when I mean ‘the good shit’. As in, ‘I watched Hostel 2 the other day. Ninety minutes of absolute bollocks and one single solitary instance of Branston. Fuck you, Eli Roth. Fuck you.’

Which is a pretty good link to my main feature. Films, that is, not pickle.

Anyway, films. The film industry is the popular kid in the wide and vague world of culture. It has the most money, drives the fastest cars, has the hottest boy and girlfriends (you gotta know the movie biz goes both ways) and the literature and music industries both want to be its BFF. But, like the popular kid in school, everyone secretly thinks the film biz is kind of a dick. Or not that secretly in the case of some.

I recently read an article about the kind of films being put out and the way they were marketed. To paraphrase the thing (the magazine is at my parents’ house), Love and Other Drugs is a weepie being mismarketed as a romcom. This is a pretty small marketing fuck-up when you compare it to Fight Club being marketed as muscle porn when it’s actually a satirical headfuck, but what the hey-ho. The writer of the article then went on to bitch about the lack of a good weepie these days. How ‘rom’ is all too often followed with ‘com’ rather than ‘ance’. So here’s my two cents.

It’s pretty fucking difficult to defend mainstream cinema these days, even if you like it. But I tried, and what I realised is that, while it never, ever produces the Branston (a film seems to have to be Lost in Translation-size or smaller for that to happen), mainstream Hollywood certainly is a barometer for what mood the world is in. And we’re bummed out right now. When we want a depressing storyline, it has to be vast and crushing or outlandish and weird. Personal tales about failed love have to be handled with a lightness of heart. And Ben fucking Stiller.

The war films coming out right after Hitler’s European tour ended (Reich’n’roll) never had a negative message and the good guys (The West!) were definitely the good guys and always won. Similarly, a film about a personal tragedy will never fly in an age where everyone feels so crappy about themselves and their personal lives (i.e., the present day).

Subtlety’s gone, too. If Breakfast at Tiffany’s was made today, there’d be a shitload of sex scenes, and it would be very obvious that both the main characters are prostitutes (didn’t you know that? Watch the film again now you do. Also, fuck you; you’re part of the problem). If Casablanca was made today, Rick would be a crack dealer on the side and there’d be gratuitous beatings. If The Lovely Bones was made today, Peter Jackson wouldn’t pussy out and gloss over the novel’s underage rape scene because he wanted to get a more family-friendly BBFC rating. Oh wait, it was and he still did. What a wanker.

I don’t know what this says about audiences, but it says a lot about filmmakers. They’re very desperate to please, to the point that it’s usually detrimental to the end product. Yes, Hollywood, we like tits. This, however, doesn’t mean we need to see tits unless the tits are important to the plot. I’m against censorship, as I think any rational person should be, but just because you’re allowed to do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it every five minutes. Nothing’s stopping me replacing every noun in my vocabulary with ‘sheppadinkle’, but if I chose to do that I would be punched. Hard. And rightly so, because I’d be being an absolute cunt. Get the picture?

So, that’s my views on film. For every Clerks, there’s a Jersey Girl. For every Patrick Fugit, there’s a Vin Diesel. For every smart, funny, touching, offbeat indie flick, there’s a bloated, over-hyped, bland adaptation of a children’s book to outsell it ten to one. But for every drooling, overweight, teenage Twilight fan, there’s a snarky blogger with too much time on his hands. Keep the faith.

By the way, the good part of Hostel 2 is when the heroine cuts that guy’s dick off and joins the torturer’s club. That may have been a spoiler, but if you honestly cared about Hostel 2 you deserve to have it spoiled for you, you tasteless piece of shit.

Struggling writer; will shag housewives for money and/or a New York apartment,
Nick