NOT BUYING IT
“History develops; art stands still.”
—e.m. forster
MOVIE LOVERS SEEM TO HAVE BEEN GRIPPED by fear for the fate of our beloved medium for almost as long as cinema has existed. If we’re particularly worried now, here at the beginning of the third decade of the weird 21st century, it’s probably because we’ve devalued, soiled, and decimated art, beauty, and nature at the hands of capital, and one can’t completely separate the state of cinema from the fate of the planet. As humans, we have expedited our own extinction via an industrial process that has been generally concurrent with the technological ascent, commercialization, and decline of the movies across the 20th century.
It would appear that the popular art form of the motion picture is in terrible shape. Yet the cloud of inevitability that hangs over the way we talk about movies and their destruction is probably as harmful to their cultural longevity as any rapid shift itself. This is not because I’m naïve enough to think that the threats to that culture aren’t alarmingly real, but because the outcomes of those feelings of inevitability can have detrimental effects rather than inspiring the proper reaction, which is, of course, resistance. Whether in our political system or the health of the arts, after all, capitulation is the worst response to feelings of helpless eventuality. It’s the response that leads to the over-corporatizing of festivals, the closing down of “niche” or “boutique” services, the conflation of whipped-up online fearmongering with “discussion,” and the shuttering of publications. There are facts, and there is rhetoric, and often in our fragile industry the two are confused.
Capitulation is the response that leads to the over-corporatizing of festivals, the closing down of “niche” or “boutique” services, the conflation of whipped-up online fear-mongering with “discussion,” and the shuttering of publications.
Before going any further, here’s a short, inexhaustive catalog of what’s ailing the movies—or at least the American. At the same time, the streaming revolution has been ever so gradually monopolized by a handful of goliaths—Netflix and Apple, in addition to the Mouse House—desperate for subscribers to help them break even, churning out the kinds of mega-entertainments they hope can compete with (and one day replace) the big-screen experiences we once thrilled to. In related bad news for the health of a culturally and economically diverse society, in November 2019, the United States Justice Department moved to overturn the 1948 Paramount Decree, the court decision that split up the studios’ monopolies on U.S. film exhibition—a landmark in antitrust lawmaking and a bedrock historical point for anyone who took a film studies course over the past half-century. That postwar decision came at a time when television was beginning its march toward cultural domination; that the reverse is happening as we face the very real threat of streaming service takeover says a lot about a political moment shaped by deregulation and corporate coddling. Understandably, it makes mainstream cinematic culture seem as dubious a prospect as it ever has in our lifetimes.
