I love going to the movie theatre. I likely always will as the pleasure that I derive from it is rooted in my childhood. I even remember seeing the first Star Wars when it was released in 1977. As well as the now in hindsight shameful Porky’s in 1981, and in high school Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Breakfast Club come to mind.
My standards were particularly low back then but I was years away from beginning to understand what the cultural shapers in Hollywood were up to. But dont let anyone in my generation ever tell you that the 70’s and 80’s were the good old days. We grew up in the cultural wreckage of the 1960’s and the time was rotten to the core. The only boast that the Boomers and X-ers can make now is that it has gotten worse.
Besides the relatively inexpensive therapy I find in the escapism, I go for the popcorn, excessive popcorn-butterlike-grease-substance, and a variety of addictive popcorn seasonings that were not available when I was young. Yes I have a problem, but assume that it is better for me than cocaine and therefor ok. I can quit anytime.
As to why we love movies, it is the exact same reason that our ancestors gathered around the fire in the evening to listen to anyone that could tell a story that could draw our imagination into it. And as to the stories that so compel us, there haven’t been any new ones told since they were told around said campfire. All stories ever told are just rehashing of the first ones, just dressed up in new settings and costumes. And they never get old.
However, according to many professional movie reviewers that I follow the movie industry today appears to be in a sustained crisis and it seems to me that entertaining and thoughtful, much less engrossing movies are few and far between. All too many range between junk and boring.
The reason for this decline today is the dominance of feminist ideology in the movie industry that does not allow key elements into its stories, such as ‘boy saves and wins the girl,’ or ‘girl saves the boy and boy saves the day.’
The good news is that as a consequence Hollywood as we have come to know it is dying or at least transforming. And in its place will emerge a new or better Hollywood because human nature does not change. Men and women both love stories because we are both human beings. The two sides of the coin.
And we will have our stories and we will pay for them.
And inevitably, always, and everywhere, there he or she emerges.
The storyteller.
M.C. Atkins
Look Away... 