In any case, I remain convinced this new phenomenon of delayed adulthood is simply a cause of current economic conditions. “Becoming an adult” has become far more of a challenge than it was in the past, especially for people in their twenties, thanks to both a larger number of people with university degrees and the recession, which invariably led to unemployment and hiring cuts.
I think it also has a lot to do with parenting styles and social expectations. Kids today aren’t expected to so much as hold a job until they’ve graduated college, and are given huge amounts of money by their parents for personal entertainment. So when they come out of college, work is this terrifying, oppressive thing that’s being forced on them, and they haven’t even trained to apply for jobs. What they tend to do when they’re looking for jobs is just stick a few resumes up on a website like Monster then wait until somebody emails them. And they’re not even willing to work anything that’s not their perfect ideal job, because they’ve been told they shouldn’t have to.
I have one co-worker who dropped out of high school at 16 and started working, and he’s the one who voluntarily stays until 10PM every day. He’s the counterpart to the spoiled, comfortable, entitled brat we’re turning our kids into.
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Back on topic, I still fail to see the horrible outrage that gasp people are watching bad movies. Is intellectual quality of entertainment really that important, when the person viewing the film is anybody else but you? What’s so important about intellectual film, besides it being a lot more enjoyable for those of us here? What ‘social good’ does intelligent film do that stupid films do not? Somebody make a compelling argument for this, please, that isn’t just general nose-turning to a crowd that you know for a fact agrees with you.
The shooter did not choose Dark Knight Rises because it was a violent film, he chose it because it was the biggest film release of the year. It was the ‘World Trade Center’ of films, the one guaranteed to win the most attention.
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And also, what is the obsession on this board with using ‘American’ as a dirty word, and synonymous with stupid and crass? America produces intelligent films too, their stupid films are just the most expensive stupid films in the world.
Can we go one month without this shit?
still plenty sated with the fifth element.
@Axelumog – Being a foodie is fine. I have friends who are foodies and completely respect that. But still the food metaphor is weak for two reasons: 1. We experience food and movies in completely different ways. 2. The metaphor is far to simplistic to be of any help. Reducing food to healthy food and junk food categories is crude at best, but ultimately useless. If we’re going to take a crude, reductionist view of food and apply it to movie consumption, then I have no idea what we’re accomplishing with it.
“There has been a systematic attempt(particularly in the Anglo saxon world) to undermine ‘elite culture’
Yeah, we call it democracy.
Look, first it was the Enlightenment that was undermining culture, then Romanticism, then Modernism, now it’s Post-Modernism. Sure, it would be great if more people were highly-educated and well-read and cultured, but Western Civ will be OK without those among “the masses” who aren’t.
Western Civilization isn’t ok though. There’s more to it than being well-read and cultured certainly, but it’s definitely not ok.
Aflwydd, you need to chill and smoke a bowl.
well Blue, you’ve seen all my films and i i’m not stopping making them anytime soon, and i consider all of them a part of the superhero genre.
but yeah, i wish it would ease up, being a comic book fan i was excited about it when they first started coming out 7 years ago, but it got old and exhausting real quick.
“Look, first it was the Enlightenment that was undermining culture, then Romanticism, then Modernism, now it’s Post-Modernism. Sure, it would be great if more people were highly-educated and well-read and cultured, but Western Civ will be OK without those among “the masses” who aren’t.”
Matt, i get where you’re coming from but my biiggest gripe is that it seems like today, unlike the earlier period you mentioned, there were a lot more voices challenging those new ideas to prove themselves. Admittedly, some of those voices were reactionary and missed the value of a lot of great art but the challenge was there and it was, i think, good. For me, this isn’t about the masses but rather about the highly educated, well-read asses in the newspapers, classrooms and online media who, instead of holding fast to a set of standards, simply tell the masses that whatever they like is also great.
Of course, we’ve probably had this discussion before…:)
You make superhero films, Brentos??
“For me, this isn’t about the masses but rather about the highly educated, well-read asses in the newspapers, classrooms and online media who, instead of holding fast to a set of standards, simply tell the masses that whatever they like is also great.”
OK, to a certain extent I’m in agreement with you on that . . . although I do think that even relatively trivial works sometimes have ideological content that might be useful to unpack.
“Of course, we’ve probably had this discussion before…:)”
We have . . . but it’s been a while and it’s kinda a slow day on the boards today. Just as I’d like to see more complexity and artistic accomplishment in the average film, I like to see us all pushing each other to include a little nuance in our statements and arguments rather than mere sloganeering.
Oh, and fuck intellectuals, it’s not about that, we are not saying everyone should start reading Proust, what I’m demanding it’s nothing else than deal with adult like adults and not like children or mentally handicapped people, like i said, this affects our choices when going to cinema, i don’t care what people do with they’re routines but when it affects me, then it’s also my problem.
@doofu
hahaha no that was a joke, me and blue are in a facebook group together and i’ll take stupid home videos and post them in there from time to time. if you’re on facebook you should add me as a friend and join the group, it’s basically a bunch of people from mubi and it’s like stop the lists but with instant notifications lol.
here’s two of my “superhero films”
glad to know i officially killed this thread, i told you my films were Superhero masterpieces.
… the challenge was there and it was, i think, good.
The Enlightenment ended badly, but to challenge ‘reason’ is good – and it seems to unreasonable to simply tell the masses that whatever they like is also great.
Nonetheless, saying everything is great doesn’t close the door to anyone of the masses with a brain in their head.
I think Joks has the better complaint: those who should know better don’t seem to care.
I long for the day someone intentionally does a caricature-like parody of a summer popcorn flick which goes mainstream… and I’d bet nobody would get it
For me, this isn’t about the masses but rather about the highly educated, well-read asses in the newspapers, classrooms and online media who, instead of holding fast to a set of standards, simply tell the masses that whatever they like is also great.
Nonetheless, saying everything is great doesn’t close the door to anyone of the masses with a brain in their head.
I think it reasonable and legitimate to be concerned about whether our children are being educated to think critically and creatively, rather than being indoctrinated by propaganda, etc. An important part of this process I believe is to teach your own children not to automatically believe as incontrovertible fact every subjective opinion that their academic teachers, media journalists and authority figures spew, and also to think critically in reading any mass-produced news etc. But I understand that this issue is more complicated than all that.
I think Joks has the better complaint: those who should know better don’t seem to care.
Personally, it’s not that I don’t care about culture, because I do. It’s more to do with my belief that negatively interfering too much with the creative flow of a culture you don’t like (such as pop-culture) seems to me to be unnecessary and pointless in the larger scheme of things, especially when there are so many subcultures out there for you to focus your energies upon and engage in instead which are thriving from curious people seeking them out and participating.
After all, why are we all here discussing art films? Forums like these exist and are easy to find, and we have all come here by our own volition because we were curious enough to do so; there’s nothing stopping anybody else from doing so who is curious enough to explore beyond the ordinary mass-produced fluff. It’s not like art films are being censored (at least not in the West), even if they don’t get the mass-media exposure of blockbuster superhero flicks.
“Yeah, we call it democracy.”
LOL. Touche!!
“Look, first it was the Enlightenment that was undermining culture, then Romanticism, then Modernism, now it’s Post-Modernism. Sure, it would be great if more people were highly-educated and well-read and cultured, but Western Civ will be OK without those among “the masses” who aren’t.”
But like Spence noted, challenges offered visions that, while at times flawed, were at least ‘tenable’. The problem i have with what happened during the 50’s nad 60’s, particularly with the pop art movement, is that it was no longer about aesthetics, it was about politics(ok it was obviously about both, but more about politics). To me the ‘politics’ of the elite is bound up a lot more closely with the notion of superiority in regards to aesthetics which can easily be justified. The pop art movement was claiming something different. ‘art is art’. it was about the individual, a selfish kind of politics. Breaking down traditions for the sake of what exactly?
Of course i’d be lying if i claimed that nothing good had come out of that ‘mentality’, particularly in film and music, but my point stands. I think what we are seeing now is, in some respects, a further deterioration of standards.
I’m just hoping it’s cyclical though and things change for the better eventually.
so did you guys like my movies or not?
side-note: i loved the back-stories of all of the new characters in Dark Knight Rises and how pretty much each character had the same thing happen to them but dealt with their circumstances in very different ways and have very unequal jumping off points to do so.
One could trace art for art’s sake back to Theophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire; then Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg.
Seeing art as ‘laddered’ is doesn’t preclude a tectonic climb.
“One could trace art for art’s sake back to Theophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire; then Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg.”
Oh I dunno…
Is the Venus of Willendorf art or pornography?
@Alex
Then what’s your alternative? Force studios to produce things you like over things the majority of people like? There’s more than enough intellectual films being made. You can’t watch it at a megaplex, but the art houses get quieter crowds anyway. You have access to the entire Netflix and Hulu libraries for less than ten dollars a month, why does it matter which films are showing at megaplexes?
@AFLWYDD
If you’re going to make that kind of grand sweeping criticism of culture, at least justify it with specifics, otherwise you’re just pissing in the wind.
Western culture obviously has it’s flaws, but I don’t know about you, there seems to be a pretty large correlation between westernization, civil rights (Especially those of women) and social tolerance.
“Western culture obviously has it’s flaws, but I don’t know about you, there seems to be a pretty large correlation between westernization, civil rights (Especially those of women) and social tolerance.”
Maybe it’s all just an Illuminati facade. Beware!
“Kids today aren’t expected to so much as hold a job until they’ve graduated college…”
And fifty years ago kids weren’t even expected to find a job until they graduated high school. The only real difference is fifty years ago that job had to be your career, when today one understands that what one is interested in at 18 may not be what they’re interested in at 35, or 50, or what have you…
Yeah, spoiled brats! Being able to choose the course in which their life takes…
“Western culture obviously has it’s flaws, but I don’t know about you, there seems to be a pretty large correlation between westernization, civil rights (Especially those of women) and social tolerance.”
Is this the same kind of social tolerance that forces Native Indians into desperate poverty, throughout the Americas (who is it that Mexican drug cartels are murdering with impunity?), and almost throughout Europe has begun banning anything related to Islam or Arab culture? Is this the same kind of social tolerance that still treats “Gypsies”; the second-largest victims of the holocaust, and who have a 700 year history in the western world; as a roaming horde of drinking, cursing, lying, mystics? The U.S. has the highest population of Romani on earth, and many cities had bans on them entering up until 1998 (were we a westernized nation before 1998?)…
Westernization made Japan more tolerant? Is that why Koreans were still a dirty, disgusting people in Japan up and until the late 90’s, even today they remain repressed, well over a hundred and fifty years after the Meiji Restoration? There were debates over the working theories of Capitalism and Communism in Japan (in a still lasting Empire) almost a hundred years before there were debates over the relative humanity of minority cultures, and it still ranks as maybe the most overtly racist nation on earth, and arguably the most westernized Asian nation.
The East is also pretty fucked up. You no region of the region of the Earth more misogynist than Central Asia. Though I don’t much about the people of china, except for itheir entire history, they have suffered under sociopathic rulers. Don’t forget how Turkey still denis the death of over million Armenians. So do single out the west for atrocities, for all of humanity has shit and blood on their hands. The west only seems to do more because they have more money. Imagine the horrors the east would unleash if it was the half with the most money.
“One could trace art for art’s sake back to Theophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire; then Clive Bell and Clement Greenberg.”
And there were all sorts of challenges to pure aestheticism going back to Dada and New Objectivity, Upton Sinclair, John Heartfield, Brecht, Surrealism, etc., etc.
@ Joks
What I’m saying is, don’t sweat the ephemera, Mubi (unless you want to).
@alwydywdywwdwdw
“So you’re denying that kids are taught to respect authority, regardless of whether the authority figure has earned it, in school”
you seriously think that’s an aspect of capitalism? you seriously think that schools FUNDED BY TAX DOLLARS are an aspect of true capitalism????
AxelUmog
But isn’t it possible you just haven’t tasted the right kind of food? Admitedly I’m playing devils advocate a bit here as I do not consider myself in any way shape or form a “foodie”, however I know people very serious about it and I’m not so quick to turn up my nose and dismiss the whole notion.
Imagine someone as ignorant about film as I am about ‘gourmet food’ dismissing film because they’ve never watched a movie that has stirred their very soul the same way their favorite pasta…
And I think there probably exists some really talented chefs out there who have devoted their lives to the craft. Are they not ‘artists’? Do they subsequently not create art?
Also I would add the obvious point that just because you or I are not ‘roused’ in particular by food, does not necessarily make the whole idea absurd.