(In short: Forgive generalizations, dear reader, experience has shown that there are diamonds in the rough, but the rough is big and the diamonds are just a few carat. Different is out, lockstep is in: the Hollywood system and society.)
What plagues Hollywood and has reduced 95% of its films to stunningly boring, repetitive strips of celluloid with a shelf-life of around 2 months, is the star system combined with "formula." Unbeknownst to many, perhaps, or known but conveniently ignored or excused, is the fact that Hollywood films are created the way five-year plans were created in Communist countries, namely by committee and according to strict regulations. As a result, they are about as vibrant, thrilling and exciting as the Yellow River Concerto, a schlock-filled piano concerto written by a few Chinese composers during one of those "Cultural Revolutions", obviously with a gun at their heads, that blends a little Addinsell and Rozsa with a smattering of Kalkbrenner, perhaps, and a tiny daub of the Viennese School of Haydn and Co. Hollywood's output of generally saltless, pre-chewed nonsense is then peddled to the public in the US and abroad as if it were Tolstoy mixed with rocket fuel and some very hot sauce.
These products -- and they are exactly that -- are embarassing to look at. The stars, by now, all look and act the same. The facial expressions are identical, the language is identical, speech intonation and patterns are the same, the gestures are identical, the camera angles the same, and the stories.... well, they are based on a few simple premises. One is: A hates B and somehow has to cross the US in a strange or certainly noticeable vehicle. There are some slight variations, like the uplifting tale of a dysfunctional family crossing the US in strange vehicle (RV or Little Miss Sunshine, for example). In the end the protagonists either 1) have sex, 2) suddenly like each other, even though they have been at each others' throats for 85 minutes of tedium, or 3) become functional again without the benefit of therapy or meds. And you thought Rain Man had anything to do with autism?
There are a few other formulas, but not many and ultimately, they all go back to a handful of very basic and obvious plots. An example: The anti-Communist movies of the late 1940s were based on B gangster movies or horror films (My Son John is sort of like Frankenstein...). All it takes is a slow amble through a video store to soak up the tedium of Hollywood on the covers of those thousands of DVDs, faces scrunched up more from some peristaltic traffic jams, it seems, than genuine distress, men showing their teeth and holding huge guns, or adults whose state of love makes them look like anthropomorphed smileys. Let us not mention all that Rambo stuff, which is audience abuse, and comedies that have degenerated to the level of Lumière's Arroseur Arrosé as it is known (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6nJfXAuHQ).
A step further
The carts and horses here are becoming mixed up. Perhaps this is not Hollywood, but, more depressingly, the nation's very way of doing things, its mental paradigm, and Hollywood has just discovered it to be a great business strategy and is rubbing it in the way some men keep rubbing one spot chez la femme, because what worked once in, say, 1965, might still be the secret to success in 2009. I am assuming here.
For Americans are, by and large, quite an uncurious, even timorous bunch, and becoming more so as time ticks away inexorably. Not only Americans, by the way.... this attitude is spreading more and more as the Great Unwashed satisfies its needs for constant and eminently predictable distraction with cheap products. Hence all it took GWB to get everyone jumping up and down and praising His Farce of a Presidency was to spread a little brumagem fear. And he did so by creating the ultimate enemy, invisible, intangible and even bearing an easy-to-remember name: the terrorist. And fear, as we know, is control.
The difference
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? The star system and the formula are not only the strategy of some mega-rich Hollywood peddlers of faux-excitement, but also of news organizations. And the results are uncannily the same. Decades ago, a freelancer could send in stories, some would get published, others not. You learned to "paper your office with rejection letters," but you also rejoiced in the occasional correspondence with an intelligent editor or a colleague. And there was the possibility of getting the story into print, not to see your name in type, but because of the story. You were providing diversity, the quintessence of thrill. The unknown, the mysterious, the recondite piece of info made the difference, like the fake beauty mark on a cream-colored breast. You were the eyes and ears of the media, scouting for things that made a difference, no matter how small.
No longer. Everyone is playing it safe, "different" is out, lockstep is in. Television's news anchors -- wrongly called journalists -- are treated as demiurges. Editors at papers barricade themselves behind spam filters and if contact does arise by sheer accident or dint of persistence, they treat the freelancer the way the chief concierge of a palace might have treated a beggar. As a result, the news has become blotchy, one-sided, predictable as a Kansas cornfield. The rest of the world to the American media -- and the yellow trash in Europe, I might add, like Bild in Germany, Blick in Switzerland, France Soir in France, to name a few -- is like West Berlin in the old GDR maps, a blank spot. Unless, of course, there is blood, disaster, or very rich and successful people becoming more and more rich. The gatekeepers, as they used to be called, are happily ensconced in their ivory towers printing out safe stories that an allegedly lily-livered readership can somehow swallow, as long as it is new, shiny, shrinkwrapped. Because, news stories wilt like butterheads in a steamroom. Gaza, for example, after 20 days, is already slipping, the butchery there passed the 1000 mark, no one wants mashed children for breakfast, lunch and dinner, so its time to turn the kliegs onto some other story. Thank goodness an Airbus 320 landed in the Hudson river and its 155 passengers and crew made it out safely. Let me ask: Since when have the news media been interested in planes landing safely -- albeit spectacularly!
(The few journalists who are allowed to rise up after some hard work and sacrifice end up cashing in their idealistic chips at the pearly gateway and suddenly sing "I'll do unto you as they did unto me." They become the stars, the untouchables, the next guardians of the towers. They have new, better, more shiny friends now. Their former life never existed. ... But I digress...)
Tacos and circuses
By now, news has become a misnomer. It should be called "Daily Surprise," fresh news for fresh people, because we don't look back. We move on, the faster, the better. None of that Eurotrashy thinking stuff. Now the US has a sexy, young, thin, intelligent, articulate, definitely more competent president. And black as well.... so pundits can hail the end of racism as we knew it. The approval rating of the outgoing prez is below freezing, so everyone except for the manifestly untreatable cases are now Good Americans, in fact so good, they don't even need to do a kind of Nuremberg on those bizarre and corrupt characters. Gentleman's agreements, perhaps? News flash of yore: Bush had 90% approval rating before invading Afghanistan in 2001. Oh, there was lots of collateral damage, and OBL got away, but that did not really matter, the whole moment was like, well, a movie... End of news flash. Move on, move on....
Wave the flag, whack that drum, blow that fife, all hail to the new chief. The American bellybutton is once again glowing in all its glory, we are free from the wickedness of the neo-cons, so roll them credits. What did George W. Bush say in his farewell speech, besides the usual whitewashing, boasting, platitudinizing, posturing, even lying? He noted the continuity with the past, the house in which Jefferson lived, and quoted the grand poobah of Republican thought: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
How noble. And no wonder. But it is what the nation really wants. Zoloft for one, Viagra for the other, a shot of hooch and tomorrow is a new day. In other words: Let someone else clean up the mess. Taking a hard look at the past is so un-American, such a waste of time. I mean, if you've taken a dump, what's behind you smells... right?
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