Crimes and misdemeanors
As “the moral of the story” becomes passé in Hollywood
By James Scolari 03/26/2009
The scene comes from time immemorial: the clan gently illuminated by flickering firelight, held in thrall by the sacred tales of the great doings of gods and men – didactic yarns that carried the mores of the age, calibrated the moral compass of the young, lauded the upright, censured the lowly.
Flash forward ten thousand years and the scene is much the same, but for the popcorn, Junior Mints and other cinematic trappings. The flickering spell still captivates the clan, and to the same purpose, yet too often the latter-day storytellers seem to have abdicated responsibility for the cogent social — if not moral — instruction, accolade or censure.
A glossy new remake of Wes Craven’s execrable 1972 theatrical debut The Last House on the Left is in multiplexes this week, the latest in a dreadful cinematic trend — where would-be art more resembles the abbatoir than the academy, and the effect plays less to cultural development than to cultural diaspora.
I’ve always loved cinema, and have never been conservative in those passions. I loved the last great era of cinematic excess — the 1970s — that coincided with my own coming of age; loved its marauding monsters, bare-bosomed heroines, its tales of madness and mayhem and hot-blooded hijinks. Thus, it strikes me as ironic that I might come off to some as a moral crusader when I say that I find myself repelled by an escalating amorality in Hollywood, now neck-deep in a new era of excess.
The emerging trend, not only in horror but cinema in general, leans toward amorality — which is like immorality without the nuisance of conscience — as the filmmaker leaves such trifling notions as a tale’s morality to the audience. Ours is a free society, but whether we have the emotional tools to handle that freedom is anything but a certainty, as we celebrate characters like Hannibal Lecter and his sociopathic brethren, whose predilection for slaughter is offered with the barest nod to any moral coda, justified by the presence of a cursory tongue in cheek. “Sorry if that went over your head,” the aggrieved filmmaker will quip. “It was intended as satire.”
Hollywood justifies its slate as satisfying the demand of the audience, and there is undeniable truth in that cowardly excuse; our culture will absolutely sink as low as we will continue to tolerate, and to celebrate, with our attention and our money. But as our art reflects our tastes and lives, the knife cuts both ways — just as, in Oscar Wilde’s tale, the picture of Dorian Gray became the unspeakable reflection of his true nature.
In a report entitled Strategic Development of the Irish Film Industry, the authors noted, “A fundamental policy of every national community in the world is to secure a distinctive presence and express their cultural identities through film.” Such is true for virtually every nation except the United States, where the only cultural imperative seems to be that which is widely marketable. The unfortunate corollary of the notion is, anything that sells becomes culturally acceptable — and remains so as long as we’re buying.
Thus, as these films earn millions, each new iteration pushes the envelope a bit further, saturating the national consciousness with the bloody footprint of such tales as Saw, Hostel, Funny Games, Vacancy, The Devil’s Rejects, Wolf Creek, et cetera, ad nauseum. Rather than slaking our dark appetites, the consumption of them actually leaves us hungry for more as our culture becomes increasingly warped.
I realize that violence is in our nature; we are “red in tooth and claw,” as Tennyson suggests — but we are likewise capable of reflection, discretion and evolution. Such was confirmed wisdom some 2,500 years ago, when among Buddhism’s “eightfold path” — a series of steps suggested to lead to a life of righteousness — was the dictate toward “right concentration,” which might otherwise be termed, in the contemporary idiom, “garbage in, garbage out.” We can see anything we like, but we can “un-see” none of it. Once we consume it, in some small way it likewise consumes us.
Thus, we might, upon consideration, avoid The Last House on the Left and its ilk, because whether such violent fare desensitizes us to violence, or increases our proclivity toward it, is beside the real point, which is simply that because we can do better, we should.
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It's something that blind-sided the 70's energy, but after all, did we really expect that the outcome of that time would not be a prolonged darkness.
They sing "God Bless America" at the end of The Deer Hunter. Why? And why does it work?
To mourn the past is verbotten.
A good film appears to do a few things, simultaeneously.
First, things have to happen in a movie which don't happen in real life.
If they do happen all the time in real life, then why include it in the movie? Fiction isn't a documentary. You may well be entertained by documentaries, but screen fictions don't set out to document. They set out to transport.
I think about diner scenes. The "establishing" sequence of the waitress taking the food to the table of the main characters. Why do so many directors have about ten seconds of their movie with a waitress carrying food from a counter to a table? It does nothing. It happens billions upon billions of times every day. In a fraction of a second, the audience knows they are in a diner. Ten seconds to convey that is a waste of everyone's time, and people feel that loss as an audience. Haven't you?
Secondly, each scene has to do multiple jobs. Not one job. Look at the blockbusters - every scene does A LOT of things, but they do them seamlessly. Before the audience has run out of things to notice in each scene, the action has moved on. Transformers 1, The Sound of Music, Taxi Driver, Blade Runner.
Bad film makers grossly underestimate the capacity of the audience to take-in information. That doesn't mean it's confusing. The skill is in seamless inclusion of narrative detail through all the senses and collective memory, generous, not grasping, not conveying a few drops, then another couple of drops. They are saying gimme gimme gimme, not admiring your camera angle.