It's Like a Movie, but It's Not

WITH summer comes the annual ritual of the Hollywood blockbuster, aimed primarily at teenagers, and with the blockbuster comes the annual ritual of complaining about it.

Critics usually focuses on the thin plots, the lame jokes, the lack of characterization and the bombast of special effects. As they see it, many films now use an aesthetic sleight-of-hand that substitutes volume, speed, size and other neurological overloads for the more traditional satisfactions of entertainment, allowing viewers to expend a minimal amount of emotional energy. These are faux movies, and are about the only kind most teenagers respond to. They are also Exhibit A of a larger phenomenon: the illusion of entertainment.

For decades, cultural observers have been saying Americans live in a world of their own illusions, built to their specifications and designed to replace the disorder and discomfort of the unmanaged reality people were once sentenced to. As Umberto Eco wrote, "American imagination demands the real thing and, to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake."

Entertainment, especially film, with its blend of the real and the fantastic, has long been implicated in this shouldering aside of the genuine. But though entertainment is often blamed for this trend, it is also seemingly immune, because you cannot make a copy of a copy. You know that the French pavilion at Disney World's Epcot is not a real French bistro. But what would an imitation movie or TV show even look like? To talk about facsimiles of entertainment doesn't make sense.

Over the last few years, however, something has appeared that not even the most prescient cultural theorists anticipated. The television producer Phil Rosenthal calls it the "illusion of entertainment," and it is just that — a form of entertainment that looks and sounds like conventional entertainment but is not, any more than Epcot's Paris is Paris. Something vital is missing.

In most entertainment, the audience responds emotionally, psychologically, intellectually, even physically. There is a level of engagement, and we usually judge entertainment on the basis of how much engagement it elicits. At its simplest, as in so many teenage movies, the illusion of entertainment eschews other forms of engagement for purely physical effects. At its more complex, engagement is replaced by another mechanism entirely. Instead of character development in movies or full-bodied jokes in situation comedies viewers get a set of signals, a kind of code, that advises them how to respond without having to expend the effort, however minimal, that real entertainment demands. You see or hear the signal and you respond as if you were getting the real thing. Or put another way, you are given the form and you provide the content.

Just compare a conventional entertainment, the director Frank Capra's "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," with its latest avatar, Adam Sandler's "Mr. Deeds" — by no means the most egregious offender. Both films tell the same story of a naïf who inherits a fortune and is taken advantage of by urban sharpies. But that's where the similarity ends. Capra's classic is heavily plotted, quiet and often tender; leisurely paced, its comedy character- and plot-generated. You must watch and listen closely to enjoy it. Mr. Sandler's movie is more skimpily plotted, loud, often violent and frenetically paced. Its comedy is virtually all non sequiturs — a disappearing butler or a gangrenous foot that is only funny because we know it is meant to be, not because it is inherently humorous. Even the romantic scenes are romantic only because viewers know they are supposed to be, and drippy music signals that they are. Mr. Sandler is working the code. He's stripped Capra down to the absolute basics of form and then added noise and speed.

In mathematics there is something called a derivative — an expression that stands for another set of expressions. The illusion of entertainment is a kind of cultural derivative. You watch most television sitcoms and, just by the rhythm of the banter and the laugh track, you know how you are supposed to respond, whether the jokes are funny or not. Sitcom writers call this "likeajoke" because it has the form of a joke without the content. Or you go to a big commercial movie, and just by experiencing the rapid cutting and thumping music you know how you are supposed to respond, whether the action engages you or not.

In effect, these entertainments exist largely as a system of reminders of what we once experienced when we watched real entertainment — movies and television shows that engaged us and made us feel.

OF course, some may argue that the illusion of entertainment is just another name for bad or formulaic entertainment, and the signals and codes are the cultural syntax that everyone grows up with. But the illusion of entertainment is not a matter of quality; it is a matter of kind — of a different way of processing what we see. Even bad conventional entertainment operates on the principle of engagement; it is just that bad entertainment doesn't succeed in engaging.

As for formulas, while most people are familiar with narrative patterns and understand what they convey, there is a big difference between old formulaic entertainment and the new illusion of entertainment. Formulas are designed to elicit predictable responses through predictable means — predictable because they have worked in the past. You show an audience an attractive young man and woman who playfully bicker at the beginning of a movie and it roots for them to wind up together at the end. Or show a bully pushing around a decent fellow and viewers root for the latter to defeat the former. The audience reacts not because it knows the formula — it reacts because the formula knows the audience.

THE illusion of entertainment doesn't put the audience through those paces. Being a derivative, it is far more emotionally economical. It gets its predictable responses by cuing the audience in how they are supposed to react. And it can do so because the audience, after years of watching movies and TV shows, is now hard-wired to respond. Virtually all Americans have internalized the code. They are sophisticated enough to know that a certain cadence of speech means funny and a certain editing pattern means action and certain saccharine music means melodrama. They don't need the whole apparatus of entertainment anymore, or even formulas. The illusion of entertainment is a shortcut — entertainment lite.

It is not an altogether unsatisfying shortcut either. Just as Mr. Eco said that Americans prefer the fake to the real, so many prefer the illusion of entertainment to the real thing. The illusion of entertainment cannot provide all the pleasures real entertainment does, but it is far less demanding and challenging. It is also more accessible, and since it lets viewers essentially fill in the blanks themselves, it is more certain in its results. In fact, many people, especially young people, are now likely to judge a movie or TV show by how effectively it provides the forms and activates the codes.

Not surprisingly, this has been a boon to the entertainment industry. Why struggle to write real jokes when you can write "likeajokes" and get the same effect? In doing so, however, producers of entertainment have not, as some critics assert, necessarily suffered a failure of talent or intelligence. Rather, they may have made a discovery and then exploited it. Just as the makers of kitsch, which is the illusion of art, learned to produce, in the critic Clement Greenberg's analysis, the effect without the cause, so have the makers of the illusion of entertainment learned how to produce the reaction without the reason for it. When the audience so embraces this, one cannot really blame producers for attempting to perfect it.

Obviously, no work of popular entertainment is entirely illusory yet. But real entertainment is endangered — and not only because the illusion of entertainment is flooding the market. An entire generation has now grown up with the illusion of entertainment. It has grown up with the codes, with "likeajokes" and "likeanaction," and scarcely knows what real entertainment is — which is why the illusion of entertainment is targeted at the young. For them, the codes are not reminders; they are the thing itself.

It is bizarre to think that conventional entertainment may someday become a relic with even the old formulas attenuated into signals. Yet that is the future we are edging toward — a future where entertainment is created by people who don't care about engagement for people who don't even know what engagement is.

re: your very long response. I may get back to this tomorrow. I am still getting caught up on work this weekend. Thanks for the post, though. In the meantime, here's a second go at it. This one is from Hermenaut (meaning a hermeneuetic traveler, I guess, I don't know how they come up with names for some of these journals - but anyway) I think this comes a bit closer to what the NYT author was saying/trying to say

Clarke Cooper

The Will to Scorn

http://www.hermenaut.com/a11.shtml

If you've ever been to a movie theater then you may also have been outside the theater or in its lobby. In these places on bad days you might encounter people in flagrant violation of the Golden Rule of cinematic etiquette: Keep your fool mouth shut about this movie, other movies, and anything that's ever been associated with a movie. The reason is that when you fling wide your pie hole and pass opinion in public you're exposing people who have never done you any harm to attitudes against which they are particularly defenseless on account of having either just formed some of their own or readied themselves to form some, and in consequence of this one or more of them may have to strike you dead on the spot. Restraint here is a matter of etiquette rather than self preservation because it's entirely your affair whether you choose to live or die, but it's inconsiderate in the extreme to expose perfect strangers to the risk of life imprisonment simply because you can't wait till you get to the car before you release your foul interpretations. I most certainly do not exempt myself from this restriction; on the contrary, as will be seen it's among my fondest wishes that there be someone at every feature I attend who would be incapable of not murdering me for thoughtless venting; as I hope for them to remain happily at large, my word is "mum."

These people are fine; they are your friends. They only mean you harm, and if they do happen to kill you it will be entirely personal. The ones you want to fear and shun are the ones who on overhearing one of these unfortunate broadcasts—which could be your own if you're not looking sharp-turn to their dates, roll their various eyes and chuckle benignantly: the Scorners.

What is it like, this scorn? Well, if you've ever been to a movie theater where they were showing a movie more than about fifteen years old, unless you were very lucky it was all around you. I recently saw the revised rerelease of Touch of Evil, an Orson Welles joint, and enjoyed it very much; I think it's a swell picture. Current audiences don't necessarily dig it though so at the end when Marlene Dietrich pronounced the story's judgment on Orson Welles' unsanitary old detective most of the house broke into titters mainly provoked, I think, by Dietrich's now-unfashionable solemnity. It wasn't the first unintended comedy they'd found in the work, but because they'd come to see a Classic and had been entertained they left the theater feeling benign, edumacated, and content. This is genial scorn, the kind that starts to smile when the movie begins because, tee hee, it's only black and white: Sure, they did their best trying to make movies in olden times, but the technology was too primitive to do anything that looked real, so you know when monkeys make faces that look like they're thinking? It's like that. Tee hee; tee hee hee.

I have a report, however, of a showing of this same picture maybe fifteen years ago, when it was less a Classic than an Old Movie. In those days the audience apparently didn't so much chuckle at its quaintness as roar at its out-of-date inanity and impossibility. When the lights came up the female of the prosperity-in-sight young couple seated in front of my informant laughed to her man, "Well THAT was the worst movie I've ever seen." Actually it was very likely the best; she may also have gone to see the rerelease and been "very impressed" by it, never remembering having seen it back when it was old-fashioned and terrible instead of a charming attempt and a fine example of what could be done even back then with such limited means. A sufficiently official Seal of Approval will always sway the opinion of a Scorner; once you've stamped their brains they'll greet your product not with Scorn, but Delight.

Now the reaction of this young lady—let's call her Leslie—to a movie she thought was terrible was amused scorn and disdain. If you cock your head and squint a little you can see fodder for that attitude in Touch of Evil: Charlton Heston doesn't "seem" like a "Mexican detective"; Welles is certainly very fat; Dietrich's languid cynicism must be a put-on because who ever feels like that? The world's Leslies and all their dates could not be more perfectly wrong about considering any of this grounds for even the simplest criticism, but these are the sorts of things to which they enjoy reacting.

(snip) discussion of Chasing Amy (it's good but not entirely germane)

So I've seen something I've disliked and been enraged; Leslie saw something she didn't like and she sneered; what accounts for the difference between these two kinds of negative reaction? Why don't the heathen rage? Partly it's just that there are different ways to receive cultural product. Some years ago, when the job which supported me was even crappier than the one which does now and that of my then-mate crappier still I went with her to an episode of workgroup-goes-drinking. Bonding pretexts in those situations are pretty tenuous, and in less than a beer I was chatting with a fellow we should call "Jake," the binder of our conversation being our agreement that we sincerely enjoyed getting high and watching old cartoons. Like there's this game I like to play, pretending that either I or the cartoon is Russian; I know next to nothing about Russian culture so anything in the cartoon that requires cultural membership I get to lose. My favorite is a 1946 Porky Pig that takes us on a tour of American history—George Washington at this, Patrick Henry at that, Abraham Lincoln at the other—but nowhere are any of the people or events named: the whole thing is a mystery to the outsider; it's Ivan the Terrible at the Sack of Orksputsk, Peter the Great consecrating the Festivity of Arkank, Molotov's Great Address. You remember those—it's all the stuff you had to stand up and recite the dates of in Russian History class.

So Jake mentions a taste for Popeye. "Mm," I agree; "or anyway the ones before Paramount took over in '39." Definitely—I love the muttering Popeye; anybody who's got that much to say to himself is okay by me. He's my main man. Paramount Popeye, on the other hand, sucks. You can no longer communicate with him in internal dialogues, there are gratuitous nephews, there's only one plot. Forget it; it's no kind of Popeye at all.

"Oh, well," says Jake. "I don't know anything about the dates, and all that."

"Oh. Oh! OH." I realized to myself. "You mean you like watching cartoons!" In the cartoon-watching sense, that is, where you feast your eyes on the pictures and relish the action. That's different.

Not that there's anything wrong with it. Everybody watches cartoons sometimes, and you can do it with movies, music, Great Literature, or State of the Union speeches; having a good feel for just looking at the pictures is important, in the same way that it's important to have a certain amount of experience with and understanding of various drugs. Lots of things only are cartoons in the first place and it's a silly mistake to think of them otherwise--Pecker, The Impostors, and Freeway are cartoon movies I liked very much. But the intoxicated state, while useful, is inherently irresponsible, and though it can do your responsibilities a lot of good to take periodic breaks from them it furthers no purpose of your own to be doped to the gills every blessed day of your life. Watching Cartoons you never see more than exactly what's presented to your literalist eyeballs. You can regard those things with more or less acuity or sophistication, noticing or not that the backdrop jiggled or that this hand-drawn animation is especially fine or weren't the President's eyes brown before, but all your attention will be delivered over to elements of presentation and the experience will be one of reception.

It makes sense that from this mode you won't be able to generate any greater indignation than "yeah, right." Somebody's offering you a reality and asking you to go along with the story they claim about it, but you can see the zipper on the monster's rubber suit—yeah, right. That is so fake. Real monsters don't have zippers on their rubber suits. Seeing through pretense means your perception is stronger than the deception, so you're better than it is and licensed to be smug.

But can't we all keep our shirts on? This movie...it is a movie. It's not real. Is there really much credit to be gotten by discovering the distinction between reality and make-believe? You did notice, didn't you, that before the princess was abducted and the sorcerer let the demons out somebody stopped you and asked for eight dollars? That's a tip-off—nobody's trying to keep it a secret that the princess is an actress-impostor—we're just pretending. That spaceship—not really a spaceship. That ferocious dinosaur—not even a model; a cartoon in fact: Watch it!

When you're offered a creative work the first thing its creators want from you is to please suspend your disbelief, to go along with this gag; just for the sake of argument, consider a forty-foot ape; let's call him Kong. That concession granted they then mean to spin you a little thing that looks sort of like the reality you came from IF that also contained also whatever unreal elements they need for the narrative: if we brought our Kong to your Manhattan, what might happen then? The contrived elements are a hypothesis, the tale an experiment.

But because of the necessary resemblances of the tale's reality to our reality many people, it would seem, skip ahead to attempt straight belief and acceptance. If coincidentally sane they understand that the events depicted are not supposed to have happened to them but still they take them as news reports from some other place. They enter the experience with only one reality-slot available in their heads, and just swap out the regular cartridge for the depiction's. As long as that depiction remains solid there are no objections; discontent arises when seams appear, signs that the depiction is a forgery, that it comes in fact from the same reality that we did before we went into the show. For someone operating in this mode the illusion-shattering ends the experience, which is judged to have failed in a silly and dishonorable fashion: That was a wire! I no longer acknowledge your so-called "Kong."

Tee, hee hee.

Leslie and other cartoon-watchers who laugh at old movies because they aren't new or boo old racial stereotypings because they aren't the ones we make now are indulging in an apathetic one-eyed fanaticism. They insist on everything being exactly the way they know it must obviously be but can't be bothered to focus a little energy and decry the violation of their flaccid principles.

I can suggest one substantial reason for you to find fault with Touch of Evil if you want: Like much of Welles' work it's overblown and black-and-white gaudy. These are qualities that affect—and effect—the story being told you. They are unnecessary divergences from the story that may serve no other purpose than to get you aroused, and you might, as I do, like that in this case but it should make you suspicious of what you're being told. It happens that one of the things I like about Welles is not this excess vivacity but the fact that he can be excessively vivacious without having that special effect corrupt his story. It is NOT relevant to the movie that Charlton Heston can't speak Spanish—see, he also isn't really a narcotics officer: He's just PRETENDING. Mexicality is not crucial to the movie's themes—what the picture's about is integrity and necessity. If Heston can't give you the impression of integrity bewildered by situational ethics then it's maybe the worst movie you ever saw; if he can't give you an impression of Spanish, who cares? You want nice Spanish, go see Carmen.

Now like I said, there's nothing wrong with a little light superficiality-Jakerie-per se. It's when you try to make something from that that you get yourself into fits of Leslieism. Jake's an easy-going guy-Jake Doesn't Mind-but Leslie says Touch of Evil isn't in color, like other movies are; Leslie says Charlton Heston doesn't speak Spanish, like Antonio Banderas does; Leslie says "Oh my god-that guy was SO FAT." Leslie takes the things she sees and compares them in a connect-the-dots fashion to all the other things she's exposed to most; her process is a lot like morphing, that obscene computer technique developed for making cats and dogs smile on the TV to sell cat and dog food to the humans. To morph from one picture to another you don't make any comparisons or contrasts, you don't do any analysis or synthesis; morphing is the computer-assisted path to making two dissimilar pictures be the same picture, and the more distinctions you obliterate the better. So if the pictures Leslie sees don't match, if the cat won't smile, Leslie gets attitude.

Leslie doesn't assess value; instead she checks to see whether the thing she sees matches everything else and if it doesn't she scorns it. Her Everything Else may be drawn from High Art or checkout-stand disposables, from the Western Canon or the avantmost garde-scorn comes in all brows and traditions. Leslie finds Stephen King scary and Mary Shelley boring, not because King is simpler to read and Leslie is a simpleton (she may be or not) but because King produces "stories" that have just the same kind of scariness as all the other scary Leslie sees when she goes looking for something scary (he is after all responsible for most of those things). It's much easier this way; the cues are all familiar so she can always tell when she's just been scared/touched/delighted/aroused and when she hasn't.

Scorn judges a thing successful when it can tell by similarity that what it's being fed has been put together in accordance with The Way These Things Are Done, deviation from which demonstrates an inability to get it right. On its days off scorn returns lattes that aren't nonfat, the way it ordered them, hello! Things succeed for Leslie to the extent that they don't stimulate you with irritating differences. Scorn is critical soma.

By contrast, what your angry reaction has done is to reach out to and possibly into the work to try and discover what it means to mean on its own terms, and, having grasped that, made a decision about whether that meaning on those terms is sensible, truthful, beautiful, shameful, intolerable, execrable or whatever else the production itself may seem to be. It doesn't take a Creation Scientist—all it requires is the same honest attention you give any person who's standing there telling you something you feel you should try to understand. In school they call it "paying attention," in relationships it's "listening"; in any of these scenaria if you neglect it you'll presently be finding yourself in some kind of trouble. Once you've heard you evaluate and decide whether your addressor is full of s--t or has an excellent point, and you respond accordingly. It's nothing in the world but the respect due someone who's speaking to you.

Leslie never touches the things she's shown; she just sits back glaring at the surfaces, detecting matches and mismatches—"I mean like they come into the room and the clock says 1:20, and then in the next shot it says 1:15!". Where anger is engaging and creative, scorn is obedient, always subject to the material presented to it and one or another set of rules for dot-connecting. Leslie herself never even enters the picture-the whole thing can be done entirely without her. Very likely someone is about to open a Web site offering scornbots that will go out and despise stuff for you, searching the Internet for everything you wouldn't like; when the search is complete your bot comes back and tells you nothing about the things it found except for how terribly unlike your preferences they all were. Buy the stock now—it'll be big big big.

Chasing Amy shares Leslie's refusal to engage—neither Leslie nor Smith has any intention of communicating; they may not even dream of it. Smith assembled a golem of a story, and populated it with a bunch of semblances that flap their mechanical gums to the beat of whatever notions offer the least disruption to his self-conceptions; it's a movie about life in a Holden-shaped hole with decals of friends stuck to the walls-real friends might not always match your preferences. The fake black militant scene is probably the true core of the movie; with all the hollering and shooting there's a lot of noise and commotion and until the gag is revealed it even seems politically threatening. But no, after all—whew!—nobody present really thought what they said or really did what they pretended; it was all void, all a lie, performed for the sake of its resemblance to other things which have been superficially perceived to exist. Scornful, lying production: The cat smiles, and Leslie the lying listener is content.

bold = original, italic = quoted from post Ok, let me try to read the article more carefully and try to parse what this guy actually (thinks he) is saying.

"Cultural observers" say lots of stupid-ass things. Right away I'm suspicious; is this article really about movies, or about "Americans"? Can't complain about one without complaining about the other, can he?

Well, I'm not going to defend the author from Anti-Americanism. He may very well be, I don't know. Certainly there are other film industries worldwide, India, France, etc. But most of the flow is one-way, US-rest of the world, so it seems more likely to find lots of foreign commentary on our films than US commentary on BollyWood, for example.

Actually, this paragraph doesn't make sense. We have a witty Eco quote being used as a launching pad to explain that movies are immune to the charge of falsifying themselves, because they're already false. Translation: "Movies are make-believe."

Most of us were already told this by our parents at age 2.

Exactly. Is it good or bad entertainment? Are some movies entertainment at all, or are they spectacle designed to evoke the same emotions that 'real' entertainment would. So, for example, is Moulin Rouge (sp?) entertainment or spectacle? Does the fact that the performers are singing modern music help conceal the films flaws? Example review:

http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/m/moulin.html

In keeping with a recent motion picture trend that anarchonistically applies modern music to period pieces, Moulin Rouge ventures down the same trail explored by the likes of Kenneth Branagh's Love's Labour's Lost and the woefully inept A Knight's Tale.

Since Moulin Rouge is the product of Australian director Luhrmann, its chief trait is style - that's with a capital S-T-Y-L-E. Viewers are likely either to love or hate the movie's excesses, much as was the case with Luhrmann's oft-discussed 1996 production, Romeo + Juliet

Moulin Rouge subjects its viewers to a sensory overload with gaudy, gloriously overproduced musical numbers that pay homage to the greats of the past while simultaneously outdoing them.

Despite all of the bombastic musical numbers, or perhaps because of them, the love story in Moulin Rouge works. At times, it's even touching. Some of this has to do with the actors. Ewan McGregor plays his role with a puppydog likability and naïve romanticism. Nicole Kidman positively smolders - it's a shame that her on-screen work here is likely to be overshadowed by her off-screen problems. One could make a compelling case that this is the best performance of her career. The love songs, which form the bulk of their interaction, serve to enhance the sense of romance, and it helps that neither of the stars is being dubbed. Their voices are strong and clear (although occasionally drowned out by the instruments).

Historical purists and those who enjoy only sedate films are likely to be infuriated by what Luhrmann has done here, but who cares? We live in an age of excess, and Lurhmann takes it to the hilt.

Translation: current entertainment isn't really entertainment. How do we know? Because "television producer Phil Rosenthal", whoever that is, says so.

This argumentation style isn't really argumentation, is it? Something vital is missing. Like facts, logic, evidence....

I agree. I wish he had provided examples. but I'm working on it : )

So entertainment engages the audience in many ways - "even physically". But today's "illusion of entertainment" only causes "purely physical effects". So that's why it's not "really" entertainment.

There's a contradiction here. Anyway, I certainly wouldn't argue with a claim that American Pie 2 engages the audience on a lesser level than (say) Saving Private Ryan. It engages them "purely physically", if this guy insists. Fine.

That's entertainment. How is it not?

I just saw a repeat of Batman today (the one with Dr. Freeze). That movie appeals strongly to the viseral (physical). Saving Private Ryan does too, but it also appeals to our sympathy, our patriotism, etc.

I'm gonna need a pretty convincing example to buy what this guy is selling right here. Seriously, what on earth is he talking about?

I'm tempted to part company with him right here, by saying: "I'm reading a New York Times article that makes no sense. So apparently instead of a rational argument of some kind, I'm supposed to respond to a set of signals, a kind of code - namely, the fact that this article appears under the hallowed words 'The New York Times', quotes Umberto Eco, bashes Americans - that advises me how to respond - namely, by clapping and nodding my head like a seal - without having to expend the effort, however minimal, that real convincing argumentation demands."

Example:

How do we know the villans in Die Hard are villans? The kill people and try to rob millions of dollars. If they didn't do that, but simply walked in and the 'villan music' was cued, would it have the same effect? Contrast Die Hard with another Bruce Willis film, The Fifth Element. The bad guy there certainly chewed the scenery, but from a presentation standpoint, he had everything down - black cape, mean scowl, etc. But it was a bad acting job. Now, if people only see movies where they are conditioned to associate cues within the scene - lighting shift, music change, - with a change in what they feel, eventually they'll associate the cues with the emotion, and not with what's on the screen. (not everyone, of course)

This is a very slippery thing. Not quite at the 'know it when you see it level' but it's out there.

Re: derivatives - he's chosen a bad analogy, I agree. I think his point is that some movies are and TV shows are abstracting out the cues that provide a sense of the emotional tone of a scene. I think this is different from a formula (boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back) in that the cue is the combination of music, lighting, etc that go into a particular scene. So even if the particular boy-gets-girl-back scene is botched, or unbelieveable - meaning it makes no sense in the context of the film it would still be 'entertaining'. - here I would cite Episode II. The chemistry between the two, is, IMHO, low. The score is great. I like the love theme. But it's there in the film to smooth over the problems that people like me have with the romance. (the first kiss scene, Hayden botches it) (I'm willing to consider that he was trying to act like an awkward adolescent, not that he can't act and what we saw is the result) A spoonful of sugar and all that. NOTE that I'm not saying that every film from the past got it right. Myrna Lloyd, Jane Russell et.al certainly acted in some real stinkers. So this isn't a completely new development.

Ah, so central to his grand thesis is the fact that sitcoms (like Adam Sandler movies) are also crappy compared to Frank Capra films. Got it! What a great point.

Or you go to a big commercial movie, and just by experiencing the rapid cutting and thumping music you know how you are supposed to respond, whether the action engages you or not.

Bad Movies, I hate to break it to everyone, have always existed.

LOL. But is this a new kind of badess, or an old kind of badness. To paraphrase Beavis and Butthead, does it suck more than anything has ever sucked before?

(Oh wait, I was supposed to name a grand old classic movie in that space, wasn't I? So sorry....)

Nope. doesn't bother me.

Anyway, in short: Bad movies are worse than good ones. Unsuccessful filims are less entertaining than successful ones. What an earth-shaking discovery! The only place where I part company with the author, I guess, is the implication that good films are all a thing of the past. The only way he supports this conclusion is by ignoring all non-Adam Sandler films, of course....

Huh? New paragraph? That's it? I thought he was going to actually explain and justify his claim that what he is complaining about here isn't just bad or unsuccessful films, but is different in kind ("a matter of kind"). How is it different in kind? He never says. I guess we're just supposed to take it on faith.

The audience reacts not because it knows the formula — it reacts because the formula knows the audience.

Uh, ok. This is some kind of metaphysical argument that is way over my head. How does it happen that a "formula" "knows" an "audience'?

A movie audience in 1955 goes to see a movie in which a bully pushes around a decent guy. The audience roots for the decent guy to prevail in the end. It's a formula, but the audience "doesn't know" this. Instead, the "formula knows the audience". Therefore it's "real entertainment".

Flash forward to 2002. A bully pushes around a decent guy. The audience roots for the decent guy to prevail in the end. It's a formula, but this time the audience "knows the formula". Thus it's only the "illusion of entertainment".

Two questions: 1. What's the freakin' difference? 2. This guy must have thought everyone was pretty stupid 30+ years ago not to recognize such movie formulas.

Alright, here's my take. I'm putting this here istead of a grand unification post between #1-NYT and #2-Touch of evil articles. The author in #1 is saying (and if he's not saying, I'll say) that because a lot of the modern movie audience faces movies the way the people in #2 do (which is to say, they evaluate the film's technical profiency, believeability of the effects, etc), more movies today are made with this in mind. For a large segement of the audience, if a film has decent eye candy and conforms to the conventions they are used to, then it's good. Whether the film is actually good in and of itself- does it tell a story? do the characters make sense - ie. do they do what they should do - is the hero heroic? etc. is of secondary importance. This isn't a question of formula, I think. I remember watching (on TV) the old Gene Autry serials from the 30's (http://members.aol.com/MG4273/phantom.htm) and those were very formulaic in how they were set out, with the expected cliffhanger. But they were still engaging. You wanted to know what happened to those characters. Why do people watch Dr. Who when there are much more technically proficient (Star Trek Voyager) shows on the air? Because Dr. Who is an engaging character (Tom Barnes, at least) and most of the Star Trek crew are plug-and-play (and I just know someone's going to post a Jerri Ryan photo now). Does Captain Janeway's personal whatever actually matter, or is it just deployed like the disease du-jour in some sappy Lifetime TV movie?

Ok fine, if all he's doing is complaining about the jadedness of modern audiences and the increase of irony and sarcasm and self-consciousness in entertainment and all that, he's got a point. I still don't see how that makes the entertainment an "illusion", however.

Yep, the audience is jaded. There's a feedback loop. If you grow up seeing nothing or mostly nothing but sarcastic, ironic films how will you appreicate really good films.

It is also more accessible, and since it lets viewers essentially fill in the blanks themselves, it is more certain in its results. In fact, many people, especially young people, are now likely to judge a movie or TV show by how effectively it provides the forms and activates the codes.

Lots of interesting little claims in this statement. It would be intriguing if he'd actually provide some examples. Which films does he have in mind which "provide the forms and activate the codes" for "young people", one wonders?

Scary Movie
Cruel Intentions
Breakfast Club
Ferris Buehlers Day Off
Not Another Teen Movie

Scary Movie is the worst, because it is this borsht of stupid slasher flicks that isn't anything but an attempt to pop up various situations from those films and make fun of them. It's taking advantage of the audience expectation, or conditioning process for that type of film, between hearing the scary suspense music start something bad happening. So the movie takes for granted that the audience (most of the target audience) is prepared to respond a certain way and has fun with that.

Now, Alien, on the other hand, is terrifying. It doesn't matter if you know that somethings coming, you DON'T want it popping out.

Why struggle to write real jokes when you can write "likeajokes" and get the same effect?

Because by writing mere "likeajokes" you can't rise much farther in the industry than some lame sitcom. (Let's remember, gentle readers, that earlier in this article the term "likeajokes" only came up in the context of freakin' sitcoms. But of course here the author tries to pretend that "likeajokes" are what are used in all comedy films. Don't let him get away with this sleight of hand.)

What "codes"? Does this guy even know what he's talking about? It's beginning to seem like this article is really just a stand-in or a teaser for a much longer, more interesting article - one which contains the actual content, the definitions, the examples, the logic, the arguments.

I'm assuming, of course. In reality it's still not possible to tell what point this guy thinks he is conveying, so one has to extrapolate. Hey, I did my best.

Some of this the article is muddled. Yes, could have used more examples. I think you're correct in that some of what he's saying is obvious, but perhaps he should have focused on the audience more than he did. Hopefully, I'm not adding to the general confusion here. Thanks again for your posts.

Your recent response to me was quite good, and cleaned up much of the mess left by the NYT article for me. If only you'd written the original article... :)

So, for example, is Moulin Rouge (sp?) entertainment or spectacle? Does the fact that the performers are singing modern music help conceal the films flaws?

I guess one problem here is that I don't (without some further justification) buy the dichotomy. Why can't Moulin Rouge be spectacle and (for that reason) entertainment? Of course not having seen it I can't really comment further ;) but I'd hazard a guess that it's a shallowly entertaining movie with flaws that, as you say, are papered over by the spectacle of their singing Madonna songs.

If this is true, I still wouldn't characterize it as "not entertainment", though. The dichotomy for me is Good Entertainment vs. Bad Entertainment, not Entertainment vs. Not-Entertainment. The former requires one to make an aesthetic judgment and defend it; to try to say the latter ("movies today are 'not entertainment'!") seems, to me, an attempt at a shortcut past all that.

[That's entertainment. How is it not?] I just saw a repeat of Batman today (the one with Dr. Freeze). That movie appeals strongly to the viseral (physical). Saving Private Ryan does too, but it also appeals to our sympathy, our patriotism, etc.

No question that SPR appeals on more levels than Batman and Robin (or whicever one that one was - I didn't see it :). SPR is, no doubt, the better film. But they're both entertainment, it's just that one is better than the other. I'm sure that someone could have enjoyed Batman & Robin on some one-dimensional level, in (ironically) the exact same way that someone might have enjoyed the 1966 Batman full length feature film with the TV actors in it (there was one, right?). The point being: there have always been one-dimensional films like this. But for some reason only recent ones are now being labeled as "facsimiles of entertainment"....

Contrast Die Hard with another Bruce Willis film, The Fifth Element. The bad guy there certainly chewed the scenery, but from a presentation standpoint, he had everything down - black cape, mean scowl, etc. But it was a bad acting job.

A bad acting job is one thing, but you'd like to say (I assume) more than that: that the screenwriter didn't roll up his sleeves and actually do the work required to make him a Bad Guy, to make the audience understand why what he's doing is wrong. This may or may not be true (I don't remember the 5th Element villain's story too well - he was trying to collect some certain rocks at the behest of the "dark evil voice" in exchange for money, or something, right? I dunno, seemed pretty evil to me ;). Anyway, if it's true that he wasn't done very well, perhaps what we have in Fifth Element is a movie villain treatment which was not as well done as Die Hard. What we don't have, however, is "non-entertainment", just bad entertainment at worst (disclaimer: I kinda liked that movie :).

I do see your overall point however about a potential tendency to dress a guy in black clothes, play ominous music, and expect the audience to play along without doing any more work than that. I guess what I don't see is why this is supposed to be some kind of recent trend; couldn't one go to a video store and rent a bunch of '40s-'50s Westerns and make the exact same comment about all the various and sundry Black Bart villains in them? (Jack Palance in Shane, of course, excepted from this criticism :)

Now, if people only see movies where they are conditioned to associate cues within the scene - lighting shift, music change, - with a change in what they feel, eventually they'll associate the cues with the emotion, and not with what's on the screen. (not everyone, of course)

Hmm, a valid point. So people shouldn't see only bad films, but good ones too. This advice has always been valid however.

["cue" as opposed to formula being the problem, i.e. Ep II]

You make a very good point about cues and I see what you mean. I did in fact have this feeling about Episode II (and I in fact) when watching them, that the emotions somehow weren't "honest" but we were expected to play along anyway. As a result the films are less satisfying and successful than, at least, Empire Strikes Back.

more movies today are made with this in mind. For a large segement of the audience, if a film has decent eye candy and conforms to the conventions they are used to, then it's good. Whether the film is actually good in and of itself- does it tell a story? do the characters make sense - ie. do they do what they should do - is the hero heroic? etc. is of secondary importance.

I'll cite Tomb Raider as exhibit A. Not a good movie at all, but crowd-pleasing, I reckon.

I think here's a place where it's worth noting something: there are more movies than there used to be. The audience is different (augmented, for example, by armies of 14-year-olds with money to burn) than it used to be. Now I disliked Tomb Raider just as much as the NYT author probably did, but there's a certain logical error being made in using movies like this as evidence for saying that all movies nowadays are becoming this crappy. I think what's really happening is that the choices in what type of movie you can go see have expanded. The existence of Tomb Raider in theatres prevented exactly no one from going to see (oh, insert artistic movie of the time here). The existence of Episode II prevented no one from seeing In the Bedroom. It's easy to focus on the rollercoaster movies and extrapolate from them to the complaint that all movies are becoming like this, but I just can't see that this is true. There are rollercoaster movies, sure, and there may even be more of them, and they certainly are being made with (and making) lots of money. But I see no evidence that there are any fewer good movies overall as a result. Just more schlocky ones, maybe. :) It's not a zero sum game.

[movies with "codes"] Scary Movie, Cruel Intentions, Breakfast Club, Ferris Buehlers Day Off, Not Another Teen Movie

Some of the ones on this list are unfortunate choices. Scary Movie was not a serious attempt, but a parody (or attempt at one), Airplane-style. Same goes for Teen Movie. Cruel Intentions was a spectacle movie in the same vein as Moulin Rouge; in the latter you go to see current pop songs sung as if they existed in 19th century France, in the former you go to see pretty teenagers putting on a version of Dangerous Liaisons.

The other two, however, I'll go to the grave defending. Don't dis early John Hughes man! :)

Scary Movie is the worst, because it is this borsht of stupid slasher flicks that isn't anything but an attempt to pop up various situations from those films and make fun of them.

Well there's not much to say in "defense" of it (why would I want to? Haven't seen it..) That's the type of movie it is. (cf. Airplane) You kinda have to judge it based on its goals. Movies like Airplane didn't really exist till...well.. Airplane, so I'll grant that it's a new phenomenon (1980) :)

Hopefully, I'm not adding to the general confusion here. Thanks again for your posts.

Thanks for your response, and indeed you make a lot more sense than the author of the article.. Best,

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