Boring content – is the film industry TOO sane?

[Tim Sewell]

17 minutes ago, IronFilm said:

You were claiming that casting a female VP in 1989 would be unheard of, and it would create a big impact to do so, and I just proved that literally decades earlier it was not just happening but not just the VP but even the presidency! 

But what's your point? Does anything that you've just posted somehow invalidate the idea that films generally reflect the cultures of their times? Does posting a poster of a movie set in the far future (then) with a female president, then a comedy about the problems caused by proscriptive gender roles - at the end of which the female president resigns when she gets pregnant - in any way counter an argument that all films are inherently political in that they either promote or condemn accepted cultural and political norms?

Or are you just doing that thing that climate-change deniers, anti-vaxxers, 911-truthers et al do, where they find one tiny portion of someone's argument that they can (kinda, sorta) 'disprove' as a way of discrediting that argument without having to expend the mental energy to actually engage with it and argue it on its merits?

Better to stick to microphones.

[tupp]

On 3/10/2021 at 12:05 AM, Tim Sewell said:

Well yeah, that really shows that I'm wrong when I say that films reflect the social mores of the societies that make them. Doesn't trade on sexist or heteronormative tropes in the slightest!

I wasn't suggesting anything about your points regarding social mores.  I was merely showing what is to my knowledge the only feature film prior to 1980 that primarily addresses issues of having a female US president.  It is not just a film that happens to have a female US president as a secondary character.

 

Of course, the mores have changed dramatically since 1964, so much so that the ending (and title) of "Kisses For My President would have to be different.

 

On the other hand, I don't think that changing social mores nor politics is at the heart of the mediocrity of our age.  Certainly, shoehorning diversity into content doesn't help, but there is a larger reason(s) for the shallow, uninspired material that we encounter today.

[helium]

On 3/9/2021 at 5:23 PM, fuzzynormal said:

 

 

Tail, dog, wag.  

As for Netflix, you're basically complaining that Netflix understands it demographic analytics.

 

If you really think the kumbaya diversity line sells -- meaning correct attitudes in white movies, as opposed to movies made for minorities or trans types -- examine the sales figures of Sundance Grand Prize winners of the last 30 years, Sundance being way ahead of its time in this respect, with rich white administrators and filmmakers pretending to be virtuous by doing their damndest to promote what they consider social justice, as long as it means they don't have to give up their positions in favor of POC.  You can also credit this administrative movement with creating a narrative trope:  the wise Black woman/minority.  This figure offers timeless advice to confused whites.

Meanwhile, there are more black doctors on American TV than in most American communities, and it's unclear how network execs are improving the world by putting black actors in white coats....

The tyranny of the social justice movement unfortunately exceeds the profit motive at this point.  A law school prof just got fired for lamenting that black students were routinely at the bottom of her class.  Nobody cared whether it was true or not, just the fact that she said it.  These attitudes are even more extreme among arts administrators.

[fuzzynormal]

5 hours ago, helium said:

If you really think the kumbaya diversity line sells

I believe diversity sells.  "Kumbaya" is a conflation.  I didn't say that.