The Death of Hollywood

There is a pertinent lack of respect for the cultural significance of cinema, deep at the heart of Hollywood itself. Modern day mainstream Hollywood is in disrepair. Never has an age of such hollow filmmaking and artlessness been so prevalent in American film. I’m not talking about high art cinema, Martin Scorsese, The Coen Brothers, David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson et al. I’m talking about mainstream, big budget, blockbuster Hollywood. The movie business has always been that: business. But never has the veil been so transparent, there is no longer any remote attempt to disguise such fat cat greed. We now live in the age of the corporation. Big business is now even uglier than it was before, as there is now billions of dollars to be made rather than millions.

The corporate age of cinema is upon us and with it comes a drought of imagination, art, care, and respect for cinema. Hollywood has always been responsible for such greatness, so many beloved and iconic films and franchises belong to those sacred hills, yet in 2014 Hollywood itself seems determined to destroy all that is magnificent and sacred about its own legacy by rebooting, remaking, reimagining every film they have ever released. Talent is not mandatory in Hollywood anymore, nor is passion, creativity or imagination; only the imagination to come up with a way to make a cheap buck. Originality no longer exists in modern Hollywood. Why make a new original film when you can make a sequel or a threequel or a prequel to an already existing classic. And if the sequel falls through why not just reboot it? There is a tacit disrespect for the cultural and aesthetic significance of cinema, deep in the heart of Hollywood.

The reason for this seismic shift is people’s lack of appreciation for the significance of cinema. Films are now so disposable; they come and go without any cultural impact. We live in such an immediate age when all content can be consumed in nanoseconds and there is no respect for the meaning of cinema, culturally. This attitude has extended to Hollywood itself, and the vulgarity of instant gratification and instant profit determines the quality of the product that is turned out year after year. The history of cinema is not merely a collection of movies that people watch for entertainment. It is our cultural modern history. These images of classic movie moments are American iconography. They define an entire age of art in the western world.

Not everyone appreciates cinema on this level and thus lays the problem, but the opening credits of ‘Star Wars’ is not just that, you cannot have the 20^th century without it. You can’t have the 20^th century without ‘The Godfather’ or ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Indiana Jones’ or ‘Jaws’, ‘Pulp Fiction’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘2001’ or ‘The Graduate’. These aren’t just movies, they are iconography, with such cultural significance it defines us more than people realise. It informs the way we act and speak, our sense of humour, the way we dress, the way we view sex, relationships, family; everything. Art has always informed culture. Now culture unfortunately informs the quality of art.

In 2014, none of that is respected. The one hundred year history of celluloid means nothing in the face of profit. Hollywood would happily decimate its own golden history to make money. Now we live in the age of the reboot. The reboot culture emerged in 2006 after the success of the Bond films. Admittedly the new Bond films are a revelation and some could argue the finest of the franchise. It worked because Bond has always redefined itself generation after generation. Audiences are used to seeing a new Bond every ten years and neither the character or the films are compromised with this transition. Other films have been successful too, Chris Nolan’s ‘Batman’ trilogy are monumental achievements and JJ Abrams ‘Star Trek’ films were incredible. Reboots aren’t always bad. With those examples, they still maintain enormous cultural significance. However, now - given the success of the already mentioned - Hollywood seems intent on rebooting, remaking, reimagining every film it has in its cannon in hope of repeating the same success, yet they never do. It’s because there is magic in the original. Films like 'Back to the Future' were not produced so calculatedly and with such crass expectations of success. They were written and produced with passion and care, and love of the project. There was no other expectation beyond filmmaking.

Most films we acknowledge to be part of a greater franchise, worth billions of dollars, started out with such humble beginnings. The original ‘Terminator’ movie, was a low budget B-Movie, that James Cameron never expected to make money, yet it begat one of the most profitable franchises ever. So of course now, in 2014, they are determined to reboot it. They always say it is so that a new generation can embrace it. Yet if something is timeless, a new generation will embrace it without it being remade. ‘Star Wars’ is timeless, yet ‘Episode VII’ is already lined up for release. “Indiana Jones’ is timeless, yet they are already lining up Bradley Cooper to don the brown fedora. Everything is so corporate. Hollywood is dominated by big corporate business events, where ‘Disney’ and ‘Marvel’ and ‘Sony’ all get together and present their next ten year plan, consisting of yet another string of soulless, artless, hollow, empty blockbusters that come and go, and get forgotten. The marketing campaigns are always more compelling than the movies themselves and everyone talks until the day of release, then one week later the film is forgotten entirely. There is no cultural significance.

Movies can no longer be seen as art. Cinema has always been a marriage between art and commerce, and where that compromise is met determines how it is remembered. That relationship is now far too one sided. The art is all but gone, now there is only commerce. Modern blockbusters will not define our times the way they did in the 70's and 80's. I’m sure there is a correlation between that and digital over film, but that’s another story altogether. Simply there is no care, no love or passion, no respect for the Iconography that defines our age.

You cannot recast Sarah Connor; Linda Hamilton is Sarah Connor. Like it or not, good actress or bad actress, she embodies that role. The image of her holding the shotgun in the steel mill at the end of ‘T2’ is immortal. Its aesthetic image will outlive all modern films. Yet Hollywood, in all their infinite wisdom have recast her, she will now be played by some two-bit nonstar from ‘Game of Thrones’. There is just no point, no possible way any reboot, remake or reimaging can compete or compare to the original of such iconic films. With Horror movies we don’t mind, we are used to it. Remaking classic Horror films has always remained popular, they are always terrible, we know they are terrible, we always prefer the original, yet we go see them anyway for a laugh. But when it comes to the films that define us there has to be more respect. Why not just remake ‘The Beatles’. You can’t. They are immortal. So much a part of the 20^th century, to remove them would unravel our entire history. 

Yet the cogs keep turning and this age of Hollywood filmmaking, so insulting, thrives and continues to make billions and billions of dollars. I wonder how the 21^st century will be defined? It is always the art that defines us: film, music, literature etc. Yet how can that be when there is no art left in the world?

VIVA MOZ

Come summer, Morrissey will have a new album out. ‘World Peace is None of Your Buisness’ will be the singer’s 10^th studio album and his first in five years. The reasons for the long delay in releasing new material are many; health problems, cancelled tours and the lack of label interest to name a few. For the last five years Morrissey has found himself subject to the whims of the modern music industry, whereby true artists are never given a pedestal or a voice and certainly not money. When Morrissey’s new album drops this summer, off the back of a monumentally successful Autobiography, the press will hail it a comeback of magnificent proportions, define it the singers greatest work and Morrissey will instantly become ‘the legend’ in print, no longer ‘the jester’. Morrissey has been in the music business for thirty years now and has endured every possible scrutiny the media can place on an artist, he has been hailed, celebrated, ridiculed and dismissed, yet all that came before means nothing when an artist reaches the big 'three zero'. Now that there is five years between his last record, the robust and utterly fantastic ‘Years of Refusal’ the media will create new context of their own design, which of course has nothing to do with Morrissey himself or his music, but he will be hailed a legend, simply for ‘hanging on’, irrespective of the fact that he has consistently released music of the highest quality and has never come close to retiring/ The tenth Morrissey album will be lauded with acclaim and the singer will be redeemed in the eyes of the media, for redemption he had never sought after nor warranted.

Morrissey is, has and always will be one of the greats, one of the most significant artists in music’s history. The most unique, original, authentic, talented, intelligent, articulate, and real artists to ever fall under the umbrella ‘pop artist’. When all is said and done, and he lays peacefully in the grave, Morrissey’s name will be spoken along side a very select caliber of artist: Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan etc. a true legend. 

Unfortunately, if you so much as dare create meaningful music with a genuine servitude to creating real art, you will be dissected, cross examined and ripped apart by mainstream culture, ridiculed for being too pretentious, too precious, and your intelligence and sincerity will be seen as callousness and unkindness in the face of a dimwit culture, and halfwit pop stars. Morrissey - a pop artist - has had to, for thirty years, share an apparent similarity and kinship, by technicality, with shallow, vapid, moronic, talentless, non-stars. Within that circle, within that charade, Morrissey will always be the odd one out as he is none of those things, yet his love of classic pop music and desire to do nothing but sing has unfortunately, circumstantially fated him with such poor company and therefore such horrific representation in the media. To quote the man himself ‘we do not live in terribly sophisticated times’ and that is being very polite. In the thirty years that Morrissey has been making music, culture has been reduced to the point of liquefaction and intelligence resides only in museums and on gravestones. To speak freely and intelligently in the world of the celebrity lacquered media frenzy we all sift through day in day out, here in the west, is to open yourself for ridicule by those who cannot even partially understand the words you speak.

The media has always been cruel to Morrissey, branded a racist, a liar, truculent, deceiving, and a self-perpetuating miserabalist. He has been branded a threat to national security and pro terrorist. His political views and frank honesty have always ben met with hostility and dismissal. The press has never been his friend, especially in the UK. He was hailed and lauded a genius in the ‘Smiths’ days and his ‘quirks’ and ‘charisma’ were tolerated; yet by the mid-nineties, the British press declared war on Morrissey and decided overnight that he was as vicious as an atom bomb and did everything to silence him through ridicule. For once you have been ridiculed, your opinion holds no merit, and this of course is the procedure the media takes when ones opinion is only that of the truth. Morrissey has never been a controversial artist, he has merely told the truth, unfortunately the truth is very ugly and people don’t like it, so we make this out to be a cute eccentricity, undermined and ridiculed until the opinions (truth) one is discussing becomes indoctrinated to the public as the wrong opinion. Morrissey has only ever yearned for the best in humanity and only ever maintained hope that we are capable of such behaviour. His vegetarianism has been endlessly mocked by the media, a lifestyle exemplified as ‘alternative’ to ‘the norm’ whereby we only shop in ‘Holland and Barratts’ and enjoy only celery and papaya for dinner.  The fact that you must claim an identity as ‘a vegetarian’ to acknowledge you do not have a normal diet, is mocking of its integrity in itself.

The media has vilified Morrissey for most of his career, the genius of his art and the kindness of his soul have always been overlooked. It is not Morrissey that is bitter, but the world around him. The truth is that Morrissey is too intelligent for mainstream culture, for pop music and celebrity, for television and journalists, he would probably find much kinder company in writing poetry and literature and share only the company he chooses, than brush the shoulders of teen non-stars with no light in their eyes. Yet one does not pick his own destiny and from the age of five Morrissey has only ever had one love and that is popular song. So these are the great sacrifices that must be in the quest for true art and in creating music that matters, means something and will live forever.

The black and white filter in which all information is presented in the media is mirrored only by the black and grey print from which it reads. The reductive narratives that the media presents in its quest to reduce all our minds to marmalade remains popular for there is no alternative, Morrissey will be subject to yet more media objectification come summer, and his new album - which undoubtedly and deservedly I’m sure - will be hailed as a masterpiece, and as the singer hits fifty-five we are expected to see some grand significance to it all, that only once you have survived the brutality that is a career in showbiz, can you really create something of value. No, Morrissey has always been fantastic, he has always been light-years ahead of his peers both in talent and brains, and has never, for a single second succumb to the demands of what is deemed acceptable and ordinary, for he is extraordinary, an artist rivaled only by the likes of Elvis Presley, and still to this day, remains peerless and untouchable. In modern times, amidst the opaque broth of banality and triviality that is modern culture, it is important to cling to intelligent art. You should never apologize for being intelligent, thinking with your own mind and striving for something more than what is spoon-fed to you. Morrissey never has, and never will.