All right, you want to find out who we really are as a society...? Quick, check the movies. Not scientific, but surely empathic in the way they can capture and reflect the times in which they are set. A handy example: "The Age of Innocence" vs "Crazy Heart."
Both award-winning films, but each reflecting an enormously different set of socio-ethical values. The 1993 Scorsese film is about the beautifully textured form & formality of Victorian America, The 2009 Scott Cooper film starring Jeff Bridges is about a 21st C America where form gives way to free-form, and formality is too absurd to even exist.
This is not to judge either the films or their times. It is, though, to stand back enough to recognize the astonishing social distances we've traveled in just a century. There was a time when we tended to live by rather than make up the rules. Propriety was so firm and fixed, much of what we said and did and dressed was according to what was "accepted & acceptable."
No, not everyone actually lived like they did in "The Age of Innocence," but its socio-ethical standards were generally deemed to be a worthy goal. A goal which even seeped down to everyday middle-America as reflected in the post-Victorian morality of America's radio soap operas and popular novels during the mid-20th C. Virginity, sentimentality, formality, and happy or at least honorable endings.
There are always two ways we can live in our world -- take it as we find it or take a second look wondering if it's heading in a good direction. Having lived in both worlds, I can accept the criticism that the Victorian world was one of considerable pretense and hypocrisy. On the other hand, when I see the anti-Victorian world in which something like "Crazy Heart" can be gently shrugged off as that's-just-the-way-it-is, I can't help missing at least a little of the old form & formality.
Now if I really want to get depressed, there's always today's glut of so-called reality shows like "The Housewives of New Jersey" and "The Jersey Shore." Not for a minute are these ever burdened down by anything even resembling form & formality...
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I fully agree, Jack. I used to enjoy watching Films. The Film Stars, either American, or British ones, were Actors in every way. You could believe in the character they were in the Film. The Films were dramatic, or Funny, without going over the top too much. Films depended on good scripts, and did not use baths of blood, and body parts all over the place, nor show murder scenes, or rape in graphic details, that makes me have to turn away from the screen. I used to leave the Cinema, feeling that I have had a nice experience, which I then used to tell my friends about, if they have not seen the Film themselves yet. Going to the Cinema, was something we all used to look forward to. But, this has gone now. They now show just the one Film, not as a few years ago, a 'B' film, then some interesting short Film, followed maybe by Pathe-News, then an interval, when some musician would do an act, and then, the light went out, and the main Film would come on...Heaven!!
ReplyDeleteNow, it costs the earth for a ticket, and they show one film, and then you get thrown out. The magic has gone. So, we now watch filns [movies] at home on our DVD players..If, we can find a Film that we could watch with our children in the same room that is..
As you said, The Films, no matter the story line, always tried to give a message at the end...the difference between right or wrong, the 'baddie' always lost at the end, and the 'good' guy got the girl, and lived happily ever after. Fiction we know, but it made you 'feel' good. Nowadays, it seems that the mass murderers, the drug addicts, or if its a War film the coward, or the bully, is the hero!
Then we have all these 'computer generated', car chases, were the 'actors' carries out mad, crazy stunts 'on the screen', and comes out 'alive' at the end...no wonder, youths try to carry out these stunts in stolen cars...and end up killing themselves..or worse some innocent family out in their car for a nice family day out.
The films no longer have a 'message', in them, unless you count the message that killing people is 'fun'.
I know that Films were always produced, to make money, but they also told a story, with imagination, and skill, mixed in with some good acting, but now, in my eyes, films are 'just' to make money, and if there is a story in it, its as full of shock effects as possible, and if its a comedy, its either full of infant jokes, and the odd sex scene thrown in...Ah well, at least you can still find DVD's of the old films in shops, and enjoy some nostalgia!
Alfred ~ We may be showing our age, but I agree. Perhaps we didn't all BEHAVE as well as in the films...but at least we BELIEVED these were the ways we should behave. There was a moral code, a sense of decency, of honor and of justice in the end.
ReplyDeleteLong gone and it's hard to tell kids today what they're missing. Well, at least some of us can still remember.