In his Experiment in Autobiography there is a point at which H.G. Wells suggests that the "caricature-individualities" of his realist novels might not seem very relevant for long, that civilization would simply have moved on.
Of course, as with so much else in Wells, his creations remain relevant precisely because civilization did not move on in the way in which he imagined. The problems with which the world was wrestling in his time remain the ones which bedevil it now--the organization of human economic and social life in line with not just the possibilities presented but the necessities imposed by the advance of technology and of knowledge broadly. Economic life, war, "sanity"--considering the situation we are in now it can feel as if society has made little to no progress at all, the past century a waste or worse that has left people scarcely trying even as the challenge has got bigger and the stakes higher.
For the moment, though, I have in mind something rather lighter than those problems, like the "bookish illiteracy" of one of those caricature-individualities he specifically raised as likely to have lost its interest before very long, Alfred Polly (of his 1910 novel The History of Mr. Polly). Mr. Polly, Wells tells us, "specialised in," as he put it, "the disuse of English." This was because, while he was fascinated by "words rich in suggestion" and "loved] a novel and striking phrase," his limited formal education left him with "little or no mastery of the mysterious pronunciation of English"--with this getting worse the more exotic the material got. To him Boccacio is "Bocashieu," Rabelais "Rabooloose."
Still, in spite of his familiarity with such figures his reading was less a matter of middlebrow chasing after classics than of omnivorousness for anything in print, at least insofar as it promised to satisfy a taste for manly adventure, which was what got him into reading in the first place. "Penny dreadfuls" were a big part of his reading diet in those early adolescent years when he was bitten by the bug, with their Haggardesque tales of tropical exploration and dives into the mysteries beneath the sea and battles where young Polly vicariously "led stormers against well-nigh impregnable forts," and "rammed and torpedoed ships, one against ten." And the habit stuck, such that later he liked "Dumas until he got to the Vicomte de Bragelonne."*
Considering all this it seems to me that this is all very far from being irrelevant. Indeed, those of us who have ever been bookish have likely been that before we became "literate" (How do you get to be good at reading if you don't do much of it? And who has not mispronounced words they read but did not hear?); or our taste in that reading (as we are unlikely to become enthusiastic readers if it is all a matter of "eating your vegetables"). Certainly looking back at what--and how--I read at his age I do not think I was so different. If I now bore the readers of this blog by writing about people like Balzac--and Wells' realist novels--the author favored back then was Clive Cussler, a teller of adventure stories where exploration and the sea and battles all figure very prominently (if with rather less of the Victorian sensibility that so colored Polly's consumption), while I might add that even today Dumas' Vicomte appeals to me less than does his preceding tales of Athos, Aramis, Porthos and D'Artagnan.
Of course, it may be the case that Wells did not imagine this ceasing to be the case so much as he imagined it not being the case for anyone in adulthood--that complete literacy would be universalized, and certainly that anyone bookish in inclination would not, through the premature end of a poorly conducted formal education, pronounce "Boccacio" as "Bocashieu." In that case one could give him some credit for being right about Polly-like "bookish illiteracy" becoming less relevant--though not in the way he expected or hoped. In our time it is not illiteracy that appears to be on the wane, but rather bookishness, particularly the kind associated with plain and simple literary pleasure.
* Vicomte is the third novel in Dumas' cycle about the Musketeers, after the original The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After--and not just to Polly but anyone expecting a swashbuckler in the style of the prior two apt to be a disappointment, one reason why film adaptations of Vicomte de Bragelonne are very rare next to the others. (Still, they do take part of the book--specifically the portion now remembered as The Man with the Iron Mask, where we do get some "blood and swash.")
Sunday, June 25, 2023
On Longtime Fans
Later, though, I came around to understanding their attitude. When a fan starts taking an interest in something their interests are fairly wide, and they are prepared to give a lot of things a chance, enough so that they may find the jaded, picky, snobbish, negative attitude hard to understand. But eventually they develop likes and dislikes, sympathies and antipathies--becoming aware of things they would enjoy more of, and things they never want to see again--at which point they, too, appear jaded and negative, perhaps even in the same ways.
Alas, such dislikes rather limit the options these days, or so it seems to me. What do you think? Are we seeing less of these things in recent science fiction than before? And what are we seeing more of?
Remember When They Thought the Action Film Was Dying Out?
Probably not. But that was the way the entertainment press was talking circa 1990, believe it or not.
What brought that on? Simply put, the style of action film that dominated the '80s was looking increasingly decadent between the ever-bigger budgets and ever-sillier results, while the grosses were hitting a limit--with this underlined by sinking franchises.
Thus Rambo: First Blood, Part II was a cultural phenomenon in 1985.
Rambo III was . . . not. This "most expensive film ever made" (capped off by Rambo's joust-like charge in a hijacked Soviet battle tank at a Hind helicopter) was received by many as laughable rather than exciting, as it took in one-third what its predecessor did at the box office.
So did it go with other films like the same year's The Dead Pool, and Red Heat, and the following year's Red Scorpion, and Tango & Cash (and in their different ways the "young adult" version of Rambo that was Disney's The Rescue and that James Bond-redone-as-'80s-action movie Licence to Kill), while even as it became a big hit the $50 million Lethal Weapon 2, with its bomb-in-the-toilet and the bad guys' house sliding down a hill, seemed to testify to the difficulty of "going bigger" as much as Rambo III (and Tango & Cash) did.
This may have been all the more the case with the films losing their thematic charge as the "post-Vietnam" sentiment waned, the moral panic over drugs and crime probably began to burn itself out, and the culture went increasingly "ironic"--and the following year did not change that. In the summer of 1990 the studios backed Total Recall and Die Hard 2 with Rambo III-like budgets in the hopes of seeing the movies achieve commensurately high ticket sales--and did not quite see their hopes fulfilled. Meanwhile the sequels to Robocop and Predator did not do quite so well as hoped, either.
At the same time they watched the romantic comedy Pretty Woman, the romance-cum-supernatural thriller Ghost and the family slapstick comedy Home Alone top the box office that year.
This, they said, is how the box office is going to be trending.
It made for a headline-grabbing narrative--the more in as this was the period of the last really big "moral panic" about violence in popular culture. But it was not really true. Rather those who made the judgment would have done better to pay attention to how big Batman had been the year before, and Dick Tracy and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were that year--and even the success of The Hunt for Red October (the last three films all placing among the ten biggest moneymakers of the year). Scaled-up adventures with heavy military hardware helped keep something of the '80s-style action movie going through the '90s, while even if the injection of that element extended its life only so much, the superhero movies showed how the genre was tending. The action movie was not passing, but evolving--such that the superheroes dominate the big screen as the romantic comedies and other such films have been relegated to the small.
Thus Rambo: First Blood, Part II was a cultural phenomenon in 1985.
Rambo III was . . . not. This "most expensive film ever made" (capped off by Rambo's joust-like charge in a hijacked Soviet battle tank at a Hind helicopter) was received by many as laughable rather than exciting, as it took in one-third what its predecessor did at the box office.
This may have been all the more the case with the films losing their thematic charge as the "post-Vietnam" sentiment waned, the moral panic over drugs and crime probably began to burn itself out, and the culture went increasingly "ironic"--and the following year did not change that. In the summer of 1990 the studios backed Total Recall and Die Hard 2 with Rambo III-like budgets in the hopes of seeing the movies achieve commensurately high ticket sales--and did not quite see their hopes fulfilled. Meanwhile the sequels to Robocop and Predator did not do quite so well as hoped, either.
At the same time they watched the romantic comedy Pretty Woman, the romance-cum-supernatural thriller Ghost and the family slapstick comedy Home Alone top the box office that year.
This, they said, is how the box office is going to be trending.
Red Forman's Vision of the '70s on That '70s Show
Watching That '70s Show years ago (mostly in reruns) I found it a mixed bag. Some of it worked, some of it didn't.
The antics of the young people who were the focus were pretty forgettable for the most part, and as it happens I actually remember more about what the adults said and did. Not that they didn't have their limitations, of course. Eric Forman's father Red was a pretty standard string of pretty standard period sitcom clichés--a working-class man who, repeatedly and badly dinged by life, has nonetheless found himself with a family in the suburbs with its different tone and expectations in middle age, to whose seemingly unending demands he responds gracelessly and insensitively; and a reactionary old member of the Greatest Generation who is endlessly tearing into the Baby Boomer son he regards as a soft, incompetent, wimp; but who, for all the coarseness and the sarcasm and the yelling, can always be expected to do the "right thing" in the end (however grudgingly and, again, gracelessly), while every now and then reminding us that he is a human being after all.*
. Still, the writers every now and then gave us a little more than the usual--in part by, in this era in which social reality was not to be seen much in a major network sitcom (1998-2006), occasionally mining a little of that reality for comedy, with a memorable black-and-white sequence in the episode "The Velvet Rope" presenting us with what Red imagined his life, and the world, would be like at that point, an era of burgeoning incomes and exploding consumer technology making life better and better for Joes like himself. We heard, too, something of its basis--the sketchy premise that, because the American worker was "experienced, loyal, and hard-working," and Germans and Japanese were not, the post-war boom that made it all possible would just go on and on.
Of course, as people learned the hard way in the '70s, it didn't (and couldn't, certainly on that basis), and the world was very different for it, with one consequence the bitter gap between expectations and reality. (There went the flying cars! Or, as Red Forman seems to have referred to them in that scene, "hovercrafts.")
Much as progress-hating postmodernists sneer at those who dare remember and bring up those broken promises the reality is that those promises really were important, and their breaking important; that there really is a disaster and a tragedy here; and far from helping the world understand with it and cope with it and move on to something better (not their forte) they have preferred to indulge their stupid ironic snobbery as the world falls apart, making them infinitely more deserving of contempt than all the people and things on which they presume to look down.
* It seems worth noting that in the show's equally nostalgic '80s counterpart, The Goldbergs, paterfamilias Murray is very similar.
The antics of the young people who were the focus were pretty forgettable for the most part, and as it happens I actually remember more about what the adults said and did. Not that they didn't have their limitations, of course. Eric Forman's father Red was a pretty standard string of pretty standard period sitcom clichés--a working-class man who, repeatedly and badly dinged by life, has nonetheless found himself with a family in the suburbs with its different tone and expectations in middle age, to whose seemingly unending demands he responds gracelessly and insensitively; and a reactionary old member of the Greatest Generation who is endlessly tearing into the Baby Boomer son he regards as a soft, incompetent, wimp; but who, for all the coarseness and the sarcasm and the yelling, can always be expected to do the "right thing" in the end (however grudgingly and, again, gracelessly), while every now and then reminding us that he is a human being after all.*
. Still, the writers every now and then gave us a little more than the usual--in part by, in this era in which social reality was not to be seen much in a major network sitcom (1998-2006), occasionally mining a little of that reality for comedy, with a memorable black-and-white sequence in the episode "The Velvet Rope" presenting us with what Red imagined his life, and the world, would be like at that point, an era of burgeoning incomes and exploding consumer technology making life better and better for Joes like himself. We heard, too, something of its basis--the sketchy premise that, because the American worker was "experienced, loyal, and hard-working," and Germans and Japanese were not, the post-war boom that made it all possible would just go on and on.
Much as progress-hating postmodernists sneer at those who dare remember and bring up those broken promises the reality is that those promises really were important, and their breaking important; that there really is a disaster and a tragedy here; and far from helping the world understand with it and cope with it and move on to something better (not their forte) they have preferred to indulge their stupid ironic snobbery as the world falls apart, making them infinitely more deserving of contempt than all the people and things on which they presume to look down.
* It seems worth noting that in the show's equally nostalgic '80s counterpart, The Goldbergs, paterfamilias Murray is very similar.
Cameron Diaz's Last Comedy, and Science Fiction Become Reality: Thoughts on the 2014 Movie Sex Tape
I was not a particular fan of Bad Teacher, but I did end up catching the reteaming of director Jake Kasdan with Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel in Sex Tape three years later.
The film had me thinking of those who love to tell us that if the science fiction genre seems less fresh and visionary and original and vibrant today that is because writers cannot keep up with a reality where technological change is far outstripping the rate at which writers can work. "The whole world has become science fiction!" they tell us triumphantly as they lift their cell phones high. ("I am holding a cell phone! The future is now!")
This kind of talk has never impressed me--struck me as mere shilling for consumer gadgets, and propaganda for the "information age," all as one sees how much technological progress has actually run behind common expectations for decades (got that self-driving car yet?), how little change there has been in the more fundamental areas of life. (The smart phone has been around for so long now that you have people old enough to vote who literally do not remember a time before its appearance--all while such things as the production and content of food, shelter, clothing, energy, transport, medicine have changed very little, to name but a few of those essentials people rarely look away from their screens long enough to notice, except when they do not have them, or use their withering math skills to understand the bill for them and are horrified. No, this is not the world of revolutionized abundance you were promised.)
Still, Sex Tape seems to me to be a movie which really would be a good example of how what would have been science fiction once has become contemporary reality--in its depiction of contemporary mores, and communications technology. Written in 1964, for example, it would have been prophetic--rather like Murray Leinster's extraordinary extrapolation "A Logic Named Joe," which saw fifty years ahead to the era of the Internet very, very clearly indeed. But of course it was no such extrapolation--leaving us with, in this case, rather a mundane farce, rather than any great vision such as gives many a science fiction classic an interest even where it ceases to entertain in the usual ways.
Still, Sex Tape seems to me to be a movie which really would be a good example of how what would have been science fiction once has become contemporary reality--in its depiction of contemporary mores, and communications technology. Written in 1964, for example, it would have been prophetic--rather like Murray Leinster's extraordinary extrapolation "A Logic Named Joe," which saw fifty years ahead to the era of the Internet very, very clearly indeed. But of course it was no such extrapolation--leaving us with, in this case, rather a mundane farce, rather than any great vision such as gives many a science fiction classic an interest even where it ceases to entertain in the usual ways.
Those Who Walked Away From Self-Publishing
Recently I was surprised to read claims that people are still self-publishing millions of books annually--precisely because self-publishing has proven such a disappointment. I expected that, after their initial experience the discouraged, exhausted--and often poorer--survivors of the marketplace slaughter tended to give up, while their experience discouraged others from going where they had gone before, all the more in as the "revolution" some hoped for never happened, was indeed cut off at the roots by the stagnation of the e-book and e-book reader's proliferation, the decline of book blogging and the ever more controlled nature of the Internet narrowing their publicity options, and of course, the unflagging hostility of the elitist bullies keeping the Gates of Literature so that folks like the Kardashians can become Authors but they can't (as said bullies tell them that they are "unworthy," when really the issue is that the Kardashians are famous but they are not, the insult as dishonest as it is cruel). And indeed, my admittedly unscientific impressions of such authors' pages on Amazon is that after putting out a few books, and (to go by sales rankings, ratings, reviews) not gotten much attention, their output has trailed off.
Is it possible that, in spite of all the disappointment, people have stuck to it? Even become more inclined to it?
There are some possibilities here--the most obvious of which is the extreme strength of the determination of a great many people to become authors, to make a living writing full-time in spite of the poor odds and the ever-abundant discouragement. Still, it seems to me that there is something to be explained here--and another reminder that no one has even begun to properly tell the story of self-publishing in these times.
Is it possible that, in spite of all the disappointment, people have stuck to it? Even become more inclined to it?
A Word on Genius: Balzac's The Two Brothers, Again
The two brothers in Balzac's Two Brothers are Philippe and Joseph Bridau. From early on in life, because of how they look and how they handle themselves, everyone expects great things for Philippe, and nothing for Joseph, with this confirmed by the choices of career each makes--Joseph's becoming a painter seen as a disaster by his mother, in contrast with Philippe becoming a soldier, and while frankly a mediocre one happening upon a succession of unlikely opportunities that see him a colonel after only a few years' service.
At least early in life Joseph accepts the assessment of his brother if not himself, mistaking Philippe's "patronizing manners" and "brutal exterior" as reflective of his being a "solider of genius," such that Balzac quips that "Joseph did not yet know . . . that soldiers of genius are as gentle and courteous in manner as other superior men in any walk of life" (and Philippe, distinctly, not one of those). "All genius is alike, wherever found," Balzac adds.
The idea that the person of true genius is "gentle and courteous" would seem unknown not only to the young Joseph, but to people generally these days--be it in how the courtiers who lionize "geniuses" in public life sing of their oafish and nasty conduct as if it were a common, predictable, even necessary part of a package of which we should all be awestruck and admiring. This is, if anything, reaffirmed by the depiction of "genius" in fiction, which often has them thoroughly unpleasant, arrogant people (like the supposed scientist of "genius" as written by the hacks who crank out our pop culture).
Why is that? I suppose it is because a great many people, in line with the prevailing belief that the world is some perfect meritocracy where people get what they deserve, such that it is assumed that those who hold high positions are more meritorious and deserving than others, quite stupidly equate position with capacity. They associate Authority with irascible, impatient, bullying individuals ever tearing into those they see as their "inferiors" (not unreasonably, given that there is never a shortage of this kind of thing), and associate superior intelligence and talent with that (entirely unreasonably, given that there is ever a shortage of these kinds of things in high places), producing a characteristic example of the kind of muddle into which the "conventional wisdom" leads those benighted enough to believe in it.
At least early in life Joseph accepts the assessment of his brother if not himself, mistaking Philippe's "patronizing manners" and "brutal exterior" as reflective of his being a "solider of genius," such that Balzac quips that "Joseph did not yet know . . . that soldiers of genius are as gentle and courteous in manner as other superior men in any walk of life" (and Philippe, distinctly, not one of those). "All genius is alike, wherever found," Balzac adds.
Why is that? I suppose it is because a great many people, in line with the prevailing belief that the world is some perfect meritocracy where people get what they deserve, such that it is assumed that those who hold high positions are more meritorious and deserving than others, quite stupidly equate position with capacity. They associate Authority with irascible, impatient, bullying individuals ever tearing into those they see as their "inferiors" (not unreasonably, given that there is never a shortage of this kind of thing), and associate superior intelligence and talent with that (entirely unreasonably, given that there is ever a shortage of these kinds of things in high places), producing a characteristic example of the kind of muddle into which the "conventional wisdom" leads those benighted enough to believe in it.
Was 1989 a Signal Year for the Evolution of the American Box Office?
Recently I remarked 1989 as the year when all the "armchair executive" stuff in the press began to impinge on my personal consciousness.
That in itself would make it seem a significant year for me. But I do think that year saw particular developments that, more clearly visible in hindsight though perhaps not insignificant even at the time, indicated the shape that the blockbuster would increasingly assume in our time, with two hits of that year in particular indicative of the pattern.
One was the year's biggest hit, Tim Burton's Batman. After all, a decade earlier Richard Donner's Superman was a colossal hit--but the franchise fizzled out pretty quickly, and was not followed up by much else in the way of superhero films.
By contrast 1989's Batman established not just that franchise, but started a fashion, which if looking slight in the '90s (the first-string DC and Marvel superheroes stayed in the comics through these years), helped pave the way for the twenty-first century boom in such figures we so take for granted, and in a broader way, the brand name sci-fi/fantasy action franchises that have displaced those '80s-style "Someone killed my favorite second cousin" movies that then dominated the action genre.
Indeed, it seems worth noting that Spider-Man apart, Batman has provided the most consistent basis for successful superhero films (certainly to go by Christopher Nolan's trilogy, and last year's The Batman). It also seems significant that Burton went with a darker tone before Nolan did, such as has since characterized treatment of the character, and the genre (for better or worse).
The other hit that seems of particular importance is the original, animated The Little Mermaid--because while animated features had been a staple of the theatrical experience for a half century by this point this was the movie that brought it back as a commercial head-liner, paving the way for how Disney and Pixar, and since then Dreamworks (the Shrek franchise) and Illumination too (the Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets and Sing franchises, and now The Super Mario Bros. Movie as well) would be the only competition the new-style action films had for the top of the box office.
Indeed, through this century, look at the top-grossing movies of the year and sci-fi action, especially superhero action, and splashy family animation, especially where the tilt is toward music and comedy, are what you are apt to see. (In 2016-2019, going by calendar grosses at least five of the top ten movies each year were either superhero films or other closely related action movies, or animated movies of this type and their live-action derivatives, their domination of the top of the box office is almost complete, accounting for every one of the top ten in 2016, nine of the top ten in 2018, eight of ten movies in 2017 and 2019.)
Meanwhile it seems that even the failures were suggestive of things to come. James Cameron's The Abyss, which was not the financial success its backers obviously hoped for, can, in its sci-fi adventure, friendly aliens, aquatic theme and ground-breaking visual effects, seem to be a strong indicator of how Cameron's career would go, anticipating hits like Titanic and the Avatar films (while, it would seem, the film's doing poorly at the box office after eschewing the kind of gunplay Cameron helped make a movie staple drove him to include plenty of that in his next two movies, Terminator 2 and True Lies).
In lesser degree, other underperformers were also suggestive of the trend of the market. The underperformance of Ghostbusters II was a reminder of just how extravagant and unrealistic studio expectations could be, such that a then impressive-seeming $100 million gross was deemed a disappointment, and put that franchise on hold for a whole generation. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier marked that franchise's slippage from the top tier of blockbusters its four predecessors had safely occupied--while, like The Abyss, probably encouraging the filmmakers to stress action movie mechanics over more cerebral elements in the next installments, a lesson they took to heart in the five subsequent Star Trek films prior to an even more thoroughly action-oriented reboot. The commercial low point for the James Bond series that was Licence to Kill, itself indicative of how the '80s-style action movies of which it was so imitative were on their way out, signaled that franchise's being overhauled yet again in a way that was to happen with increasing frequency, with the Pierce Brosnan eras seeing a mere four movies in seven years before a reboot that, after a mere five films, has been rebooted itself. (It seems notable, too, that Licence to Kill was the last Bond film that EON put out into the ever-more brutal summer season, preferring the vibrant but less action-oriented late autumn-winter period for that series' releases ever since.)
Of course, one can look at other points in film history for other anticipations, as with 1993 (when Jurassic Park showed how CGI-dominated the blockbuster would be), 1999 (with the return of Star Wars, the upping of the CGI ante, the routinization of prequels and of grumbling about them), and 2000 and 2002 (when the X-Men, and then Spider-Man, kicked the superhero boom into higher gear). Still, it seems to me fair to say that 1989 was exceptionally rich in indications of the "shape of things to come."
That in itself would make it seem a significant year for me. But I do think that year saw particular developments that, more clearly visible in hindsight though perhaps not insignificant even at the time, indicated the shape that the blockbuster would increasingly assume in our time, with two hits of that year in particular indicative of the pattern.
One was the year's biggest hit, Tim Burton's Batman. After all, a decade earlier Richard Donner's Superman was a colossal hit--but the franchise fizzled out pretty quickly, and was not followed up by much else in the way of superhero films.
By contrast 1989's Batman established not just that franchise, but started a fashion, which if looking slight in the '90s (the first-string DC and Marvel superheroes stayed in the comics through these years), helped pave the way for the twenty-first century boom in such figures we so take for granted, and in a broader way, the brand name sci-fi/fantasy action franchises that have displaced those '80s-style "Someone killed my favorite second cousin" movies that then dominated the action genre.
The other hit that seems of particular importance is the original, animated The Little Mermaid--because while animated features had been a staple of the theatrical experience for a half century by this point this was the movie that brought it back as a commercial head-liner, paving the way for how Disney and Pixar, and since then Dreamworks (the Shrek franchise) and Illumination too (the Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets and Sing franchises, and now The Super Mario Bros. Movie as well) would be the only competition the new-style action films had for the top of the box office.
Indeed, through this century, look at the top-grossing movies of the year and sci-fi action, especially superhero action, and splashy family animation, especially where the tilt is toward music and comedy, are what you are apt to see. (In 2016-2019, going by calendar grosses at least five of the top ten movies each year were either superhero films or other closely related action movies, or animated movies of this type and their live-action derivatives, their domination of the top of the box office is almost complete, accounting for every one of the top ten in 2016, nine of the top ten in 2018, eight of ten movies in 2017 and 2019.)
In lesser degree, other underperformers were also suggestive of the trend of the market. The underperformance of Ghostbusters II was a reminder of just how extravagant and unrealistic studio expectations could be, such that a then impressive-seeming $100 million gross was deemed a disappointment, and put that franchise on hold for a whole generation. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier marked that franchise's slippage from the top tier of blockbusters its four predecessors had safely occupied--while, like The Abyss, probably encouraging the filmmakers to stress action movie mechanics over more cerebral elements in the next installments, a lesson they took to heart in the five subsequent Star Trek films prior to an even more thoroughly action-oriented reboot. The commercial low point for the James Bond series that was Licence to Kill, itself indicative of how the '80s-style action movies of which it was so imitative were on their way out, signaled that franchise's being overhauled yet again in a way that was to happen with increasing frequency, with the Pierce Brosnan eras seeing a mere four movies in seven years before a reboot that, after a mere five films, has been rebooted itself. (It seems notable, too, that Licence to Kill was the last Bond film that EON put out into the ever-more brutal summer season, preferring the vibrant but less action-oriented late autumn-winter period for that series' releases ever since.)
Of course, one can look at other points in film history for other anticipations, as with 1993 (when Jurassic Park showed how CGI-dominated the blockbuster would be), 1999 (with the return of Star Wars, the upping of the CGI ante, the routinization of prequels and of grumbling about them), and 2000 and 2002 (when the X-Men, and then Spider-Man, kicked the superhero boom into higher gear). Still, it seems to me fair to say that 1989 was exceptionally rich in indications of the "shape of things to come."
Might it Be Comforting to Disbelieve in the Bestseller List?
I have written at some length about the failings of the bestseller lists as an index of the book market--the ambiguities of their signaling (all they really tell us is that, of the few fastest-selling books they mention at all, these are selling faster than those this particular week), the roundabout and incomplete collection (the publishers don't supply the information), and the "black boxed" nature of the premises on which they collect and classify the data (making it impossible to judge its value for ourselves). And that is all without getting into their constant, quite deliberate, manipulation (as politicians' political action committees, for example, contrive to get the ghostwritten memoirs of those they patronize onto the bestseller list).
Of course, those trying to make sense of that market (myself included) use them anyway for lack of anything better with regard to "the big picture" (as I have when writing about, for example, spy fiction or military techno-thrillers).
Still, as I have also remarked time and again, the content of even the most prestigious list has long been appalling, especially these days, whether one is looking at fiction or nonfiction. As if the often execrable nature of the work is not enough, its particular form of execrable (much of the time, the snivelings and Big Thinks of celebrities who have had cushy lives, and no evidence of anything to think with) is a reminder that now, just as in Balzac's day, the publishers are Dauriat-like vulgarians trafficking in printed paper bearing "famous names" as they pay the claqueurs to applaud the trash they foist on the public.
Naturally it would be pleasant to think that these lists, poorly founded and manipulated as they are, said nothing about the actual tastes of the reading public--but even now I fear they approximate the real pattern of book consumption well enough to make any such thinking desperate escapism.
Of course, those trying to make sense of that market (myself included) use them anyway for lack of anything better with regard to "the big picture" (as I have when writing about, for example, spy fiction or military techno-thrillers).
Still, as I have also remarked time and again, the content of even the most prestigious list has long been appalling, especially these days, whether one is looking at fiction or nonfiction. As if the often execrable nature of the work is not enough, its particular form of execrable (much of the time, the snivelings and Big Thinks of celebrities who have had cushy lives, and no evidence of anything to think with) is a reminder that now, just as in Balzac's day, the publishers are Dauriat-like vulgarians trafficking in printed paper bearing "famous names" as they pay the claqueurs to applaud the trash they foist on the public.
Naturally it would be pleasant to think that these lists, poorly founded and manipulated as they are, said nothing about the actual tastes of the reading public--but even now I fear they approximate the real pattern of book consumption well enough to make any such thinking desperate escapism.
Remembering the Summer Movie Season of 1989
Looking back the summer of 1989 is probably when I first noticed all the talk about the box office--partly because there was so much of it.
At the time the press was buzzing with excitement about Hollywood's "first $2 billion summer," which was to play such a part in the later excitement about its "first $5 billion year."
Of course, in making so much of the number there was the familiar combination of fixation on the passing of some arbitrary threshold, complete lack of historical memory, disregard for the inflation of the dollar and ticket prices with it (all that math!), and breathless-hype-as-default-tone, exacerbated perhaps by the disappointments of the year before. (Consider how 1988 saw the big action movies underperform--as with Arnold Schwarzenegger's Red Heat, the fifth Dirty Harry movie The Dead Pool, and especially Sylvester Stallone's Rambo III--while even Die Hard failed to break the $100 million barrier, all of which doubtless made the grosses of Lethal Weapon 2, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and Batman the year after look the more impressive.*)
Still, it did have its share of hits, and whatever one makes of it it did convey a sense that this was an exciting time for movies--commercially, at least.
Artistically was a different matter.
So has it tended to remain even when Hollywood has a good summer, and a good year--the entertainment press apparently more inclined to think like "armchair executives" than "cinematic connoisseurs," and I suppose, encouraging the audience to do the same.
* The original Die Hard's domestic gross was actually just $83 million--on a $40 million budget--a far cry from what the second Rambo film or the Beverly Hills Cop action-comedies made, and for that matter, the return on investment achieved by films like Commando and Lethal Weapon.
At the time the press was buzzing with excitement about Hollywood's "first $2 billion summer," which was to play such a part in the later excitement about its "first $5 billion year."
Still, it did have its share of hits, and whatever one makes of it it did convey a sense that this was an exciting time for movies--commercially, at least.
Artistically was a different matter.
So has it tended to remain even when Hollywood has a good summer, and a good year--the entertainment press apparently more inclined to think like "armchair executives" than "cinematic connoisseurs," and I suppose, encouraging the audience to do the same.
* The original Die Hard's domestic gross was actually just $83 million--on a $40 million budget--a far cry from what the second Rambo film or the Beverly Hills Cop action-comedies made, and for that matter, the return on investment achieved by films like Commando and Lethal Weapon.
Was You Only Live Twice a Natural Stopping Place for the Bond Film Series?
But up to this point each movie had made more money than the last--and if You Only Live Twice disappointed that way it still brought in over $100 million on a $10 million production budget, an extraordinary level of profitability before one even thinks of the other revenue streams associated with it. The result was that art may have suggested the film as a logical conclusion to the saga--but commerce was in the driver's seat, which was why the series let Blofeld live to fight another day, and remains with us over a half century later (even if "Bond 26" is very, very slow indeed to get going).
Elon Musk and the Dark Singularity: Is the Fear of AI Running Out of Control Principally a Fear of the Ultra-Privileged?
Time and again I have been struck by the amount of attention given to what seem to me the sillier fears about the problems that progress in the field of Artificial Intelligence may raise, particularly the idea of "AI" emerging as a distinct, malevolent Other, and in particular AI, with its opaque, possibly alien natures and thought processes and agendas, somehow wresting power from "humans."
I have been struck, too, by (at least to hear Ezra Klein tell the story) how many of those involved in AI at its cutting edge themselves publicly espouse such fears, as seen in how heads of major tech companies are themselves calling for a "slowdown" in such research, and appearing on cable news shows to go from merely warning of the possibility of a Dark Singularity they tell us could be coming a lot sooner than even Ray Kurzweil thinks, to telling Tucker Carlson that we need quasi-military contingency plans for preemptively shutting down that none-too-far-off Singularity (!).
In that I see the influence of an abundance of bad sci-fi (such as Isaac Asimov was already inveighing against a century ago, apparently to no effect on the conventional wisdom whatsoever), and shameless, sensationalist attention-grabbing that feeds off of itself. However, there also seems to me an obliviousness to, or desire to ignore, the very real conflicts among humans of vastly unequal power, with all it implies. For all such talk about "humanity" being in control the vast, vast majority of the people on this planet have very little power over their lives, either individually or collectively, and are quite conscious of being subject to other "intelligences" that seem opaque, possibly alien in their natures and thought processes and agendas, which may be hostile to them and a threat to their survival, from dictators to oligarchs to the "faceless" functionaries within the "artificial men" and "corporate persons" that in a very meaningful sense already give us a world crawling with inhuman super-intelligences as scary as any out-of-control computer.
But for a tech billionaire in a culture which, to borrow from Hegel, regards the "successful" entrepreneur, and above all the "successful" Silicon Valley entrepreneur, as "God on Earth," and that precisely because those corporate persons, and even the artificial men, do their bidding, the thought of something replacing them as God on Earth has a different, more threatening, quality, so much so that silly scenarios of robot revolt that may be even less likely than ye olde zombie apocalypse have a powerful purchase on what serves them in place of an imagination.
I have been struck, too, by (at least to hear Ezra Klein tell the story) how many of those involved in AI at its cutting edge themselves publicly espouse such fears, as seen in how heads of major tech companies are themselves calling for a "slowdown" in such research, and appearing on cable news shows to go from merely warning of the possibility of a Dark Singularity they tell us could be coming a lot sooner than even Ray Kurzweil thinks, to telling Tucker Carlson that we need quasi-military contingency plans for preemptively shutting down that none-too-far-off Singularity (!).
But for a tech billionaire in a culture which, to borrow from Hegel, regards the "successful" entrepreneur, and above all the "successful" Silicon Valley entrepreneur, as "God on Earth," and that precisely because those corporate persons, and even the artificial men, do their bidding, the thought of something replacing them as God on Earth has a different, more threatening, quality, so much so that silly scenarios of robot revolt that may be even less likely than ye olde zombie apocalypse have a powerful purchase on what serves them in place of an imagination.
Are Those Who Keep Banging on About The Terminator in Our Discussions About AI Missing the Point of That Movie?
It is a tiresome cliché of discussion about artificial intelligence that people keep referencing an Arnold Schwarzenegger B movie from 1984. (We all know which one.)
The idea, in line with the Frankenstein complex that Isaac Asimov had already had occasion to criticize a half century before (to no effect, apparently), is that we will create a powerful artificial intelligence, and it will kill us all.
They pay very little attention to how it did so in the movie--specifically initiating a nuclear exchange. The fact would seem the more significant given that the movie was made in, and came out during, the "Second Cold War" and the associated "Euromissile crisis" when the danger of nuclear war, and the protest movement against war and against nuclear weaponry, was particularly strong--the years of the miniseries The Day After, and movies like WarGames, and novels like David Brin's The Postman and Stan Lee's (the "other" Stan Lee's) Dunn's Conundrum--such that this was not implausibly on James Cameron's mind. (Indeed, Terminator 2 can seem a reminder, if any were needed, that that danger did not vanish with the Cold War's end in the manner that those intent on lionizing the victory would have liked the public to believe, while trigger-happiness with nuclear weapons was, again, a significant element of Cameron's 1989 film The Abyss.)
But people never think of The Terminator as a warning about the dangers of nuclear weaponry, without the arms race in which "Skynet" would never have been created, let alone given the means with which to devastate humanity--means humans in the long run might have used no less destructively even without the involvement of artificial intelligence. My guess is that this is partly because the memories of the nuclear danger have been forgotten and buried, with opinion-makers by no means eager to revive them (they blatantly call people alert to that danger "cowards," the world-view of a Barry Goldwater become the mainstream here as in so many other areas of political life), while there is instead a preference for fixating on less plausible and less troublesome dangers--an AI apocalypse, like a zombie apocalypse, being a lot less politically contentious than fears of nuclear or climate catastrophe, with catharsis through thinking about the former perhaps a way of taking the edge off of worries about the latter. Another evasion, of the kind that so characterizes political life in our time.
But people never think of The Terminator as a warning about the dangers of nuclear weaponry, without the arms race in which "Skynet" would never have been created, let alone given the means with which to devastate humanity--means humans in the long run might have used no less destructively even without the involvement of artificial intelligence. My guess is that this is partly because the memories of the nuclear danger have been forgotten and buried, with opinion-makers by no means eager to revive them (they blatantly call people alert to that danger "cowards," the world-view of a Barry Goldwater become the mainstream here as in so many other areas of political life), while there is instead a preference for fixating on less plausible and less troublesome dangers--an AI apocalypse, like a zombie apocalypse, being a lot less politically contentious than fears of nuclear or climate catastrophe, with catharsis through thinking about the former perhaps a way of taking the edge off of worries about the latter. Another evasion, of the kind that so characterizes political life in our time.
The Politics of Edgelordism
It seems to me that, like so much else, "edgelordism" has a politics.
Consider what it means to be an edgelord--to go about provoking people for the sake of provocation. This seems to fairly obviously entail pleasure in an exercise of power over others, and using it to subject them to unpleasantness, that has more than a whiff of the bully about it. This is probably more dissonant for a person espousing the egalitarian values of the left than a person of the anti-egalitarian right.
Meanwhile there is the matter of whom one provokes. It may not always be clear just in which direction someone is punching when they make a provocative statement or perform a provocative act, but inclination apart, they are unlikely to get away with it for long if they offend persons more powerful than themselves. Those who offend for the sake of offending--if they get to do it for long--are probably managing to go on doing so because they take the safer course, making sure to stay on the good side of the former, not just by not directing punches at them, but directing punches at those they dislike (as bullies necessarily do).
Consider, for instance, the country's pieties. As James Galbraith remarked, "one cannot use in public" the word "market . . . without bending a knee and making the sign of the cross." But how many of our edgelords make the market their target? Quite the contrary, I remember how in the episode "Gnomes" the "edgy" creators of South Park made their "shock" ending their siding with Big Business against the mom-and-pop shop--and thus did it go with their sneering at rainforest-protecting environmentalists, and those who criticized the way in which the presidential election of 2000 was decided, and much, much else, so continually taking right-wing positions that some wondered if they were being ironic, and eventually realized they weren't.
The combination of politically conservative politics with a delight in obscenity that would be expected to offend a conservative seemed to them incongruous enough to media-watchers that they coined the term "South Park conservative." Yet "edginess" and conservatism have often gone hand in hand, as any look at a list of literary classics makes clear. The "èpater the bourgeoisie" Decadents are more easily classed with anti-rationalist reactionaries than with any progressive element (in contrast with, for instance, an Emile Zola, who offended in a different way for different reasons). Likewise Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange--all on the Modern Library's list of the Top 100 English-language novels of their century--are all at bottom deeply right-wing works that were edgy in that way, with what Nabokov had to say of his intentions in writing his book in "On a Book Entitled Lolita" making clear that in at least his case edgelordism was a motivation. The result is that rather than an innovator South Park stands in a long tradition, shock at which bespeaks nothing so much as the fact that our designated cultural commentators generally do not read books--or understand books when they do, none of which prevents them from being on the big platforms and getting the big money for being there in that way that makes fools of all those who snivel about the word of letters being a "meritocracy," such that we ought to be awed by its officially designated leaders and respectful of their opinions.
Consider what it means to be an edgelord--to go about provoking people for the sake of provocation. This seems to fairly obviously entail pleasure in an exercise of power over others, and using it to subject them to unpleasantness, that has more than a whiff of the bully about it. This is probably more dissonant for a person espousing the egalitarian values of the left than a person of the anti-egalitarian right.
Meanwhile there is the matter of whom one provokes. It may not always be clear just in which direction someone is punching when they make a provocative statement or perform a provocative act, but inclination apart, they are unlikely to get away with it for long if they offend persons more powerful than themselves. Those who offend for the sake of offending--if they get to do it for long--are probably managing to go on doing so because they take the safer course, making sure to stay on the good side of the former, not just by not directing punches at them, but directing punches at those they dislike (as bullies necessarily do).
Consider, for instance, the country's pieties. As James Galbraith remarked, "one cannot use in public" the word "market . . . without bending a knee and making the sign of the cross." But how many of our edgelords make the market their target? Quite the contrary, I remember how in the episode "Gnomes" the "edgy" creators of South Park made their "shock" ending their siding with Big Business against the mom-and-pop shop--and thus did it go with their sneering at rainforest-protecting environmentalists, and those who criticized the way in which the presidential election of 2000 was decided, and much, much else, so continually taking right-wing positions that some wondered if they were being ironic, and eventually realized they weren't.
The combination of politically conservative politics with a delight in obscenity that would be expected to offend a conservative seemed to them incongruous enough to media-watchers that they coined the term "South Park conservative." Yet "edginess" and conservatism have often gone hand in hand, as any look at a list of literary classics makes clear. The "èpater the bourgeoisie" Decadents are more easily classed with anti-rationalist reactionaries than with any progressive element (in contrast with, for instance, an Emile Zola, who offended in a different way for different reasons). Likewise Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange--all on the Modern Library's list of the Top 100 English-language novels of their century--are all at bottom deeply right-wing works that were edgy in that way, with what Nabokov had to say of his intentions in writing his book in "On a Book Entitled Lolita" making clear that in at least his case edgelordism was a motivation. The result is that rather than an innovator South Park stands in a long tradition, shock at which bespeaks nothing so much as the fact that our designated cultural commentators generally do not read books--or understand books when they do, none of which prevents them from being on the big platforms and getting the big money for being there in that way that makes fools of all those who snivel about the word of letters being a "meritocracy," such that we ought to be awed by its officially designated leaders and respectful of their opinions.
Is Writing Turning into Rewriting in the Age of the Chatbot?
Anyone who has had much experience of writing knows that it is hard, time-consuming work, which is why anyone who buys a book "by" a celebrity who takes it for granted that the celebrity on the cover actually wrote it is very, very ignorant, gullible, or both.
One reason for this is that writing is in large part rewriting, a notoriously tedious and painful process.
Still, as people increasingly rely on chatbots to generate "content," with the artificial intelligence pouring out lots of words that they must then polish, the polishing seems likely to be ever more of what it means to "write."
In considering the situation we should remember two truisms about writing, namely:
1. You can't rewrite well unless you know how to write well in the first place--and people do not pick up that skill just cleaning up chatbot content.
2. Most people who take pleasure in writing at all take pleasure in the experience of writing, not the rewriting, which they are apt to experience as a chore, and want as little as possible to do with.
Together 1. and 2. mean that increasingly relying on chatbots for text creation will leave people with less of the skill needed to polish that created text--and the wherewithal to go about that polish properly (which comes down to a readiness to tough out the tedious, painful process because they care about the quality of the content). The result may well be a decline in the quality of written content from what we get today--especially if the required skills go faster than the improvement in chatbot functioning that would make up for them.
One reason for this is that writing is in large part rewriting, a notoriously tedious and painful process.
Still, as people increasingly rely on chatbots to generate "content," with the artificial intelligence pouring out lots of words that they must then polish, the polishing seems likely to be ever more of what it means to "write."
In considering the situation we should remember two truisms about writing, namely:
1. You can't rewrite well unless you know how to write well in the first place--and people do not pick up that skill just cleaning up chatbot content.
2. Most people who take pleasure in writing at all take pleasure in the experience of writing, not the rewriting, which they are apt to experience as a chore, and want as little as possible to do with.
Together 1. and 2. mean that increasingly relying on chatbots for text creation will leave people with less of the skill needed to polish that created text--and the wherewithal to go about that polish properly (which comes down to a readiness to tough out the tedious, painful process because they care about the quality of the content). The result may well be a decline in the quality of written content from what we get today--especially if the required skills go faster than the improvement in chatbot functioning that would make up for them.
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