Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I am no fan of '90s independent film, with its many unattractive traits including its smug, lazy, show-offy--dare I say it, EXTREME!--edginess (exemplified by that "filmmaker" whose critical adulation has lasted long enough for him to become the "Grand Old Man" of the movement, Quentin Tarantino).
Director and now DC Films co-boss James Gunn may be said to have come out of not only that period, but that ferment, with his work marked by it from Tromeo and Juliet forward. Thus writing the story and screenplay for 2002's live-action Scooby-Doo film he initially produced an R-rated script, which, in spite of the cuts and other changes, in its final PG-rated form still not only made Scrappy-Doo the villain (again, not just edgy, but lazy), but gave him an R-rated vocabulary (even if his usage of it is strategically cut off in the film we get) and had him literally piss all over Daphne while they are riding the Mystery Machine in a flashback scene (which, given that she was being played by Sarah Michelle Gellar in her Buffy the Vampire Slayer era, also meant his appearing to piss all over a feminist icon in her heyday, making this even edgier).
All of this carried over to his superhero films, which actually began with the low-budget Super (which Gunn didn't have to keep PG, and didn't), but also the PG-13 Guardians of the Galaxy films, where he wore a cheap nihilism on his sleeve throughout, from running his gag in which characters get cut off in the middle of a dramatic monologue into the ground, to having Yondu massacre his mutinous crewmen to the sounds of "Come a Little Bit Closer," before getting himself fired from the job of directing the third and last installment for some, again, edgelord, jokes on Twitter that came back to haunt him (before he was rehired and did his thing all over again).
If I generally find Gunn's sensibility wearisome, especially as this side of '90s culture grows ever more stale and trite, it at least seemed passable with the Guardians franchise (at least, to this viewer who never read any of the relevant comics)--but less so with the DC Extended Universe, and still more its most celebrated characters, such that barring his managing to show another side to himself as an artiste (something his cohort is not known for), it seems to me to bode poorly for their latest crack at satisfying their Marvel envy. Or, rather, their envy of what Marvel used to be in the Beforetime preceding the pandemic.
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
The Box Office Performance of Alien: Romulus
NOTE: This post is a derivative of a reply to a reader's comment back in October. The original post, and exchange, may be found here.
I previously declined to venture a comment about Alien: Romulus because when thinking about a film's likely or actual performance I tend to look for close points of comparison and extrapolate from that. This was until recently fairly easy with the Marvel movies, for example, because there were so many of them released so close together that it was possible to find very close precedents and search for trends among them. It was a lot harder with the Alien movies because they have been very widely separated over time, with a certain amount of variety among them, while I wasn't sure what kind of Alien movie Romulus would be (whether it would be more action- or horror-oriented, whether it would be more or less attentive to the "mythology" of the series). It seemed to me possible that the movie could add to the long list of underperforming franchise films of the last couple of years, but also possible it would do better, and in the end it has been a modest success. Even when we adjust for inflation Alien: Romulus seems to have done a little better domestically and internationally than 2017's Covenant (picking up $350 million worldwide, versus the $310 million or so Covenant made in today's dollars). That still leaves it a pretty long way away from the heights reached by the first two movies (the original Alien was almost an $800 million hit in today's terms), and the top rank of blockbusters today (the $1 billion+ grossers), but given that it more than quadrupled the reported production budget ($80 million) it is almost certainly turning a decent profit by today's standards ($100 million+ not out of the question when we take into account the post-theatrical income streams).
Especially given how Hollywood remains committed to the "franchise film," and how so many of the latest franchise films are doing a lot less well than Alien has just done, it is unsurprising that Fox has already decided to continue the franchise. So far as I know development of that next film is still in its early stages, but I would not be surprised if the backers decided to get a little more ambitious, aiming for something more than a relatively low-budgeted August release the next time around--maybe profitably, maybe not.
I previously declined to venture a comment about Alien: Romulus because when thinking about a film's likely or actual performance I tend to look for close points of comparison and extrapolate from that. This was until recently fairly easy with the Marvel movies, for example, because there were so many of them released so close together that it was possible to find very close precedents and search for trends among them. It was a lot harder with the Alien movies because they have been very widely separated over time, with a certain amount of variety among them, while I wasn't sure what kind of Alien movie Romulus would be (whether it would be more action- or horror-oriented, whether it would be more or less attentive to the "mythology" of the series). It seemed to me possible that the movie could add to the long list of underperforming franchise films of the last couple of years, but also possible it would do better, and in the end it has been a modest success. Even when we adjust for inflation Alien: Romulus seems to have done a little better domestically and internationally than 2017's Covenant (picking up $350 million worldwide, versus the $310 million or so Covenant made in today's dollars). That still leaves it a pretty long way away from the heights reached by the first two movies (the original Alien was almost an $800 million hit in today's terms), and the top rank of blockbusters today (the $1 billion+ grossers), but given that it more than quadrupled the reported production budget ($80 million) it is almost certainly turning a decent profit by today's standards ($100 million+ not out of the question when we take into account the post-theatrical income streams).
Especially given how Hollywood remains committed to the "franchise film," and how so many of the latest franchise films are doing a lot less well than Alien has just done, it is unsurprising that Fox has already decided to continue the franchise. So far as I know development of that next film is still in its early stages, but I would not be surprised if the backers decided to get a little more ambitious, aiming for something more than a relatively low-budgeted August release the next time around--maybe profitably, maybe not.
"It's Not the Economy, Stupid," They Still Tell Us
The media continues to insist that "It Wasn't the Economy, Stupid" to those trying to understand the meaning of the U.S. presidential election of 2024. Exemplary of this is Sarah Bernstein's piece in the New York Times attributing the outcome of the election to America's "dating culture." Again seizing on the "male rage" theme ever popular with the culture war addicts, Ms. Bernstein argues for the ultimate source of said rage being the expectation that males be the bread-winners in their households--that if it is now the norm for married women to work, the men bring home a significantly larger paycheck--has led to frustration among both men and women, especially in an era in which the "gender gap" in pay has narrowed, and a rising proportion of women enjoy superior educational and occupational outcomes to a rising proportion of the male population. (Men who cannot meet the resulting higher income standard find a growing proportion of women ruling them out as prospects.)
I will not go so far as to argue that there is nothing to this. It does seem to me that men and women do widely hold the expectation Ms. Bernstein talks about, and all the statistics I have seen testify to the substance of the shift in relative incomes that she describes. However, as an explanation of the election, or even the dating woes of the population, it is sadly lacking. After all, while the income gap between men and women has narrowed, this has largely been a matter of stagnation or erosion of incomes for the vast majority of males when income is taken in inflation-adjusted terms rather than of women's incomes catching up to those of prosperous male counterparts. (Indeed, median female income actually held steady as a proportion of per capita GDP from the 1950s to today.) As the situation also implies given that relative to many of the essentials of daily living (housing, auto ownership, higher education, health insurance premiums, etc.) the purchasing power of those male incomes has collapsed, with every sign indicating that collapse's continuing with no end in sight , all as economic insecurity generally is increasing.
The result is that even if women have caught men up this way what they have actually caught up to, contrary to the impression Ms. Bernstein gives of women doing so well that they can easily support not just themselves but a "househusband," means that few women interested in the financing of a household, a marriage, the rearing of children can really afford to give no thought to a partner contributing a second income, and indeed a fairly significant one. Accordingly the fact that women, even relatively high-income women, expect that a prospective partner make at least as much as they do, reflects hard economic reality--reality which would endure regardless of notions about gender. However, that observation would be unlikely to appear in an essay in the Times, or any other publication of its ilk, which much prefer to focus on the differences across the gender line than the differences which cut across it, while gaslighting the public with insistences that "You've never had it so good" as they struggle harder and harder to make ends meet in ways that those who write for the opinion pages of publications like these have rarely ever had to do.
I will not go so far as to argue that there is nothing to this. It does seem to me that men and women do widely hold the expectation Ms. Bernstein talks about, and all the statistics I have seen testify to the substance of the shift in relative incomes that she describes. However, as an explanation of the election, or even the dating woes of the population, it is sadly lacking. After all, while the income gap between men and women has narrowed, this has largely been a matter of stagnation or erosion of incomes for the vast majority of males when income is taken in inflation-adjusted terms rather than of women's incomes catching up to those of prosperous male counterparts. (Indeed, median female income actually held steady as a proportion of per capita GDP from the 1950s to today.) As the situation also implies given that relative to many of the essentials of daily living (housing, auto ownership, higher education, health insurance premiums, etc.) the purchasing power of those male incomes has collapsed, with every sign indicating that collapse's continuing with no end in sight , all as economic insecurity generally is increasing.
The result is that even if women have caught men up this way what they have actually caught up to, contrary to the impression Ms. Bernstein gives of women doing so well that they can easily support not just themselves but a "househusband," means that few women interested in the financing of a household, a marriage, the rearing of children can really afford to give no thought to a partner contributing a second income, and indeed a fairly significant one. Accordingly the fact that women, even relatively high-income women, expect that a prospective partner make at least as much as they do, reflects hard economic reality--reality which would endure regardless of notions about gender. However, that observation would be unlikely to appear in an essay in the Times, or any other publication of its ilk, which much prefer to focus on the differences across the gender line than the differences which cut across it, while gaslighting the public with insistences that "You've never had it so good" as they struggle harder and harder to make ends meet in ways that those who write for the opinion pages of publications like these have rarely ever had to do.
It's Still the Economy, Stupid--But They're Trying Very Hard to Make You Forget It
After months of hearing that "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" from the media outlets covering the 2024 presidential election, which were eager for the election to be about anything else, it turned out to be about . . . the economy, stupid. Afterward the media outlets admitted as much, however reluctantly--saying stupid things like "It Wasn't the Economy, it Was Inflation" (as if inflation were somehow a thing apart from the economy)--and then hastened to bury the realization as they went on selling the "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" narrative again in spite of the hard facts.
Consider the particularly popular "White male rage" variation on the argument--and how it compares with the data on how Americans actually voted. According to the data set published by U.S. News & World Report, 54 percent of the White women who voted, 44 percent of Hispanics (including 40 percent of Hispanic women), and 17 percent of African-Americans (including 11 percent of African-American women), voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump. Given those numbers it is safe to say that the majority of the votes for Trump came from persons classifiable as outside the "White male" category--all as, not incidentally, a far from negligible 39 percent of White males voted for Harris (a vote on the part of that group just 7 percent lower than the vote for Harris among White women). That does not rule out the "status politics" of the country, which the media do everything in their power to whip up at every turn in the shabbiest and most cynical way, has factored into the electoral outcome. However, the reduction of Trump's victory to "White male rage" simply does not find validation in the numbers, or anything else--though of course, those who wanted to pretend "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" have never let hard fact get in the way of their loathsome culture war-mongering.
Consider the particularly popular "White male rage" variation on the argument--and how it compares with the data on how Americans actually voted. According to the data set published by U.S. News & World Report, 54 percent of the White women who voted, 44 percent of Hispanics (including 40 percent of Hispanic women), and 17 percent of African-Americans (including 11 percent of African-American women), voted for Republican candidate Donald Trump. Given those numbers it is safe to say that the majority of the votes for Trump came from persons classifiable as outside the "White male" category--all as, not incidentally, a far from negligible 39 percent of White males voted for Harris (a vote on the part of that group just 7 percent lower than the vote for Harris among White women). That does not rule out the "status politics" of the country, which the media do everything in their power to whip up at every turn in the shabbiest and most cynical way, has factored into the electoral outcome. However, the reduction of Trump's victory to "White male rage" simply does not find validation in the numbers, or anything else--though of course, those who wanted to pretend "It's Not the Economy, Stupid" have never let hard fact get in the way of their loathsome culture war-mongering.
The Last Great Moral Panic Over Violence on Network TV
I place in the category of such events Law & Order actor Michael Moriarty's showdown with Attorney General Janet Reno over her threats to censor network TV if it did not significantly reduce the amount of violence that it put on the air.
Looking back it seems to me to be plausible, even probable, that Reno's kicking up a furor over TV violence was a cynical ploy by a Clinton administration implementing a thoroughly neoliberal economic program ("Reinventing Government," NAFTA, etc. as the modest social promises were kicked to the curb) that, generally unpopular with a public that had overwhelmingly voted against this path, outraged supporters who rightly felt betrayed, while winning no points from the right for its vigorous furtherance of the Reagan Revolution--and attempting to change the subject and score cheap points with an appeal to the Helen Lovejoys of the world at a time when this was still a fairly hot topic with them.
Hence the grandstanding about what was airing on TV as entertainment--and the specific decision to focus on violence on TV rather than sex on TV, sex usually the more controversial thing, and therefore more charged, not least because it was so much a concern of the culture warriors. By contrast concern for the violence on TV was a less charged matter, in part because of how concern about it could seem to cut across ideological lines, and be less suggestive of pandering to a right-wing Agenda in this way as in so many others.
Hence also the ease with which Reno backed away from her calls with nothing done about the matter--that people were less eager for something to be done about the violence on TV than the sex on TV making her and the administration less likely to catch criticism for the retreat (especially from that right that they were so anxious not to offend any more than they were already doing, little good that it ever did them).
Indeed, the only real consequence of the affair can seem to be the damage Mr. Moriarty did to his career by taking the cynically proffered bait. Thus did the fuss, which was undesired by Moriarty's producers and certainly to hear him tell it, see him stand alone, like Gary Cooper in High Noon (!)--but afterward parting ways with the show, and if he went on working afterward, never landing a really comparable gig again, no starring role in a comparably high-profile series appearing in his list of credits three decades on.
Of course, that did not mean that disputation over the perceived violence of the content on network television was wholly at an end. Still, in line with the broad politics that made Janet Reno's maneuver such a a safe one for her to undertake, and the fact that the successor administration was a Republican one with a blatant culture war commitment, sex figured in it much more highly than violence, such that when George W. Bush appointee to the Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell--like the Clinton administration, easy to see as cynically stoking the culture war as cover and a source of cheap political points as it busily furthered the implementation of the neoliberal agenda--aggressively handing out fines during his tenure, hitting NYPD Blue with a million dollar penalty for nudity, not violence, while giving the "patriotic gore" in an uncensored broadcast of Saving Private Ryan a pass. It was also sex that was on the minds of those who denounced Desperate Housewives in its early days, and the display of Janet Jackson's nipple at the Super Bowl, with the same carrying over to the censoriousness of One Million Moms and #MeToo alike. However, that was far from all of it. The reality was that Big Media was changing, with before the end of the 1990s HBO dramas like The Sopranos making NYPD Blue look tame by comparison--all as the Internet exploded the scene. Simply put, the culture moved on--and so did the struggles over the censorship of that culture, which rage on to the same noxious ends as ever they did.
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Reflections on the "Big Thinks" on "Europe and America"
Those who would say something about the contrast between "Europe" and "America" tend to fall back on certain clichés, either badly outdated or baseless to begin with. One of the worst is the comparison of "democratic" America and its popular culture with "aristocratic" Europe and its "high" culture, personified in the caricatured culture clash between the "crude" American and the "sophisticated" European.
This conception ignores how from the start America has had its aristocrats (however much their pretensions may have been taken less than seriously, or downplayed, by many in and beyond their country), while in Europe the aristocrats were, by definition, few. (After all, aristocrats can cultivate the graces of life because they live off of the toil of others rather than their own toil, while even among the aristocrats few get the whole "package," possessing titles and certain privileges going with them but wondering where their next meal will come from.)
There is what this also means, that America has long had its high culture, which has come a long way since the days when the Henry Jameses could snivel about America's lacking monuments and museums, while one should never forget the limits to the possession and enjoyment of high culture in Europe. In the case of the aristocrat it was apt to be a matter of superficial attainments for the purposes of showing off in that way to which the leisure class is addicted that Jane Austen satirized in her discussion of the "accomplished young lady," while contact with such culture falls off sharply just a little way down the socioeconomic ladder (Hans Fallada's portrayal of Berlin carpenter Otto Quangel showing disbelief at what a symphony conductor does sums it up), while Europe has its low culture as well, as trashy and stupid as anything that came out of America. (One would need only look at what Silvio Berlusconi put on the air in a country where, as one critic put it, "one struggles to take a step without encountering evidence of millennia of high culture.")
Bad enough in the day when Nabokov wrote Lolita, why do these stupidities persist so much later, when they seem so much less forgivable?
It would seem relevant here that we live in a deeply reactionary era which stresses cultural difference over similarity--strains for difference where it scarcely exists, plays up whatever it can; that so many have made so much of trans-Atlantic differences, and done so on the basis of the most outworn clichés, like the decadence of Old Europe contrasted with the vigor and innocence of "Young" America, for political and other purposes ("Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus"); that so many are so impressed with shallow aristocratic pretensions (utterly taken in and awed by and ready to glorify the "accomplishment" of the general public's supposed betters), and so utterly credulous toward the courtiers of the elite, both in the news media and the arts.
As if all that were not lousy reason enough, the centrist has also been a convenient marketing tool. Americans of conventional mind are prone to assume their country to be superior to the rest of the world in many things, like the development and exploitation of information technology. Yet they are ever ready to believe that others do some things better than them--with one of these fashion, cosmetics and those things generally serving the ends of "style" and beauty, where Europeanness counts for something with Americans, precisely because that is what one would expect of a more aristocratic, aesthetically refined culture. An example that springs readily to mind is the more than decade-long bombardment of the American public by commercials for Cindy Crawford's Meaningful Beauty skin care line. That the product was derived from melons grown in southern France by a French doctor who in his manner of speaking English and other ways can seem like an Anglosphere caricature of a Frenchman can seem part of the sales pitch. "It's European!" the commercial all but shouts. As European as a European men's carryall.
This conception ignores how from the start America has had its aristocrats (however much their pretensions may have been taken less than seriously, or downplayed, by many in and beyond their country), while in Europe the aristocrats were, by definition, few. (After all, aristocrats can cultivate the graces of life because they live off of the toil of others rather than their own toil, while even among the aristocrats few get the whole "package," possessing titles and certain privileges going with them but wondering where their next meal will come from.)
There is what this also means, that America has long had its high culture, which has come a long way since the days when the Henry Jameses could snivel about America's lacking monuments and museums, while one should never forget the limits to the possession and enjoyment of high culture in Europe. In the case of the aristocrat it was apt to be a matter of superficial attainments for the purposes of showing off in that way to which the leisure class is addicted that Jane Austen satirized in her discussion of the "accomplished young lady," while contact with such culture falls off sharply just a little way down the socioeconomic ladder (Hans Fallada's portrayal of Berlin carpenter Otto Quangel showing disbelief at what a symphony conductor does sums it up), while Europe has its low culture as well, as trashy and stupid as anything that came out of America. (One would need only look at what Silvio Berlusconi put on the air in a country where, as one critic put it, "one struggles to take a step without encountering evidence of millennia of high culture.")
Bad enough in the day when Nabokov wrote Lolita, why do these stupidities persist so much later, when they seem so much less forgivable?
It would seem relevant here that we live in a deeply reactionary era which stresses cultural difference over similarity--strains for difference where it scarcely exists, plays up whatever it can; that so many have made so much of trans-Atlantic differences, and done so on the basis of the most outworn clichés, like the decadence of Old Europe contrasted with the vigor and innocence of "Young" America, for political and other purposes ("Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus"); that so many are so impressed with shallow aristocratic pretensions (utterly taken in and awed by and ready to glorify the "accomplishment" of the general public's supposed betters), and so utterly credulous toward the courtiers of the elite, both in the news media and the arts.
As if all that were not lousy reason enough, the centrist has also been a convenient marketing tool. Americans of conventional mind are prone to assume their country to be superior to the rest of the world in many things, like the development and exploitation of information technology. Yet they are ever ready to believe that others do some things better than them--with one of these fashion, cosmetics and those things generally serving the ends of "style" and beauty, where Europeanness counts for something with Americans, precisely because that is what one would expect of a more aristocratic, aesthetically refined culture. An example that springs readily to mind is the more than decade-long bombardment of the American public by commercials for Cindy Crawford's Meaningful Beauty skin care line. That the product was derived from melons grown in southern France by a French doctor who in his manner of speaking English and other ways can seem like an Anglosphere caricature of a Frenchman can seem part of the sales pitch. "It's European!" the commercial all but shouts. As European as a European men's carryall.
The Decline of the Reality Star
Despising the reality TV genre from the first (oh how hard the courtiers and claqueurs worked to get the public to love Survivor!), for many years after when the press referred to some entertainment celebrity as if the general public was expected to recognize their name and I had never heard of them my first thought was always "They're a reality star, aren't they?" and I was usually right.
Now, it would seem, this is less likely to be the case--because of that pop cultural fragmentation that means I might not know who they are for any number of reasons. Film stars, sports stars--they just aren't what they used to be, the media ecosystem that supported stardom in the past different from what we have now, while it may even be that when we consider the recording star we are made oblivious to decline here as well by the Taylor Swift phenomenon. (The real state of popular music in this regard is to be judged not by the status of those who are already megastars, but the chances of newer entrants into the field of becoming them, which show every sign of fast-shrinking.) Now, after we have (in the view of some, at least) seen reality TV play its part in making a President of the United States, the institution of the reality star would appear to be in decline along with all the rest.
Now, it would seem, this is less likely to be the case--because of that pop cultural fragmentation that means I might not know who they are for any number of reasons. Film stars, sports stars--they just aren't what they used to be, the media ecosystem that supported stardom in the past different from what we have now, while it may even be that when we consider the recording star we are made oblivious to decline here as well by the Taylor Swift phenomenon. (The real state of popular music in this regard is to be judged not by the status of those who are already megastars, but the chances of newer entrants into the field of becoming them, which show every sign of fast-shrinking.) Now, after we have (in the view of some, at least) seen reality TV play its part in making a President of the United States, the institution of the reality star would appear to be in decline along with all the rest.
Reality TV as Symbol of the Twenty-First Century
As was to so often be the case in the twenty-first century, what as late as the '90s was satire proved a slight thing next to the obscene reality of just a few years later when the reality TV boom brought the collective dementia of The Truman Show to life, and the courtiers and claqueurs of the entertainment press "normalized" it and its multiplicity of stupidities and vilenesses, which seemed likely to go on forever because of the addiction of the media-industrial complex to stupidity and vileness. But it may be that the readiness of the public to accept particular forms of stupidity and vileness have their limits, spelling the beginning of the end (rather than just the end of the beginning) of the reality TV format if we are to go by what the entertainment press tells us.
It would probably be too much to read into that the beginning of a saner new era--but I welcome the development nonetheless.
It would probably be too much to read into that the beginning of a saner new era--but I welcome the development nonetheless.
The Reality TV Bubble Bursts?
The press is telling us that the reality TV bubble has burst.
It seems to me too early to tell if this is really the case.
If so, while I have sympathy for the workers in television production who will experience this as another blow to the job market in which they work, the genre is a vile thing. The showbiz "wannabes" passed off as "ordinary people" crammed into a house to scream at each other and degrade themselves in stupid games and contests. The rich idiots making a global media spectacle of their raging stupidity, vulgarity and narcissism. The business-themed competition shows where millionaires put billionaires whose luck they pass of as genius on pedestals so that they may sit in judgment of supposed hopefuls of similar success in a pageant of conformism and aspirationalism at its most cruel and stupid. On and on it goes, all of it not just lowest common denominator in thinking and deeply retrograde in its attitudes, but thoroughly unpleasant to look at or contemplate for any but the most warped mentality in a way that puts me in mind of the quote attributed (very likely, incorrectly) to the philosopher George Santayana: "Americans love junk. It's not the junk that bothers me, it's the love."
Ordinarily I am not bothered by people loving what some would consider junk, and indeed even defend their right to unapologetically love what may be indisputably junk without qualification (hence my distaste for such terms as "guilty pleasure"). However, the world would be a better place if this particular type of junk never existed.
It seems to me too early to tell if this is really the case.
If so, while I have sympathy for the workers in television production who will experience this as another blow to the job market in which they work, the genre is a vile thing. The showbiz "wannabes" passed off as "ordinary people" crammed into a house to scream at each other and degrade themselves in stupid games and contests. The rich idiots making a global media spectacle of their raging stupidity, vulgarity and narcissism. The business-themed competition shows where millionaires put billionaires whose luck they pass of as genius on pedestals so that they may sit in judgment of supposed hopefuls of similar success in a pageant of conformism and aspirationalism at its most cruel and stupid. On and on it goes, all of it not just lowest common denominator in thinking and deeply retrograde in its attitudes, but thoroughly unpleasant to look at or contemplate for any but the most warped mentality in a way that puts me in mind of the quote attributed (very likely, incorrectly) to the philosopher George Santayana: "Americans love junk. It's not the junk that bothers me, it's the love."
Ordinarily I am not bothered by people loving what some would consider junk, and indeed even defend their right to unapologetically love what may be indisputably junk without qualification (hence my distaste for such terms as "guilty pleasure"). However, the world would be a better place if this particular type of junk never existed.
Of "Guilty Pleasures"
I have never liked the term "guilty pleasure," or at least its usage in reference to the enjoyment of cultural works not conventionally held in great esteem. There is about the term a sense of groveling before Authority that I find deeply distasteful--the more in as in the world of culture and the arts Authority has made its prescriptions and exercised its influence in such a self-serving, treacherous way from the start, and with particularly disastrous consequence in our time.
So far as I am concerned people should like what they like, without guilt--and deal with the value judgments after that, with people thinking for themselves rather than mindlessly following the dictates of a priesthood that it seems to is rather less necessary and more avoidable in this sphere than in so many others.
So far as I am concerned people should like what they like, without guilt--and deal with the value judgments after that, with people thinking for themselves rather than mindlessly following the dictates of a priesthood that it seems to is rather less necessary and more avoidable in this sphere than in so many others.
Alan Moore on Fandom: A Few Thoughts
Alan Moore recently published a piece in the Guardian titled "Fandom Has Toxified the World."
The content of the actual piece is rather less categorical in its criticism of fandom than that, and so the title an example of the characteristically cynical media practice of catching the eye with something more shocking or provocative than the material it offers really warrants. After all, Moore declares that he "believe[s] that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture" (emphasis added) and indeed that in the absence of fandom a culture--such as, I suppose, that of comics--"ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies." However, he is "also sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight" (emphasis added), which "poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement," with, as the title of the item indicates (it is representative of Moore's position to that extent, at least), this is one of those "sometimes."
In saying that Moore discusses his experience of fandom--which is not insignificant, but also limited, comparing the fan world he knew when he was young, at a time when the comic book was much more marginal to cultural life than it is now, with what, after aloofness from it for the decades during which he became a superstar in the field, fandom in its contemporary form. This is the occasion of the negative commentary, none of which will surprise anyone at all exposed to, for example, the Comicsgate episode.
While Moore's piece stuck to familiar ground here--arguably because it did so--it did get me thinking again about how so many treat fandom as an easy target. Consider, after all, the title of the piece: "Fandom has Toxified the World." Reading up on these matters I have had the opposite suspicion--that, to the extent that we find fandom "toxic," the toxicity of the world has simply been reflected in fandom, and that focusing on fandom is easier and safer than criticizing bigger and broader cultural developments, in part because fans are such an easy target for kulturkampfers from all sides. After all, fan-ness is equated with nerdiness by the conventional, and we live in a culture where gleeful nerd-bashing is not just given a pass, but a significant cultural industry in its own right (certainly to go by such successes as The Big Bang Theory and its spin-offs). At the same time Big Media has a significant financial stake in beating up on some elements of the fan community--Big Media, after all, intent on having things both ways, desirous of exploiting fan affection for the franchises they own, but at the same time desirous of the freest possible hand in exploiting the materials of its franchises as it chases consumers' ever-shrinking disposable income. Meanwhile those who embrace identity politics are prone to equate fandom with what they would see as its worst elements. (Looking at the dialogue about Joker 2 online I am struck by how many have rushed to see the film as giving fans what they think is a well-deserved middle finger, with the politics of identity and its enmities factoring heavily into this as they use words like "entitlement" to beat down any social criticism they see as irrelevant to their own concerns.) At the same time the identity politics-bashing right, if pleased to see the umbrage at certain aspects of pop culture turn the relevant part of the public off of "wokeness," has little sympathy for them. The right is the purview of the swaggering jock, not the nerd, and anyway sees grown men who like comics and such as refusing to put away "childish things" and get jobs and devote themselves to raising the country's fertility rate, 'cause reasons.
Indeed, all that being the case makes it seem even less likely that fandom is "toxifying" the world, than the opposite, that the world is toxifying fandom. After all, to go by the extreme disrespect with which pretty much everyone treats fandom, fans are nowhere near so powerful as they would have to be in order to have such an impact on the culture, while they are by no means immune to the world's toxicity, such that it manifests here--all as some, for whatever reason more attentive to the signs of poisoning here than elsewhere, readily confuse cause with effect.
The content of the actual piece is rather less categorical in its criticism of fandom than that, and so the title an example of the characteristically cynical media practice of catching the eye with something more shocking or provocative than the material it offers really warrants. After all, Moore declares that he "believe[s] that fandom is a wonderful and vital organ of contemporary culture" (emphasis added) and indeed that in the absence of fandom a culture--such as, I suppose, that of comics--"ultimately stagnates, atrophies and dies." However, he is "also sure that fandom is sometimes a grotesque blight" (emphasis added), which "poisons the society surrounding it with its mean-spirited obsessions and ridiculous, unearned sense of entitlement," with, as the title of the item indicates (it is representative of Moore's position to that extent, at least), this is one of those "sometimes."
In saying that Moore discusses his experience of fandom--which is not insignificant, but also limited, comparing the fan world he knew when he was young, at a time when the comic book was much more marginal to cultural life than it is now, with what, after aloofness from it for the decades during which he became a superstar in the field, fandom in its contemporary form. This is the occasion of the negative commentary, none of which will surprise anyone at all exposed to, for example, the Comicsgate episode.
While Moore's piece stuck to familiar ground here--arguably because it did so--it did get me thinking again about how so many treat fandom as an easy target. Consider, after all, the title of the piece: "Fandom has Toxified the World." Reading up on these matters I have had the opposite suspicion--that, to the extent that we find fandom "toxic," the toxicity of the world has simply been reflected in fandom, and that focusing on fandom is easier and safer than criticizing bigger and broader cultural developments, in part because fans are such an easy target for kulturkampfers from all sides. After all, fan-ness is equated with nerdiness by the conventional, and we live in a culture where gleeful nerd-bashing is not just given a pass, but a significant cultural industry in its own right (certainly to go by such successes as The Big Bang Theory and its spin-offs). At the same time Big Media has a significant financial stake in beating up on some elements of the fan community--Big Media, after all, intent on having things both ways, desirous of exploiting fan affection for the franchises they own, but at the same time desirous of the freest possible hand in exploiting the materials of its franchises as it chases consumers' ever-shrinking disposable income. Meanwhile those who embrace identity politics are prone to equate fandom with what they would see as its worst elements. (Looking at the dialogue about Joker 2 online I am struck by how many have rushed to see the film as giving fans what they think is a well-deserved middle finger, with the politics of identity and its enmities factoring heavily into this as they use words like "entitlement" to beat down any social criticism they see as irrelevant to their own concerns.) At the same time the identity politics-bashing right, if pleased to see the umbrage at certain aspects of pop culture turn the relevant part of the public off of "wokeness," has little sympathy for them. The right is the purview of the swaggering jock, not the nerd, and anyway sees grown men who like comics and such as refusing to put away "childish things" and get jobs and devote themselves to raising the country's fertility rate, 'cause reasons.
Indeed, all that being the case makes it seem even less likely that fandom is "toxifying" the world, than the opposite, that the world is toxifying fandom. After all, to go by the extreme disrespect with which pretty much everyone treats fandom, fans are nowhere near so powerful as they would have to be in order to have such an impact on the culture, while they are by no means immune to the world's toxicity, such that it manifests here--all as some, for whatever reason more attentive to the signs of poisoning here than elsewhere, readily confuse cause with effect.
AI Movie Trailers Today, Full-Length AI Movies Tomorrow?
If you spend enough time online to have come across this humble blog, it has probably already come to your attention that the Interweb is now awash in trailers for movies that have not been made, and which are therefore not coming to a theater (or anything else) anywhere near you--in cases, oodles and oodles of trailers for a single concept, the long-stuck-in-development-hell Gal Gadot-starring Cleopatra movie (which, if it does get made as we are again being told is the case, will probably look nothing like any of the trailers).
Given how fast the development of "generative Artificial Intelligence" seems to be moving (the extreme opposite of the slowness to put AI to any sort of practical, real-world use, like satisfactorily drive a vehicle through a city street, or even tidy your home), I wonder how long it will be before those playing around with the programs in these ways graduate from trailers to short movies and even full-length movies. (Indeed, some enterprising individuals may already be working on figuring out how to string together lots and lots of short AI-generated movies to form one coherent full-length movie.)
I wonder, too, how long it will be before Hollywood starts to regard this as a real competitor--and the studios which have made the creatives they so despise knuckle under to their participation in the training of such software find that the development of that software has put not just the writers and actors and set designers out of business, but the studios themselves as they find themselves superfluous in a media world awash in digitally conjured cinema.
Given how fast the development of "generative Artificial Intelligence" seems to be moving (the extreme opposite of the slowness to put AI to any sort of practical, real-world use, like satisfactorily drive a vehicle through a city street, or even tidy your home), I wonder how long it will be before those playing around with the programs in these ways graduate from trailers to short movies and even full-length movies. (Indeed, some enterprising individuals may already be working on figuring out how to string together lots and lots of short AI-generated movies to form one coherent full-length movie.)
I wonder, too, how long it will be before Hollywood starts to regard this as a real competitor--and the studios which have made the creatives they so despise knuckle under to their participation in the training of such software find that the development of that software has put not just the writers and actors and set designers out of business, but the studios themselves as they find themselves superfluous in a media world awash in digitally conjured cinema.
Is "Glicked" Confusing Perceptions of Gladiator 2's Box Office?
I remember how back in the summer of 2023 the media telling us that the "Barbenheimer" meme juxtaposed the two big feature film releases of July 21 of that year (Barbie and Oppenheimer) went "viral" online, Internet users reveling in the ironies of the contrast between a movie about plastic toys and a movie about (however much the media prefer to tell us it is about something, anything, else) THE DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR THAT HANGS OVER ALL OF US EVER MORE THREATENINGLY AS OPPENHEIMER DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER NOLAN HIMSELF SPELLED OUT TO THE BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS LEST ANYONE MISS THE POINT.
I don't know that I believe that the Barbenheimer stupidity really did go "viral" the way the media claimed it did--precisely because everything I have seen about how the Internet works has left me only more and more convinced that things really don't go viral that way, that indeed the media just tells us they did, because it helps them push a particular narrative.
Still, whether or not Barbenheimer really did go viral or not the phenomenon did have one important feature in common with the great majority of those things we are told went viral--namely that it is extremely stupid, and each and every unfortunate contact with it like nails on a chalkboard.
Naturally the media, which can never resist repeating its stupidities, seized on the chance to reuse the marketing concept by talking up "Glicked"--the release of a screen adaptation of the revisionist Broadway musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz, Wicked, the same weekend as the bloody Roman pseudo-epic Gladiator II. (They slapped together the "Gl" from Gladiator and "icked" from Wicked. Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.)
The expectation was that just as Barbie and Oppenheimer both performed way above expectations at the box office, saving the until then really dismal summer season of 2023, so would Wicked and Gladiator. As it happened, neither movie quite lived up to the expectations observers held for it on their mutual opening weekend, each coming in under the range that Boxoffice Pro projected the Wednesday of their week of release.* Still, Wicked did just well enough then and after to be considered a very palpable hit (with $262 million banked after ten days in release, and decent prospects through the season), while Gladiator has . . . done less well. Apparently on track to end up with half what the original did after inflation, it may be that even with post-theatrical income counted in the movie will be reckoned a money-loser, though few seem willing to admit that. This is, I think, primarily because the entertainment press is pushing the narrative that Hollywood's model of blockbuster filmmaking is as salable as ever, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary--but it may be that the "Glicked" foolishness intended to help sell both movies is playing its part, predisposing observers to think of Gladiator II as a success, and even letting it benefit from association with the much more successful Wicked in the minds of the easily befuddled.
* Wicked, supposed to open with $120-$140 million, picked up only $114 million.
I don't know that I believe that the Barbenheimer stupidity really did go "viral" the way the media claimed it did--precisely because everything I have seen about how the Internet works has left me only more and more convinced that things really don't go viral that way, that indeed the media just tells us they did, because it helps them push a particular narrative.
Still, whether or not Barbenheimer really did go viral or not the phenomenon did have one important feature in common with the great majority of those things we are told went viral--namely that it is extremely stupid, and each and every unfortunate contact with it like nails on a chalkboard.
Naturally the media, which can never resist repeating its stupidities, seized on the chance to reuse the marketing concept by talking up "Glicked"--the release of a screen adaptation of the revisionist Broadway musical prequel to The Wizard of Oz, Wicked, the same weekend as the bloody Roman pseudo-epic Gladiator II. (They slapped together the "Gl" from Gladiator and "icked" from Wicked. Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.)
The expectation was that just as Barbie and Oppenheimer both performed way above expectations at the box office, saving the until then really dismal summer season of 2023, so would Wicked and Gladiator. As it happened, neither movie quite lived up to the expectations observers held for it on their mutual opening weekend, each coming in under the range that Boxoffice Pro projected the Wednesday of their week of release.* Still, Wicked did just well enough then and after to be considered a very palpable hit (with $262 million banked after ten days in release, and decent prospects through the season), while Gladiator has . . . done less well. Apparently on track to end up with half what the original did after inflation, it may be that even with post-theatrical income counted in the movie will be reckoned a money-loser, though few seem willing to admit that. This is, I think, primarily because the entertainment press is pushing the narrative that Hollywood's model of blockbuster filmmaking is as salable as ever, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary--but it may be that the "Glicked" foolishness intended to help sell both movies is playing its part, predisposing observers to think of Gladiator II as a success, and even letting it benefit from association with the much more successful Wicked in the minds of the easily befuddled.
* Wicked, supposed to open with $120-$140 million, picked up only $114 million.
Gladiator 2's Failure: Some Thoughts
Recently appraising Gladiator 2's box office performance I have inclined to the view that the movie is proving a commercial disappointment at the box office--not a total, The Marvels/Flash-style catastrophe, but far from what it would take to really justify a $300 million movie, and that the outcome was far from unforeseeable.
Consider the first Gladiator film that came out when many of those who voted in the recent presidential election were not yet even born. The movie was basically a blend of "You killed my favorite second cousin!" action movie with Attitude Era WWE in period costume. The approach had enough novelty, narratively, visually and in other ways to make for one of the more original and entertaining summertime spectacles of those years--but the film's cachet owed to its being taken for something more, the period setting evoking the epics of the last days of Old Hollywood, enough so to fool the more superficial critics into mistaking its puffed-up kayfabe (the ultimate wrestling feud!) for Historical Drama, and awarding it a slew of Oscars that action movies usually do not get, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (in a way, epitomizing Ridley Scott's career as a prolific maker of historical "epics" who apparently has no interest in or understanding of history whatsoever).
Alas, I suspect that the movie's just looking like an epic rather than actually being one limited its impression on viewers, with all that meant for any appetite for a return to Scott's Rome (the more in as the movie left even less room for a sequel than most, with hero and villain both dead, and history taking a wildly implausible turn in his story that would not stand up to any serious follow-up). And I dare say that the historical epics of old that Gladiator was able to exploit the existence of some nostalgia for in 2000 are that much more distant from the memory of today's moviegoing audience on the whole--all as, much as people enjoyed it, the original Gladiator doesn't generate much nostalgic pull of its own. (It's no Star Wars that way, no Top Gun, no 2002 Sam Raimi-helmed Spider-Man even.)
The result was that the very belated follow-up was just a transparent cash grab with a blend of sequel and remake as hazy as it is unimaginative, selling much more on spectacle than the predecessor did in an age in which audiences have had so much spectacle that it is ever harder to really make them feel that here is something they have never seen before--while American audiences, certainly, have long been harder to sell on this particular kind of spectacle, even if the movie has the benefit of being less shopworn than, for instance, the superheroic adventures of which they have seen so many. The resulting, tepid, appeal translated to a tepid response from ticket-buyers.
Consider the first Gladiator film that came out when many of those who voted in the recent presidential election were not yet even born. The movie was basically a blend of "You killed my favorite second cousin!" action movie with Attitude Era WWE in period costume. The approach had enough novelty, narratively, visually and in other ways to make for one of the more original and entertaining summertime spectacles of those years--but the film's cachet owed to its being taken for something more, the period setting evoking the epics of the last days of Old Hollywood, enough so to fool the more superficial critics into mistaking its puffed-up kayfabe (the ultimate wrestling feud!) for Historical Drama, and awarding it a slew of Oscars that action movies usually do not get, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (in a way, epitomizing Ridley Scott's career as a prolific maker of historical "epics" who apparently has no interest in or understanding of history whatsoever).
Alas, I suspect that the movie's just looking like an epic rather than actually being one limited its impression on viewers, with all that meant for any appetite for a return to Scott's Rome (the more in as the movie left even less room for a sequel than most, with hero and villain both dead, and history taking a wildly implausible turn in his story that would not stand up to any serious follow-up). And I dare say that the historical epics of old that Gladiator was able to exploit the existence of some nostalgia for in 2000 are that much more distant from the memory of today's moviegoing audience on the whole--all as, much as people enjoyed it, the original Gladiator doesn't generate much nostalgic pull of its own. (It's no Star Wars that way, no Top Gun, no 2002 Sam Raimi-helmed Spider-Man even.)
The result was that the very belated follow-up was just a transparent cash grab with a blend of sequel and remake as hazy as it is unimaginative, selling much more on spectacle than the predecessor did in an age in which audiences have had so much spectacle that it is ever harder to really make them feel that here is something they have never seen before--while American audiences, certainly, have long been harder to sell on this particular kind of spectacle, even if the movie has the benefit of being less shopworn than, for instance, the superheroic adventures of which they have seen so many. The resulting, tepid, appeal translated to a tepid response from ticket-buyers.
Is Gladiator 2 a Flop?
Admittedly the entertainment press doesn't think so.
Still, consider the situation as it stands.
Seventeen days into Gladiator II's international release the movie has collected $209 million internationally, while ten days into its North American release it has made $111 million in that market. Assuming not unreasonably that the movie has already made 80 percent of its international total by this point, and 60 percent of its North American total, one would expect the movie's final take to come to around $445 million. Alternatively were one to take the $185 million figure for the final domestic take implied by the calculations presented above and expect this to amount to 40 percent of the final worldwide gross the way the domestic take did for the original, one gets a figure of $460 million, some $15 million more, while if one is prepared to allow for a margin of $15 million the other way as well we get $475 million.
A gross in the range of $445-$475 million (which may be more than some see it making) may sound like a lot of money. The bullish will point out that this has the movie matching what the original made ($465 million), ignoring the dollar's losing almost half (46 percent) of its purchasing power since 2000 according to the Consumer Price Index. The result is that merely matching the original's gross in current dollars means the movie's making about half what the original did in real terms.
We get an even worse picture when we think in terms of the cost of the film. The original Gladiator was made for a little over $100 million, which permitted a very healthy profit indeed on a gross of (roughly) a half billion. By contrast the sequel would be making a half billion dollars--after an outlay of $250-$310 million on the production, an expenditure of two to three times as much.
We do not ordinarily think of a sequel that made half as much as the original as a success.
We also do not (given the economics of film production and distribution) think of a movie, or anything else, that costs three times as much as its predecessor for the same return a success, with this certainly carrying over to a movie that costs $250 million+ to make (and $120 million more to distribute and market) grossing a half billion dollars. And indeed, as I argued back in April, the bar for profitability may be higher for this one than the range discussed here--a loss still quite plausible even after the post-theatrical income from streaming, TV rights, physical media, etc. is taken into account.
Still, with rare exceptions the press has been fairly upbeat about how Gladiator 2 is doing.
A plausible explanation for the gap between rhetoric and reality is that the entertainment press is on the whole claquing for this one--at least in part because it fits in with the narrative that Hollywood so badly wants to believe, namely that, contrary to the evidence of 2023, and what must be regarded as the ambiguous evidence of the public response to the thinned-out release slate of a 2024 mere weeks short of its end, franchise-addicted Hollywood's formula for generating blockbusters remains viable. And it is not going to let a little thing like movies actually losing their backers money get in the way of that.
NOTE: The item was subject to some minor corrections on December 8, 2024.
Still, consider the situation as it stands.
Seventeen days into Gladiator II's international release the movie has collected $209 million internationally, while ten days into its North American release it has made $111 million in that market. Assuming not unreasonably that the movie has already made 80 percent of its international total by this point, and 60 percent of its North American total, one would expect the movie's final take to come to around $445 million. Alternatively were one to take the $185 million figure for the final domestic take implied by the calculations presented above and expect this to amount to 40 percent of the final worldwide gross the way the domestic take did for the original, one gets a figure of $460 million, some $15 million more, while if one is prepared to allow for a margin of $15 million the other way as well we get $475 million.
A gross in the range of $445-$475 million (which may be more than some see it making) may sound like a lot of money. The bullish will point out that this has the movie matching what the original made ($465 million), ignoring the dollar's losing almost half (46 percent) of its purchasing power since 2000 according to the Consumer Price Index. The result is that merely matching the original's gross in current dollars means the movie's making about half what the original did in real terms.
We get an even worse picture when we think in terms of the cost of the film. The original Gladiator was made for a little over $100 million, which permitted a very healthy profit indeed on a gross of (roughly) a half billion. By contrast the sequel would be making a half billion dollars--after an outlay of $250-$310 million on the production, an expenditure of two to three times as much.
We do not ordinarily think of a sequel that made half as much as the original as a success.
We also do not (given the economics of film production and distribution) think of a movie, or anything else, that costs three times as much as its predecessor for the same return a success, with this certainly carrying over to a movie that costs $250 million+ to make (and $120 million more to distribute and market) grossing a half billion dollars. And indeed, as I argued back in April, the bar for profitability may be higher for this one than the range discussed here--a loss still quite plausible even after the post-theatrical income from streaming, TV rights, physical media, etc. is taken into account.
Still, with rare exceptions the press has been fairly upbeat about how Gladiator 2 is doing.
A plausible explanation for the gap between rhetoric and reality is that the entertainment press is on the whole claquing for this one--at least in part because it fits in with the narrative that Hollywood so badly wants to believe, namely that, contrary to the evidence of 2023, and what must be regarded as the ambiguous evidence of the public response to the thinned-out release slate of a 2024 mere weeks short of its end, franchise-addicted Hollywood's formula for generating blockbusters remains viable. And it is not going to let a little thing like movies actually losing their backers money get in the way of that.
NOTE: The item was subject to some minor corrections on December 8, 2024.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
