MST3K: Anti-cinema?

Yeah, people who listen to hip hop are lowlives, too. You just can't help some things. But you can change.

Anyway, let's stop discussing me and my purported obsessions and steer more toward the topic at hand.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

What's the difference?

I'm happy to have those discussions, as evidenced by the fact that I keep having them, but I think the manner in which they're presented is not incidental. At minimum it forces us to unpack what your actual position is, distinct from whatever clickbaity opener initiates it.

Also, as your last reply to me indicates (and I'll go into more detail on this soon, once I have a bit more time), that stuff seems to be underpinning a lot of the other stuff. There are reasonable philosophical disagreements worth hashing out, but I keep getting the sense that it's less about those than it is about having a picture of a type of person, a type you don't like, and imagining them when we discuss these things. Hence all the unnecessary (and sometimes out-of-nowhere) personalization.

Yeah and this person is anybody who doesn't respect film.

This imaginary person also lives rent-free in your head.

If not respecting film qualifies one for rent-free space in my head, then consider me the philanthropist of the year for providing shelter to billions.

Thank you, I’m already on my way to collect, starting with your outstanding debt of good taste and common sense.

Now, don't be cheeky.

“You can use the same attitude and ask what's wrong with just letting people half-watch a film while surfing the internet. But the answer lies in the act itself. You're not giving yourself 100% to the film and intentionally introducing something that distracts you from the original experience. The atmosphere and feel of the original work are infringed upon. You cannot say you really watched the film with your best intentions and all the fairness you could give it.”

“Nobody's trying to make it illegal to watch MST3K. But the way we consume art matters. I believe watching films in the MST3K version only is detrimental to one's respect for the integrity and quality (or lack thereof) of the original work and art in general.”

It's easy to lose sight of what this business IS, notably part of the "Entertainment Industry". If it's not fun to go to the movies, or view them at home, I don't know why I'd do it. MST3K is part of the same spectrum that includes seeing Citizen Kane as part of an erudite "Classic Film Series" at the University, mentored by a PhD. I've done plenty of both, and if movies were just CK at the University, I'd have given up on it a long time ago....too much like a dissection of a Dickens novel.

While I've done the academic part, I still personally insist on referring to this form of entertainment as movies. That can take me from Casablanca to The Terror of Tiny Town, which I actually have seen....at the university.

As for "letting people half-watch a movie while surfing the internet"....I do that all the time and that idea of "letting" sounds vaguely authoritarian....it's my darn basement and home theater. If the movie isn't engaging enough to draw me away from social media, then fortunately, I didn't completely waste that brain-time.

Oh-o, the Entertainment Industry guy is back.

Indeed. They are the guys who pay the bills and own the infrastructure to make that stuff that we watch. The auto industry works the same way. I don't make either my own movies nor my own car.

Never thought I'd be seeing Dickens thrown under the bus in this thread...

Granted that it would be more like throwing him out of the carriage while it's crossing the raging river, but, yeah, I don't recall Dickens as much more than a course requirement, something I'd cite when I want to sound erudite, except, of course, for Tiny Tim, who always moves me to tears.

I know, I know - you didn't mean to be a Scrooge

Yes, please let's keep talking about how movies are a business as an excuse to limit a film aspiring to art, when there are thousands upon thousands of artistic films that have both been made and turned a profit and (even for a few years) were exactly what mainstream audiences wanted from their films. But apparently now we can't do that because....it's a business.


It's such a lazy dumb argument that it's not surprising how often it's been basically cut and pasted from one response to the next.


Also, Dickens and Citizen Kane are very telling as examples of films that are supposedly too taxing on brains for the average person. The former was basically the Steven Spielberg of his generation, and Citizen Kane is the template for nearly all modern mainstream filmmaking.


But these pop culture landmarks are just soooo erudite, aren't they?

But there are limits to what even above-average filmmakers can do when trying to make more artistic films!

Damien Chazelle has been saying in recent interviews that he's essentially been put in "director's jail" after Babylon turned out to be such an expensive flop!

Mind you, I happened to be among the relatively few who appreciated Chazelle's Babylon, flaws and all, and caught it at the cinema as soon as it opened.

But the fact that he might never again direct a big-budget movie is pretty depressing.

And this kind of economic pressure does put pressure on directors to deliver on the commercial stuff, or else face the prospect of "director's jail" - being relegated to directing TV shows or just stuff that's made straight-for-streamers, or whatever.

The issue isn't that movies need to turn a profit (that's always been a challenge in the film industry), the issue is the business model these studios have is broken and is being run by executive turd brains.


Movies do not need to involve hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. Especially when they are in the hands of the most risk adverse and uncreative people on the planet. It's a mix that has always been doomed to failure. Plus it is also what has led some people to adopt this infuriating attitude that the issue is movies being 'too artistic' for general audiences. That they have to play it safe and give them exactly 'what they want'. It's nonsense that gets perpetuated by those who have literally zero understanding of the arts, or even what people actually might want or be interested in.


But some people like to dunk their head deep into that trough of horseshit, and then try and tell everyone else that's all they deserve too.