Hollywood Blockbusters Are Masterpieces; Art Is Pretentious

You do make a very compelling argument Yoda. I'm reluctant to fully embrace everything you've said. But I do feel like it's something that was obvious to me from the start that in a zealous spiel I forgot somehow. There's nothing wrong with enjoying a McDonalds hamburger once in a while as long as you don't overdue it and maintain a healthy diet overall.

I guess not everyone who enjoys a hobby, such as avid film watching, has to pursue it passionately to it's core. There's a natural progression in finding and appreciating value, but there is no moral obligation to finding a certain amount or kind of value that one person, such as myself, can go around imposing on everyone else. It is perfectly acceptable to indulge in casual relaxation frequently without ever digging any deeper into that particular form of relaxation. It was wrong of me to try and impose my personal views on other people. And it was wrong of me to criticise other people so broadly and so harshly. I think I'm learning my lesson, and the fit of frustration is safely in the past (for now at least). Thank you for your response, Yoda. It was very insightful.

I actually do want to see Trainspotting.

Alright, I'll keep those in mind and check them out.

Glad it was helpful. And you know, I'm kind of reluctant to fully embrace it myself! Approaching these things very casually doesn't feel "correct" to me at all. It's just not in my makeup to pay any attention to something unless I'm paying a lot of attention to it, so I totally get where you're coming from. But then, that's why genuine empathy is so hard, I guess: it forces us to try to visualize an entirely different life, not the same life with just the one thing (being less interested in movies) different.

And it's a fine line, because I think we need to recognize this without affirming it. For example, I will always encourage people to think more seriously about stuff like this (it's kinda why this site exists), and I have no patience for people who are dismissive of it. But it's hard to walk the tightrope between always wanting people to think about it more, without forgetting they can have valid reasons for it when they don't.

Really want to see Morvern Callar from Lynne Ramsay, it's supposed to be great and i loved both Ratcatcher and We Need To Talk About Kevin. Lynne Ramsay is probably the best living Scottish Director, and one of the best female directors.

Red Road (2006) is another very good scottish film that just came to mind. It's also directed by a woman: Andrea Arnold, she's English though.

Some factors I can think of why Hollywood movies are so exposed here besides the fact this is an American forum:

1st - Hollywood is the dominant industry worldwide though, it's several times bigger than Bollywood which is the second largest and Bollywood lacks international penetration of Hollywood. In many countries hollywood movies dominate box office, for instance, in Brazil 85% of the box office is Hollywood's (quite near the US's share of 93% hollywood), in Germany it is 75% hollywood and only in Asian countries like China and Japan, that hollywoods share of box office is below 35% and only in India that Hollywood has less than 10% box office share.

Still Hollywood movies suffer from its internationality: they cannot contain a lot of subtle American cultural cues since most of the audience is foreign. That means they have to be very simple and very dumb to appeal simultaneously to many hundreds of millions of people. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, movies like 2001 and The Godfather were blockbusters but they were sophisticated because at the time Hollywood was not as international as it is now. Today even the most mediocre manga series is more creative than 90% of Hollywood's films.

3rd - In other countries TV shows and other forms of media are dominant in pop culture. In Brazil those TV 200 episode long soap operas dominate narrative fiction while in Japan, manga is the dominant medium for popular narrative. That means that America's relative importance in movies is larger than its relative importance in pop culture in general. In Brazil we mostly consume local pop culture with the exception of the elites who like to consume American stuff because they think it's cool, but the one form of American pop culture Brazilians consume is Hollywood, the same case in Japan.

4th - Most people here are not serious about movies in the way you are. They just relax and post here for fun not because they are trying to understand deeply cinema and think it's funny how some people can actually be dead serious about the artform.

5th - One should never underestimate xenophobia. For example Harry Lime asked me for recomendations of Japanese animation for the animation countdown because he was feeling "adventurous" as if a film nerd should need to feel adventurous to watch stuff that's not murican.

I watched that as a kid more than any murican hero except Spider Man.

Thats is really ignorant and arrogant nationalism. Americans are just very alienated from the world, actually I was glad I was not born in the US because otherwise I wouldn't have access to most of the world's culture that I had thanks to living in a more "peripheric country": as a kid I watched French cinema and TV, Japanese cinema and TV shows, Brazilian TV shows, Mexican TV shows, American TV and movies besides other stuff. If I were born in the US it would be: murican, murican, murican, murican,.... It's astounding how completely oblivious you guys are in regards to world culture: you guys think the US = World. When in fact the US is only an small (although important) fraction of the world.

Japan specifically has an enormous number of superheros. For example, the best superhero fictional narrative ever made is Japanese (PMMM is technically a superhero show and I liked it more than Watchmen (1986) comic regarded by many as the best American superhero narrative ever which in light of my limited experience I agree). I don't think Japan likes murican super heroes a lot because I rarely see any reference to murican heroes in Japanese fan art and culture (Samurai Flamenco is a Japanese TV show about a guy obsessed with superheroes and it took 26 episodes for them to cite one murican superhero Captain America).

The largest Japanese fan art site is this: http://www.pixiv.net/info.php?id=2855 try fiding a reference to an murican superhero there, I never saw a single one and I browsed through thousands of pictures, I think I saw representation of Harry Potter and Brad Pit though.

In Brazil though American superheros became more popular in recent decades. I think it's an impact of the dominance of superheroes in Hollywood movies which is the main channel by which American culture reaches Brazil. For instance I only know who MLK is because hollywood movies mention him.

In mainstream American super hero comics the global scale is pretty pitiful, but that's just because they're focused on America in a superficial way. In indie comics it's not the same. I have a really cool Wildstorm comic where a task force of normal humans travel to a former soviet union country and battle super powered villains and heroes there, and they blur the lines between good guys and bad guys pretty well too. Super Heroes in Japan are more like power ranger and magic girl types. They don't really have the traditional sense of super heroes. Wasn't the first Japanese super hero Spider Man? Super heroes have been around a lot longer in America than anywhere else too haven't they?

What do you mean by "traditional sense"? Its true that vigilantes with superhuman skills dressed in colorful costumes were an American invention but in Japan they are very numerous right now. Look at One Punch Man, Kamen Raider, PMMM, Samurai Flamenco and other Japanese series about superheroes. Its true that they are different from American superheroes but that's because they are not American, they are Japanese, but they are superheroes certainly.

In Brazil, Japan is regarded as a heavily Americanized culture although I wouldn't say so it's true American cultural elements such as superheroes took stronger roots there than anywhere else. Also the (slight but existent) popularity of anime in North America is partly due to its heavy American influence as well.

You think kids would watch that now?! Today?! I dont think kids watch the Electric Company anymore even though I watched it as a little kid. Im not out of touch.

The point is Guap even though youve traveled the world more and see all this ....your mind is too closed-off to where you could ever be considered enlightened. You cant even have a forward moving conversation here, and you think this place is prejudiced?! So really you havent learned anything but have seen alot.
You dont know what the hell youre talking about and youre desperately trying to portray otherwise. If Civil War II were to open in Tokyo it would make a gazzilion dollars just like if it premiered in New York.

Hm, thats probably because its a Japanese fan art site. Yknow, aimed for Japanese comics?
LOL & "recent decades" - thats called a generation Slick' You only knowing who MLK is thru Hollywood films shows you dont know what you are talking about when judging Americans, and our film culture, which is revered worldwide more than any other countries films. Sad when you and Zotis are questioned more directly your supposed expertise is truly flimsy. Notice Im not talking about your entire nation because Im not an ignorant ass.

Well Tongo you are indeed a person with severe cognitive limitations given that you do not understand my posts (and starts shouting ad hominem attacks for no reason) so there is no point in talking to you.

Thank you. Your constant condescending unyielding attitude towards whoevers tastes you wish to crap on is not enlightening, is borish, and thats why Ive never talked to you Guap.

Murica'

Correct. Its almost impossible for kids overseas not to be familiar with western superheroes. Not saying western comics are the best, oh hell naw Ive seen todays stuff , just its the prettiest package and the name value, like any product.

Every country is different. In the US most people only consume American or English speaking culture, in Japan most people only consume Japanese culture with sprinkles of British and American culture in the form of rock bands and some Hollywood movies. Japan is also a bubble like the US in their own way but they are more self aware of being a bubble. In the US the bubble effect is so strong that they think people who understand that they are in bubble are weird and pretentious, although Americans know there exists other countries they think it's normal for each country to only consume locally produced culture.

Also I noticed that in the US the people who are serious fans of animation which is mostly foreign are people who were excluded from American society and so found comfort in foreign culture, which is rejected by American culture. Hence the American stereotype of anime fans being socially inept.

In Brazil we mostly consume a combination of Brazilian culture, with some American movies and TV shows (I am particularly well versed in American culture because I was kinda off an "weeaboo of American culture" when I lived in Brazil) and rock bands mostly from UK and AC/DC from Australia, as well as a lot of manga derived TV shows in your childhoods and Latin American/Mexican TV shows.

I think the big advantage in living in a third world country is that we lack a superiority complex so we can appreciate better what the rest of the world does, as I said in my childhood I consumed culture from many different countries). I never saw Brazilians being dismissive of the culture of other countries like Americans can be.

Also, American culture is indeed xenophobic by it's nature: since the founding pf the country Americans have held upon a certain view of the world (American exceptionalism) that is inherently racist/prejudiced: they view the US ("America") as inherently superior, the rest of the world as inherently inferior. According to Van Creveld, American culture developed in opposition to European, or more specifically, British culture. This meant a natural resistance to foreign culture (even from Europe which is were the American people came from): The American bubble (or the wider Anglo-Saxon cultural bubble) exists for a reason.

Well, the animation list actually had a record number of Japanese films (about 25-27 if I recall correctly), if you compare it had like 6-7 times the number of Japanese films the average decade countdown has. Animation from Japan is perhaps the form of foreign film that is the most popular in North America and the UK, the reason is that animation is one thing that's almost nonexistent in Anglo-Saxon film. Still, even the almost nonexistent American animation managed to fill up 70 movies in that list by virtue of being American: movies like Surf Up and Kung Fu panda are similar to the several dozens of CGI movies China makes every single year, their differential was being made in the US so US audiences were aware of these movies.