What do you feel is the biggest problem with modern entertainment

Quickie, as I have to get to work:

If capitalism is the reason movies suck today, then why didn't movies suck so much in the 20th century? We still had capitalism in the USA back then AND a lot of great films too.

Hey man, I'm just putting my money where my mouth is. And by money I mean a fat wad of these Target coupons. You can't argue with those savings.

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So you are talking about a 100 year sample size...I would say the three best periods of time in American film (30's, 70's, and 90's) all came from post recession/depression times

By getting all projects approved by ThatDarnMKS? That way, only good movies would be made.

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I only hope he will accept my Target coupons as legal tender in this scary new economy.

I'm afraid you'd have to burn those coupons and publically denounce capitalism.

The Canadian government funded the making of Cronenberg's "Shivers". It sent the conservatives, and probably a lot of liberals as well, to pulling their hair out. And so sometimes tax dollars can be invested wisely into the arts (as well as aggravating the puritans). But, yes, this is very much an exception to the rule. But....it can happen.


As for the issue over why capitalism has had the kind of corrosive element on 'art' that it has, this has an awful lot to do with how expensive making a movie is. And how completely essential capitalism has become to creating in this medium.It is the necessary ally which also feeds on this particular art forms blood. Sucks all risk out of their ventures (and art without risk is almost always bad art)


To me, this has always been one of the fundamental flaws of cinema. It's grossly limiting and opens the door for way too many compromises (and compromise is also a pretty bad thing for art). Painters do not need to worry about much else beyond the cost of their paints and their canvases. Writers have just needed to keep their typewriters well oiled. Musicians need to have enough money to repair their instruments. But films just suck money out of their creators. At least historically, they were a near impossibility for the average person to make, unless they were willing to completely bankrupt themselves.


What is unfortunate though is this problem persists even as this financial burden has been increasingly lessened in the last ten years. Modern technology has made it so one doesn't have to completely risk their livelihood to create on film. Yes, it is still more expensive than other artistic avenues. But it is significantly more in the hands of 'the people'. Which is great. And which is also why I take such an issue with people whose complaints about a film include anything to do with how a movie might look 'cheap' or 'amateurish'. It is exactly this kind of peckishness which keep forcing filmmakers to invest extra time and money into this ruse of having their art look moneyed enough. Or professional enough. Because people will turn something off if it doesn't look like a studio made it. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is probably one of the biggest issues film faces. Because it is exactly this that then throws the artist back into the trap of needing studio money to produce an acceptable product. And then we are back to needing to recoup huge losses.



So, as flawed as capitalism can be, let's start pointing fingers at those who keep demanding film be kept out of the hands of the average man or woman. This is really much of the root of the problem.

Can't talk, swallowing all my coupons before MKS's KGB (read: Target cashiers) catch me.

Finally some sense being spoken in this thread.

Undefined, capitalism is everything and nothing (e.g., it's a value, it's a system, it's a paradigm, it's an epithet), an abstraction so broad that blaming it is like blaming "evolution," or "the internet." You can't miss when you aim at capitalism, but the depth of the blow is usually nugatory.

If the problems of "modern" (21st century?) entertainment are unique to our time (if not, why bemoan "modern entertainment"?), we should reflect that capitalism is NOT unique to our time. Our great ages of cinema (e.g., the 1970s) were also capitalist times.

But what if MKS turns out to be the biggest problem with modern entertainment?

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Then we'll need to revert back to the old ways (Target discount aisle capitalism).

It's not just a problem with the capitalist strategy of movie making, but also a shortage of good ideas to exploit and a need to create products in order to justify one's existence. Most movies have always been dreck, even some big budget epics. If they were all good, we would not need Oscars, because everybody would be a winner. Some years, some eras have been better than others but even that is a matter of slightly different good/bad numbers. It's also a fallacy of human memory that we mainly remember the good ones. I don't keep a list of all of the bad movies I have seen and have already erased from my memory the experience of seeing the new Jurassic installment. As a result, some past decades seem great, but that's mainly because we have forgotten the junk from that era and have a selective focus.

Then we’ll adjust our answers to the OP accordingly. Worth the risk, I’d say.

This is a kind of odd idea. In ultimate terms, "everything's already been done," "Wisdom of Solomon," "there are only 'X' number of plots," etc., it's certainly true, but this has always been true. And yet local originality (rearranging the furniture) and quality (saying again, what needs to be said for a particular generation) doesn't seem to be so impossible. So long as generations have pains, curiosities, and hopes, there will be ideas that fit the times.

Good ideas are harder to find in our modern age, in some part, because everyone now has a platform. Consider that more music is being made and widely distributed now than at any other time in history. But how many Soundcloud rappers are you willing to suffer through before you find the gem. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is itself too expansive to keep up with anymore (Do I want to really to do the equivalent of a graduate class in "lore" and "canon" to understand why the purple man wants the magic rocks?). More good music is being made now than ever, but finding it is harder.

A problem particular to cinema is probably an inherent contempt for the written word. Film is a visual medium with visual slogans like "show don't tell." To give too much deference to the writing process would suggest otherwise. Story ideas depend on invention which takes us back to the written word (unless we're exclusively generating ideas by improv or story boards with no prior script), and this insultingly indicates that the logos is more important than the icon, that film is merely derivative of literature. Rather than exceeding and transcending writing with movie-magic, it turns out to be parasitic on it. Thus, the writer is excepted as a necessary part of the process (and there are even awards for good writing), but the big bucks, blow jobs, and extravaganzas go to the visualists and players.

The Director is Willy Wonka. The lead actor is Charlie. The writer is merely an Oompa-Loompa, necessary but merely instrumental, with the fantasy of true "invention" and "creation" being lauded to "visionary" directors and the actors who allegedly "create" their characters. Such is the hierarchy of the Chocolate Factory.

Well it seems to me that perhaps modern audiences place too much importance on little things over story. For example, people I know love the movie Crazy Rich Asians, and I really didn't like it and felt that it had cliche after cliche in all these cliched romance movies I have seen over and over again, to the point of groan.

But people who like it say the movie is a groundbreaker because it has an all Asian cast, which you never see in an American movie, so that changes everything. Can a movie full of cliches, that have been done over and over again, really all of a sudden become original and groundbreaking, just because you change the race of the cast alone?

This is an example, where it seems that people will consider the glass half full too much just based on one change, expected to redeem everything?

Simple. Political correctness or the new phrase for it Woke. This is why people have gravitated to low budget podcasts. People can feel agendas in entertainment, there are no agendas in these low budget podcast just entertainment. 90% of the film and shows created right now are just fleeting because of these agendas. I mean the comedy movie is practically dead because of it right now. I think the film/entertainment industry is going have to hit a rock bottom soon in order to come out of it. We have before after the 60s and 80s but this feels like a deeper hole to dig out of.

Since 2020 I haven't had much hope for anything out of Hollywood minus Better Call Saul (it's really good because it's managed to keep away from woke stuff.) I tell you what though Everything Everywhere All At Once is the first hope I've had for film since 2020. If it wins a bunch of Oscars I think we could be headed in the right direction. Entertain us don't preach.

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I came here to do two things, drink some beer and kick some ass, looks like we are almost outta beer - Dazed and Confused

101 Favorite Movies (2019)

Bingo. I haven't seen Crazy Rich Asians but the agenda is clear. Make a cliche movie with Asians for Americans. Boring. Not an ounce of me cares to see it. Same reason I have no desire to see the new Asian Marvel movie. It's pandering, audiences will only put up with it for so long. Where as I stated up there Everything Everywhere All At Once is an inspired original great entertaining movie that just so happens to have Asians starring in it. The agenda was make an entertaining movie that look it happens to have Asians in it...not make a movie with Asians. The race/identity is irrelevant, that's the goal. (Ironically I think they all have Michelle Yeoh in them )

If they want this "representation" stuff to make a difference you have to make movies that make a difference. I roll my eyes when I hear representation. It's important but making an entertaining movie should be rule 1.

My understanding is the BBC is, or at least was, funded by the government as a counteractive means against what was perceived as a decline in programming in a purely commercial environment.

I'm pretty sure lots of countries have national film boards part of whose mission is to fund the arts, which include movies. And outside of the US I believe there's usually mission goals of advancement or promotion of x-country's culture (Canada famously has a lot of tax breaks or hiring requirements for movies shot in the country. There was a backstory about Jenna Fischer wouldn't have been allowed to play the receptionist in Slither if The Office hadn't blown up right at that time, making her a star. I don't really recall in the US, the NEA being much of a force, probably because, well, for a variety of reasons that are American-specific, both in our culture and film industry. But I could be wrong there). Granted, a similar slice of that is protecting one's country's culture , can result in screen quotas (South Korea being the country where I've heard about it before, which, these things sound a bit like cultural tariffs in terms of their reasoning, doesn't surprise me that France also has some). Speaking from the American perspective, those don't seem great to me.

Granted, you say "socialist movies", and I'm not even sure what you mean by that.
And since the examples I gave feel like they're often more associated with arthouse movies (even the entertaining ones), there's a counter-argument of, "those aren't what people meant by entertainment," even if they happen to be entertaining.
e.g. I think Peter Strickland movies are extremely entertaining. I've noticed at least during some of them, "received funds from the British Lottery." So... IDK.

I guess this is the post where I'm the one who has to invoke Poe's Law.