Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => Art and Literature for Catholics => Topic started by: Matthew on February 26, 2025, 03:29:22 PM
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Yes, Hollywood is run by the you-know-hews. But if you can get past that, try to listen to what he has to say. He really has a point about the smaller quantity of distractions, more organic creations, etc. and this short video really struck a chord with me.
He's right. We can identify 50's music, 60's music, 70's music -- but what about 00's vs 10's vs 20's? I can't. It's all the same and soulless. People won't be rebooting today's movies 30 years from now. Not even for nostalgia. They're crap now and they always will be. Today's crap will NOT be tomorrow's "Back to the Future". Things do NOT become "classic" just because 20 or 30 years pass. He has a real point here.
I find it interesting, from a philosophical perspective.
I highly recommend this short video. It's well worth your time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-jrbrC-Qg4
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Hays code
It was written by a catholic priest
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i know it ended in 1968 i mean we need to return to it
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Hollywood has gone downhill for a variety of reasons. I've listened to a number of podcasts with writers, directors, talent agencies, etc. Their analysis of the problems are below.
Money Reasons
1. Quantity over Quality. Streaming services need "content" so crap is churned out (i.e. Disney, Marvel) and the genre is run into the ground, til dead.
2. Corporatization. Almost every major studio is publicly traded, which means it's run by "suits" whose main concern is the stock price, not storytelling.
3. Marketing/IP. Related to the above 2, the Execs want movies which are easily marketable, (i.e. a known brand/IP/franchise), so sequels, prequels, etc are churned out, because they are "safe" and less marketing $s are needed, due to the public awareness which already exists.
Story Reasons
4. CGI over story. Money is spent on special effects, in an attempt to "wow" the audience, while top screenwriters are ignored, in favor of newbies. The script/story suffers.
5. Scripts get changed. Top directors/actors are given "creative control" to change the script during filming, which often results in poorer storytelling.
6. Good writers = TV shows. Since writers aren't paid well for movie scripts and their stories get changed for the worse, the top talent has moved to tv shows.
Acting
7. Acting is subpar. Actors are chosen who believe in "the message", who are liberal and who have favor with Hollywood's "values". Talent still matters, but not as much.
8. Nepotism. Self-explanatory. Most of the young actors who are related to "legends" can't act. But they are "part of the club" so they get hired.
Message Over Story
9. Script requirements. Often a director is given a list of "things that have to be in the movie" (i.e. a cool car, funny jokes, things which they can sell in toy stores, a love subplot, a diverse cast, product placements, specific locations for sets, etc) and then a writer has to cram all that into a story and have it still make sense. Doesn't work.
10. Liberalism/wokeism. When directors/actors get "preachy" then story often suffers and characters don't act like real humans.
All of the above kills the creative process and originality. It is the opposite of being imaginative, fun and entertaining.
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I’ve been around long enough to recognize waves of nostalgia for worldly fads, styles, and fashions come around about every 20-30 years.
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I’ve been around long enough to recognize waves of nostalgia for worldly fads, styles, and fashions come around about every 20-30 years.
For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would ever feel nostalgia for the 1980s or 1990s. There is really not a whole lot that is iconic about that era. It was pretty nondescript.
Now, as for the 1970s, those were distinctive. All-pervasive lapses of taste were so blatant that, in a twisted kind of way, they have their own charm. Avocado appliances and burnt-orange upholstery, in retrospect, didn't look that bad, and to this day I have a soft spot for heavy dark woodwork and wall paneling. (The living room wall in one of my houses is in serious need of repair, and I've considered the latter.) Men's fashion, well, maybe we just kind of need to forget that part.
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For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would ever feel nostalgia for the 1980s or 1990s. There is really not a whole lot that is iconic about that era. It was pretty nondescript.
Now, as for the 1970s, those were distinctive. All-pervasive lapses of taste were so blatant that, in a twisted kind of way, they have their own charm. Avocado appliances and burnt-orange upholstery, in retrospect, didn't look that bad, and to this day I have a soft spot for heavy dark woodwork and wall paneling. (The living room wall in one of my houses is in serious need of repair, and I've considered the latter.) Men's fashion, well, maybe we just kind of need to forget that part.
So, I can’t interest you in three Sears polyester seersucker leisure suits from about 1975? Light blue and white, gray and white, beige and white? Men’s size medium, look as good as new. Pure Vintage! They were my father’s travel/RV suits for Mass because they’re impossible to wrinkle!
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So, I can’t interest you in three Sears polyester seersucker leisure suits from about 1975? Light blue and white, gray and white, beige and white? Men’s size medium, look as good as new. Pure Vintage! They were my father’s travel/RV suits for Mass because they’re impossible to wrinkle!
I'm going to have to pass on that offer, medium size wouldn't quite work for me. Try 2XL.
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For the life of me, I can't understand why anyone would ever feel nostalgia for the 1980s or 1990s. There is really not a whole lot that is iconic about that era. It was pretty nondescript.
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I think those years are in sort of a "sweet spot" in the distance in the past, by which they are just far enough back for most adults to remember them, and also far enough back such that the world was a vastly, vastly better place in those days than now.
Just watch any movie from that time period. America was largely white, civilized, orderly. The internet didn't exist, or just barely existed, so all the problems of social isolation and brainwashing and other things that the internet has brought into society didn't really exist either. The movies were made, to a large extent, in a way that reflected the common sense of the time. Criminals were bad. Good people were good. Men were strong. Women were (okay, this was changing a bit already) feminine.
I am shocked to see scenes in movies from that time period that show public places, and the women walking around are actually wearing dresses. Such a thing is long gone in the world today. I think people like to see those times again, preserved on film, since they no longer exist in the world around us.
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The 80s look good because the 2020s are horrible.
I admit that I do like a lot of movies and music from the 60s, 70s and 80s, because that's what I grew up with, but it doesn't mean that they are good.
Sure, some things we like to remember, like some cars or some house appliance styles and colors, but if you look at these pieces of entertainment with a critical eye, you will see how much evil is there. Even in the 40s, with the "code" in force, Hollywood was pretty bad.
Katharine Hepburn was wearing pants to set the revolution in motion. And we are talking about the 1930s.
The movies are enjoyable? A lot of them are, I admit, but it does not mean that they are good. I do have bad taste and like bad things, but at least I know that they are bad.
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The 80s look good because the 2020s are horrible.
:laugh1:
Can't dispute that!
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Sure, some things we like to remember, like some cars or some house appliance styles and colors, but if you look at these pieces of entertainment with a critical eye, you will see how much evil is there. Even in the 40s, with the "code" in force, Hollywood was pretty bad.
Katharine Hepburn was wearing pants to set the revolution in motion. And we are talking about the 1930s.
Agreed. "Older" is not necessarily objectively good with regard to morality/substance in film, even if relatively better than modern stuff. Even the application of the Hays code/National Legion of Decency, however well intentioned, could be surprisingly idiosyncratic. If I remember correctly, the censors would cry havoc over things like the use of certain firearm models in the old film noir films/pointing gun towards the camera, resulting in alteration of scenes, and yet countless examples of immodesty in varying degrees somehow slipped past them unscathed...:facepalm:
And a fair number of the 40's, 50's, and 60's US films, even if free from immodesty and immorality, are surprisingly saccharine, sappy, and without real substance or serious ideas. They often create a superficial world with smiles all around but no real thought or formation. There seems to be a disconnect from the real-world problems. And the ones that did try to tackle serious issues were often unpopular or seen as "negative" during their time. Of course, when the censors were eliminated in the 70's, and the profanity/immodesty/immorality was ramped up, one problem was traded for another....
Maybe the 80's and 90's media holds a certain appeal to some because on one hand, certain examples are relatively much better than present filmaking (with less violation of natural law etc.), yet at the same time they lack the sappy/saccharine superficial elements of 40's-60's, and weren't afraid to show bad, gritty things for what they really were. In effect, maybe there was a certain inadvertent "truth-teller" element there.
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The 80s look good because the 2020s are horrible.
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Yes, that's saying the same thing I said in slightly different terms. But the 80s and 90s have the advantage that a major percentage of adults alive today actually remember those years fairly well.
It's astonishing to see the difference in culture and mentality in those movies. I watched an 80s Sylvester Stallone movie a while back, called Cobra, in which Stallone is a highly effective police man. In the beginning of the movie, a criminal starts shooting up a supermarket. He takes a lot of customers hostage at gunpoint, murdering several. Stallone is called in. He goes in and shoots the guy dead. On his way out, an obnoxious liberal reporter gets in his face and asks why Stallone didn't give the criminal his civil rights and bring him to trial (it wasn't possible in the scenario, anyway, for many obvious reasons). Instead of bothering to engage, Stallone grabs the liberal by the back of the neck and shoves his face into the torso of the corpse of one of the victims that is being wheeled past at the moment, and says something like, "Why don't you tell me what happened to this guy's civil rights?" And since Stallone is the hero, this behavior is presented as something positive.
Our society is so drenched in liberalism today that people would be outraged at a cop (or anyone, even) saying something like this, and most people today would be on the side of the liberal reporter.
Just to see this type of behavior promoted in a movie is something so refreshing to so many people, and obviously it was in there because most of the population agreed with that idea.
Nowadays everyone in the theater would be cheering for the liberal reporter.
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the censors would cry havoc over things like the use of certain firearm models in the old film noir films/pointing gun towards the camera
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:laugh1:
I've never heard of this. What models of firearms weren't allowed to be shown in movies??! For what possible reason?
I definitely agree with the rest of your post too. I kind of think the priests in charge just didn't have all the power they really needed, though, and that a lot of those things were negotiated or threatened under pain of Catholic boycott, but that there were certain things that they just couldn't get the Jews not to put into the movies, such as passionate kissing, which seems to happen a lot in those old movies, but which is gravely inducive to impurity.
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:laugh1:
I've never heard of this. What models of firearms weren't allowed to be shown in movies??! For what possible reason?
Primarily any variant of the classic Thompson submachine gun or "Tommy gun". The censors would object when the "bad guys" were shown with these, as it made them look powerful or sophisticated (even though in reality their use was pretty universal by both police as well as the gangsters, mafia etc.). The censors preferred the Tommy guns to be shown only in the hands of law enforcement.
I definitely agree with the rest of your post too. I kind of think the priests in charge just didn't have all the power they really needed, though, and that a lot of those things were negotiated or threatened under pain of Catholic boycott, but that there were certain things that they just couldn't get the Jews not to put into the movies, such as passionate kissing, which seems to happen a lot in those old movies, but which is gravely inducive to impurity.
Very true... some of those older films, despite being from what would appear to be an outwardly saner time, could very easily be serious occasions of sin...
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It's astonishing to see the difference in culture and mentality in those movies. I watched an 80s Sylvester Stallone movie a while back, called Cobra, in which Stallone is a highly effective police man. In the beginning of the movie, a criminal starts shooting up a supermarket. He takes a lot of customers hostage at gunpoint, murdering several. Stallone is called in. He goes in and shoots the guy dead. On his way out, an obnoxious liberal reporter gets in his face and asks why Stallone didn't give the criminal his civil rights and bring him to trial (it wasn't possible in the scenario, anyway, for many obvious reasons). Instead of bothering to engage, Stallone grabs the liberal by the back of the neck and shoves his face into the torso of the corpse of one of the victims that is being wheeled past at the moment, and says something like, "Why don't you tell me what happened to this guy's civil rights?" And since Stallone is the hero, this behavior is presented as something positive.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
In fact, this kind of hero character is only featured in movies/shows today to LAUGH AT HIM, to mock, for the sake of irony.
Simpsons for example made fun of action heroes like this. "Chaotic good" guys, getting their hands dirty, with a touch of vigilantism and/or thirst for justice.
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The answer is simple really, but it might take some unpacking.
1. Woke is basically just deconstructing (tearing apart) everything -- every culture, every institution, every norm, every rule.
2. The 80s were 40 years ago, and thus it was when things hadn't been "blown apart" yet.
So yeah -- that's the appeal of 80's and 90's films in a nutshell. Yes, the poison was there. The foundations were undermined. But you could still enjoy a relatively normal life "on the surface" -- the earthquake hadn't come yet to destroy the whole city, as it were.
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I'm going to have to pass on that offer, medium size wouldn't quite work for me. Try 2XL.
One size 2XL could be made from piecing all three suits together. Think how ‘70’s it would look in patchwork with combined colors and alternating stripe directions! Lent gives me plenty of time to sew and they’d be completed and delivered by Easter.
Just think! You’ll be the talk of your chapel! :jester: