Zeeboe
01-29-2012, 07:37 PM
One may be predisposed to challenge that films should not be perceived so acutely. That they are just fantasy with little or no public pertinence, simply a hobby for an afternoon or evening that should be enjoyed with popcorn and dismissed. This view is too uncritical and dismissive. Since producers and their consumers do not exist in cultural vacuums, any cultural product -- and by this I mean everything from books to films to music to television to political speeches to food packing -- can and should be seen as a text that is suggestive of the cultural context out of which emerges.
People put an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources into the production and consumption of movies. There must be reasons, aside from the technical skills of the makers and the formal qualities of a given project, why audiences are especially responsive to particular motion pictures. There must be reasons why some films are exceptionally popular and have a stronger staying power; why some movies are invested with extraordinary amounts of cultural capital, remaining in the public consciousness and even entering political discourse; why some motion pictures are recycled more often through re-releases, remakes, sequels, imitations, or films that echo their themes, structures, or images.
Any movie, in order to be effective, must connect in some way with audiences -- with their memories and misfortunes, experiences and expectations, fantasies, and fears. Many motion pictures succeed because they connect with the individual or collective experiences of large numbers of the consuming public. We creature culture and look to it to help us make sense of the world around us. This function becomes particularly crucial in times of change, conflict, and instability.
Films are an integral part of our society's culture. As such, they are always bound up with the meanings we assign to our experience. Some have claimed that movies are the most telling art form for understanding a society's cultural values and responses to it's experiences. In a commencement address at Smith College in 1973, film critic Pauline Kael argued that "of all the arts, movies now come closest to expressing the changes in our attitudes and the tensions in our lives."
Some have even made that point even more emphatically. Joseph Reed asserts that "how we see ourselves, what we think of us, what we think our world is like, how we think it works all come from the movies (and now television as well)."
This is too strong a statement because other institutions such as schools and religion obviously play a significant role in shaping our world view. Our families also determine who we are, and determine what we're not. All of our relationships with everybody we ever meet for the rest of our lives is based on the way we relate to the members of our family.
But Reed's point should not be easily rejected. For some of us, filmed depictions of major life experiences ranging from sexual intercourse to work to socializing to war are likely to precede or even substitute for our actual encounters with them. As Reed points out, much of what some of us think we know of life comes not from direct experience but from simulated experience delivered through vicarious and highly mediated format of motion pictures and television (both entertainment and news programming.) I would add music to the list as well.
Popular culture media such as these may give us the only knowledge we have of races we have never encountered personally, places we have never been, and experiences we have never had. Thus the way we see, understand, and misunderstand experiences of the past, present, and future are largely shaped by popular culture; and films, especially those which are very popular with audiences, demand critical assessment and careful interrogation if we are to understand what they say about the concerns and values of the people and the times that produced them.
The images we get from movies and other popular culture media, especially the images that are repeated often or are especially popular or powerful, will likely influence how we view the world, which in turn must influence how we act in it. Thus films become more than stories or pastimes. They function as myths that are an integral part of the process through which we remember history, interpret experience, and prescribe a course of future action.
People put an enormous amount of time, energy, and resources into the production and consumption of movies. There must be reasons, aside from the technical skills of the makers and the formal qualities of a given project, why audiences are especially responsive to particular motion pictures. There must be reasons why some films are exceptionally popular and have a stronger staying power; why some movies are invested with extraordinary amounts of cultural capital, remaining in the public consciousness and even entering political discourse; why some motion pictures are recycled more often through re-releases, remakes, sequels, imitations, or films that echo their themes, structures, or images.
Any movie, in order to be effective, must connect in some way with audiences -- with their memories and misfortunes, experiences and expectations, fantasies, and fears. Many motion pictures succeed because they connect with the individual or collective experiences of large numbers of the consuming public. We creature culture and look to it to help us make sense of the world around us. This function becomes particularly crucial in times of change, conflict, and instability.
Films are an integral part of our society's culture. As such, they are always bound up with the meanings we assign to our experience. Some have claimed that movies are the most telling art form for understanding a society's cultural values and responses to it's experiences. In a commencement address at Smith College in 1973, film critic Pauline Kael argued that "of all the arts, movies now come closest to expressing the changes in our attitudes and the tensions in our lives."
Some have even made that point even more emphatically. Joseph Reed asserts that "how we see ourselves, what we think of us, what we think our world is like, how we think it works all come from the movies (and now television as well)."
This is too strong a statement because other institutions such as schools and religion obviously play a significant role in shaping our world view. Our families also determine who we are, and determine what we're not. All of our relationships with everybody we ever meet for the rest of our lives is based on the way we relate to the members of our family.
But Reed's point should not be easily rejected. For some of us, filmed depictions of major life experiences ranging from sexual intercourse to work to socializing to war are likely to precede or even substitute for our actual encounters with them. As Reed points out, much of what some of us think we know of life comes not from direct experience but from simulated experience delivered through vicarious and highly mediated format of motion pictures and television (both entertainment and news programming.) I would add music to the list as well.
Popular culture media such as these may give us the only knowledge we have of races we have never encountered personally, places we have never been, and experiences we have never had. Thus the way we see, understand, and misunderstand experiences of the past, present, and future are largely shaped by popular culture; and films, especially those which are very popular with audiences, demand critical assessment and careful interrogation if we are to understand what they say about the concerns and values of the people and the times that produced them.
The images we get from movies and other popular culture media, especially the images that are repeated often or are especially popular or powerful, will likely influence how we view the world, which in turn must influence how we act in it. Thus films become more than stories or pastimes. They function as myths that are an integral part of the process through which we remember history, interpret experience, and prescribe a course of future action.