Moving Pictures

An excellent comment at The new Culture Forum about the way film has steadily infantilised itself over the last few decades.

Now that has disappeared, and movies such as The Dark Knight are poured over for meaning. The truth is, in the last three decades, as attention spans and perspectives have shortened, genuinely adult narratives have been disappearing from the cinema. The child-like and the trivial have taken centre stage and been given not just big budgets but the full broadsheet treatment.

I think there is some force to the notion that the rot did indeed set in with Star Wars. It seems to have something to do with the post-war generations coming of age – without actually seeing the need or wanting to grow up. I remember when the first Indiana Jones film appeared and it was touted around as a ‘modern’ version of the old Saturday Matinee kids films that used to be on when these people were young.

It isn’t necessarily the subject matter as such, I’ve always liked science fiction, for example. However, to me, SF (not sci-fi, of course) has always been – at its best – what you might can a philosophical form, a sort of narrative thought-experiment taking contemporary concerns and examining them through a story.

Largely though, for me, this is where SF (or Sci-Fi in this case) cinema and TV have largely failed, with a few exceptions Terry Gilliam springs to mind), preferring its traditional Hollywood simple goodie V baddie narratives interlaced with explosions and special effects.

We did in the 60s/70s expect a lot from film, from all popular culture, feeling that it would grow up along with us, mostly it has stayed juvenile though, along with – it seems most of its audience – of whatever physical age.