Twitch-O-Meter: Hooray for Hollywood?  Eh, Kind Of…

The interest in projects that stretch beyond boilerplate thrills has grown steadily since the tail end of the 1990s, and within the last few years has reached a surprisingly high pitch.  Early entries in the wave like Fight Club and Three Kings imparted smart, incisive cultural and political critiques between bouts of high-concept visuals and elaborate action.  Released with the events of September 11th still smoldering in the public’s mind, Ridley Scott’s increasingly resonant Black Hawk Down sandwiched a dire evaluation of crusading war policy in between some of the most intense combat sequences ever committed to film.  Love him or hate him, Michael Moore’s cannon, beginning with Bowling for Columbine in 2002, reached wide audiences and engendered debate and an unheard-of legion of “response” films.  Recent titles such as Good Night, and Good Luck and Breach have continued drawing parallels to and examining society, and future releases like There Will be Blood and The Kingdom appear poised to offer commentary amid spectacle.

The curtailed list above highlights the need to piggyback thought-provoking material on tried-and-true tropes that will offer audiences some distraction – it’s the “spoonful of sugar” mentality at work.  Filmmaking on the scale of the projects above requires a return on investment, further rationalizing the piggyback mindset.  It’s hard to either endorse or rebuke this tactic – watering down is watering down, but the more butts there are in seats the more chance there is to stir debate.  Of course every frame of film is meant to manipulate, engendering fear, longing, excitement, and so on – however there can be no denying the growing trend to intersperse plot points meant to goose more community-minded sections of the brain.

Where’s this all coming from?  The last time Hollywood readily fostered this much opinionated filmmaking was the ‘70s, with the public reeling from the drawn-out conflict in Vietnam and corruption in the Nixon Whitehouse.  Without drawing specific parallels and taking this post in a direction it isn’t meant to go, it can’t be denied a large portion of the population feels dissatisfaction with the current U.S. administration and its policies and practices, and for the first time in a long time studios are taking a number of chances on films that challenge perceptions and ideologies.  And the door is swinging both ways.  The old adage about Hollywood being a bastion for God-less liberal views and attitudes doesn’t quite hold up the way it used to, with companies like Walden Media pouring huge sums of money into projects, aimed at wide audiences, with overt religious ties. 

Is there a negative side to all this?  Is politicized filmmaking further polarizing audiences that increasingly see themselves as Red and Blue?  I’m not sure.  Going back to the “spoonful of sugar” notion, the danger of someone simplifying a situation just to get their message across without offering a fair shake to all involved is very real.  There’s also a question of how much foothold films should give to politicized content.  “You got your art in my politics!” “You got your politics in my art!” You see where this is going…

In a world where Rob Zombie’s Halloween can wrest $30 million from U.S. wallets in one weekend, please don’t mistake my praise as all-encompassing.  There’s much wrong with the studio system, not the least of which is how they’ve conditioned us to expect and accept less from our entertainment dollar.  Mr. Woodcock might offer a life-changing, transcendental experience for viewers and open their eyes to notions of acceptance and tolerance, but the smart money’s on “not so much.” And you know what?  Overall quality aside, sometimes that’s alright.  In its own wrong-to-remake-John-Carpenter but good-to-turn-your-brain-off way, so is Halloween.  It takes all kinds – and I’m thankful all kinds are increasingly welcome at the multiplex.  There will likely always be a perception among the general global public that Hollywood’s a leader when it comes to filmmaking, so here’s hoping when things cool down around the world the creative types working in the studio system, who’ve been empowered by their emotions to create challenging works, don’t lose sight of pushing for something better on screen.