Let me explain. The reason why Back to the Future worked for my generation is not that we were stunned by the cultural differences that Marty McFly discovers on his way back to his parents' teen years. It's that we knew the references very well. We knew the music, the TV, the fashion. We were aware of those things. We knew who the biggies were. We even admired some of those old icons. We knew the movies, the stars, Elvis and the other early rock stars. We also knew the older stars they were replacing: Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, even older Bing Crosby. We knew the TV shows, the movies. We knew how people dressed. And we sometimes admired and even liked their craft.
Today, when I read sites dedicated to culture, like movies, it's as if there really wasn't a film industry before 1992. Oh sure, some will have the obligatory Chaplin movie, or Duck Soup, or The Seven Samurai. But on the whole, you'd think if it wasn't laden with CGI or featuring the latest, hippest, it just didn't exist. And if older movies are mentioned, there is almost an apology for the lack of sophistication, or old standard styles that existed at the time.
Which brings me to Steve Graydanus. He's every Catholic's favorite movie critic. And yet? He exemplifies what I mean. Set aside the fact that when it comes to movies influenced by American Protestantism, you can expect at least a finger wagging, if not a drop of a letter grade. That's just the Catholic coming out.
But go to his site here, and see what he praises, what he doesn't, and what he doesn't even mention, which to me represents everything I'm noticing. Movies like The Godfather, Gone With the Wind*, Cool Hand Luke, Cape Fear, Psycho, and The Sting - movies considered revolutionary, influential, or among the greatest ever made, aren't even mentioned. You might say it's because his is a family guide site, and those aren't family. Yet he has R rated movies (see The Silence of the Lambs). Why not these?
When he does rate classics, such as Snow White or Stage Coach, he often injects slights at them for various era based distinctives, or seems to say 'nothing special, but an A for reputation', even if he ends up praising the overall films for reasons his review doesn't reflect. Or he dismisses them outright. Yet he gives a B- to The Phantom Menace. A B+ to The Lego Movie! Are you kidding me? Sure it was cute, but Lawrence of Arabia gets an A-, while the Lego Movie gets a B+?
It's as if the Internet age has changed things. Changed what we accept as good, quality, acceptable, unacceptable, classic, legend. Sometimes it's as if things that once were the "Essentials" have suddenly been tossed on the trash heap. What was once legend is now antique at best. Once the medal standard is now a forgotten footnote. I don't know why. I don't even have a theory.
I just know that when my friends and I watched 1933 King Kong, in the post-Star Wars era, we thought it was awesome. We got that it was old, the special effect weren't up to Star Wars. We got that the acting was different than modern acting. We hadn't been influenced by Multi-cultural PC enough to look for racism and bigotry in every frame of every movie, but we got that it was of its time. Unlike modern movie review sites, we wouldn't lament the special effects, acting, racism, or anything else. We took it for its time and praised it accordingly. And any young, budding movie critic would also have to grapple with such films, even if they didn't care for them, because they were part of the whole cinematic package. It's noteworthy that Decent Films doesn't even review the original Kong, mentioning it only in the review of Jackson's 2005 remake, and then more or less dismissing it as uninteresting and not worth much more acknowledgement than setting up the basis for Jackson's B Graded remake. A movie that once garnered praise and adoration from critics, movie buffs, film historians, and youngsters of every generation, reduced to an afterthought. Such is the fruits of the Internet Age.
Mr. Graydanus is not alone. Like so many modern film critics, he seems to have little to say about anything old, unless it tickles his fancy for this or that reason. Likewise, fanboy that he is, his respect is reserved for the latest fantasy/comic book laden stories with copious amounts of CGI. Sure, he gives bad reviews to movies, often when they flagrantly assault a major part of the Catholic ethos. This isn't to pick on Mr. Graydanus. In fact, I enjoy reading his reviews, even if I disagree with many of his conclusions. But he represents a trend that is far more common, even among older critics trying to appeal to the Internet age, than it is the exception. Just look at the IMBD top movies list for examples.
It's post-modern, mixed with the Internet cubicles of a fragmenting generation. I owe nothing to anything greater than myself or the particular clique to which I belong. If I'm a movie reviewer, and don't care about or want to look at a given movie, then so be it. And woe betide anything other than a small handful of old offerings that fail to measure up to the awesomeness of Now (compare his C rating for the delightful 1977 The Hobbit animated movie with his B level rating for Jackson's 2012 cinematic version - what was better in Jackson's other than the use of CGI?). Back in the day, a movie critic who didn't include The Godfather would be like a Revolutionary War historian who had nothing to say about Washington. But not today. What that says about the greater trends of our post-modern Internet age, I don't know. But I'm 100% convinced it says something, and eventually will say it loudly.
*It's worth noting that Decent Films has few reviews of the greatest movies from 1939, considered for almost all time as the Greatest Year in Movies. Including Gone With the Wind. Again, it says much, IMHO.
NOTE: This is an old post from about a decade or so ago. This was well before Deacon Greydanus banned me the first time, when we used to get on well even when we disagreed. So this was not some slap at him over his clear swing to the Left of center. This was when we got along, and he sometimes would admit I made a good point or two, even when we disagreed. It just came up with a slew of visits, and I found it interesting. Especially as I pondered how he did exemplify many of those old 'postmodern' traits, well before his shift left. I wondered if there might be a connection, somehow postmodernity being a gateway drug to the left of center so to speak. Perhaps that's the loud statement I was expecting.
Sometimes I wonder if worldly converts make more thorough converts. If you are coming from another faith tradition, it has to be difficult to shed all the sensibilities of that completely. I happen to be a bit of an Andrew Klavan fan girl. He's not quite Catholic, but pretty close, and he understands reality as it is. Just mentioning him because occasionally he talks about films (he's even written a few) and recently he did some reactions to Oscar winners over the years and then synthesized his observations in this post:
ReplyDeletehttps://thenewjerusalem.substack.com/p/why-movies-suck
Thought you might appreciate it as well.
Funny you say that. We just finished reading Nabeel's book, "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" and I've also been enjoying several of his videos.
DeleteI do appreciate the different perspectives he brings to things. Apostate Prophet is another convert I've been watching lately.
Oops! The above was me.
DeleteAs one who has gone agnostic to Protestant to Orthodox to Catholic, yes it isn't easy. In some ways you might see things those in the tradition have perhaps at least not seen in the same way. Though I don't think you ever fully settled in either. Even as a pastor, I was aware of not having grown up in church when I sat around those - including my wife - who had.
DeleteAs for that fellow, I'll look him up. You never know. Same with Apostate Prophet.
Greydanus is living rent-free in your head. He's not that important. (My favorite film critic was the late Terry Teachout, btw). It's a reasonable wager he does not rate films released prior to 1992 because he's hardly seen any. That's his idiosyncratic deficit.
ReplyDelete==
One reason we had a better handle on mass entertainment of the 1950s was because there was less of it. The town I grew in had four television channels, one of which was a UHF station you tuned in like you did a radio station (and much of their programming time was taken up with appeals for donations). The only video games I knew of were Pong and PacMan. Today's kids are inundated with on-demand media.
I've always been puzzled by that phrase. I find people will focus on what they will, and usually for reasons they have. In this case, I still focus on D. Greydanus for the same reasons I used to focus on Mark Shea. 1) He's a fellow Catholic convert, 2) he was someone I read when I first entered the Church, 3) he has had a spectacular fall into much of the worst he once would have called out, and 4) he is still read and linked to. Not that a billion Catholics read him or anything. But I seldom go more than a few weeks at a time without seeing a post or blog page or article by him linked to or posted. And still get thumbs up from other Catholics in positions of some influence. As I said, this is a decade old article, yet all of a sudden a flurry of visits. Why? No clue. But enough to do my little part in giving people at least a different view about him beyond 'he said it about the Church, it must be true.'
DeleteAs for the other part, it's true that since cable TV meant millions of channels, you began having a fracturing of a common social palette. But that doesn't account for the contempt for past cultural output that seemed not to arise with Cable (in many cases just the opposite), but with the increase in social media and the Internet.