weird thing about consuming literally any art other than what is being promoted at this exact moment is people will be like whoa where do you find this stuff? or they react with hostility to the idea that you're watching even like an extremely famous and popular movie from a few decades ago
I worked at a resale store for years, and volunteer at my local library sometimes, you pick up trends, and it's kind of depressing how many people just read what everyone else reads, or only whatever's on the NYT list, or only 1-to-3 authors and nothing else. The same goes for viewing and listening.
maybe this has always been the case for most people! but i guess hanging out with a lot of big readers/art people/movie freaks for years i'm surprised when i realize how little interest most people seem to have in broadening their horizons
I watched Deep Cover and really enjoyed it. Very fun movie. thanks for the recommendation
Agree 100%. How do they know their next favorite musician/film/book isn't one recommendation away?
Whole lot of people think of art in terms of model upgrades - it's why the live-action Disney remakes are so big, and why people are always concerned with continuing a franchise for the 'next generation' instead of just showing them the original stuff
And that's the ultra-mainstream! If you're looking for stuff not in the mainstream, you're a contemptible snob who thinks they're better than them, and if you're looking for stuff that's not in the mainstream AND OLD....you're Ted Kaczynski, practically
I think consumers upgrading from VHS to DVD to Blu to 4K helped pave this road, and so did video game upgrades/rereleases for new consoles.
I think it's simpler than that, though - before, everyone had roughly the same amount of familiarity with old movies, say, because they were on TV all the time - if you wanted to know more than average, you had to really work for it
The last 30-40 years has made it much easier to see and learn more about them, but by the same token it's made it much easier to never encounter them once in your life
So we've ended up with a society of haves and have-nots that's entirely self-created - the curious kids know everything, and the uncurious kids know nothing except what algorithmically inserted in front of them
I believe the recent reports about teens and twenty-somethings crowding into revival theaters, for instance - just like I believe that Merritt encountered someone who had maybe only ever heard Jaws mentioned once
There's got to be an architecture of cultural discovery that's a happy medium out there, but it'll take a while
The old experience of having to hunt down media is still there—you just have to have a niche enough interest. My kid has a fascination with ‘90s independent Canadian cinema, so scoring a DVD, Blu-ray or screening is a major accomplishment!
Oh, and so did the 5.1 DVD audio mixes for movies that were originally mono or 4.0. Once you get the idea that you can make something even better than its original version to take advantage of new hardware, all bets are off.
"model upgrades" as a way of viewing this disturbs me on a deep level, but I think you're right?
I've always seen it as viewing the originator of something can often seem hokey compared to later versions.
Like going back to the original Star Wars is a slow drag in parts if you don't have nostalgia for it, but it's mainly because you've seen every scene done to death and iterated upon for almost 50 years. But if you saw it first - it was ground-breaking, incredible, and left an indelible mark.
i recently mentioned to someone close to me that i was gonna watch a movie from like 1950 and they were just like “why?” lol as if that’s a weird thing to do
I'm being thrown into the deep end of performance art right now and I know nearly nothing about it so I don't have any preconceived expectations and it's wonderful. I have to write smart things about what I'm seeing so it's terrifying too! It's turning into a top 10 life experience though
I've always had to be a little careful about saying innocuous things like "I like movies" in any work environment
I like movies, too! "Vote for Pedro!" Ah ha ha hah ha!
I’ve been watching Farscape for the first time, and anytime I mention it to people I have to include a long explanation
I put Farscape on in the pizza restaurant i was working in last year and I had to describe it to at least four exasperated parents when their kids were flipping out over the cool alien costumes
Water... world? Umm hello in this draught???
A Maltese falcon? In this economy?
participating in canon? how dare u
Last summer i saw the Russell-Cotes museum in Bournemouth, which is a huge stately home by the sea, and the owner was a Henry Irving Stan. He must have been astonishing on stage, but it's kind of revolting seeing this shrine to him gathering dust. Proper "Fame? Don't Bother!" moment.
Why the hostility? Do they assume you're showing off or something?
the way we treat art as disposable is truly excrutiating! one of the fun things about ao3 & tumblr to me is how easy it is to talk about stuff that isn't in the popular zeitgeist and how excited people are for new people to enjoy it. definitely not the experience on twitter/bluesky/even letterboxd
a lot of people i talk to literally cannot find new anything (mostly music) without The Algorithm
I just got out of a screening of Brazil and during the credits a young guy behind me said "I expected to be bored by such an old movie but it was actually pretty exciting" - like this guy just wandered into a screening of Brazil, knew nothing about it, saw the year 1985, and braced for the worst
Where do you find these people!? Or have I just filtered them out of my life? I watched the 1938 Robin Hood movie recently. I was shocked how well it stood up, and haven't shut up about it.
FRANCIA, 1180 AD “hail brother, what is that you read?” Uh, the song of roland “wear thoust hear of such ancient tales, foolish knave? hast thou even read Lancelot of the Cart? ‘tis the new hotness”
I let the algorithms do their thing and I always find something new and interesting to enjoy. There is a massive world of amazing content that flies under everyone’s radar.
never encountered the hostility but "where do you find this stuff" is like half my interactions with my parents. Except they've also say it when I recommended something new and popular like Killers of the Flower Moon
i'm like 40 but tend to moonlight in childcare between jobs etc - at my last afterschool gig one of my 20 year old coworkers was referring to a family dismissively "they're all stuck in the 90s, these kids are always talking about stuff like indiana jones and ghostbusters" and it was just so ODD
like those are massive cultural touchstones i cant imagine how dismissive they'd be about anything else old
Plus, there have been several reboots/remakes of those IPs, so it's silly to treat them as relics of a past era when media corps clearly don't.
then again when I was growing up I knew plenty of people who refused to watch black and white anything so plus ca change i guess
I just tell people to watch Crimes of the Future 2022 randomly.