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One of the most interesting issues in Fight Club was that of disillusionment in, for Fight Club, young men. Tese men had grown up watching films, seeing the cult of celebrity that sprouted around the film industry and this had raised their expectations to untenable heights where disillusionment could be the only outcome. Oscar Wilde once said, but then he said something about everything, "We are all in the gutter but some of us are starring at the stars." Our mistake has been to believe that film stars, celebrities in general are on some higher plateau. You have all seen the adoration which some pop stars receive; you hear the little girl in an interview saying that when she grows up she wants to be a... pop star. On her face is a look of wide-eyed innocence and naivity, for that moment she fully believes that she is to be a pop star. Of course it his highly unlikely that she ever will be, and the chances are that she will get over it. However, what about the ones who can't get over it? The people who spend their entire life clamoring for Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. The people we see queuing for miles to take part in the Pop Stars programme, the Soap Stars series... my, there are a lot of them aren't there?
Celebrity manifests itself in many forms. It has become a massive part of our society, an industry even. If you look at the newspapers you see a daily splurge of entirely meaningless stories about celebrities, each stoking the fire of their fame. One that sticks out in my mind was an article by Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail, I remembered the "jounalist's" name because the article so incensed me. The Daily Mail had dedicated the whole of page 3 to a story about Jerry Hall buying food from a supermarket. Now, you must believe me, I searched for a story in that article, I even searched for one of those tenuous links at the end, like "Meanwhile Mick Jagger was .... with the young supermodel..." but there was nothing. They had published a story about someone going to the supermarket, using a trolley and putting the purchased goods into her car. Have we really become so fixated with celebrity that we need to know such trivia as that?!
Films and music have had other effects on society besides creating the cult of celebrity. Look at the film industry. Every year a whole raft of films come out based around the traditional goodie vs. baddie concept. Admittedly the Good vs. Evil conflict has gone back to the Bible, but nonetheless the film industry's take on the situation has left many people always believing there must be a master criminal behind it all. Films have a tendancy of simplifying our view of life. Yes, there are films that don't do this; there are grittily realistic films; there are sad films; there are many films that don't fall into the simplifying life category. However, the vast majority of films do simplyify complex things. They instill in us the idea of a simple world in which things can be clearly defined. This isn't always the case but I do see an increasing amount of films showing a wanton disregard for complex issues. Okay, you need simple films, but you also need complex ones, and in the current climate of market demographics and research the film industry knows exactly what we want to see. Some of us might want to see something that challenges us but the vast majority of people don't want to. Obviously most people in this forum will fall into the former category, but the vast majority of people are in the latter category. I'll cite the example of my French teacher. She said that 'La Haine', which we had been watching, was the type of film she hated, she did not get a film to make her think, she got it to let her switch off for a few hours. To relax.
Perhaps I've deviated from the subject of the discussion but I thought that people's increasing desire for the simple film was important. You see, this type of film will only perpetuate the simplification of issues that we already see.
I also want to rail against the music industry for the proliferation of its manufactured sugar-pop. The fact that these people can sing about love, about a life, which they have not experienced is sickening. How many remember the scenes of mass hysteria when Take That broke up; people were crying in the street. All over a band who had made a connection with them singing about something meaningless. Meaningless, in that they had no idea what they were singing about, they just sung the words without the meaning. Meanwhile serious bands struggle to gain the attention they deserve. The most worrying thing is that now a backlash has been seen against pop the music industry is creating bands in other genres. Linkin Park are widely believed to have been a manufactured band. Manufacturing drippy ballads is one thing, but manufacturing agnst? Kurt Cobain would be turning in grave to see the glut of Nirvana-a-likes that Fred Durst has recently signed. First we see Staind a band so bland that the Chinese have dropped water torture in favour of merely playing prisoners the Staind album on loop, if that doesn't make you crack nothing will. Then there are Puddle of Mudd, a band who sent Durst a demo tape. Fred being the svengali he is, spotted the singer's talent and so got him a record deal and then replaced the rest of the band with session musicians. The jerk.
If we are looking for something to blame for society's woes then let's blame the corporations. The ones who have stolen our dreams packagd them and then sold them to us at a healthy 25% profit. Let's fight against the homogenisation of music of films of television. Let's do something positive before it's too late. There are millions of people out there all desperate to be on TV, to be famous, to have a nice car, a nice house, perfection. They are only going to be disappointed. And that, my friends, is a time bomb waiting to explode.
Celebrity manifests itself in many forms. It has become a massive part of our society, an industry even. If you look at the newspapers you see a daily splurge of entirely meaningless stories about celebrities, each stoking the fire of their fame. One that sticks out in my mind was an article by Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail, I remembered the "jounalist's" name because the article so incensed me. The Daily Mail had dedicated the whole of page 3 to a story about Jerry Hall buying food from a supermarket. Now, you must believe me, I searched for a story in that article, I even searched for one of those tenuous links at the end, like "Meanwhile Mick Jagger was .... with the young supermodel..." but there was nothing. They had published a story about someone going to the supermarket, using a trolley and putting the purchased goods into her car. Have we really become so fixated with celebrity that we need to know such trivia as that?!
Films and music have had other effects on society besides creating the cult of celebrity. Look at the film industry. Every year a whole raft of films come out based around the traditional goodie vs. baddie concept. Admittedly the Good vs. Evil conflict has gone back to the Bible, but nonetheless the film industry's take on the situation has left many people always believing there must be a master criminal behind it all. Films have a tendancy of simplifying our view of life. Yes, there are films that don't do this; there are grittily realistic films; there are sad films; there are many films that don't fall into the simplifying life category. However, the vast majority of films do simplyify complex things. They instill in us the idea of a simple world in which things can be clearly defined. This isn't always the case but I do see an increasing amount of films showing a wanton disregard for complex issues. Okay, you need simple films, but you also need complex ones, and in the current climate of market demographics and research the film industry knows exactly what we want to see. Some of us might want to see something that challenges us but the vast majority of people don't want to. Obviously most people in this forum will fall into the former category, but the vast majority of people are in the latter category. I'll cite the example of my French teacher. She said that 'La Haine', which we had been watching, was the type of film she hated, she did not get a film to make her think, she got it to let her switch off for a few hours. To relax.
Perhaps I've deviated from the subject of the discussion but I thought that people's increasing desire for the simple film was important. You see, this type of film will only perpetuate the simplification of issues that we already see.
I also want to rail against the music industry for the proliferation of its manufactured sugar-pop. The fact that these people can sing about love, about a life, which they have not experienced is sickening. How many remember the scenes of mass hysteria when Take That broke up; people were crying in the street. All over a band who had made a connection with them singing about something meaningless. Meaningless, in that they had no idea what they were singing about, they just sung the words without the meaning. Meanwhile serious bands struggle to gain the attention they deserve. The most worrying thing is that now a backlash has been seen against pop the music industry is creating bands in other genres. Linkin Park are widely believed to have been a manufactured band. Manufacturing drippy ballads is one thing, but manufacturing agnst? Kurt Cobain would be turning in grave to see the glut of Nirvana-a-likes that Fred Durst has recently signed. First we see Staind a band so bland that the Chinese have dropped water torture in favour of merely playing prisoners the Staind album on loop, if that doesn't make you crack nothing will. Then there are Puddle of Mudd, a band who sent Durst a demo tape. Fred being the svengali he is, spotted the singer's talent and so got him a record deal and then replaced the rest of the band with session musicians. The jerk.
If we are looking for something to blame for society's woes then let's blame the corporations. The ones who have stolen our dreams packagd them and then sold them to us at a healthy 25% profit. Let's fight against the homogenisation of music of films of television. Let's do something positive before it's too late. There are millions of people out there all desperate to be on TV, to be famous, to have a nice car, a nice house, perfection. They are only going to be disappointed. And that, my friends, is a time bomb waiting to explode.
Intelligent discussion at last!
Well, surely the whole point of Natural Born Killers is to parody the ludicrous scenario we are currently in where censorship and media crusades reign supreme. Anyone who does anything based on Natural Born Killers must either have had their irony gland removed or be extremely dumb.
Yet we do bear a responsibility to all those people out there who are influenced adversely by films. And they are many. There will always be people out there who are mentally unstable and who will be influenced by something, be it a film, a video game or, perish the thought, a book. It is our responsibility to do what we can to ensure that impressionable people are kept away from potentially dangerous films. That's why we have a ratings system. It has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that Jamie Bulgers killers were influenced by a violent film which they should not have been allowed to see.
With older people the problem is slightly different. There is no way that you can stop an over 18 adult from going to watch Natural Born Killers, if he decides to emulate the events he has witnessed because of a mental condition that would have resulted in him emulating any violent film he was to see then there is little that can be done. Obviously we cannot ban all violent films. Nor can we ban all unstable people from attending films. What we must do is to work on prevention. That is to say the means we have to detect unbalanced people and to stop potential or actual crimes. Banning all violent films and video games is like taking away all children and saying you've stopped paedophilia.
In fact it reminds me of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut called (something like 'in the monkey house', where to curb a population problem the powers that be force all people to take drugs that numb the body below the waist, making sex pointless. This of course does lower the population, but it ignores the fundamental problem. The stories actually very good, if not slightly strange, well worth 10 minutes of anyone's time.
Essentially though my beef is not against violent films. It is against the companies that take our dreams and sell them to us. The companies that prey upon people's ardent desire for fame and commercialise it to earn vast profits. If it's in Music or film it annoys me. Especially the films that create an idyllic world that clearly isn't possible. I don't mean all films that do that, just the ones which preach to you. At the moment examples escape me, but the main point is that a film should never take one of your dreams and bastardise it by selling it to you. I don't approve of manipulative programs like Big Brother, Pop Stars and Soap Stars; all of them have one basic aim, to make money out of a dream.
Maybe it's pretentiously expressionistic to say so, but the more dreams they sell, the fewer they leave us with. The fewer dreams we have, the more automatous we become. It's sad to say it, but the solution to terrorism, to world peace, would be to encourage the expansion of global conglomerates. After 10 or 20 years of advertising campaigns advocating pepsi or coke consumption I wonder if the Muslims would be devout enough to blow themselves up in the name of Islam. In fact, I wonder if they would become as generally valueless as western culture (the oxymoron that it is) has become.
Maybe not everyone will agree with me, and I mean no personal insults in the last comment, but no one can deny that Western society has lost a great number of its values.
Well, surely the whole point of Natural Born Killers is to parody the ludicrous scenario we are currently in where censorship and media crusades reign supreme. Anyone who does anything based on Natural Born Killers must either have had their irony gland removed or be extremely dumb.
Yet we do bear a responsibility to all those people out there who are influenced adversely by films. And they are many. There will always be people out there who are mentally unstable and who will be influenced by something, be it a film, a video game or, perish the thought, a book. It is our responsibility to do what we can to ensure that impressionable people are kept away from potentially dangerous films. That's why we have a ratings system. It has been shown beyond reasonable doubt that Jamie Bulgers killers were influenced by a violent film which they should not have been allowed to see.
With older people the problem is slightly different. There is no way that you can stop an over 18 adult from going to watch Natural Born Killers, if he decides to emulate the events he has witnessed because of a mental condition that would have resulted in him emulating any violent film he was to see then there is little that can be done. Obviously we cannot ban all violent films. Nor can we ban all unstable people from attending films. What we must do is to work on prevention. That is to say the means we have to detect unbalanced people and to stop potential or actual crimes. Banning all violent films and video games is like taking away all children and saying you've stopped paedophilia.
In fact it reminds me of a short story by Kurt Vonnegut called (something like 'in the monkey house', where to curb a population problem the powers that be force all people to take drugs that numb the body below the waist, making sex pointless. This of course does lower the population, but it ignores the fundamental problem. The stories actually very good, if not slightly strange, well worth 10 minutes of anyone's time.
Essentially though my beef is not against violent films. It is against the companies that take our dreams and sell them to us. The companies that prey upon people's ardent desire for fame and commercialise it to earn vast profits. If it's in Music or film it annoys me. Especially the films that create an idyllic world that clearly isn't possible. I don't mean all films that do that, just the ones which preach to you. At the moment examples escape me, but the main point is that a film should never take one of your dreams and bastardise it by selling it to you. I don't approve of manipulative programs like Big Brother, Pop Stars and Soap Stars; all of them have one basic aim, to make money out of a dream.
Maybe it's pretentiously expressionistic to say so, but the more dreams they sell, the fewer they leave us with. The fewer dreams we have, the more automatous we become. It's sad to say it, but the solution to terrorism, to world peace, would be to encourage the expansion of global conglomerates. After 10 or 20 years of advertising campaigns advocating pepsi or coke consumption I wonder if the Muslims would be devout enough to blow themselves up in the name of Islam. In fact, I wonder if they would become as generally valueless as western culture (the oxymoron that it is) has become.
Maybe not everyone will agree with me, and I mean no personal insults in the last comment, but no one can deny that Western society has lost a great number of its values.
Nice post.
I have debated the point of whether entertainment is influential over and over before, and it's sprawled over days of postings etc, and nobody really agrees.
So, to sum up days of previous argument in one sentence:
Music & Movies influence you if you are stupid.
Since when did we have to look out for the morons?
Why should I be restricted in what I hear/see in case some toehead gets it into his head that he should kill his class because a Goth Rocker who goes by the real name of Brian Warner told them to do it?
If movies were influential, in the immortal words of Reed Rothchild/Chest Rockwell "Hey, I'll stop making these movies right now and go do magic, cos that's something I hope to branch out into"
Look at the situation in America with the WTC.
Talaban/Muslim fundamentalists dont watch movies or listen to music, it's forbidden.
So what made them do it?
Anyone?
So, let those that are dumb enough to listen to movies and music like they provide answeres do so, I'll watch Natural Born Killer and listen to rock music, then campaign for freedom in reporting, an end to inhumane business practices and and ending child-slavery.
Except my views and actions won't be taken into consideration as a well-balanced fan of "death" metal and violent movies.
Because that would make people stop and say "Hang on, this guy listens to extreme music and watched Battle Royale/Texas Chainsaw Massacre, yet has no violent instincts".
And we can't have that now can we?
So..er..Marylin Manson is evil, Natural Born Killers made them do it and we should all listen to pop music and watch Disney movies.
Now THAT is scary.
I have debated the point of whether entertainment is influential over and over before, and it's sprawled over days of postings etc, and nobody really agrees.
So, to sum up days of previous argument in one sentence:
Music & Movies influence you if you are stupid.
Since when did we have to look out for the morons?
Why should I be restricted in what I hear/see in case some toehead gets it into his head that he should kill his class because a Goth Rocker who goes by the real name of Brian Warner told them to do it?
If movies were influential, in the immortal words of Reed Rothchild/Chest Rockwell "Hey, I'll stop making these movies right now and go do magic, cos that's something I hope to branch out into"
Look at the situation in America with the WTC.
Talaban/Muslim fundamentalists dont watch movies or listen to music, it's forbidden.
So what made them do it?
Anyone?
So, let those that are dumb enough to listen to movies and music like they provide answeres do so, I'll watch Natural Born Killer and listen to rock music, then campaign for freedom in reporting, an end to inhumane business practices and and ending child-slavery.
Except my views and actions won't be taken into consideration as a well-balanced fan of "death" metal and violent movies.
Because that would make people stop and say "Hang on, this guy listens to extreme music and watched Battle Royale/Texas Chainsaw Massacre, yet has no violent instincts".
And we can't have that now can we?
So..er..Marylin Manson is evil, Natural Born Killers made them do it and we should all listen to pop music and watch Disney movies.
Now THAT is scary.
No I do not think they should be blamed for the woes of society.
I'd have to disagree. While the media does exaggerate the influence of certain films and certain music i do feel that it influences people. I mean you've heard of the small child who killed his sister by practising wrestling moves on her and there have been images of Take That fans and Spice Girls fans crying in the street when their band lost a member or split up.
If a film can influence someone enough to make them think, to evoke emotions- fear, sadness, laughter and happiness- why shouldn't films have more negative consequences. It is both narrow-minded and naive to suggest that films and music and video games do not influence people, after all our favourite examples of each are the ones that influence us most.
If a film can influence someone enough to make them think, to evoke emotions- fear, sadness, laughter and happiness- why shouldn't films have more negative consequences. It is both narrow-minded and naive to suggest that films and music and video games do not influence people, after all our favourite examples of each are the ones that influence us most.
...they all influence nothing!
I think that films and music influence society, just as much as games do.
One of the most interesting issues in Fight Club was that of disillusionment in, for Fight Club, young men. Tese men had grown up watching films, seeing the cult of celebrity that sprouted around the film industry and this had raised their expectations to untenable heights where disillusionment could be the only outcome. Oscar Wilde once said, but then he said something about everything, "We are all in the gutter but some of us are starring at the stars." Our mistake has been to believe that film stars, celebrities in general are on some higher plateau. You have all seen the adoration which some pop stars receive; you hear the little girl in an interview saying that when she grows up she wants to be a... pop star. On her face is a look of wide-eyed innocence and naivity, for that moment she fully believes that she is to be a pop star. Of course it his highly unlikely that she ever will be, and the chances are that she will get over it. However, what about the ones who can't get over it? The people who spend their entire life clamoring for Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame. The people we see queuing for miles to take part in the Pop Stars programme, the Soap Stars series... my, there are a lot of them aren't there?
Celebrity manifests itself in many forms. It has become a massive part of our society, an industry even. If you look at the newspapers you see a daily splurge of entirely meaningless stories about celebrities, each stoking the fire of their fame. One that sticks out in my mind was an article by Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail, I remembered the "jounalist's" name because the article so incensed me. The Daily Mail had dedicated the whole of page 3 to a story about Jerry Hall buying food from a supermarket. Now, you must believe me, I searched for a story in that article, I even searched for one of those tenuous links at the end, like "Meanwhile Mick Jagger was .... with the young supermodel..." but there was nothing. They had published a story about someone going to the supermarket, using a trolley and putting the purchased goods into her car. Have we really become so fixated with celebrity that we need to know such trivia as that?!
Films and music have had other effects on society besides creating the cult of celebrity. Look at the film industry. Every year a whole raft of films come out based around the traditional goodie vs. baddie concept. Admittedly the Good vs. Evil conflict has gone back to the Bible, but nonetheless the film industry's take on the situation has left many people always believing there must be a master criminal behind it all. Films have a tendancy of simplifying our view of life. Yes, there are films that don't do this; there are grittily realistic films; there are sad films; there are many films that don't fall into the simplifying life category. However, the vast majority of films do simplyify complex things. They instill in us the idea of a simple world in which things can be clearly defined. This isn't always the case but I do see an increasing amount of films showing a wanton disregard for complex issues. Okay, you need simple films, but you also need complex ones, and in the current climate of market demographics and research the film industry knows exactly what we want to see. Some of us might want to see something that challenges us but the vast majority of people don't want to. Obviously most people in this forum will fall into the former category, but the vast majority of people are in the latter category. I'll cite the example of my French teacher. She said that 'La Haine', which we had been watching, was the type of film she hated, she did not get a film to make her think, she got it to let her switch off for a few hours. To relax.
Perhaps I've deviated from the subject of the discussion but I thought that people's increasing desire for the simple film was important. You see, this type of film will only perpetuate the simplification of issues that we already see.
I also want to rail against the music industry for the proliferation of its manufactured sugar-pop. The fact that these people can sing about love, about a life, which they have not experienced is sickening. How many remember the scenes of mass hysteria when Take That broke up; people were crying in the street. All over a band who had made a connection with them singing about something meaningless. Meaningless, in that they had no idea what they were singing about, they just sung the words without the meaning. Meanwhile serious bands struggle to gain the attention they deserve. The most worrying thing is that now a backlash has been seen against pop the music industry is creating bands in other genres. Linkin Park are widely believed to have been a manufactured band. Manufacturing drippy ballads is one thing, but manufacturing agnst? Kurt Cobain would be turning in grave to see the glut of Nirvana-a-likes that Fred Durst has recently signed. First we see Staind a band so bland that the Chinese have dropped water torture in favour of merely playing prisoners the Staind album on loop, if that doesn't make you crack nothing will. Then there are Puddle of Mudd, a band who sent Durst a demo tape. Fred being the svengali he is, spotted the singer's talent and so got him a record deal and then replaced the rest of the band with session musicians. The jerk.
If we are looking for something to blame for society's woes then let's blame the corporations. The ones who have stolen our dreams packagd them and then sold them to us at a healthy 25% profit. Let's fight against the homogenisation of music of films of television. Let's do something positive before it's too late. There are millions of people out there all desperate to be on TV, to be famous, to have a nice car, a nice house, perfection. They are only going to be disappointed. And that, my friends, is a time bomb waiting to explode.
Celebrity manifests itself in many forms. It has become a massive part of our society, an industry even. If you look at the newspapers you see a daily splurge of entirely meaningless stories about celebrities, each stoking the fire of their fame. One that sticks out in my mind was an article by Alison Boshoff in the Daily Mail, I remembered the "jounalist's" name because the article so incensed me. The Daily Mail had dedicated the whole of page 3 to a story about Jerry Hall buying food from a supermarket. Now, you must believe me, I searched for a story in that article, I even searched for one of those tenuous links at the end, like "Meanwhile Mick Jagger was .... with the young supermodel..." but there was nothing. They had published a story about someone going to the supermarket, using a trolley and putting the purchased goods into her car. Have we really become so fixated with celebrity that we need to know such trivia as that?!
Films and music have had other effects on society besides creating the cult of celebrity. Look at the film industry. Every year a whole raft of films come out based around the traditional goodie vs. baddie concept. Admittedly the Good vs. Evil conflict has gone back to the Bible, but nonetheless the film industry's take on the situation has left many people always believing there must be a master criminal behind it all. Films have a tendancy of simplifying our view of life. Yes, there are films that don't do this; there are grittily realistic films; there are sad films; there are many films that don't fall into the simplifying life category. However, the vast majority of films do simplyify complex things. They instill in us the idea of a simple world in which things can be clearly defined. This isn't always the case but I do see an increasing amount of films showing a wanton disregard for complex issues. Okay, you need simple films, but you also need complex ones, and in the current climate of market demographics and research the film industry knows exactly what we want to see. Some of us might want to see something that challenges us but the vast majority of people don't want to. Obviously most people in this forum will fall into the former category, but the vast majority of people are in the latter category. I'll cite the example of my French teacher. She said that 'La Haine', which we had been watching, was the type of film she hated, she did not get a film to make her think, she got it to let her switch off for a few hours. To relax.
Perhaps I've deviated from the subject of the discussion but I thought that people's increasing desire for the simple film was important. You see, this type of film will only perpetuate the simplification of issues that we already see.
I also want to rail against the music industry for the proliferation of its manufactured sugar-pop. The fact that these people can sing about love, about a life, which they have not experienced is sickening. How many remember the scenes of mass hysteria when Take That broke up; people were crying in the street. All over a band who had made a connection with them singing about something meaningless. Meaningless, in that they had no idea what they were singing about, they just sung the words without the meaning. Meanwhile serious bands struggle to gain the attention they deserve. The most worrying thing is that now a backlash has been seen against pop the music industry is creating bands in other genres. Linkin Park are widely believed to have been a manufactured band. Manufacturing drippy ballads is one thing, but manufacturing agnst? Kurt Cobain would be turning in grave to see the glut of Nirvana-a-likes that Fred Durst has recently signed. First we see Staind a band so bland that the Chinese have dropped water torture in favour of merely playing prisoners the Staind album on loop, if that doesn't make you crack nothing will. Then there are Puddle of Mudd, a band who sent Durst a demo tape. Fred being the svengali he is, spotted the singer's talent and so got him a record deal and then replaced the rest of the band with session musicians. The jerk.
If we are looking for something to blame for society's woes then let's blame the corporations. The ones who have stolen our dreams packagd them and then sold them to us at a healthy 25% profit. Let's fight against the homogenisation of music of films of television. Let's do something positive before it's too late. There are millions of people out there all desperate to be on TV, to be famous, to have a nice car, a nice house, perfection. They are only going to be disappointed. And that, my friends, is a time bomb waiting to explode.