comment #1

le corbeau says ...

Yeah, that's what movies used to be. Back when they were informed by the experience of World War II, for instance. Back then people knew that sometimes history stuck you with a raw deal but you had to take it and do your best anyway.

Now... your duty isn't to the community, to your fellow soldiers/cops/gunslingers/whatever, anything square like that. It's to your own self-actualization. Your only duty is to resolve your childhood issues and become a better yuppie. Movies are therapy, dramatized.

Movies have to leave the real world and enter pure fantasy to find something to believe in and thus, to feel duty toward. Frodo has a duty. Peter Parker has great responsibility. But nobody in a movie set in America, 2006 ever does.

comment #2

jeffmcm says ...

I couldn't disagree more. First of all, 'back when movies were informed by the experience of World War II" is the same period of time when movies were informed by the need for master societal narrative that excluded minority perspectives and voices. What Mgmax praises is nothing more than social regimentation in its purest form.
The other side of the argument, about fantasy films, is nonsense as well. Frodo (in the movies at least) has no other narrative purpose or characterization except as the guy who delivers the Ring. And besides, just because a movie's genre is fantasy, that doesn't mean that its moral resonance is diminished. An American film made in 2006 is still an American film made in 2006, regardless of location or genre.

comment #3

Doug Pratt says ...

It's straight from Joseph Campbell

comment #4

Rich S. says ...

These Suber lessons are becoming not only more simplistic, but also simpleminded. "Drama for Dummies." If this guy is a film professor, no wonder everything coming out these days sucks.

comment #5

MAGGA says ...

Isnt Spiderman set in America 2006?

comment #6

le corbeau says ...

Uh... yeah, an America 2006 in which teenagers get superpowers from radioactive spider bites. That's the same as a Sidney Lumet movie, sure.

To Jeffmcm's comment, well, my eyes glaze over pretty automatically at a phrase like "master societal narrative" both because I don't know what it means and to the extent I do, I mostly disagree with the concept (quick, describe the contours of the M.S.N. as manifested in the following five movies: It's a Gift, Bride of Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, Crossfire, Duck Amuck).

But let's not be snarky and devolve into a buff vs. academic war. Do you really think that, because you are black/Native American/Chinese/Maori/whatever, that Cary Grant is the Other to you-- but on the other hand I identify totally with him because I too am white? Believe me, there are plenty of other differences between me and Cary Grant, as were probably pointed out by unkind females in my youth, but it's ridiculously reductive to assume that everything that cinema of that era offered-- all the role models, all the attitudes, all the WWII messages about brotherhood across ethnicity-- was so strictly and crudely limited in its appeal to one section of the audience.

Oh, and I'd say there's a lot more to Lord of the Rings than Frodo as a FedEx man with a package for Mordor. There's a lot of post-9/11 resonance there about how the world offers no hiding places from evil on the march, and duty calls no matter how insignificant and isolated you may feel yourself and your home to be.

comment #7

sutter kane says ...

What's interesting is that I think Mgmax may have a point; there was a time when what moved us in films was characters choosing a greater responsibility over themselves, but I almost think we have inverted it over the years. What we see in something like Brokeback Mountain, for instance, are characters that use their inner strength to turn away from societal pressures in order to be true to themselves. Rounders is another good example, actually.

I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it seems to me that that 'greater good' simplicity is exactly what Jeff didn't like about the LOTR movies. It's easier to like heroes portrayed on screen than to see more accurate reflections of ourselves up there, but once you've experienced the kind of revelation a movie like 21 Grams was for me, it's hard to go back.

comment #8

mizerock says ...

How did they expect a remake of "The Four Feathers" to work in this day and age?

comment #9

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