A little more than three years ago N.Y. Times reporter Kyle Buchanan posted an intensively researched piece about the future (if any) of movies, especially in the minds of Millennials and Zoomers. The piece was called “How Will the Movies (As We Know Them) Survive the Next 10 Years?“.
The basic answer was that movie loyalty is a thing of the past and that cinema culture as most of us know it isn’t likely to survive.
The keeper quote was from Kumail Nanjiani. The basic thrust was about 20somethings not being into movies as a rule, and watching them sporadically at best. The quote is pasted below. It would seem that Nanjiani’s “friend who directs big movies” was on to something.
Today the youngest Zoomers are ten years old, and anyone younger is Gen Alpha. For years the running joke with Millennials and Zoomers is that ADD isn’t a bug but a feature. I’m presuming that the Kumail observation goes double or triple when it comes to 15-and-unders.
Ask a typical tween or young teen what their favorite films are and a good percentage, I’m guessing, will give you a slightly quizzical look. Focusing on anything longer than a TikTok video is a challenge. Phone screen and streaming content, sure, but I would be hugely surprised to hear that even a small percentage watch “films.”
We all understand that attention spans, at least as far as scripted stand-alone dramas and comedies lasting 90 minutes or longer are concerned, have been diminishing among younger people since the ‘80s.
When I was a tween and young teen, I was watching actual films made by name-brand filmmakers. I saw King Kong and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms when I was eight or nine. I saw and loved Red River when I was ten. I knew who Julie Christie, Terrence Stamp, David Hemmings, Olivia Hussey, Paul Newman, John Wayne, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas and Kenneth Tobey were. I watched adventures, comedies. My mother used to go to Ingmar Bergman films and come home and rave about them.
What do I actually know about where young Zoomers and Generation Alpha are at in terms of cinema? Not much but I can guess.
Present-tense despair: If there was ever a demographic whose taste in films represents a blend of Dante’s Inferno (or my idea of it) and a metaphor for the ruination and death of cinema as you and I and people like David Fincher, Ari Aster, Todd Field, Peter Farrelly, Luca Guadagnino and Chris Nolan know it, it’s almost certainly tweens and young teens of 2022.
Here’s how I put it three years ago — a message to Millennials and Zoomers:
So you guys are basically saying “later with watching carefully compressed and craftily written, acted-out stories about the human experience on big screens in theatres”…you’re blowing that off because narrative tales seem more effective or absorbing in longform cable and because movies aren’t YouTubey enough and they don’t deliver the goods, according to your standards and demands. Right? You’ll watch an occasional film from time to time, sure, but not out of habit or any sense of loyalty to the form.
Do you guys understand that dramatic or comedic movies have been delivering craftily written, acted-out stories about the human experience for a little over a century? First with silent movies and then with soundtracks starting in the late ’20s? And that until you guys came along no generation has ever said “no offense but fuck the theatrical communal ritual of watching craftily written, acted-out stories about the human experience“? You realize that, right? You guys are the first!
Did you also know that before the advent of movies there were things called “plays” that did roughly the same thing (i.e., presented craftily written, acted-out stories about the human experience)? And that the writing and presentation of plays first began some 2700 years ago, all the way back to ancient Greece in 700 b.c.?
So let’s sum up, shall we? You guys are the first generation to blow off a century-old tradition of people gathering in a theatre to watch movies of a semi-aspirational nature. And in a certain sense you’re also blowing off 2700 years of theatre, or more precisely the tradition of submitting to that…in a way you’re the very first humans in 2700 years to say “sorry but our attention spans can’t handle the ordeal of concentrating on a two-hour (and sometimes three-hour) dramatic or comedic presentation“?
I realize you guys watch craftily written, acted-out stories about the human experience at home, but you’re doing this while texting and multi-tasking and feeding the dogs and preparing meals or paying the pizza-delivery guy and folding laundry.
The spirit of focus and concentration and generally submitting to a sustained two-hour drama or comedy is going away, and you guys are the pioneers! You’re definitely making yourselves heard and shaping the saga of human history.