Last night “Correcting Jeff,” one of the more dickish and obnoxious HE comment hounds, stated that “cinema died years ago, yet Oscar bloggers fight on like Japanese soldiers hiding in caves.”
Not a bad metaphor for what people like myself do, but there’s more to it than just living on wild berries and stray lizards, bathing in mountain streams, sleeping on a bed of grass and leaves and occasionally sharpening the bayonet sword with a rock.
Wokesters deciding that “ars gratia artis” had to be diminished if not dismissed in favor of movies being used mostly if not exclusively as propaganda devices to promote social justice and implement across-the-board DEI — that’s certainly one big change that corroded the Oscar brand and the general aspirational vibe that fed the magic of Hollywood for so many decades.
Over the last 90 or so years the best films have often reflected social-political tensions and concerns, but the balance tipped six or seven years ago when a stone sociopath and crime-family grifter won the Presidency and a reactive lurching decision was made by woke commissars to counterbalance the Trump toxicity…to emphasize progressive instruction and social equity over emotional revelation and (at least occasional) attempts at universal illumination — this is what killed the once-vital golden goose of cinema more than anything else…more than Marvel/DC, more than the pandemic and streaming, more than Bob Strauss incessantly beating the Get Out drum.
I for one am proud to be an online, 24/7 cave-dwelling Japanese soldier in this regard, fighting like Emiliano Zapata or William Wallace or Dorothy Parker or Mose Allison for the values of classic-brand cinema and the cause of reminding the industry that the artistic values of yore are eternal and need to be cherished …values that exist above and beyond the oppressively shallow SJW Jen Yamato progressive gulag aesthetic (“banal representation matters!”) and the terrible nerve-gas scourge of the Perri Nemiroff / Maria Menudos Noovies brand (“keep smiling!…keep hustling popcorn!”) and the soul-numbing narcotic of those utterly grotesque Nicole Kidman “big lie” AMC spots….I for one am proud to be a proverbial die-hard Japanese soldier in this regard.