Angry Rant from an Angry Man by Jason Scully
Hello and welcome to an angry rant from an angry man. You’re certainly in for a treat on this day of days because you can now be battered brutally over the head by none other than me, the most petty person you will ever have the honour of meeting and I will argue to the death with anyone who disagrees to even the slightest degree with that sentiment.
Now that I’ve managed to turn even my intro into a rant in its own right we can now start raving about today’s topic. Alrighty, I wanted to talk about video games, then movies, then books, then music and then TV but I realised that they all share the same problem that makes them all equally crap in my eyes and so it begins, the quest for me, through my pointless rantings, to educate you on the one thing that is ruining not one but several multi-billion dollar industries.
Now the non-super high IQ Rick and Morty fans in the audience may be wondering, “How can you claim to know what’s ruining literally all of modern-day media?” Surely if you do then the people in Hollywood who stand to make millions off such a revelation would act on it, and you’re a kid on the internet typing an essay at midnight because you drink too much coffee. And you’re right, but what if I told you that there lies both parts of the same problem that has been killing media since the 1980’s. (Ya see what I did there? Yes I know it wasn’t very funny, why don’t you try writing this?)
Part 1: You’re part of The Problem.,
Most people don’t have a firm grasp on what makes modern art in media “good,”yet like those who do (me), we’ve all left a cinema theatre at some point thinking something along the lines of “Dear God, that was shite, I now possess a strong desire to end my own life”. Clearly something is wrong here. A mass of uncultured and uneducated people wander into a movie and all manage to agree that it was terrible, yet few of them are able to tell you why. Inversely, many people can’t tell you why a good movie was good, hence the Star Wars prequels. You might recall during my awful opening that I said I was going to dedicate (waste) my time talking about why this is in video games or in movies or in any other form of media, but what would be the point? Even if I could explain the topic of “show don’t tell” in movies, the art of using an interactive plain in video games or the build up that a more gradual medium like books offer it wouldn’t make a difference. And that’s because of two things, the first of which is; you don’t know what you want. Like it or not, You. Just. Don’t. You only know what you like and if I told you these things I would only give you something that you liked and worsen the problem.
Here, let me prove it.In 1966 “The Good The Bad and The Ugly” was released to massive success. What was the last Western movie you saw? When was the last Western released movie released.? Do you know? I’m guessing not, because the Western genre is dead. Following its release a massive surge of Westerns were massed produced to meet demand. There was no passion, no drive to create and no story so good that it needed to be told. The Good The Bad and The Ugly was a great success because it was a great story that people hadn’t seen but loved nevertheless. They didn’t know what they wanted but they did know what they liked. Yet a flood of similar movies that was mostly garbage followed because a bunch of corporate stooges knew what people wanted. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and the making of these movies made it so that nobody wanted Westerns anymore. Why, I hear you ask? Well it’s quite simple
Part 2: It’s a Rich Man’s World.
The title of this section is from an ABBA song. When was the last time you heard it? I’m guessing not for a while because either you didn’t like it, it was no longer mainstream to play it on radio or you heard it too many times to listen to it ever again. This is an example of the major problem that current media face.
Money, Money, Money. It’s all that people want. Money is good in this industry to an extent, monetary reward is a good motivator. But the problem with money is everyone wants a slice of the pie and everyone wants to have the biggest slice. When these are the conditions under which a market or industry operate people start getting greedy. They start looking to cheat or gain the system. Why bother pumping resources into making something that has a risk of failing when you can just invest a very mild amount in and a get a safe return. Because remember Part One, you know what you like and you will pay for what you like. If people don’t know what they want then looking for it is a high risk high reward venture that few people are willing to invest in
The best example for this is Illumination Entertainment, the company responsible for inflicting the Despicable Me movies on society. I could go on and on about how the deliberately low budget led to some of the laziest animation I’ve ever seen or how the plot was cookie cutter forgettable or any number of reasons that those movies are an insult but I’m not going to. They made millions of those terrible movies and slapped minions onto every available product imaginable to boost funds; they have me beat and they’ve beat every other producer in Hollywood too. Wait, you don’t believe me, you think there’s a shred of passion or commitment in Hollywood? Well, remember the minions in the minions in Despicable Me whose job it was to act as an antithesis to the main character? They got their own movie that grossed 336 Billion dollars at the box office. Inglourious Basterds, one of the greatest movies of all time, made 120 Billion in the box office. Yeah. I know.
This abomination that is the above example really shows that art in modern culture has been dumbed down to the point where art is produced along fixed guidelines to meet an already existing demand. It’s not like these giant multi-billion dollar corporations have enough money to try something new and tap into a sleeper market. No, that would risk a total collapse of the local pool cleaning industry if they lost money for a change, think of all the jobs that might be lost. Money has become the only thing that most people in modern art aspire to. One minute Eminem raps about being poor, the next he owns a private tennis court next to his mansion and today he still raps about how hard his life is. Art in all media now only needs to be good enough to keep up with the latest trend. “New” is trending but never before seen is “Risky” and risks must be avoided, even at the cost of what could have been.
Conclusion
Alright, so given what you’ve learned in Parts One and Two and the examples I gave, what conclusion can we draw? That an ignorant public and a greedy echelon of industry have led to the death of diversity in art forms which evolve and are improved upon purely based on diversity. Diversity and evolution and vastness is what separates art from all other things in society and makes art what it IS. It is no longer good enough to try something new or build on top of what has already been done. Art only needs to diversify until it reaches a form which is profitable. Once it reaches this point it is milked to death by mainstream media and is dead in the eyes of the public until something else takes its place, thus starting the cycle anew. This process by its nature inhibits growth and diversity in what was once a great industry. But it can be again, if we learn to break the cycle. No one is going to go this for us; there’s too much benefit for the minority for them to stand up for the silent minority
How that is done may very well be up to you.