“Art as expression not as market campaigns”
(“Natural Science” off the Rush album ‘Permanent Waves’)
The lowest common denominator, a number that cannot be divided any further down, the least part of a vulgar fraction.
I am not talking about mathematics that would be boring, I am talking about everything in what we call our society these days; music, television, cinema, the media, anything we read, watch or use as a form of information or entertainment.
The most popular newspapers in this country are the ones known as tabloids, in the Chambers English Dictionary tabloid is referred to as “rather informal or sensationalistic in style and with many photographs; anything in a concentrated form, a summary.” Tabloid is actually a trademark name for a medicine in tablet form.
Easy to swallow in other words, no thinking time necessary. The phrase that sticks out for me is “with many photographs” that says it all for me, its supposed to be a newspaper something that informs you of the news of the day, not an artificially enhanced woman who doesn’t mind showing the world what she’s got under her T-shirt. (Don’t get me wrong, they are very beautiful women for the most part and they do have the desired effect) but come on, there is a time and a place surely.
Moreover, can we have some news before we get to the tits and I don’t mean the politicians! And I mean news as well not something you’ve made up just to sell the paper, I understand you’ve got to make a living and to do that you’ve make the damn thing sell and in the same way I don’t blame the women who appear on page 3 for doing what they do, we’ve all got to earn a crust and they are paid handsomely I’m sure but I’m saying is I suppose is for a little dignity, a little integrity to raise it’s head, say hello, leave it’s little stamp on something and then let us make an opinion of our own, let us think.
When did thinking become something to be avoided?
With the invention of the television probably, we didn’t have to use our imaginations anymore as we did when all we had was the radio to listen to, we were told stories and we filled in the gaps, the scenery, the faces, the personalities in our minds just as we had always done with books.
Aaaahhh books, whatever happened to them? You could lose yourself for hours on end that became days on end as you immersed yourself in a story either fact or fiction, your mind racing, your synapses firing as the words on the page became images in your mind, you would “fall through the hole in the page”, “lose yourself in a good book.” and so on. The best books, the ones I’ve enjoyed throughout my life are the ones that leave me wondering if I actually read it or saw it. The words leapt off the page so successfully that the images imprinted themselves on my consciousness like a permanent afterimage, as if I had seen the movie of the book, sometimes (and I love it when this happens) I don’t even remember reading the words or turning the pages, it just sort of flowed into my brain like a really healthy form of alcohol.
When I was in my late teens and early twenties I read everything that Stephen King wrote, from ’The Shining’ to ’The Stand’ to ’Needful Things’ and on to ’Rose Madder’ and ’The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon’ it didn’t matter what the story was about, and sometimes if you thought about it for long enough some of the stories were in fact quite silly, ’Christine’ and ’The Dark Half’ for example but it didn’t matter because he is a master of his art, I lost myself in every single page, he could weave a story around any subject he bloody well felt like and it was always gripping.
But of course this inevitably led to “The film based on the novel by…” and it always baffled me how a film director could it get it so wrong! The books themselves produced their own strong and vivid images; all the filmmaker had to do was transfer that to the screen. Of course I probably should have known that it was down to the movie companies themselves, getting the film out there as quickly as possible to make as much profit as possible whilst the novel itself was still in the consciousness of the populace conveniently forgetting that a movie like a painting or a piece of music is in fact an art form, something to be revisited, to be admired or to be a subject of constructive criticism (I stress the word constructive), not a complete howler of a film that completely stank the place out and seriously diluted the original novel from which it came and the artist who wrote it in the first place! (‘Needful Things‘, ‘Pet Sematary‘, ‘The Dead Zone’ and ‘Firestarter’ spring to mind). True there have been some absolute corkers of late based on Stephen King stories, the obvious being ‘The Shawshank Redemption’ as well as ‘The Green Mile’, ‘Misery’ and ‘Stand By Me’.
All of which in case you hadn’t noticed were made by directors who actually gave a damn about their art, Frank Darabont and Rob Reiner and actors who can actually act, Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, Kathy Bates, James Caan, Tim Robbins and Richard Dreyfuss to name but a few.
Instead of using any old actor who needs a job e.g. Marg Helgenberger and Jimmy Smits in ’The Tommyknockers’, and whoever those nobodies were in ’Christine.’ They were never really going to trouble the Oscars were they?
All it takes is a little time and care and using the best resources you can get your hands on. It’s not rocket science.
A similar thing happened to my own personal favourite ’movie franchise’ the James Bond films. If ever there was a time to remember the adage “Less Is More” then it was with the Bond movies.
It was all going so very well at the start what with “Dr No”, “From Russia With Love” and of course “Goldfinger” but why, oh why did they have to just pile on the gadgets and girls and guns and ridiculous villains who had numerous opportunities to kill Bond but instead decided to tell him of their dastardly plans for world domination giving James ample time to scheme his way out of a particularly sticky situation, (I mean you Mr Blofeld!).
Bond, I mean the literary Bond invented by Ian Fleming, was a spy, an intelligence officer who is supposed to be inconspicuous, stealthy and deadly. Not a stand-out-in-a-crowd, womanising cad who didn’t mind telling everyone and anyone who asked, his BLOODY NAME! You’re supposed to be a spy, not a used car salesman.
Of course, all that didn’t matter as long as it put bums on seats. Around the time of “You Only Live Twice” though it was completely put of hand, I mean seriously, Sean Connery looked about as Japanese as Andrew Flintoff!
And it got worse unbelievably, George Lazenby for god’s sake and don’t get me started on Roger Moore.
“Live and Let Die” was great, “The Man with the Golden Gun” was OK but after that it was liking watching some creepy old uncle in a safari suit groping his way around the world with any woman he could lay his hands on just as long as she was less than half his age, which wasn’t difficult as most of the people alive in the seventies were half Roger Moore’s age.
But look what happened when the filmmakers removed the gimmicks and got back to what the whole thing was supposed to be about - a man alone in his work doing his best to stop someone else doing bad things to innocent people whilst fighting his own personal demons, just as Fleming had envisioned?
You get the phenomenal Daniel Craig and two (so far) awesome movies. Why did it take until 2006 for the owners of the James Bond franchise to work that out? Why did we have to have invisible cars, megalomaniac insomniacs, satellites that can destroy continents and wars in space with laser guns that haven’t been invented thirty years after the film was made?
“Casino Royale” and “A Quantum Of Solace” did just as good business, if not better than almost any other Bond movie without the far-fetched nonsense of “Moonraker” and “Die Another Day” so why didn’t they think of that before?
MONEY! And bugger what anyone thought of the film as long as it got made!
As long as some big-breasted beauty fell for James and he got to use lots of gadgets and guns, it didn’t matter that Christopher Walken was abysmal in “A View To A Kill” (everyone was abysmal in “A View To A Kill”) or Roger Moore was caught snow-boarding down a glacier with The Beach Boys playing in the background as long as it made MONEY!
There are thousands of movies made like that, no thought goes into it as long as it makes a quick $ or £ or €. As long as their wallets are full they don’t care despite the fact their souls are empty, bottomless pits of nothingness.
Who ever thought that ANY “Police Academy” sequel was worth doing, never mind six of the damned things, a scene for scene remake of “Psycho” in colour for crying out loud! Alfred Hitchcock could have made it in colour if he’d wanted to but he thought (he knew) that it would create a more atmospheric picture in black & white. I’m sure if anyone knew anything about movie-making it was Mr Hitchcock (it was cheaper to do it in b&w as well but there you go!).
I could go on and on but I think you get the point so I’ll leave it there, next time I think I’ll have a go at the music business, basically why the music business is being destroyed by the music business itself.
