Glitter and Shine

My first name is Kill and my last name is Joy. Here’s why.

I fret about popular entertainment. I worry that comic-book-style heroes are replacing real-life heroes. I wonder if Hollywood’s imagination drowns out the Abraham Lincolns of the world, and the Martin Luther King, jr’s. As that happens, we as a society, and we as individuals, gorge on mental Twinkies, and we have feeble moral muscles to show for it.

It’s not that I’m particularly bigoted about Hollywood writers. But I’m realistic. The blockbusters that millions flock to see are profit-vehicles. The writers entertain with spectacle, because that’s how you fill seats in the cinema.

It’s laughable to think that most Hollywood writers write movie scripts with pastoral concern about making America better, making its people nobler. Maybe I’m cynical, but it seems that these writers are judged by how much money they make for the studio. And how many studio heads take a long view of America’s future? (My guess: it’s the same number as the number of varieties of fruit can that you buy at a cinema.)

So? Here’s a metaphor. I knew a young prosecutor. He was married to a medical intern, and he had a young son whom he loved. His downfall was consorting with a prostitute. She hooked him by hooking him on crack. One day, he got high with her, and they got into his car, and he drove onto a freeway using the off-ramp. A cop spotted him. Goodbye marriage, goodbye career, goodbye dignity.

Some people compare Hollywood writers to prostitutes. That’s a very loose metaphor, and it over-generalizes. I apologize to the sincere craftsmen among them.

But candidly, their motive is often the same as that category of professional, and so is their pastoral concern for their customers, even if they differ in legality and in method. (By the way, I think the same way about lawyers who talk clients into funding merit-less lawsuits or merit-less defenses to lawsuits. Or about pastors who incubate their own greed with the tithes of their congregation. Perhaps the point is not that Hollywood writers are worse than others; it's just that they're not better.)

To be fair to Hollywood, I know or know of Hollywood craftmen who don’t fit the predatory mold. The writer/director of the indie film Radio Free Albemuth, John Simon, truly believes in the value of the legacy of Phillip K Dick, who wrote the story that the movie is based on. And whatever his merits or demerits, I have heard that Mel Gibson had no idea that The Passion of the Christ would be the blockbuster that it was. He made the movie with his own money, because he believed in its importance.

I don’t know if it’s coincidence, but both of the examples I just gave are movies that have a basis in reality. The Passion of the Christ – of course. But also Radio Free Albemuth. Because the book and movie are a fictionalized account of elements of Phillip K Dick’s life.

But back to the crap. The waste of resources on spectacle is tragic, because a movie can be much more than that. A fine work of fiction can lift up the character. But just like I prefer an analysis of the Bible by a great man, rather than by a great scholar, so great fiction requires a deep writer. That’s why people like Harold Bloom urge the study of the classics over more contemporary fare that will soon fade from memory.

Classic cinema, from when movies were more vitamin and less sugar, often has greater merit than today’s blockbuster: like Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. The history might be doubtful, but the message is great. It’s a cerebral movie.

It has great lines about the rule of law. At one point, Thomas Moore’s son-in-law said, "I’d cut down every law in England to [get at the Devil]." Thomas Moore replied,


Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?

This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down (and you're just the man to do it!), do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?

Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!Powerful stuff.

Probably it’s unrealistic to keep our children out of the cinema. But maybe we can make a bargain with them: they can earn a ticket to X-Men. Like this: choose something worthwhile, and make it the price of going to the cinema. Have them read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or his Second Inaugural Address and talk about it with you before going to a movie. Or the Sermon on the Mount. Or Martin Luther King, jr's Letter from Birmingham Jail. Anything that gives the child a grounding in what is good and real, to counter the tsunami of glitter and shine of the Hollywood blockbuster that he or she craves.

Maybe I’m a crank. Maybe this is an eat-your-moral-vegetables-before-dessert essay. So be it. I dread a generation of children that gets their shallow heroes from today’s Hollywood.

Here is a link to the fine article that inspired this essay: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/09/opinion/09coates.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=x-men&st=cse