Post-Sincerity Post
The snide superiority complex of movie audiences
Blow-Out (1981) is one of my favorite movies of all time. John Travolta plays an ex-fed turned sound engineer for shitty B-movies that witnesses (hears and records) a murder that someone is trying to cover up. In his attempt to get to the bottom of the killing, he finds a much deeper plot. The finale is impeccably staged, and the juxtaposition of the rousing score and the American flag next to the utter devastation of Travolta is monumentally moving (I’m definitely not going to spoil it any further; for the love of god, go watch this masterpiece yesterday). I saw this for the first time a couple years ago after blind-buying it from a Criterion/ Barnes & Noble sale and didn’t stop thinking about it for a month straight. The tragedy of the last 15 minutes kept replaying over and over in my head. When I stumbled onto a local repertory screening the original 35mm print of Blow Out I nearly passed out. The theater was an incredible little 2 screen joint that had a library of film books, niche (and not-so-niche) posters from the golden age of Hollywood, and the classic red velour seating that has since gone out of fashion. The expected letterboxd crowd started trickling in, in quiet reverence for the silver screen, but then the film started. The audience (about 25 people crammed into the small screening room) started laughing at the sincerity of the flick. At first it was small chuckles at the neon-red blood, then full belly laughs, culminating in hysterics at the ending that nearly brought me to tears mere weeks earlier.
I left the theater confused. How could so many people reject an artist putting an earnest piece out into the world? Looking at reviews from the time and since it’s release, I couldn’t find a single reference to Blow Out being “Funny,” “Campy,” “Ironic,” or anything of the sort. There has been a shift in how we consume art. Everything has to have a knowing wink; a quippy comment; a signifier to the audience that they don’t need to take it too seriously, because they themselves don’t either.
The Minecraft Movie —and the response it received in theaters— shows a different facet of the same problem. From my exposure to the phenomenon, it appears as though less than a quarter of the ticket sales are going to people genuinely interested in the film and the rest are interested in going solely for the bit. You know the one. Chicken Jockey. The two most dreaded words in theaters. I’m no stick-in-the-mud, I like when people are interacting with the movie in front of them. Some of my favorite movie experiences are in theaters where people gasp, scream, laugh, etc.. The problem (for me) is the performative bullshit like throwing bags of popcorn and bringing a live chicken into a movie theater where —presumably— people have spent their hard earned money to go and enjoy a film with their family, date, what have you. Maybe it’s just me getting older and more cynical, but it holds zero interest for me. The people doing this aren’t doing it because they legitimately love that a zombie riding a chicken is on the screen (duhhh). They’re doing it so they can be part of a meme going around on the internet. It’s planking with more collateral damage.
I haven’t been the only one to notice this trend of the lack of vulnerability in modern Hollywood films; what I’m getting at runs deeper. The majority of movies that top the box office since the turn of the century have been sequels, major IP franchises, or Barbie (the only “original” movie to top the box office since 1998’s Titanic was 2009’s Avatar, which has since spawned sequels and an entire theme park). Since 2012, NINE of the thirteen highest grossing movies of each year have been Disney products; this is excluding 2025, which is currently being led by, you guessed it, a Disney sequel. Other studios are incentivized to keep in line with the prevailing money-maker, leading the entire industry towards homogenization. When every movie has to make $100 million or be considered a failure, you have to cater to the largest possible movie-going demographic; it has to be easily digestible, not too heavy, nothing too risqué. A light chuckle and some name recognition is what they’re aiming at.
Audiences have been trained to like the winking comedy and to not fully engage with a film for nearly two decades, and it’s only getting worse. Netflix is apparently dumbing down their content even more to promote second screening (using a phone or computer while watching a show/movie) to keep you plugged in. That is unfathomably bleak. The goal is to have as many eyeballs on the product as possible so they can drive the stock price through the roof. cool.
In a meandering sort of way, that brings me back to my original point. Studios are training us to like the sort of slop that is easily digestible and pass through our bodies like cheap Taco Bell, and movies and audiences are suffering. Even repertory theaters, typically filled with pretentious cinephiles, haven’t been immune to this. Have we passed the point of no return? I think, like record players, vinyl, and LP’s, the center of the culture will shift away from film (further than it has already), prices to enjoy these things will increase, and the community of cinema-enjoyers will shrink to a militant faction devoted to the cause.