Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: January 07, 2018 09:47PM
Badassadam1 Wrote:
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> It seemed like movies were better quality before
> the year 2000.
"Having an agenda" and "[better] quality" are two entirely different things.
"Moving pictures" began in 1895, with one-minute long films of horses running, etc. (No stories, just films of film technique applied to moving points of focus.) This chapter of film history segued into "plot" films in about 1906.
Which means, from 1895 through [about] 1905, films did not have "agendas," because they did not have stories/plots.
Beginning with the earliest plot-based motion pictures, EVERY film had a "political" agenda, expressed through plot, dialogue, casting, direction, costuming, makeup, hair design...and, increasingly, music...either played by a live pianist sitting in the theatre who played music in sync with the action onscreen, or (later, after "sound came in") on the soundtracks. All stories were told from the viewpoint of a relatively well-to-do (economically, socially, and educationally) viewer---even though ostensibly "told" from the viewpoint (as an example) of a black slave in the Old South (because the actual viewpoint was of a white person IMAGINING what an either an "ideal," or a "villainous," black person or Native American or Hispanic would feel/think/speak, but through the prism of accepted WHITE perception.
Commercial films were then, and are now, the expression of white male privilege (even when told from the viewpoint of a female). It takes a great deal of money to make a film, and that money comes (almost entirely) from white male privilege.
Whether the films are adventure tales, or mysteries, or comedies, or Westerns, or are intended for largely juvenile audiences, the money to produce them comes from white male privilege, and this is true to this moment in time. (Beginning in 1910, there WAS a parallel film industry which made "black" films for "black" audiences, and those films were mostly made with non-white money, but white people almost never saw any of them, so effectively, they don't "count" for this discussion. None of them were seen by white audiences, none of them were reviewed in "white" publications, and none of them "qualified" for newsworthy awards except those few awards specifically restricted to black filmgoers who attended showings in racially-segregated venues.)
The products of the various Disney properties have always been acknowledged as being very narrowly agenda-drawn. When Walt Disney was alive, he was the agenda-drawer...after he died and others succeeded to Disney executive upper levels, this Disney "tradition" continued, uninterrupted...and this is true to this moment, as I am typing this.
Westerns, war-based films, and "warm family stories" are virtually always agenda-driven (often by what they do NOT show, or treat as "invisible").
I agree that films have changed in the last decades, but this change has been prompted by (most importantly) the economic necessity of the foreign audience income streams from those films. This means that the emphasis is usually on special effects and action (because the language and cultural translation problems are vastly reduced in films which are heavily action- and special effects-oriented). American nuance does not translate well into non-English languages and non-American cultures. In today's entertainment industry, the American boxoffice receipts are of secondary importance---really nice when they work out well, but not-so-important if the film bombs here, but is a hit everywhere else on the planet.
I think what you are mostly objecting to is the economic necessity of appealing to the most important foreign markets (Asia, for example). This global economic change HAS changed the way films are plotted, cast, and produced...and not for the better, in my own humble opinion. [*]
[*] I have been running Charlie Chan films one-right-after-another as I go through endless numbers of files, discarding everything I no longer want or need...and Charlie Chan, in just about every Chan film ever made, always mentions his own "humble opinion" at some point in the script. :)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/07/2018 11:10PM by Tevai.