A sad commentary on American arts and entertainment

My grandkids, or the younger ones anyway, were been bugging their parents to see Dumbo, the latest Hollywood remake. My recent illness gave me an excuse not to be part of a family outing, but when they descended on the ole homestead and mentioned that the movie was playing in nearby Fort Mudge, and they thought I needed to get out of the house, I was trapped. Trapped like a rat. So I went. Great modern animation and special effects, kind of a lame, PC (pro animal rights and "inclusivity") version of the original story. Harmless, gormless entertainment.

When I see movies like this and the remake of Alice in Wonderland, well done though they may be, I can't help but wonder if no-one in Hollywood has any new ideas. It seems today that all we see is remakes in movies and remakes on TV. And some of them, extensions of franchises that are well past their best-before dates (Hello Star Wars!) are truly dreadful. Where's the creative talent, the imagination that begat the original movies, which were themselves adapted from stories that some truly talented writers devised a hundred years ago?

This is hardly a new thought. Here's what Brooks Atkinson, one of America's leading drama critics, had to say, nearly seven decades ago.

Something elusive and intangible seems to have drained the vitality out of the theatre and perhaps out of American arts as well. No one knows the reason exactly. But could it be that the spiritual climate in which we are now living smothers art that is really creative, and that the emphasis on public expression of all kinds is toward meekness and conformity? [My emphasis. Walt]

People are playing safe. They hesitate to say what they think. The intellectual and artistic life of the country has been flattened out. ...ignorant heresy-hunting and...bigoted character-assassination are succeeding. The hoodlums are in control here as well as in Russia, and the theatre begins to look as insipid in the one place as in the other.... We cannot expect to have vital art in our theatre if we emulate totalitarian countries and yield the control of cultural life to the Yahoos and hoodlums.

Quoted in William Shirer's Midcentury Journey, 1955. That was well before Mr Atkinson or Mr Shirer had heard the expression "political correctness", but political correctness is what is described in the emphasized words. Political correctness is killing not only political thought but also our collective imagination. We have become a society where original, non-conforming thought is the greatest of all sins. Sad.

Postscript: I can't get over how, the older Danny DeVito gets, the more he looks like me!

Dinner and a show

Last night Mrs. Walt and I hied ourselves down the road to the new Cineplex in Fort Dreary to see Saint Vincent, the latest Bill Murray movie. More about that in a few minutes. First, an observation about our changing society. We are evolving, and not, as Mark Steyn details in After America, for the better.

Walt remembers going to the cinema -- or "theater"/"theatre" if you prefer, although to me that term refers only to live or "legitimate" theatre -- for the Saturday matinee. 25 cents (made of silver back then) got you into the show, with enough left over for a small box of popcorn, minuscule by today's standards. The popcorn came with salt, but no "golden topping".

Nowadays the popcorn counter in the lobby has lengthened to almost a block -- well, let's say 20 or 30 feet -- and offers an amazing array of junk food and fizzy drinks. Popcorn comes in a number of sizes, except for small or medium. You can get XL, XXL, XXXL and American. The bucket that I saw a fat lady buying reminded me of the feedbag that the milkman used to hang on old Dobbin's head about halfway through his round.

Speaking of feedbags, I observed that in addition to the long, long popcorn counter, the cinema now boasts a mini food court! Yep, there's a snack counter where you can get 1000s of calories in a clamshell -- burgers, fries, and assorted other starches and carbs.

There were a few chairs and tables, but no-one sat at them. Instead, they took their supersized portions of lard (referring to the alleged food, not their butts) into the auditorium, the better to gorge themselves while watching whatever was on the silver screen. The young lady sitting beside me ate her way through the entire feature singlehandedly. By that I mean she dug whatever she was eating out of the container with one hand, while texting (surprised?) with the other.

Time was, when a young swain invited his girl out for dinner and a show, it was understood to be dinner first, then the show. Now, it seems, we can do both at the same time. Modern life is just one big bouffe, with a bit of entertainment on the side. And here (pictured) is the result.