Sorry guys for the grammar mistake of "naval" instead of "navel." I have never been great with spelling and grammar and I'm not sure I ever will be. Thanks to A for pointing it out.
I was never much of a movie fanatic, but I did once like movies more than I do. They seemed to fall into two categories: (1) The world the way we wish it would be, and (2) the world as it is. The first helped us to escape our troubles for a while, and the second were cathartic and helped us find characters to relate to, to help us deal with an imperfect world or at least find the beauty beyond the ugliness, or at the very least, remind us we are not alone in our struggles.
Anymore, any movies that might fall into the first category have to have their little public reminders (like the lesbian kiss), because, as you point out, they're not really about the world as we, the audience, want it, but instead how Hollywood envisions we *should* want it. And I don't think most of us mind a "lesbian kiss," but if the movie around it is horrid and trite and just a rehash, and we're called homophobic because we didn't want to pay good money to see another rehashed movie (but this time with two chicks kissing), that gets annoying.
And as for the second, the world as it is, I'm as much about other people's experiences as anyone, but you need a relatable, universal experience, not this preachy, segmented experience that basically says, "Oh, yeah, you think you've got it bad. At least you're not X. Stop complaining!" Honestly, it's like going to a fire and brimstone church all the time, meaning it's meant to put you in your place and make you say thank you for the pleasure of being put in your place.
And Hollywood is not alone in "checking boxes." We have a wildly unqualified vice president because she checked boxes. We have a supreme court nominee whose answer to the question "What is a woman?" was not "As a legal matter, that is a difficult discussion and not entirely clear" (which is how I would have answered it) but "I'm not a biologist." Again, she checked a box for skin color, not actual critical thinking skills. And don't get me started on our joke of a transportation secretary. All checking boxes. It's fine to celebrate firsts, but make sure they are actual firsts and not just enforced, superficial firsts.
Sure there were good movies for us 7 yr old's in 1976... Bad News Bears, Looney Toones, The Good The Bad and the Ugly... 1977 gave us Star Wars, Rocky, and Jaws. Good times. I grew up a saner person trying to figure out the plot lines and how they related to good versus evil, etc. and it is the way it should be, making your own choices rather than the narrative of someone else.
You are correct, we DID used to watch the award shows... until the end of our nations first black president's 2nd term. Then we turned off the TV. A couple years later we turned off sports and cut the cable cord watching athletes kneel during our traditions.
I read AwardsDaily, including comments; and subscribe and read this Substack also. I am glad and appreciate that you wrote and published an essay about film here. My career was in in big Pharma and the trends that you highlight around film awards (eg virtue signaling over art) is similar to what I saw there where diversity (read non-white, non-straight, non-male), equity (read subjectivity in all performance measures), and inclusion (read exclude straight white makes) ruled promotions and hiring. Science and healthcare suffers when resources and investments are sub-optimal. Writing and leadership like yours is invaluable because you have an excellent talent for articulating complex and sensitive arguments. That you were not born in to great wealth and raised as a connected elite gives you street creds. I saw many of the AwardsDaily comments can not forgive you for leaving the faith. I share your essays with friends and family and we love them. Thank-you Sasha Stone.
Remember, Remember, the end of November, When Musk, Matt and Murray, put an End to the Error, Woke is dead, we're alive, we will wake up and thrive, rediscover the self, Sasha leads us to health, and evolve, become sane, not just human; Humane. -mrs
After 80 years on this planet I can honestly say that the three movies that have meant the most to me are: It's A Wonderful Life, Ben Hur and The Sound of Music. IOW, nothing that has been produced in the last 50 years has interested me enough to drop one $ at the Box Office. And, while I may be off the charts in my distaste for Hollywood's tribalism, I believe it is likely the average ex movie goer is more aligned with my thinking, than that of say, ... Alec Baldwin?!
Here is some proof of how my distaste for Hollywood worked in my life. In my mid twenties, I had the opportunity to go to Hollywood to make movies. Fresh from the USC Cinema School and a BA in Cinematography, I eschewed a lucrative assignment to a Hollywood film studio in favor of an opportunity to become an Air Force Fighter Pilot. And thereafter, a certain one year tour of duty into the beast of a war in Viet Nam. Why, you might ask? Because I did not want to spend 4 or more years rubbing elbows with such as ... Alec Baldwin!
Today, all these 50+years later I have come to the understanding that the single greatest thing about this nation is the freedom and ability we enjoy to pursue our individual dreams! Individual responsibility and self initiative as practiced by every successful US citizen in whatever walk they choose, trumps the collective mindset that so stultifies the woke tribal plantation dwellers and the left leaning zombies ruining our culture today! This was true of Hollywood even back then, but it is much more true today! Please, LMK, ... if you disagree?! Roger Rule
It's been crazy to see Hollywood implode, The strangest part is that normally shareholders would step in and say: Um, you're fired, now bring me someone who can make Top Gun, ET, Animal House and Ordinary People.
But instead, they become more racist and misandrist
Hey Sasha, I saw the doc Z Channel today. I'm guessing you spent some time there.
Regrettably, this is happening in other industries that are much more vital than movies and awards. Recently the School of Engineering at Berkeley published its hiring guidelines saying that excellence in diversity and inclusion are as important as excellence in research.
Bad movies or bad microelectronics? No need to choose: with woke you'll get both.
It has become quite a mission to find a good movie to watch. I don't go to the theaters any more. I boycot all woke actors, so, try out movies downloaded on TV but delete most after watching them for 10 mins or so.
I've checked out on modern Hollywood. Traded the Obama channel for TMC. Being "entertained" does not include all virtue signaling all the time. Since the evil madness has boldly and proudly exited the closet, I have gone retro. Reading books, listening to cd's, more fresh air, exercise and projects.
I used to love movies. (I had a brief career as a script doctor, fixing truly awful dialogue.) I went to the movies every chance I got, even when I was broke. The small town I grew up in had a theater with 2 screens, and movies stayed as long as they made money. Raiders of the Lost Ark stayed a year - I think I saw it 14 times in high school. Now, I pretty much don't watch any movie made after 2015, and when Amazon gives me the "Oscar winning movie" list to peruse, I don't even look at it because I know I will hate pretty much all of them. (Somehow they only "suggest" the new woke ones.) We have entire family memories around LOTR and Harry Potter movies, and my husband and I quote Jaws embarrassingly frequently. Now? I haven't been to a theater in years. (The only good thing now is the popcorn, and Target sells it cheaper!) I don't need to be preached at and guilted while shelling over way too much money for a crappy movie that should have been a movie of the week on a network (maybe) and not ever put on the big screen. I hope they do go broke - they deserve it.
When I was a kid, we used to go to the movies every Saturday...35 cents at the heritage movie house showing old horror movies (The Green Slime, House of Dark Shadows, etc) or 75 cents at the new theater showing first run movies. As I grew older movies were still a way of life all the way through high school. By college (the early 80s) we went less and less. And once I got out of college and got a career, movies didn't seem like a good use of time anymore. Drinking, clubbing, and carousing for strange occupied all of my non-working hours. I might have gone to a dozen mainstream movies throughout the 80s.
I look at the quality of movies we watched every Saturday and they truly were comically bad. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc. I think the first serious movie I saw was in the 6th grade, "Nicholas and Alexandra"... my buddies hated it, I loved it. It made a Russophile of me. It wasn't until College that I started seeing truly good movies at the local arthouse.
I don't think Hollywood has imploded or fallen or is cranking out meaningless drivel. I do worry about this country's obsession with heroes though. Where the superheroes that are larger than life, or the "warriors" we're told to worship for their service, I think finding heroes, needing heroes has become a sad and dangerous obsession. People - young and old - need to stop looking for heroes and role models outside themselves and start valuing themselves for themselves. And when they can do this, virtue signaling and cultural engineering will lose their power over us and be relegated to the dustbin of bad memories.
We don't need another hero.
JFK once said that we have the power to make this the greatest generation the world has ever known - or to make it the last. And although he was speaking about the power of the atom, the power of art is just as profound; just as promising and just as perilous. It would be wonderful to see Hollywood rise to the challenge of creating a generation of people that can abandon identity sociopolitics, and find strength, purpose, and most of all, gratification in themselves for themselves. This is, after all, the dawning of The Age of Aquarius.
I saw 3 movies in the theater last year...the 50th anniversary re-release of both "Jaws" and "The Godfather" and also "Top Gun: Maverick".
I'm not one of those people who can't stomach the movie theater. I'm looking for opportunities to go but virtually all of the new films at my local multi megaplex strike me as eminently forgettable. So most I've seen in the theater the last few years are either re-releases or specialty films. That's said, I watched 276 films last year according to my Letterboxd account and there were many I enjoyed immensely.
Sorry guys for the grammar mistake of "naval" instead of "navel." I have never been great with spelling and grammar and I'm not sure I ever will be. Thanks to A for pointing it out.
I was never much of a movie fanatic, but I did once like movies more than I do. They seemed to fall into two categories: (1) The world the way we wish it would be, and (2) the world as it is. The first helped us to escape our troubles for a while, and the second were cathartic and helped us find characters to relate to, to help us deal with an imperfect world or at least find the beauty beyond the ugliness, or at the very least, remind us we are not alone in our struggles.
Anymore, any movies that might fall into the first category have to have their little public reminders (like the lesbian kiss), because, as you point out, they're not really about the world as we, the audience, want it, but instead how Hollywood envisions we *should* want it. And I don't think most of us mind a "lesbian kiss," but if the movie around it is horrid and trite and just a rehash, and we're called homophobic because we didn't want to pay good money to see another rehashed movie (but this time with two chicks kissing), that gets annoying.
And as for the second, the world as it is, I'm as much about other people's experiences as anyone, but you need a relatable, universal experience, not this preachy, segmented experience that basically says, "Oh, yeah, you think you've got it bad. At least you're not X. Stop complaining!" Honestly, it's like going to a fire and brimstone church all the time, meaning it's meant to put you in your place and make you say thank you for the pleasure of being put in your place.
And Hollywood is not alone in "checking boxes." We have a wildly unqualified vice president because she checked boxes. We have a supreme court nominee whose answer to the question "What is a woman?" was not "As a legal matter, that is a difficult discussion and not entirely clear" (which is how I would have answered it) but "I'm not a biologist." Again, she checked a box for skin color, not actual critical thinking skills. And don't get me started on our joke of a transportation secretary. All checking boxes. It's fine to celebrate firsts, but make sure they are actual firsts and not just enforced, superficial firsts.
Sure there were good movies for us 7 yr old's in 1976... Bad News Bears, Looney Toones, The Good The Bad and the Ugly... 1977 gave us Star Wars, Rocky, and Jaws. Good times. I grew up a saner person trying to figure out the plot lines and how they related to good versus evil, etc. and it is the way it should be, making your own choices rather than the narrative of someone else.
You are correct, we DID used to watch the award shows... until the end of our nations first black president's 2nd term. Then we turned off the TV. A couple years later we turned off sports and cut the cable cord watching athletes kneel during our traditions.
Great piece.
I read AwardsDaily, including comments; and subscribe and read this Substack also. I am glad and appreciate that you wrote and published an essay about film here. My career was in in big Pharma and the trends that you highlight around film awards (eg virtue signaling over art) is similar to what I saw there where diversity (read non-white, non-straight, non-male), equity (read subjectivity in all performance measures), and inclusion (read exclude straight white makes) ruled promotions and hiring. Science and healthcare suffers when resources and investments are sub-optimal. Writing and leadership like yours is invaluable because you have an excellent talent for articulating complex and sensitive arguments. That you were not born in to great wealth and raised as a connected elite gives you street creds. I saw many of the AwardsDaily comments can not forgive you for leaving the faith. I share your essays with friends and family and we love them. Thank-you Sasha Stone.
Remember, Remember, the end of November, When Musk, Matt and Murray, put an End to the Error, Woke is dead, we're alive, we will wake up and thrive, rediscover the self, Sasha leads us to health, and evolve, become sane, not just human; Humane. -mrs
Excellent article, Sasha. Thank you.
Also interesting is how Hollywood elites speak out forcefully for gun laws, yet continue to make films that glorify guns and violence.
I would recommend checking out Will Jordan's (The Critical Drinker's) YouTube channel. His why modern movies suck series is great.
Thank you Sasha for your excellent expose!
After 80 years on this planet I can honestly say that the three movies that have meant the most to me are: It's A Wonderful Life, Ben Hur and The Sound of Music. IOW, nothing that has been produced in the last 50 years has interested me enough to drop one $ at the Box Office. And, while I may be off the charts in my distaste for Hollywood's tribalism, I believe it is likely the average ex movie goer is more aligned with my thinking, than that of say, ... Alec Baldwin?!
Here is some proof of how my distaste for Hollywood worked in my life. In my mid twenties, I had the opportunity to go to Hollywood to make movies. Fresh from the USC Cinema School and a BA in Cinematography, I eschewed a lucrative assignment to a Hollywood film studio in favor of an opportunity to become an Air Force Fighter Pilot. And thereafter, a certain one year tour of duty into the beast of a war in Viet Nam. Why, you might ask? Because I did not want to spend 4 or more years rubbing elbows with such as ... Alec Baldwin!
Today, all these 50+years later I have come to the understanding that the single greatest thing about this nation is the freedom and ability we enjoy to pursue our individual dreams! Individual responsibility and self initiative as practiced by every successful US citizen in whatever walk they choose, trumps the collective mindset that so stultifies the woke tribal plantation dwellers and the left leaning zombies ruining our culture today! This was true of Hollywood even back then, but it is much more true today! Please, LMK, ... if you disagree?! Roger Rule
What a beautiful piece, thanks Sasha!
It's been crazy to see Hollywood implode, The strangest part is that normally shareholders would step in and say: Um, you're fired, now bring me someone who can make Top Gun, ET, Animal House and Ordinary People.
But instead, they become more racist and misandrist
Hey Sasha, I saw the doc Z Channel today. I'm guessing you spent some time there.
Great article!
Regrettably, this is happening in other industries that are much more vital than movies and awards. Recently the School of Engineering at Berkeley published its hiring guidelines saying that excellence in diversity and inclusion are as important as excellence in research.
Bad movies or bad microelectronics? No need to choose: with woke you'll get both.
It has become quite a mission to find a good movie to watch. I don't go to the theaters any more. I boycot all woke actors, so, try out movies downloaded on TV but delete most after watching them for 10 mins or so.
Awesome article Sasha!
I've checked out on modern Hollywood. Traded the Obama channel for TMC. Being "entertained" does not include all virtue signaling all the time. Since the evil madness has boldly and proudly exited the closet, I have gone retro. Reading books, listening to cd's, more fresh air, exercise and projects.
It was nice while it lasted.
I used to love movies. (I had a brief career as a script doctor, fixing truly awful dialogue.) I went to the movies every chance I got, even when I was broke. The small town I grew up in had a theater with 2 screens, and movies stayed as long as they made money. Raiders of the Lost Ark stayed a year - I think I saw it 14 times in high school. Now, I pretty much don't watch any movie made after 2015, and when Amazon gives me the "Oscar winning movie" list to peruse, I don't even look at it because I know I will hate pretty much all of them. (Somehow they only "suggest" the new woke ones.) We have entire family memories around LOTR and Harry Potter movies, and my husband and I quote Jaws embarrassingly frequently. Now? I haven't been to a theater in years. (The only good thing now is the popcorn, and Target sells it cheaper!) I don't need to be preached at and guilted while shelling over way too much money for a crappy movie that should have been a movie of the week on a network (maybe) and not ever put on the big screen. I hope they do go broke - they deserve it.
When I was a kid, we used to go to the movies every Saturday...35 cents at the heritage movie house showing old horror movies (The Green Slime, House of Dark Shadows, etc) or 75 cents at the new theater showing first run movies. As I grew older movies were still a way of life all the way through high school. By college (the early 80s) we went less and less. And once I got out of college and got a career, movies didn't seem like a good use of time anymore. Drinking, clubbing, and carousing for strange occupied all of my non-working hours. I might have gone to a dozen mainstream movies throughout the 80s.
I look at the quality of movies we watched every Saturday and they truly were comically bad. Fantasy, Sci-Fi, etc. I think the first serious movie I saw was in the 6th grade, "Nicholas and Alexandra"... my buddies hated it, I loved it. It made a Russophile of me. It wasn't until College that I started seeing truly good movies at the local arthouse.
I don't think Hollywood has imploded or fallen or is cranking out meaningless drivel. I do worry about this country's obsession with heroes though. Where the superheroes that are larger than life, or the "warriors" we're told to worship for their service, I think finding heroes, needing heroes has become a sad and dangerous obsession. People - young and old - need to stop looking for heroes and role models outside themselves and start valuing themselves for themselves. And when they can do this, virtue signaling and cultural engineering will lose their power over us and be relegated to the dustbin of bad memories.
We don't need another hero.
JFK once said that we have the power to make this the greatest generation the world has ever known - or to make it the last. And although he was speaking about the power of the atom, the power of art is just as profound; just as promising and just as perilous. It would be wonderful to see Hollywood rise to the challenge of creating a generation of people that can abandon identity sociopolitics, and find strength, purpose, and most of all, gratification in themselves for themselves. This is, after all, the dawning of The Age of Aquarius.
I saw 3 movies in the theater last year...the 50th anniversary re-release of both "Jaws" and "The Godfather" and also "Top Gun: Maverick".
I'm not one of those people who can't stomach the movie theater. I'm looking for opportunities to go but virtually all of the new films at my local multi megaplex strike me as eminently forgettable. So most I've seen in the theater the last few years are either re-releases or specialty films. That's said, I watched 276 films last year according to my Letterboxd account and there were many I enjoyed immensely.