Movies or 'films', if you really need to scratch your sophist cherries, used to be cool. Nowadays a film is apparently an opportunity to engage in activism first and profit last. The process of finding a film to watch has now become a choice between wanting to be either entertained or preached to. Hollywood folks used to say they were making films for artistic reasons and for social conscience reasons, but they were really making them to make money and we all knew it. Now, because the word 'profit' is apparently a rude word and a synonym of 'greed', film consumers who own this particular type of thesaurus expect the ruse of culture and social conscience to be the reality. The expectations for openess about these reasons for making films is now driving film studios, producers and presumably even those guys who gaffer tape cables to the floor, to choose films with content that reflects diversity, diversity and other kinds of diversity. Film production used to be about planning to make money first, but now it seems it's increasingly like those shitty startups that talk about how they'll work out how to make money from it 'later on'. Hollywood is also expected to make films that were not originally about diversity and diversity and other kinds of diversity into films that are now about diversity and diversity and other kinds of diversity. A script, the casting and the um, gaffering and other stuff that produces films has to be bashed into a shape that reflects the apparent diversity of today's society. This is usually done with a large hammer not unlike the one on the Soviet flag and over the legendary 'anvil of wokeness'. Once you've bashed a project into a shape that reflects diversity, diversity and other kinds of diversity you have a green light to push your agenda while you fail to make any money. The result is films and TV shows that go out of their way to be annoying, annoying and even more annoying. They push a not-so-hidden agenda of social transformation and progressive thought through a cultural conduit that was never engineered for the type of pressures this activism produces. I mean, if I tried to put boiling raw sewage at 500psi through a braided hose that was rated for only 125psi cold, there'd be shit everywhere. I've just created a bunch of mixed analogies and metaphors which has to mean I've won some kind of jackpot.
Irony is amazing because it makes you do that thousand yard stare while you consider its layers and soak in its juices. I love marinating my feeble mind in irony. Like the time I was at a party and this loud and obnoxious English guy was telling everybody loudly and obnoxiously how loud and obnoxious Americans were. Then he declared Americans 'don't have a sense of humor' and they 'don't understand irony'. Then I asked him to define irony, the crowd fell silent along with him and he shuffled his feet and walked off or something. I honestly don't remember what he did as the intense light of my simple question fell upon his idiocy, because I was already locked into the thousand yard stare and mesmerized by the marinating mind mixed metaphor. (I'm still doing them, I just know I can win that jackpot again, oh please mister, don't kick me oudoda casino, I'm on a streak...)The irony with Hollywood is this: Terminator 2 was a hugely profitable film and made only to make money. It's also a film that still generates deep reflection about the impact of technology; the price we are willing to pay for those we love; the need for accountability within liberal democracies and the inherent value of human life. It also happens to make good points about how we treat people with mental health issues and how messed up the foster parent system can be. In fact, it also has a single mother in the lead and she's amazing because she loves her son, cares deeply about the future of humanity and has a collection of large caliber firearms. I grew up, existed during the 1970s and 1980s which means I was around during the peak time of Cold War sphincter-puckering. No other film was able to get me to think and reflect more deeply on the Cold War than T2 which cost 100 million dollars to make and made a huge profit precisely because it was made to make money. Likewise Jurassic Park was a hugely profitable film that inspired audiences to think about bioethics, hubris and the corruption of science. It also introduced us to the application of chaos theory for risk management and we got to see a lawyer get every single bone in his body broken as he is mercessly shaken back and forth in the jaws of a T-Rex. I don't think I have to point out that this got everybody thinking how good the world would be if all lawyers were eaten by large dinosaurs.
Shakespeare, who was an English playwright, poet, producer, actor and all round great guy, wrote his plays because he wanted to, nay - needed to make money. He had a family, he had bills to pay and debts and probably wanted to buy himself a new espresso machine or something, one of those fancy Italian ones with the cool badge on the back that lights up, but you never get to see it because your kitchen isn't designed for that and everytime you make a coffee you think about how cool that badge would look if you could just see the goddammed cool badge. You know, one of those machines. Shakespeare was a fan of money and wrote about it often, he sayeth thus: "Money is a good soldier, and will on." The modern way of saying this is:
That's right, make your momey work for you. Never has a truer and more profound statement been made about momey. So The Bard was into momey, he wanted momey and he needed momey. He was a successful guy and when he died, he died with momey. If you want to read more on this, then read Nick Hornby's Shakespeare Wrote for Money which is not only insightful but also very funny. The problem with momey today is that everybody thinks it's evil to want to make some. I'm now going to stop saying 'momey' because that joke is over. When you think about money in such a negative way, you do so because you have a vision of what the world should be and this vision has a problem in that it doesn't align wth reality. A person who wants to make a film that will be successful has to have a financial incentive first. The reason for this is that this way of thinking actually aligns with reality. Once you've decided you would like to have some money from making said film, you will want the film to be good and this is because a good film will one that makes momey, er money. So next time you watch a film that makes you think, remember that it was probably made to make money first. And of course next time you watch a film where the lead characters are all engaged in dialogue that sounds like 'talking points' strung together with a few random swear words, then you're probably watching something shit. So, I will now have a go at writing dialogue that is appropriate for a film that will get picked up by Hollywood and made into a franchise.
WE SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING 2
[INT. COFFEE SHOP - DAY] The aroma of freshly brewed, fairtrade, organic, single origin, carbon neutral, self-governing estate coffee fills the air as SOPHIE, a passionate, African-American LatinX superhero activist in her mid-20s, sits across from her friend, LILY, a young journalist who was bitten by a solar-powered spider and now identifies as a neurodivergent, ambidextrous, indigenous arachnid single mother (because she ate her partner).
SOPHIE (eyes alight with fervor) Lily, I can't shake off the feeling that we're just scratching the surface with our activism. There's so much more work to be done.
LILY (nodding in agreement) You're right, Sophie. It's like we're stuck in this cycle of addressing symptoms without tackling the root causes. We need systemic change, that person who is homeless who attacked me with an axe yesterday was so helpless and vulnerable and we did nothing to help him or her or they/them.
SOPHIE (emphatically) Exactly! It's not enough to just call out individual instances of injustice. We have to challenge the very structures that uphold inequality—whether it's racism, sexism, economic disparity, or single-use plastic straws.
LILY (leaning in) But how do we even begin to dismantle these systems? They seem so deeply entrenched. Also, why are there two of you and why do I have two coffees? I only ordered one.
SOPHIE (leaning forward, with a sincere look of concern on her face) It must be the double vision caused by the axe incident yesterday. I honestly hope that person who is homeless is doing okay. We can start by amplifying the voices of those who are marginalized and oppressed, by speaking truth to power and by grassroots actions. We listen to their experiences and center their stories in our fight for change. And we hold those in power accountable for their actions—or lack thereof. We should dress up in paper-mache outfits that look like oil rigs and trucks, then dance and sing in the streets while we sing folk songs through gigantic pink megaphones. After all, it's crucial we are taken seriously.
LILY (nodding, a spark of determination in her eyes) Yes, you're right, I shouldn't have called it an attack, it was an incident. Thank you for correcting me and not cancelling me. Please don't cancel me. I must've slipped into my socially-conditioned, privileged discourse. It's hard to shake off, especially when you were raised in an oppressive, microcosmic, social-construct that perpetuates the myth that the system is for everybody. I don't remember ever feeling like my tennis and piano lessons were for everybody and my private school certainly paved the way for an even greater climate catastrophe because we had air-conditioned luxury coaches and trips to Paris and London for school excursions. Sure, I could have said no, but I decided to fight the system from within whenever we had those excursions. We honestly need to use our platforms to shine a light on issues that are often overlooked or ignored, such as climate change. Nobody talks about climate change! We need to challenge the status quo and refuse to accept anything less than true equality and climate justice for all affected by the ongoing issues pertaining to the use of fossil fuels and white men and please don't cancel me.
SOPHIE (smiling) That's the spirit, Lily! Together, we'll keep pushing boundaries and breaking down barriers until we see the world we've been fighting for—a world where everyone is truly free to thrive in accordance to our guidelines.
LILY (smiling back) Damn right, Sophie. Let's change the world, one conversation at a time. But first, I'll need to go to hospital again, because I think I'm bleeding into my prefrontal cortex..." [FADE OUT.]
I remember seeing an interview with Quentin Tarantino back in the 1990s and it was astonishing how confident he was about the success of his films. He just casually said things about his latest project that made it seem like he just knew it was going to be successful. Well, I didn't understand at the time, but after spending at least seven or maybe even eight minutes creating the characters Sophie and er, the other one, and writing that dialogue, I now understand why he was talking like that.
I'm going to be a rich (and cool) dude.
