In the coming months, I will be publishing a series of pieces on what I perceive to be decades of acute cultural decline across nearly all mediums and forms. This first article tries to look at the relationship between art and commercialism, using film as an analytical lens. The series is informally called, the Jeremiad.
CULTURAL DECLINE
There has been a clear decline in the quality of artistic output across a number of mediums. From film to music, even video games have suffered from seemingly the same slow depletion of quality. It is worthwhile, when considering this phenomenon, to examine the link between commercial appeal and critical acclaim. One finds a conflict between popular tastes and artistic merit throughout much of cultural-object-producing history. There have been significant exceptions to this, one could name, in the realm of TV, the Sopranos as a rare intersection between commercial viability and critical approbation. There are other pertinent examples. For instance, in the field of music, the albums of the Beatles are another rare example of art that fits popular demands while also passing, rather impressively, critical litmus tests.
THE PERIODIZATION OF MINI GOLDEN AGES
There are several examples of periods where there was a consistent stream of content made, whether in film, music, or other disciplines, in which the concern for commercial viability didn’t preclude the creation of boundary-pushing, exemplary art. The way films get produced and the degree of control and oversight production companies have over the entire process is hugely impactful in this regard. The US film industry in the 1970s saw the emergence of a comparatively large number of directors whose devotion to cinema eschewed commercial considerations for the most part. One can point to the works of Scorcese, Cassavetes, Cimino, Altman, Bogdanovich, and others in this period who attainted that elusive combination of financial backing and creative freedom that seems scarcely to exist in the Hollywood of our time. That isn’t to say that the 60s didn’t see the creation of any number of well-funded films of considerable artistic merit and vision, but in the 70s something qualitatively different was occurring; directors were being, in many cases, given more or less free rein to push their projects into whatever direction they saw fit. Take Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, for instance—this film was wildly ambitious and outrageously over budget. Having been initially estimated to cost somewhere between 12 and 15 million, the picture ended up being more than twice the projected cost to make. While not without certain critical misgivings upon release, the film has since been solidly, uncontroversially preserved in the western film canon as one of the greatest films of all time. This was a box office hit with references to a novel of Conrad’s, and the poetry of Elliot. Can one conditioned to our moment’s commercial marginalia even imagine this? The salient point here is that, historically, commercial viability did not necessitate works that were artistically or culturally barren.
THE CASE OF JAPAN
We might, for the sake of broadening our range of data a bit, turn to the case of Japan, a nation whose film industry followed a somewhat similar trend, with key differences here and there but with a downward curve to match our own. This is a country that, in the 60s, boasted an absurd number of talented, exceptional filmmakers. From Ozu to Kurosawa, Ichikawa to Kobayashi, Mizoguchi and more, the post-war domestic film industry simply blossomed. The 70s saw the rise of more artistically challenging films by directors like Oshima and others, followed by the 80s filled with delightfully bourgeois Itami pictures. Past critics have blamed the rise of television for the decline of Japanese cinema, but in reality a confluence of factors likely contributed to the evolution of a more overtly business-minded production model in major studios. Kurosawa, in attempting to make Kagemusha, in 1980, had to turn to foreign investment due to a few films that did not perform well domestically, these being Dodeskaden and Dersu Uzala. It was the only the pull that George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola had with 20TH Century Fox that allowed the film to be finished at all. Toho had given up on Kurosawa’s vision, writing it off as a financial mistake and cutting their losses. This is indicative of a significant shift in the priorities of the financial backers of films in Japan. All it took was two box-office flops for Kurosawa, who more or less introduced Japanese cinema to the rest of the world with Rashomon and Seven Samurai, to become persona non grata in the domestic film market.
MY ATTEMPTS AT EXPLANATIONS
In continuing to pursue the initial line of thought, one might reasonably ask: “What accounts for the diminution of perceived value (in the eyes of the studios) of artistically bold, creative directors in both Japan and the US (whose market expansion in the post-war period followed a somewhat similar pattern up until the 70s and 80s when there was a divergence)?” In both cases we see the previous existence of a vital, rich period of creative expression and achievement, during which the money people are more or less on board with whatever the director’s whims were. Of course there were exceptions, Orson Welles was unable to find funding for many projects after Citizen Kane, and he lost control of the next picture, the Magnificent Ambersons, with the rushes being mutilated by the money people to the tune of around 40 minutes, but in general, the 50s and especially the 60s were periods of immense creative output. In the US, which was particularly harmed by the stagflation of the 70s, if anything, more auteurs seemed to retain creative control over their pictures than before, whereas in Japan things started to shift in favor of the budget-minded producers and studios. Ironically, Japan, whose manufacturing and industrial strength would flower in the 80s while the US’s economy became offshored and financialized, seemed to miss the twilight golden age that the US had in the 70s. With the collapse of United Artists in 1980, after the economically disastrous Heaven’s Gate by Michael Cimino, the monied interests in the studios launched a campaign to regain control over the pictures directors made, and this is reflected in the relative dearth of visionary films in the 80s and the surplus of commercial effluent. One might not be crazy to wonder why Japan, experiencing an economic boom in the 80s, wouldn’t have also had a period of artistic fertility in film. This isn’t to say that there weren’t exceptional films made in the 70s and 80s in Japan, but, compared to the 50s and 60s, things were trending downward. While there are differences in each case, in both the US and Japan we see a triumph of the financial backers over the creatives; the directors lost ground and the big studios consolidated more control than ever. The era in which Spielberg and Cameron and Scott made their names was one of unprecedented oversight and restriction compared to the previous decade.
ONWARD TO NEW FORMS
In Japan, however, while film languished, new media like anime started to come into its own with foundational films like Lupin III and the Castle of Cagliostro in the late 70s. New forms were being born as well, video games would come into their own in the following decades, with Japan as a nexus of innovation. There is no doubt that in the 80s, 90s, and 00s, there were good films made in both countries, but they were fewer and farther between, mixed in with all manner of hyper-commercial drivel. The independent film industry would produce some great pictures in the US, and 90s and early 00s Japanese horror has some gems. The fact remains, however, that never again would we see frontier- expanding films at the same rate in either the US or Japan.
OUTLIERS AND LATE BOOMS
There are countries whose film industries bloomed creatively during the exact period where they became comparatively desiccated in the states and Japan. Korea and Hong Kong are both perfect examples, with an inverse curve. These places experienced economic periods of prosperity later than Japan or the US. If my theory about the ephemerality of artistic golden ages produced by economic booms holds true, the South Korean studios will begin to gradually pick away at director’s prerogatives over the coming years, if they haven’t started already. Since the late 90s, Korean directors have produced some of the greatest films of the last 30 years, with Lee Chang Dong and Kim Ki-duk being favorites of mine.
THE ROLE OF THE RICH
Inevitably, when thinking about root causes here, one will arrive at the fact that the values and priorities of the patrons of art will have a huge impact on its creation. If a society has an affluent class who, despite their tireless efforts to extract rents and profits, cares about art, if not out of a genuine connection than at least as a status symbol, then that wealthy class will not be averse to using some of their considerable funds to stimulate the production of art. If, as seems to be the case now, all the rich people are philistines (or STEM-oriented misanthropes, or some combination of both), the productive levers that allow the flow of art to drip uninterrupted will not be pulled.
See the next installment of this series to see my take on our brave new world of philistinism and panglossian techno-futurism.
THE CONVERSATION PIECE 