"Do you ever feel like we're in this never-ending Marxian Dialectic?"
"No. What's that?"
"It's this process of change wherein nothing ever changes. Basically there's this given contradiction, an argument, between a secondary and primary aspect. Eventually, the secondary yields to the primary, but then the victorious primary transforms into an aspect of a new contradiction. You win an argument, but the cocky swagger you consequently develop becomes the basis of a new argument."
"I do NOT have a cocky swagger, asshole."
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
My response to a comment in the middle of a thread of comments to a week-old post on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily that I'm weirdly proud of
The Original Post:
“It’s void of balanced intellectual diversity and what is needed is true independent competition.”
Bull honky. Lions for Lambs and XXX. The Hangover and The Royal Tenenbaums. No Country for Old Men and Nightmare on Elm Street. Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. Some of those are smart and some of those are dumb and some of those are both smart and dumb at different points in the films. Sounds like intellectual diversity to me.
“The Industry is a collusive oligopoly obsessed with celebrity –not talent.”
You say oligopoly like it’s a crazy, awful thing. Look at cell phone companies, airlines, breakfast cereal, almost anything. Oligopoly is one of the most common market forms, and why? Because a market can’t support a thousand different movie companies or cell phone companies or breakfast cereal manufacturers. It’s not economically feasible. And what are we colluding to exactly? To make money? To get people to watch our movies? To poison the young and turn them all in to Communist, Satanist homosexuals? Yes, yes and yes. I’ve got this gorgeous bedazzled hammer, sickle and pitchfork set that I can’t wait to poke the rumps of the youth of America with.
Second, to say “the industry” is celebrity-obsessed is ridiculous. Culture is celebrity-obsessed; we in Hollywood merely exploit it. We are not the ones watching TMZ and the Hills and reading People magazine. We simply create them and sell them.
Third, of course we’re obsessed with talent– we have about a hundred different award shows to recognize our own talent every year.
““Hollywood” is most definitely being “forced down” the throats of the public by virtue of the fact that there is no independent ALTERNATIVE.”
Read a book. Surf the internet. Watch a foreign film, even. There’s your alternatives. Are you forced to consume media? Do I have a gun to your head? Oh wait, I do.
*puts gun away*
Sorry about that. All of us in Hollywood have to have about four of these trained on the heads of people in the rest of America’s at all times.
My arms are so tired.
“It’s void of balanced intellectual diversity and what is needed is true independent competition.”
Bull honky. Lions for Lambs and XXX. The Hangover and The Royal Tenenbaums. No Country for Old Men and Nightmare on Elm Street. Dirty Dancing and Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights. Some of those are smart and some of those are dumb and some of those are both smart and dumb at different points in the films. Sounds like intellectual diversity to me.
“The Industry is a collusive oligopoly obsessed with celebrity –not talent.”
You say oligopoly like it’s a crazy, awful thing. Look at cell phone companies, airlines, breakfast cereal, almost anything. Oligopoly is one of the most common market forms, and why? Because a market can’t support a thousand different movie companies or cell phone companies or breakfast cereal manufacturers. It’s not economically feasible. And what are we colluding to exactly? To make money? To get people to watch our movies? To poison the young and turn them all in to Communist, Satanist homosexuals? Yes, yes and yes. I’ve got this gorgeous bedazzled hammer, sickle and pitchfork set that I can’t wait to poke the rumps of the youth of America with.
Second, to say “the industry” is celebrity-obsessed is ridiculous. Culture is celebrity-obsessed; we in Hollywood merely exploit it. We are not the ones watching TMZ and the Hills and reading People magazine. We simply create them and sell them.
Third, of course we’re obsessed with talent– we have about a hundred different award shows to recognize our own talent every year.
““Hollywood” is most definitely being “forced down” the throats of the public by virtue of the fact that there is no independent ALTERNATIVE.”
Read a book. Surf the internet. Watch a foreign film, even. There’s your alternatives. Are you forced to consume media? Do I have a gun to your head? Oh wait, I do.
*puts gun away*
Sorry about that. All of us in Hollywood have to have about four of these trained on the heads of people in the rest of America’s at all times.
My arms are so tired.
- Comment by Dan F. — Tuesday May 4, 2010 @ 1:08pm PDT
Monday, February 23, 2009
Monday, November 24, 2008
Why not Dan?
From Rhodes Scholars discussing Foucault to Carly Ciarrocchi, it seems like everyone has a blog these days, doesn't it?
So I thought, why not Dan?
So I thought, why not Dan?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Do you seriously think just because people watch or buy the crap that is produced by the entertainment industry, that somehow vindicates the quality of what is being produced? Millions of people buy Miley Cyrus albums, does that mean she’s a genius? Or could it be that when your choice is crap or crap, you’re gonna choose crap every time?
When the leftist political agenda is spread on heavy in movies like “Lions For Lambs” or “Redacted,” the “small minded minority” stayed away and those movies tanked at the B.O.
“Hollywood” is most definitely being “forced down” the throats of the public by virtue of the fact that there is no independent ALTERNATIVE. The Industry is a collusive oligopoly obsessed with celebrity –not talent. It’s void of balanced intellectual diversity and what is needed is true independent competition.
“Hollywoodism” is the mindset of people working in (or advocating on behalf of people who work in) the entertainment industry who lament “assuming the worst in people” and then refer to their consumers as “small minded.”
America NEEDS a refuge from Hollywoodism.