That is what I'd truly like to be
When
we watched the Oscars last night, my wife noticed the Westminster dog
show on another channel. So it was good to flip to than during
commercials, boring speeches and the meaningless awards such as best
gaffer. As an amusing and snide observation, I offered my wife a bet
that she won't be able to point out even one black person in the dog
show, and wisely enough she did not accept the bet. One time that we
flipped to the dog show the announcer explained how the breed that was
currently being pranced around is good for a discriminating dog owner,
and the word "discriminating" was used without a slightest hint of
disapproval.
I noticed that the gay or otherwise bold and
transgressive movies received fewer awards than expected. But even so,
I don't see how anyone could claim that every single one of the five
movies nominated in the Best Picture category are better than, for
example, any of the following movies: "Narnia", "War of the Worlds",
"Batman Begins", "King Kong", "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Sin City".
All right, of course you can claim this, I just happen to strongly disagree with it.
One of my favourite Finnish bloggers, Panu Höglund, whose best work I should perhaps translate here in the future, wrote a post
in which he criticized the Finnish moviemaker Aki Kaurismäki, whose
glorified depictions of underclass and its values and immense hatred of
everything that can somehow be associated with the middle class and
normal people have made him the favourite of Finnish intellectuals and
artists, especially those of ex-Stalinist variety. In the last two
paragraphs of his post, he writes:
It's been over a decade since [a Finnish humour magazine] Pahkasika parodied this adoration of underclass with its fictitious movie review titled "Small-time criminal --- the mythic hero of the Finnish cinema" which then praised the young actors who played thieves and whores for their ability to bring out the "sensitivity and goodness of these people". Despite this, Kaurismäki continues being the same broken record, and his present work can be considered a part of the anti-nerd mainstream culture: violence, brutality and wretchedness of the underclass must be adored as authentic and non-alienated, and the "life" that nerds should get is ideally as close as possible to the life of the rampaging underclass.
I would like to see movies and other works of art that depict the middle-class lifestyle in a way that values its good and positive aspects. That accept that the desire to have a steady life and healthy family relationships is a deeply human desire. And that understand that the tragedy of the underclass is precisely in the fact that the underclass has no way to rise to the middle class, to live even the middle class life --- and that the underclass would want to rise to the middle class, but cannot get there, and doesn't know or understand why.
So very true. Quickly, how many recent Hollywood movies can you name that satisfy this request? It's easy to name movies in which the middle class life is considered bad and underclass values are celebrated, but can you name even one recent movie with the opposite message?
The reason why middle class life cannot be celebrated in movies, is the fact that most of the audience is already living it. In the same vein, uplifting and grandiose epic movies are always set in the past or the future, but never the present. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Posted by KTM | 12:45 PM