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When I was asked to write about the Oscars for this column, my first response was to decline. I don't watch them, and truth be told, I'd rather watch the paint in someone else's apartment dry. I don't like their insular, self-congratulatory nature, their spectacular displays of glamour and privilege, the endless acceptance speeches that only very rarely achieve the right to be called "good television" (like Dustin Hoffman assuring the audience that "Oscar" has no genitalia), and their painfully middle-of-the-road, not surprisingly safe, nominations. The Academy Awards are obviously a commercial event, an aspect of the promotional culture that surrounds all "Hollywood" films. They have very little to do with quality. Yet I find myself wondering if these criticisms are valid, since I question the assumptions that commercial viability contaminates culture, and that "quality" is an appropriate (albeit ambiguous) standard against which to judge cultural practices. |
Yes, mainstream films can be formulaic, commercial and violent, but that's not reason to dismiss them by Dr. Lianne McLarty
Valerie Shore photo |
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Popular culture has long been denigrated because it is the commercial culture of industrial capitalism. The traditional Left feared commodity culture's ability to pacify audiences, and divert their attention from real social inequalities. The Right lamented popular culture's threat to the "art" of the elites, and warned of culture's debasement through its "mass" appeal. What both positions share is the belief in a fundamental split between so-called "high" and "low" art (and their audiences), as well as a tendency to use the standards developed for the former to evaluate the latter. Art, it is said, should be unique and difficult. Popular films, by their very nature, are conventional (which is not to say they don't change); as the current popularity of sequels suggests, they are hardly unique. Because the conventions of these films work in concert with audience expectation, they are also not difficult (which is not to say they don't sometimes subvert those expectations). So, movies aren't "art." Yet, using the standards for valuing "art" to denigrate and dismiss popular films because they are commercial, conventional, easily read and widely consumed is rather like dismissing chemistry because it's not theatre. The point is not that one is "art," but that specific cultural practices need to be considered on their own terms. To say that Hollywood movies are formulaic is less a critical analysis than a simple description. Indeed, popular films are of interest precisely because their established conventions are a means of social communication, negotiating or managing (depending on your point of view) actual social conflicts. In this respect, Hollywood movies are as valid a site of study as more accepted forms of cultural expression, such as art history and literature. This defence of the popular extends to those more traditional fields, since it is premised on the assumption that all culture contributes as much to what a society is and does as its social institutions and ritualized practices. Another frequently heard criticism of popular movies pertains to portrayals of violence. In fact, awards shows such as the Oscars could be seen as a way for media culture to celebrate and validate itself against its detractors, some of whom charge that "the media" not only promotes violence, but elicits its perpetration in the unsuspecting movie-goer. "You go into the cinema okay, but come out a killer!" If this were the case, why is it we don't sing in the rain after seeing a musical? The counter-argument -- that violent culture works like a safety valve, providing cathartic release and preventing the acting out of violence -- is equally flawed. These positions attribute far too much power to what, by many estimations, audiences generally don't take very seriously (the current popularity of horror/comedy hybrids suggests this). They also replay worn critiques of popular culture which see it as contaminated, and assume its audiences, "the masses," can't discern, or are easily manipulated. It's far too simplistic (and elitist) to isolate and scapegoat the diverse products of "the media," and charge them with what amounts to mind control. Popular culture does help to shape a society's sense of itself, but to assume that it is capable of directly changing our behaviour fails to recognize other, more immediate, social, historical and economic conditions or influences. My point is that violence in the media needs to be addressed in qualitative, not quantitative, terms. The tendency in some studies to count the number of violent acts fails to address how a violent act is represented; visualizing something is not an automatic endorsement. What's more violent? Showing the carnage of war, or replacing it with sanitized (and censored) images that amount to abstract patterns of light on a screen? Granted, the high tech Gulf War media images made better dinner-time television than those from Vietnam, but erasing violence in this way is arguably more sinister; it validates violence ("it's a 'just' war") and simultaneously disguises it ("it's 'just' a war"). Indeed, some credit the TV coverage of Vietnam for helping to mobilize more people to approve of bringing an end to that war. Banning portrayals of violence may work towards absenting a discussion of it from cultural discourse, leading to its tacit acceptance. I find myself asking about "media violence" of another kind. Personally, I'm more disturbed by the relatively recent Hollywood love affair with historical dramas (in part, because they can conveniently avoid contemporary feminist issues), than I am by a horror movie that graphically suggests the oppressive aspects of capitalism by situating zombies in a shopping mall (Dawn of the Dead, 1979). But, maybe that's just me. I've turned what was supposed to be a discussion of Hollywood glamour into a journey through its gutters! What about the Oscars? I'd still rather see the movie. Dr. Lianne McLarty is associate dean of fine arts at UVic. Her areas of interest include cultural studies, popular culture and feminism, and horror and science fiction.
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