"Are We No Longer Capable of Producing Great Drama?"

[Mono no aware]

This is an article I found on Patheos about drama and the cinema.  I disliked it for the author's dismissal of contemporary cinema as having produced nothing more than "a diseased pseudo-culture of celebrity."  Whatever may be true about celebrity culture, it doesn't necessarily mean that great drama is dead.  He also contends that the old studio system "allowed for the production of movies that were never going to be blockbusters, but that were often interesting and human, and some of those dark horses ended up being great works of art"—presumably indicating that he can no longer find "interesting and human" stories in movies. 

He is correct when he says "hardly five minutes of It Happened One Night could now be shot," but hardly five minutes of Blade Runner could've been shot in 1934; it would've made no sense to an audience that had no working concept of artificial intelligence.  I like movies from the 1940s and 50s, but I don't think great drama disappeared afterwards.  I wonder if anyone agrees with the author, who according to Wikipedia is "a Catholic whose writings generally contain an identifiable conservative or traditionalist perspective," because I found this essay to be exemplary of an unhealthy anachronistic hauteur.  I didn't want to derail a thread about marriage and vocations, so I'm reposting it here.

Patheos | Are We No Longer Capable of Producing Great Drama?

I've long told my students that drama is the most unpredictable of the main literary genres. It can go dormant for a very long time—for over a millennium in the west, from Terence and Plautus to the rise of the "mystery" plays in medieval Europe. England has been a literary powerhouse since the time of Spenser, Sidney, and Shakespeare, but there is almost no good drama (as opposed to poems in dramatic form, such as Prometheus Unbound) written in English between Sheridan and Goldsmith in the time of Johnson, to the generation of Eugene O'Neill.

The advent of film, precisely when it came, involved a happy coincidence of cultural conditions that gave rise to great drama for about fifty or sixty years, most of it in the form of film rather than stage plays. You had thriving popular cultures in the US and across Europe. You had pretty high levels of literacy, and more than fading memories of classical Greece and Rome and of the great and long European Renaissance from Chretien de Troyes to Milton. You had people who knew war, who knew hard physical work on farms and in mills and down mine shafts, who had been in churches and synagogues filled with worshipers, who felt the transience of human life (think of the flu pandemic), the difficulties of virtue, and the inevitable and dreadful punishments that vice brings along with its fleeting and disappointing pleasures. You had, moreover, the opera, which in places like Italy and Germany was not a precious little enclave for the rich and the sophisticated, but truly a feature of popular culture, Theater houses in the United States hosted traveling troupes of players and singers.

Then came the new medium. It produced a diseased pseudo-culture of celebrity, but FIRST it produced great drama, created by men and women who had not themselves been raised in that pseudo-culture. The studio system, despite its many injustices (and you don't want to look too closely behind that curtain), allowed for the production of movies that were never going to be blockbusters, but that were often interesting and human, and some of those dark horses ended up being great works of art indeed.

There's poverty and privation just one false step away from the principals in so many of the finest movies, and it isn't poverty as a "political" thing—just the ordinary poverty that human beings have until very recently always been near. The poverty does to the human spirit what Johnson said the prospect of hanging does: it clears the mind admirably. I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; The Good Earth; Boys Town; The Yearling; A Tale of Two Cities; You Can't Take it With You; It's a Wonderful Life; People Will Talk; The Keys to the Kingdom; All Quiet on the Western Front; and on and on.

I think that those cultural conditions have played themselves out. Put it this way: It Happened One Night could not make any sense now. Hardly five minutes of it could now be shot—and certainly the tremendous final scene would be a puzzle. For better and for worse, the nearness of poverty is gone; but also the demands of virtue, and the unstated knowledge that in life there must always be sacrifice and suffering.

[red solo cup]

Ah Boy's Town. Cried like a baby at the end.

[OCLittleFlower]

Heck, I'd settle just for good looking actors who can actually ACT.  Both traits are rare these days.

[The Harlequin King]

I can't vouch for people's creative abilities, but from a technical point of view, it's easier to make an independent film now than it ever was. This is the age of YouTube.

[Carleendiane]

Drama is not dead. Plenty of it right here on SD. Doncha know? And the cast of characters...kings, queens, gardeners, and replay.....oh yeah, it's all right here.

[Daniel]

I can't vouch for people's creative abilities, but from a technical point of view, it's easier to make an independent film now than it ever was. This is the age of YouTube.

It's easier to make a film, but it's not necessarily easier to gain an audience. Because as you said, this is the age of YouTube. Everyone and his mom is uploading stuff... but, if you notice, the videos with the hundreds of thousands of views are not necessarily the ones that are the most artistic, the ones that are of the highest quality, the ones that contain the best message, etc.

edit - Speaking of cinema, I am currently taking a class on cinema. And although this is not at all the teacher's opinion, I myself am beginning to conclude that movies were never all that great to begin with. We mostly watch older films in that class, and these older films are clearly different from newer films. Yet even these older films don't really seem to be "high art". The biggest difference between the old and the new, however, seems to be that the older films were at least closer to art. The films you see these days are far less about art and more about riding the trends and making a ton of money. The producer comes out with some new blockbuster (usually something recognizable like Transformers or Spider-Man or Planet of the Apes) because he knows that it will become extremely popular for a few months. In those few months the movie brings in a lot of money. These movies are generally well-executed with good acting and nice special effects, but they are not all that great in terms of their overall message and themes. And then after the popularity dies down pretty much everyone forgets all about the movie.

[Kaesekopf]

If it's easier to make a film, why is Catholic media such rubbish and has production effects of the 90s?

[Daniel]

If it's easier to make a film, why is Catholic media such rubbish and has production effects of the 90s?

It's easier because technology has improved. High-quality cameras are less expensive, and everything's now digital, and new software allows for easy editing. Some people have shot pretty decent films using just their iPhones. The biggest problem (if you're on a low-budget) is probably in finding actors.

As for why Catholic media is behind the times, I have no idea. I don't watch any Catholic media, though I am aware that a lot of Catholic movies aren't incredibly great. As regards media, The Vortex seems to have its act together (on a technical level anyway).

edited

[Mono no aware]

Although YouTube can have its place, a filmmaker having made a short would be more likely to want to submit it for entry in independent film festivals.  You would want an audience of potential producers to see your work rather than have it compete with kittens and karaoke.  The technology to make a movie is cheaper than ever, but it still takes talent and skill to make a good one.  I know it's unpopular to say this, but an aspiring filmmaker should take college-level courses in history of cinema, criticism, and of course, film making.  All the iPhones in the world can't make up for someone's ineptitude in lighting, writing, composition, editing, and mise-en-scène.  Unfortunately, ever since Quentin Tarantino broke in the 1990s, there have been several generations now who think you can become a director by the autodidactic practice of watching a slew of movies.  It's even more unpopular to say this, but I don't even think Quentin Tarantino is good.  His legacy was toxic.  For a whole decade there was a glut of bad gangster movies with cutesy dialogue.

[Mono no aware]

Speaking of cinema, I am currently taking a class on cinema. And although this is not at all the teacher's opinion, I myself am beginning to conclude that movies were never all that great to begin with. We mostly watch older films in that class, and these older films are clearly different from newer films. Yet even these older films don't really seem to be "high art". The biggest difference between the old and the new, however, seems to be that the older films were at least closer to art. The films you see these days are far less about art and more about riding the trends and making a ton of money. The producer comes out with some new blockbuster (usually something recognizable like Transformers or Spider-Man or Planet of the Apes) because he knows that it will become extremely popular for a few months. In those few months the movie brings in a lot of money. These movies are generally well-executed with good acting and nice special effects, but they are not all that great in terms of their overall message and themes. And then after the popularity dies down pretty much everyone forgets all about the movie.

To say that cinema was "never all that great to begin with" is a bold statement.  As for the big-budget "blockbuster" movies, I don't think too many people consider them high art, although I do remember Gerard arguing somewhere on this forum that one of the recent Superman movies was a work of genius containing many Catholic themes.  I hate comic book movies so I'm not going to touch that one.  The visuals of something like Transformers may be impressive on a superficial razzle-dazzle level, but they aren't impressive artistically; they don't compare favorably to the visuals of relatively low-budget films from the 1970s like Days of Heaven or Nosferatu the Vampyre. 

For the sake of discussion, I guess we would need to compare a list of great movies from one era with great movies from another.  I think the dividing line for what constitutes the "golden age" of cinema is somewhere in the mid-1960s.  A lot of critics say it was 1968, when Oliver! won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and it was the last big-budget Hollywood musical to do so.  After that came the so-called "Easy Riders and Raging Bulls"—the era of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, &c.  In my opinion movies like Chinatown, The Godfather, Barry Lyndon, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest are far more visually impressive than almost anything that came before, and even rank higher as "great drama" for being moodier, more complex, and more pessimistic about human nature.

[The Harlequin King]

I know it's unpopular to say this, but an aspiring filmmaker should take college-level courses in history of cinema, criticism, and of course, film making.  All the iPhones in the world can't make up for someone's ineptitude in lighting, writing, composition, editing, and mise-en-scène.

Is it really all that unpopular to say so? I have no doubt that film school is useful; simply that moviemaking is more accessible now than it ever was. If I really, really wanted to make a movie, I have a much better chance of doing it now than I would have in the 1950's. Back then, if you didn't go through the studio system, you wouldn't have been able to make a movie no matter how good you were.

By the way, mise-en-scène is one of those expressions I learned in film class but still find pretentious for some reason. (Probably the same way people in the church hall feel if I'm overheard saying "salicus" or "Caeremoniale Episcoporum".)

[Mono no aware]

Is it really all that unpopular to say so? I have no doubt that film school is useful; simply that moviemaking is more accessible now than it ever was. If I really, really wanted to make a movie, I have a much better chance of doing it now than I would have in the 1950's. Back then, if you didn't go through the studio system, you wouldn't have been able to make a movie no matter how good you were.

By the way, mise-en-scène is one of those expressions I learned in film class but still find pretentious for some reason. (Probably the same way people in the church hall feel if I'm overheard saying "salicus" or "Caeremoniale Episcoporum".)

It would be unpopular to say so, probably, for the same reason it's unpopular to say people should pursue philosophy at university.  There've been a lot threads on here where that idea gets dismissed as an idiotic waste of money and a sure way of finding one's self in the position of a lowly barista—or, worst of all, living with one's parents.  The arts are troublesome, because not everyone who graduates from film school is going to become a successful director right away (or even ever), and then you find yourself with a specialized or liberal arts degree when it would be more lucrative to have had an education in engineering or business.  (And "lucrative" is the order of the day around here).  If you didn't make a big splash with a short film in your first few years after graduation, you would have to take a low-level job in the movie business as a technician, and then you'd most likely be working in "Hollyweird," which is anathema to traditional Catholics. There are alternatives, of course: there are film-making jobs in cities like Wilmington, NC or Vancouver, where portions of the film industry have migrated for more cost-effective location shooting.

Mise-en-scène does indeed have a pretentious ring, but as you know, it's also a reminder of how the torch of film criticism and film theory really belonged to the French in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and without the French New Wave and Cahiers du Cinéma, we would never have had the American golden age of the 1970s, or Hitchcock's reputation as a serious artist.

[OCLittleFlower]

If it's easier to make a film, why is Catholic media such rubbish and has production effects of the 90s?

Lower bar to entry. 

Look at what has happened with self-published books on Amazon.  Most of them are crap.  Most are typo ridden sludge written just to please the author.  There are a few gems, but most of it is garbage.  Because ANYONE can put their crap out there.

[misericonfit]

There is no lack of dramatic events - so it should not be beyond human skill to turn them into dramas of high quality. There are plenty of admirable films, after all.

[GeorgeT]

For good drama, the author is better looking towards television and netflix these days. That is where the drama has gone. Not to say it is not polluted by at least some measure of rot from our trash culture. Almost everything is. But it is good drama, nonetheless. I wonder what the author thinks of current BBC dramas.