Meta-Movie Man

Guest Post by The Zman

They say art holds a mirror up to society, which means something becomes art when it reveals the nature of society or just nature itself. The classical nude statues are art, rather than pornography, because they are idealized representations created to celebrate the human form. Literature becomes art when it portrays society in such a way that it reveals certain truths about the age. For example, The Great Gatsby is art, because it captures the age and the reality of materialism.

Whether or not movies can rise to the level of art is debatable, as the medium is superficial by design. Another aspect of art is it tempts the person experiencing it to think about things they may not be naturally inclined to consider. Motion pictures are a passive medium, encouraging the viewer to relax and let the images flashing past him do all the heavy lifting. Citizen Kane is considered the best film ever made, but it does not rival literature in terms of artistic impact.

That said, maybe movies should be judged on a narrower artistic standard, in that maybe the best they can do is reflect attitudes of the age. The science fiction shows on the later-50’s and early-60’s, for example, reveal the optimism of the age with regards to scientific progress. Fast forward a generation and science fiction films reveal the fear and disappointment in science. Today, science fiction is mostly multicultural personal drama in space, revealing the feminization of our age.

In other words, like pop music, a movie can be considered art if it comes to symbolize the times in which it was made. The 1970’s movie Saturday Night Fever can be called art, because it reflects the vulgarity of the time. The movie Terminator is a reflection of the anxiety over the Cold War and the nuclear arms race. These movies are not art because they achieve some high technical standard, but simply because they were popular, touching some nerve with the public at the time.

It is a low standard, for sure, but popular culture is a low-brow product made for profit, not artistic achievement. The performers and characters in the business of producing this content can call themselves artists, but in reality, they are just the modern version of carny-folk, tolerated by society for entertainment purposes. The elevation of the profane in the modern age, is itself a statement about the age and the people, who have taken over control of the culture. Our is the age of vulgarians.

Putting that aside, by this standard, Quentin Tarantino is probably one of the great artists of the modern age. His movies tend to reflect some aspect of the times, in an exaggerated and juvenile manner. He makes movies that his ten-year-old self wanted to see, so they tend to lack anything resembling complexity and instead feature exaggerated characters that even a child can grasp. They are morality tales for stupid people, who are not all that interested in lectures about morality.

His latest film, Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, is a long boring buddy story about a fading television actor. It is set in late-1960’s Los Angeles and references every popular news event of the period. The point of the film is to tell the people, who came of age in that time, especially those who grew up in Los Angeles, that it was a great time to be a young American. It was also a great time to be famous, as you got to party and bang starlets, even if you were a minor television star.

Tarantino, of course, is a meta-movie maker. He tends to make movies about movies and the world around movies. All of his shows are celebratory versions of the B-movies he watched growing up as a kid. In some respects, he is the Gen-X movie maker, in that his stories never end well, but the bad endings don’t offer a larger critique of the times or offer a lesson about the characters. In other ways, they lampoon the long shadow of the Baby Boom culture the 60’s and 70’s.

You see that in his latest film. The people are living in an idyllic time, where they can have great lives with little actual work. That time in California was probably the best time and place to live in post-war America. Yet, the degeneracy of the people and the pointlessness of their existence eventually destroyed that society. Modern Los Angeles is homeless camps and third world peasants. A white person growing up in that squalor will come to hate their ancestors for having created it.

That’s the funny thing with Tarantino. He grew up watching cheesy B-movies and re-runs of 1960’s television shows. Much of that content was science fiction. Yet, he has yet to make a movie about the future or even a B-movie version of it. The space movies of his youth would make good fodder for his brand of film, but instead all of his stuff is set in the past. From an artistic perspective, he is a man backing through life, watching was passes into the fading mists of his age.

Again, whether movies can be considered art is debatable. Art should be lasting and movies just don’t hold up over time. Still, by a lower standard, one that simply relies on cultural relevance, Tarantino would be counted as an artist. His movies speak to a people living in steep cultural and demographic decline. His latest celebrates the memories of a generation who will literally be gone in a generation. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is an epitaph for a generation and a nation.

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Vixen Vic
Vixen Vic

I think the older movies are classics, indeed. I rarely watch movies after the ’60s.
I like the term “carny-folk” to refer to today’s pathetic actors. I think I’ll start using that.

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

I think he seriously understates the artistic merit of Tarantino’s film making but this was a much better review of the film than you’d read in the mainstream media.

realestatepup
realestatepup

Your observation on Tarentino is interesting. But…his ending for “Once Upon a Time” was what a teenager who knew about what really happened would have WISHED could have actually happened. If that’s what really had happened that night then I think the cultural honeymoon of America would have been delayed a bit. Instead, those murders ushered in a time of dread, increased drug use, and a general disillusionment with society in general. It probably was the beginning of the real rot.
I am no feminist, at all, and Mr. Tarentino being a man it makes sense he would write more accurately about men and their behavior, but I always found his female characters to be complete and utter cardboard cut-outs.
I am not offended by it, but rather just confused as to why he really has never fleshed out a female role.
I know, I know, Kill Bill. I thought this movie was Ok. Could have been so much better. I felt like it was a man assuming this is what a woman MIGHT do for revenge when in reality it’s exactly what a man would do.
The fight scenes between the women especially were ridiculous. Yes, Tarentino is very much about the ridiculous.
I believe women want to know the “why” more than the “what for”. For instance, watching Pulp Fiction, the number one burning question on my mind was “What the hell was Uma Thurman’s character even doing with Marsalis? How did that even happen?” Tarentino managed to make that relationship yet another cliche of rich black man gets pretty white woman.
I found the relationship between the the two diner robbers much more believable.
I agree movies tend to be a passive journey, and maybe have to rely much more on shocking images, sex, and nudity to tell the story rather than the story itself.
A few noted exceptions to this, in my opinion:

Out of Africa
Schindler’s list
Star Wars (only the originals, the new ones are just horrible)
The China Syndrome
Rear Window
Sophie’s Choice
The Shawshank Redemption
Spotlight
Life of Brian (anything that makes fun of institutionalized religion is usually pretty good)
Philadelphia
Forrest Gump

There’s more but you get the idea. I tend to avoid violent movies like Saw etc. These movies, in my opinion, hold zero redeeming value and really are just gross.
I also don’t care for romance movies either. They seem formulaic and trite.
I haven’t been to a movie theater in some time, consider it to be a giant waste of money. It’s not the experience it used to be, and there is such a dearth of anything worth paying 20 bucks to see.

And yes, the book is always better than the movie.

Hardscrabble Farmer
Hardscrabble Farmer

Look at Tarantino. Think physiognomy.

What do you imagine his experience with women was during his formative years before he became a celebrity? That’s why his women have no depth and are seen only as some gauzy, idealized version of what men want in a woman. It doesn’t matter now that he has his pick of the starlets because in his inner life he never stood a chance with them. He can’t flesh out a role for them because he has no first hand knowledge of them. They will always be some enigmatic vision of what his adolescent mind wanted rather than a reflection on the relationships he had with them.

Soonjira Watanabi (EC)
Soonjira Watanabi (EC)

OMG, is that why I have this unrelenting animosity towards women and at the same time want to buy them an ice cream?

Mile4
Mile4

True Romance is my all time favorite.

Glock-N-Load

True Romance is a top 5 movie of mine. Lots of great scenes. Heck, I think there’s even a scene of a wannabe actress giving a car blowjob to a movie producer.

Unreleased
Unreleased

I’d probably choose Reservoir Dogs myself; with all of its honest ugliness and unsung heroism.

And my favorite critique of Tarantino’s “Hollywood” would probably be this one:

Tarantino Punches the Damn Dirty Hippies

In the cult of cool Tarantino conducts like a maestro. His films endear to the TV generation in the same way Coppola’s Godfather does to mafiosos.

And anyone looking to unlock the formulaic code to his Hollywood success stories need only to observe the briefcase combination in Pulp Fiction.

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