Friday, December 19, 2008

Culture Notes

Watching Tatum O'Neal as a young girl smoke a cigarette in the 1973 film Paper Noon, I think about how that would be inconcievable today. Why is this?

The idea now is that if fictional entertainment shows an impressionable character doing something less than the ideal (or rather repressing all natural unhealthy imuplses until they become obsessive dysfunction) then their children, who must be perfect, will follow suit. So the corporations that own these fictional entertainments will create outlets for these repressed impulses, taking money from consumers, so they can feast on the imagination of others. Interactively engaged rather than creatively inspired, they are being grafted to virtual experience, trusting pixels rather that light particles, flatscreen HD rather than optic nerves and retinas.

Although watching someone smoke a cigarette in a movie does make me want one. But I'm addicted.

No comments: