Why do I worry about the survival of Hollywood? I haven’t liked anything they produced since 1970, and very little since 1950. Everything they produce now is intentionally awful, devoid of empathy and depth.
Mike Gioia writes a spirited defense of the new independent producers, emphasizing that AI will give more power to the independents and less to Hollywood.
I’m not really defending Hollywood as it now functions. I’m thinking about the basic division of humanity into basic types and talents. Civilization makes a secure place for a variety of talents and skills.
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Here’s the concept expressed most perfectly in sharia law:
The Almighty has created this world as a trial and test for man; every person has therefore been made to depend on others for his living. No one in this world can live independently as regards his needs and requirements. A person of the highest rank turns to the most ordinary to fulfill them. In other words, every single person has an important role to play, without which this world cannot continue.
This role depends upon his abilities, intelligence and inclinations as well as upon his means and resources, which vary from person to person. In fact, it is because of this variation that a society comes into being. Consequently, laborers and workers, artisans and craftsmen, tillers and peasants are as indispensable as scholars and thinkers, savants and sages, leaders and rulers. Every individual is an integral component of the society and contributes to its formation according to his abilities.
By creating various classes of people, the Almighty is testing whether the big and the small, the high and the low create a society based on co-operation and respect or create disorder in the world by disregarding the role each person has been ordained to play.
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Entertainment is a necessary talent and a basic type. If entertainers are stuck in an overloaded and unstable gig situation, they will eventually give up and find a more secure job that doesn’t use their talents.
FDR recognized this with the WPA Writers Project and related projects for theater and other arts. Wall Street had killed most of the smaller opportunities for creativity, and the WPA provided steady useful work for non-superstars. The Soviet system did the same, with official STEADY support for writers and artists and composers and scientists.
A large organization like Hollywood or WPA or the Soviet setup gives secure employment to entertainers and related technicians. It does require them to constrain their talents, but constraint and editing are crucially necessary for good results.
If Hollywood can’t respond to the competition by CONSTRAINING its own tendencies to preach idiocy and punch peasants, the secure employment will be gone.
Polistra's Mill 