Sometimes I'm just wrong.
This has been made especially clear to me in a number of ways recently, but it's always a downer when you realize that you're wrong in your own area of expertise. For me, that area is movies.
So there I was, looking for an article to write about. Nothing too political… I don't want to get my head bitten off (I mean I don't want to offend anyone). Nothing about money… I'd rather bring happy news.
And it seems that that’s what people really want. Nothing honest, nothing true, just an escape. If we pretend the recession isn't happening than it isn't.
Except it is, and we sort of know that too-but haven't actually brought ourselves around to admitting to it yet.
So, there it is, the relevance that my article has to society. I suppose you also might want to know a thing or two about the article, and maybe even why I am so wrong, remember?
In a recent article titled In Downturn, Americans Flock to the Movies from The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/movies/01films.html) something culturally relevant is discussed…and I think you might be able to guess what is.
Movie going attendance is up…way up. Really, it has “jumped, by nearly 16 percent. If that pace continues through the year, it would amount to the biggest box-office surge in at least two decades”.
That’s a lot of people going to the movies. And that’s why I am so wrong. I thought that no one was going to the movies. I thought that that’s why I have to wait until July of 2009 to see the newest installment in the Harry Potter series when I could swear that the thing was due out last November. And it’s definitely not the only film to be suffering that sort of set back.
So I can’t answer as to why any of that horrible stuff is happening, but I probably couldn’t answer why most horrible things are happening. I do know (now), that people are going to the movies more than last year, and that really surprises me that “while much of the economy is teetering between bust and bailout, the movie industry has been startled by a box-office surge that has little precedent in the modern era”.
Except, when I think about it, that makes perfect sense. Of course, it makes sense in the scariest way imaginable.
We are in a recession; we are in a depression… whatever you call it. It is happening and we’re starting to act like it.
Hollywood made money in the 1930’s. They made money as an industry by making films about people living extraordinary lives that the average American could never dream of actually living. Today, the tendency is leaning towards a “mix of movies, which have been more audience-friendly in recent months as the studios have tried to adjust after the lackluster sales of more somber and serious films”.
Sound familiar? In the 1930’s children and adults flocked to the movies see the latest Busby Berkeley musical whenever they could. It seems as though we are beginning to find ourselves in a parallel of this.
I should note that there is good evidence to say that correlation does not prove causation. Movies aren’t necessarily more successful just because the economy is down.
But it does beg a certain question. Are we experiencing something that is greater than the normal up’s and down’s that the film industry usually goes through. Do we have a serious problem, one even greater than the great depression?
I’m scared, and I hope that this warning is a false alarm. If not, I don’t know what to hope for.
