#70
the end of art
Louise Bourgeois
Recently, Quebec filmmaker Xavier Dolan told the Spanish press:
“I don’t see the point in dedicating oneself to telling stories when everything around us is crumbling. Art is useless, and dedicating oneself to movies is a waste of time.”
He walked it back a few days later, but I wish he had not.
I think he’s right.
I have written about this before — our forever-growing appetites and inability to properly examine media consumption. There’s too much tv, too many movies, too many artists. This is a normal outcome when you consider the landscape of narcissism, self-importance, disassociation, and avoidance that we live in.
What is art’s role during the apocalypse? What do movies and tv specifically do for us besides provide yet another buffer for the outside world we refuse to reckon with?
Does spending billions of dollars making movies and tv shows still make sense?
Did it ever?
I am reminded of a tweet I saw yesterday:
It’s not like the film world is any better.
Barbie or a Bomb.
I don’t fucking care. Why should I?
If I want to watch a movie, I can. There are millions of them already out there from all over the world.
Pick a decade. Pick a country. Learn to torrent.
But no, we want new. Easy.
Need new. All in one place.
People are starving, and the housing crisis is ever worsening. Still, we seem completely unphased by the billions spent on creating new bullshit, adding to the endless, fragmented noise that is American media. People give their attention to millionaire actors and Hollywood writers striking and continue to ignore everything else — life itself, literally, everything that goes on outside of la la land.
It could be argued that the only worker the average American respects is the one that entertains, the one that offers escape.
It’s not that art is useless; it’s that it is hardly the most important thing right now. I find Dolan’s quote compelling partly because it feels like something that all artists should be feeling — anyone not out to make million dollars for themselves should feel some sort of dissonance about the importance of their own unique vision amidst the…end of the world.
Seeing the budgets of big studio films should make us feel sick to our stomachs. Not just what producers and CEOS make but the totality of it, how absurdly big it has become, and how much of the world it eats up each time another production starts up.
This kind of discourse, these questions, and this perspective are actively discouraged. The big picture is always obfuscated. Just think about the finished product. Just think about the More that’s coming, the temporary relief of entertainment, no matter the cost.
The ability to recognize you’re full has been snuffed out.
Don’t ever stop watching; you might die.
Or worse: have to eat in silence or tweet about something other than tv.
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I wonder if I’ve been full for the last year aand that’s why nothing on the platforms™️interests me.
Thanks for this.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.