0 downloads queued. You know the drill – you shell out ten bucks for a film, or flip on the telly. Besides being forced to sit through a bunch of brain-numbing advertisements, you’re met with something you feel you’ve seen a million times before, except they’ve managed to somehow make it worse. In frustration, you walk out halfway through what you’re watching, because despite the fact that you were dumb enough to pay for it, you can’t tolerate the crapositude (I exercise my right to make up words!) laid forth before you, and take the remainder of the cost hit as some kind of symbolic fee for preserving what’s left of your sanity.
Then, you spend the next hour or so wondering, yet again, why the people in Hollywood are such idiots – do they really think people want what they’re dishing out? Is there really anyone with a truly creative bone in their body making decisions of what ends up on your doorstep to consume? The answer is quite simply “no”, and here’s why I think that is. The answer is ironically, in front of us.
You say to the world “entertain me”. An industry dedicated to this very thing arises, with an extreme level of efficiency and organization throughout the last century and otherwise only comparable in voracity with say, Jehovah’s Witnesses going door to door, or telemarketers scamming senior citizens out of their pensions. Do you know what the word means – entertain? I think sometimes we forget, so I’ll remind you.
To hold the attention of, with something amusing or diverting.
To hold the attention… with something amusing or diverting. It doesn’t say it needs to be intelligent, or creative, or contain any virtue of any kind. It only needs to hold your attention for some indeterminate amount of time, amuse you or divert you (presumably from more important pursuits) to be successful entertainment. Interesting don’t you think? So even in getting you to shell out that ten bucks, or pay for a month of cable, and you watching it for a few minutes, walkout or no walkout, the entertainment industry has successfully filled their part of the contract. It doesn’t make a lick of difference either if you think you are fighting back by discussing with your peers how “absolute bollocks” that new reboot of your precious childhood series was – just by doing that you’re enabling them to make more of the same. Because it doesn’t matter to them! They know you’ll do the same thing next time, at worst, maybe you’ll give up on one franchise, but they have an alternative turd sandwich for you to swallow and gag over after that – And they still get your money.
I think many of us start out at least, with relatively pure ideas of things. Entertainment ought to have integrity! Right? Right? Because it’s at its heart a good thing, right? it can make us feel happy… for a day… or for a few minutes. That’s gotta be worth something! Here’s my theory: I think the truth is that what leaves me with a feel-good sensation more often than not is probably somewhat of a mixture of entertainment, and education. I learn something that enables or edifies, despite the fact that I’m also being entertained – which merely means my other senses are being appealed to. It makes the learning easier. Because improving as a person, and discovering more about the strange and wondrous realm I live in, stretching my limits, that’s the kind of stuff that in the end makes life worth living. And as a creative person, I want to instill that feeling in others – I’m sure I’m not alone. Maybe a better word for it is “edutainment”.. I know that may conjure up images of “public awareness” ads from the 70’s with cartoon characters talking about the dangers of drinking and driving.. but you know what I mean. The rare thing you watch in your lifetime and say “THAT is what I want to create. But BETTER.” Such an experience is beyond mere entertainment, and yet.. so many of us with that dream seem to forget that eventually, and get relegated to menial labor making just that.
In today’s world almost everything good has been substituted with lameness. But it doesn’t have to be so if we don’t just sit back and let it happen, but fight to bring the good back. For starters, if you create a universe you really care about, don’t sell your right to control it. Have some integrity. I know you want to “get bigger than Jesus” or whatever, but everything isn’t about money. That kind of thinking is part of what led us to this point to begin with. Have faith that if you’re doing something worthwhile, it will eventually reap its reward. If you go whoring your creativity out in hopes of wealth or success, you’re going to pay the same price countless others before you have – your life’s labor will be a haggard shell of its former self by the time you are old and reflecting on what it was all worth – your main character, full of depth and humanity will be a soulless puppet when the studio execs are done “tweaking” based on their whims of whatever angle will bring in the bucks.
Who are you kidding? You won’t even recognize your own story in the end, should you go down that path. So if you believe in something, fight for it instead. Tooth and nail. That goes for whether you’re making your own stuff, or want to SEE more truly life changing work in others. If you don’t, you don’t deserve to complain about a damn thing.
