Since this one has a cinema theme, a quote from NYer review of Edddie Murphy's latest(on the demise of the communal movie experience brought about by instant streaming):
"Choice -preferably an exhaustive menu of it- pretty much defines our status as consumers,and has long been an unquestioned tenet of the capitalist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cultural life (or any kind of life, for that matter), and one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience from the Athens of Aechylus to the multiplex, is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will. The same goes for folks around us, whom we do not know, and whom we resemble only in our private desire to know more of what will unfold in public, on stage or screen. We are strangers,in communion, and, once that pact of the intimate and the populous is snapped, the charm is gone. Our revels are now ended."
Many congrats, btw. May the revels of you and your never end.
I was actually thinking along these very lines just yesterday. I think that we, as a society, are dying of abundance. Not good — and nearly impossible to resist.
Since this one has a cinema theme, a quote from NYer review of Edddie Murphy's latest(on the demise of the communal movie experience brought about by instant streaming):
ReplyDelete"Choice -preferably an exhaustive menu of it- pretty much defines our status as consumers,and has long been an unquestioned tenet of the capitalist feast, but in fact carte blanche is no way to run a cultural life (or any kind of life, for that matter), and one thing that has nourished the theatrical experience from the Athens of Aechylus to the multiplex, is the element of compulsion. Someone else decides when the show will start; we may decide whether to attend, but, once we take our seats, we join the ride and surrender our will. The same goes for folks around us, whom we do not know, and whom we resemble only in our private desire to know more of what will unfold in public, on stage or screen. We are strangers,in communion, and, once that pact of the intimate and the populous is snapped, the charm is gone. Our revels are now ended."
Many congrats, btw. May the revels of you and your never end.
I was actually thinking along these very lines just yesterday. I think that we, as a society, are dying of abundance. Not good — and nearly impossible to resist.
ReplyDeleteps: JT?