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Old 07-29-2014, 10:58 AM   #49
Zigūr
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Inziladun View Post
And why does PJ have only two modes with these films: goofy slapstick and overblown dramatics?
I feel like that is something which has become true of all kinds of adventure and capital-r Romance media in general (which we might otherwise clinically term 'speculative fiction'). It all feels like 'soap operas and sit coms but with dragons and robots' to me these days, nothing with that "applicability" which was so valuable to Professor Tolkien.

In my opinion the modern, mainstream Western 'culture industry' may currently be at one of its lowest points in terms of anti-intellectualism and fatuousness (yes I know 'fatuous' is one of my favourite words), turning everything into this sort of homogenous cultural gruel of adaptations, reboots and revivals of older texts and properties which are chewed up and regurgitated as identical, generic slop. As a wise man once said, "I guess if you feed humanity flavourless wallpaper paste for decades then you shouldn't be surprised if that's all they want to eat now." But it's a chicken-and-egg problem really, the industry feeding the consumers and vice-versa. That being said, I think a lot of blame lies with the current intensity of the corporatocratic grip on our politics and economics: lazy, stock storytelling feeds the bottom line a lot more readily than, I don't know, dignity or meaning.
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