Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven
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| Sunny Days in Heaven Spiritual/Political/Philosophical Blog on the Nature of Truth and Falsehood and Heaven |
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Wednesday, May 01, 2002 Cartoon and Comic Book Movies With Spiderman and Star Wars movies coming out soon, I am led to reflect on B flicks and their surprising command of box office hegemony in our culture. When I was a kid, there were far more B movies than now. We had westerns, singing westerns, science fiction, adventure and action films, war movies, Tarzan movies and comic book movies or TV shows like Superman. What these movies all had in common was that they were cheap to make, and looked cheap on screen. But as children, we didn't care at all; credulousness being the hallmark of our immature condition. What the movie lacked in talent, dialogue, and special effects, we made up for with pure suspension of disbelief. But that dramatically changed in the 70's. Before that, though, a sea change was already underway. If I recall correctly (having shown my daughter not too long ago the classic movie ending to end all endings) the original Planet of the Apes came out in 1968. If you watch the scenes on board the spaceship as it first takes off (and Charleton Heston smokes a cigar! before taking his little Rip Van Winkle nap), they are pretty cheesey. Not horrible. Not Plan Nine, but nothing special either, and observe the ape make-up which was highly touted then, but still looked ridiculously stiff and useless - you see that this B movie was a harbinger. It had a big name actor (slightly over the hill, perhaps) with high production quality for its time and a rather silly plot and dialogue. (Get your stinkin' hands off me, you dirty ape!) Following that, Heston did The Omega Man and the classic, Soylent Green. All B movies, but not bad ones with pretty good production values. But Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in 1969. And that changed the face of all science fiction movies to come. It wasn't a B movie, but it dictated that all sci-fi B movies had to look good (except for Roger Corman films, of course). That's where George Lucas came in. He made an unbearably hokey movie with horrible dialogue which made all his actors (except for the real pro, Alec Guiness) look bad. Star Wars. But it looked great! It was still the Perils of Pauline but the railroad trains were fantastic. Then Speilberg and Lucas dreamed up Raiders of the Lost Ark and the rest is history - B movies became boffo. Serious, mature movies suddenly took a back seat in the industry. B movies once signaled the end of an actor's career. Now it meant the start or re-energizing of one. And the infantilization of all culture thus accelerated until all that matters is pop movies, music, art, clothes, comic books, and video games. Blame it all on Kubrick and then Lucas. posted by Mark Butterworth | 3:24 PM | |
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