Art for Art's Sake
Not that they have much to do with each other on the surface, but today marks a couple of important anniversaries.
Twenty years ago today, the first Blockbuster Video opened in Dallas, Texas.
Back then you could rent video at any one of a number of stores, but Blockbuster quickly became the first really well-known national rental chain.
This would be more of a cinematic footnote than anything else, except that shortly thereafter Blockbuster helped to kill the NC-17 movie rating by refusing to carry any NC-17 movies, cutting those films off from an enormous revenue stream and discouraging the studios from making intelligent movies (or any movies, really) on adult themes. We see the results: Movies are becoming more juvenile all the time, and Roger Ebert gets more grouchy. Back in August he gave "no stars" to two movies in a single week - he never had occasion to do that before. You think he would have had to do that if the NC-17 rating were still viable? If he had some decent pictures to review on adult themes, you think he would have bothered with "Chaos" and "Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo"? (I know, "Chaos" had an NC-17 rating. That just proves my point; thanks in part to Blockbuster's idiotic policy, the rating has become a garbage can.) All together now:
Blockbuster, Blockbuster, sis boom bah!
Homogenized movies, ha ha ha!
(Best I could do on the spur of the moment.)
On the other hand, today is also the anniversary of Walt Kelly's death in 1973 at the age of 60.
Now, here was a guy unafraid to take chances. He was just a cartoonist, and a strip cartoonist at that. And a strip about funny animals, to boot. Nevertheless, he got in more trouble with his syndicate over political commentary than anyone until Garry Trudeau showed up.
One thing that interests me about Kelly is that he and Al Capp drew enormously popular strips at about the same time, Kelly's "Pogo" to Capp's "Li'l Abner". More on Capp at the proper time, but the comparison is instructive. Kelly and Capp, as I say, were contemporaries.
They could also draw better than 99% of anyone who has ever published a strip (sorry, but it's true). Their comics took place in the American South, though in widely different locations (the Ozarks vs. the Florida Everglades), and had a populist bent. Yet Kelly was a liberal and Capp was a conservative.
Maybe these two anniversaries have something in common after all. They show that there's room for all kinds of variety in America until something comes along - something corporate or sensationalistic or commercial or chicken or what have you -and steamrollers the whole thing.
Benshlomo says, We have met the enemy and he is us.
Twenty years ago today, the first Blockbuster Video opened in Dallas, Texas.
Back then you could rent video at any one of a number of stores, but Blockbuster quickly became the first really well-known national rental chain.
This would be more of a cinematic footnote than anything else, except that shortly thereafter Blockbuster helped to kill the NC-17 movie rating by refusing to carry any NC-17 movies, cutting those films off from an enormous revenue stream and discouraging the studios from making intelligent movies (or any movies, really) on adult themes. We see the results: Movies are becoming more juvenile all the time, and Roger Ebert gets more grouchy. Back in August he gave "no stars" to two movies in a single week - he never had occasion to do that before. You think he would have had to do that if the NC-17 rating were still viable? If he had some decent pictures to review on adult themes, you think he would have bothered with "Chaos" and "Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo"? (I know, "Chaos" had an NC-17 rating. That just proves my point; thanks in part to Blockbuster's idiotic policy, the rating has become a garbage can.) All together now:
Blockbuster, Blockbuster, sis boom bah!
Homogenized movies, ha ha ha!
(Best I could do on the spur of the moment.)
On the other hand, today is also the anniversary of Walt Kelly's death in 1973 at the age of 60.
Now, here was a guy unafraid to take chances. He was just a cartoonist, and a strip cartoonist at that. And a strip about funny animals, to boot. Nevertheless, he got in more trouble with his syndicate over political commentary than anyone until Garry Trudeau showed up.
One thing that interests me about Kelly is that he and Al Capp drew enormously popular strips at about the same time, Kelly's "Pogo" to Capp's "Li'l Abner". More on Capp at the proper time, but the comparison is instructive. Kelly and Capp, as I say, were contemporaries.
They could also draw better than 99% of anyone who has ever published a strip (sorry, but it's true). Their comics took place in the American South, though in widely different locations (the Ozarks vs. the Florida Everglades), and had a populist bent. Yet Kelly was a liberal and Capp was a conservative.
Maybe these two anniversaries have something in common after all. They show that there's room for all kinds of variety in America until something comes along - something corporate or sensationalistic or commercial or chicken or what have you -and steamrollers the whole thing.
Benshlomo says, We have met the enemy and he is us.
posted by benshlomo at 11:33 AM
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