{"id":32558,"date":"2018-03-20T06:46:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T11:46:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32558"},"modified":"2018-03-20T06:46:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T11:46:26","slug":"film-in-the-anthropocene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=32558","title":{"rendered":"Film in the Anthropocene"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Film in the Anthropocene<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Film is of course the art form of Industrial Civilization and its mass culture, whether as a simple historical fact, a manifestation of technical possibility, or in the various ideologies it is adept at expressing.<\/p>\n

But it is also the art form of the Anthropocene.\u00a0 I am overstating the case somewhat, but not entirely, when I note that the prevailing message of film is the power of belief and trust.\u00a0 This is most visible in the nearly inevitable Hollywood Plot whereby evil, prejudice, self-doubt, or malevolent aliens are overcome, at the plot\u2019s climax, by a leap of belief or trust that transcends the odds.\u00a0 This is true whether we are talking about Westerns, \u201cStar Wars,\u201d \u201cRocky,\u201d \u201cPocahontas,\u201d \u201cToy Story\u201d\u2014or \u201cA Wrinkle in Time,\u201d which I saw earlier today (don\u2019t ask). \u00a0Never mind the odds or probable limits. \u00a0Believe.\u00a0 Trust.\u00a0 Take my hand.\u00a0 Look me in the eyes.\u00a0 Close your eyes.\u00a0 Jump.\u00a0 What film doesn\u2019t contain this moment?\u00a0 The force is always with the film\u2019s hero if only he or she will surrender fussy sensibility and give in to it.<\/p>\n

It is easy enough to make a connection between the narrative of belief in yourself against the odds in the context of competitive capitalism, especially as it increasingly becomes a game of roulette in the financialized casino capitalism of today.\u00a0 But the story of self-overcoming through belief in oneself is more broadly suited to the Liberal life-plan of self-creation.\u00a0 You can be whoever you want\u2014as long as you dream big: that\u2019s the narrative line of almost every \u201cage appropriate\u201d (a phrase I use in both of its senses) movie or TV show produced for my children.\u00a0 The meta-myth of Liberalism is that there are no limits, that ideas and ideals can create reality, that any obstacle can be overcome by human ingeniousness\u2013if, that is, we don\u2019t lose faith and fall victim to the sensible or moderate law of averages that are so often represented by the foil if not the antagonist.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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Film in the Anthropocene Film is of course the art form of Industrial Civilization and its mass culture, whether as a simple historical fact, a manifestation of technical possibility, or in the various ideologies it is adept at expressing. But it is also the art form of the Anthropocene.\u00a0 I am overstating the case somewhat, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7],"tags":[3934,1200,3647,13546,19355,2057,6665,815],"class_list":["post-32558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","category-survival-2","tag-belief","tag-belief-systems","tag-culture","tag-erik-lindberg","tag-film","tag-hope","tag-resilience-org","tag-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32558"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32559,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32558\/revisions\/32559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}