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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

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Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#281

Post by Duanemclemore »

marcosdumay wrote: post #230
justanotherjoe wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe more about the "ruined punchline" thing? Cause that sounds natural to me. Like in Jurassic Park, Alan Grant hears "We clocked the t-rex at 32 mph" and he goes "Did you just say 't-rex'?". Actually they repeat it like 3 times more to really lean into it. And I guess my point is that Jurassic Park doesn't feel modern or clumsy in this particular execution.

Well, that's people repeating the line for confirmation in a scenario where communications weren't very reliable and the information was extraordinary. That's close to the way the conversation would happen in real life.

Sure! I would humbly suggest that we don't go to movies to see -real- real life situations re-presented back to us.

I mean, unless you have two comedic geniuses who can really sell yelling down the stairs to ask the partner what they want for dinner, getting met with "HUH???" inching a little closer, and having repeat this three times until you finally just go down and ask in a normal voice. In the right hands that could be comedy gold on screen.

But by in large, we don't consume media because it represents the banal reality of everyday life.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#282

Post by rezmason »

This phenomenon isn't exclusive to film or even fiction.

A year or two ago, YouTube flicked a short at me where a Gen-Z fan of some personality shared their feelings of heartbreak after he announced his departure from the platform.

A montage of the channel's videos had the fan's voiceover (I'm paraphrasing): "This YouTube channel has been a part of my life, my childhood, since I was like a little kid, and I never imagined one day it would end."

And then, jarringly: "This is me right now." And a still photo of their tear-streaked face. "This is me right now," not in the emotional or confused tone of someone navigating a personal tragedy, but the straight conveyance of a sentiment that has social currency. A sentence they knew others would know how to digest. Because they've seen others use it enough times to be literate in whatever transaction it represents.

I understand their choice to include their emotional reaction, and that shows some real vulnerability that I truly appreciate, but what is "This is me right now"? Maybe it springs from the social media they grew up in— where the vast majority of posts and comments are either a status or a reaction, and discourse has been strained and reduced into signals of acknowledgement.

That's what I think this "literalism" is. It's the misshapen MICR-font metadata stamped in cultural things, so that they can be parsed by a machine— and the machine is the set of heuristics younger generations have adopted to sift through mountains of low signal-to-noise content that platforms are pushing on them.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#283

Post by BobaFloutist »

decimalenough wrote: post #14
brokencode wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that were the case, people would watch classic movies, read novels, etc. No, I’m pretty sure social media has seriously hurt the average person’s attention span. The idea of sitting down and watching a two hour movie is really quite daunting when you’re used to videos that are at most 30 min and often less than one.

Observe somebody browsing Tiktok/Instagram/YouTube Shorts. People compulsively swipe on to the next reel if the one they're watching doesn't hook them in within the first second .

Right, because the much vaunted Tik-Tok algorithm starts a stopwatch when the clip begins in order to determine whether or not to serve you more content like it.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#284

Post by IncreasePosts »

justanotherjoe wrote: post #34
Duanemclemore wrote: post #21

I don't know if calling it a "New Literalism" is helpful. I just don't know that a penchant for literalism ever went away. Now, what IS relatively new is the "ruined punchline" phenomena that they identify (without naming) on the movie recap podcast Kill James Bond, which is that contemporary movies always ruin jokes by telling one, say... "x" and then having another character chime in with "Did you just say 'x' !?"…

Can you describe more about the "ruined punchline" thing? Cause that sounds natural to me. Like in Jurassic Park, Alan Grant hears "We clocked the t-rex at 32 mph" and he goes "Did you just say 't-rex'?". Actually they repeat it like 3 times more to really lean into it. And I guess my point is that Jurassic Park doesn't feel modern or clumsy in this particular execution.

That's not a punch line, it is Dr Grant babbling in disbelief that they actually created a T-rex

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#285

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #113
somenameforme wrote: post #17

Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size. And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them! Even for individual movies. For all the m…

2002 was also when broadband internet and movie piracy became more prolific - DivX was just out, DVD burners became a thing, etc. Streaming video was in its infancy, with TiVo and VOD slowly becoming a thing (although that only reached mainstream in 2007 when Netflix launched). DVDs and DVD players became mainstream, as well as flat TVs, HD video, etc. Anyway. The tech in the movie theaters did improve by a lot since…

Netflix wasn't launched in 2007. The streaming service was launched in 2007. Netflix as a company was founded in 97 and was ubiquitous by 2002. Why go to the movies and pay $100+ for a family when you could wait 4-6 months for the home release and get the movie mailed to your home? You could go out and buy a box of microwavable popcorn and a few bags of candy and still save 80 bucks.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#286

Post by FredPret »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #123
ajmurmann wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of that is because the movies themselves changed vs everything else that has changed. Back in 2002 most people still watched tv on CRT that were very small by today's standard and had very low resolution. You either had to go out and rent a movie, rewatch something you had recorded or bought or watch whatever was on and enjoy the ads. Now we have a huge choice of movies and tv shows at our finger ti…

> Yes the screen is still much smaller than in the cinema I recently got a a pair of XR glasses (ray neo 3). Pretty much replicates the full cinema experience. Only downside is it isn't a shared experience.

Can you read text for long periods on those?

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#288

Post by rurban »

x0x0 wrote: post #209
zamadatix wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2002, watching a movie at home for most people meant flinging a low quality VHS or DVD onto a ~27" tube TV (with a resolution so worthless it might as well be labeled "new years") using a 4:3 aspect ratio pan & scan of the actual movie. Getting anything recent meant going out to the Blockbuster anyways. In 2022, watching a movie meant streaming something on your 50+" 16:9 4k smart TV by pressing a button from your…

Also, I know this sounds like get off my lawn, but people behaved better. Or maybe they didn't didn't, but the penetration of flashlights kept in people's pockets wasn't 100%. Which is pretty annoying now that a movie for two is like a $75 experience with popcorn.

I watch about 3 movies a week with my wife. The cheap ticket is 6.50€ (Mondays), the normal is 8.50€.

Dresden, Germany

We don't watch streams, as my wife constantly talks over it. Which she cannot in the movies

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#289

Post by BobaFloutist »

babypuncher wrote: post #252
BobaFloutist wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are clearly also very educated. Impressive use of language! I think it's pretty normal that as people get deeper and more invested in any given artform, they tend to become more appreciative of works that are less immediately pleasing to lay-people. You mentioned literature and (atonal) music, but this just as readily applies to food, wine, videogames, Anime, fashion, anything you can think of. I'll agree th…

To put it another way, today's avant-garde is tomorrow's mainstream.

Yup. Hence why we went from too much patriotism post-9/11 to too dark after Nolan Batman to too quippy after the Marvel takeover.

I remember first watching The Avengers and finding it refreshing. "This is fun! Why aren't more action movies fun? They're always so gritty and violent and serious, even though the protagonists are functionally superhuman, they're always so mean-spirited and the dialogue is is always so aggressively masculine and primitive and angry." And then that was everything for the next few decades.

Re: The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

#290

Post by cultofmetatron »

FredPret wrote: post #286
cultofmetatron wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes the screen is still much smaller than in the cinema I recently got a a pair of XR glasses (ray neo 3). Pretty much replicates the full cinema experience. Only downside is it isn't a shared experience.

Can you read text for long periods on those?

I won't recommend it for doing any kind of coding. its workable but far from ergonomic. That said, my pair is perfect for streaming shows and playing video games. Im going to wait till a system with true spatial anchoring and 4k come to market. I think at that point, Id be willing to use it as a virtual monitor.
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