wolfghostninja

Murderbot is dull-edged science fiction "content" commissioned by Apple TV. It doesn't even try to be good. Don't think, just watch seems to be the theme here. No laughs, no nuance, no soul. This isn't art, it's "content". Still, everyone involved got a paycheck, which is what differentiates content from art by artists who take risks. Content means everyone gets paid no matter what, subscription services guarantee a minimum standard, which doesn't need to be high or aspire to anything other than box-checking. Hey presto you have 10 episodes at 30 mins each. Boring beyond belief. I wonder how many enjoy it because of the sunk-cost fallacy. Apple TV seems threadbare and exclusively middle-brow. Can't wait for Dune 3, theres never been so much "content" out there, but in truth there's absolutely nothing worth watching most of the time.

I'm sure I'm not alone in having noticed the steady decline of cinematic art emanating from Hollywood. Nowadays, award shows or films/tv shows/content that are awarded gongs at the Golden Globes or the Oscars, Emmy's etc are a signal that I will find the works patronising and or shallow, and of course there are exceptions to the rules. I recently watched American Fiction, which was a breath of fresh air, and I am eager to see The Brutalist too, but by and large, popularity of a production is a sign that it is one to avoid.

Part of the problem is that studios, for a variety of reasons, have stopped taking creative risks preferring instead to have hits, rather than any attempt to contribute to culture.

Apple is (or was) a tech company that now sits on so much cash that it has movies as a side hustle. This entails hiring executives and excludes art - so nothing is ever really created instead it is cinema by commission. Greenlit projects must adhere to a checklist, and artists are sidelined in the decision making process of production in favour of bland, safe, and uncontroversial subject matter. It's all very profitable I'm sure. There is no shortage of customers for things like Severance, Masters of the Air, House of Dragons, Succession, and so on, and of course I am glad that people enjoy themselves watching that sort of thing - they aren't totally without merit - but pushed to describe the nature of contemporary cinema I would use the word "braindead".

It isn't the quality of the actors, the sets, the score, even the dialogue that I don't appreciate, but the mindset behind these productions - they don't ask any questions of us the viewers, they aren't particularly thought provoking or challenging, they really have nothing to say, in my opinion.

Severance - although I haven't finished the series - falls neatly into the category of "content" - after all that is the foremost ambition of its creators - to create content for their sparkly new platform, and of course there is the marketing and the way awards tie into the shows success.

Sadly, the great David Lynch passed away recently - it is worth remembering that he had a difficult time getting Twin Peaks made, and I think that auteurs like Lynch cannot emerge from "studios" like Apple or Amazon - they reek of corporate worldview, disconnected and made inside a bubble, by people who cannot or do not think or imagine - in short they are poseurs - not artists, and it follows that their output is exciting but shallow.