Last week when I checked my usual on-line reads, a fair number of bloggers, commenters and reporters were opining on dismal ratings for the Oscar awards in particular and dropping attendance on movies-in-theaters. The general consensus was that Hollywood-provided movie entertainment was dying the death; no longer or interest or very relevant to a large segment of the American public. Yes to the dying the death part, but alas still somewhat relevant; if it wasn’t, the occurrence of the Oscar awards would have been only a brief and transitory blip on the internet radar for the overwhelming number of us not employed in the movie business.

Oh, did you know the Oscars were on last night?
Were they? Huh… anyway…

We humans do like to be entertained, though; movies, television, books, music, on-like gaming, stage performances of all sorts, sports, even just videos of furniture refinishing or a thousand other obscure hobbies documented on social media. Something interesting going on to divert us from an otherwise hum-drum existence? We will watch it, read it, stream it, play it or otherwise participate, even if only passively. The established American entertainment-production hub generally known as Hollywood has produced movies for the silver screen for a little over a century. (I’m currently reading a rather entertaining mystery series set in that milieu in the 1920s – a gorgeous silent movie star with a penchant for men and trouble, and her stalwart, able and extremely respectable sister-in-law/assistant who becomes quite the amateur detective.) For at least half a century, Hollywood and the close-in environs around Los Angeles also produced much of our television programming, although lately a lot of that product has been filmed/taped elsewhere, to the not so-quiet lamentations of whose local professionals who have seen their careers diminish into non-profitability.

At any rate, most commenters in or at the fringe of the American entertainment world acknowledge that there is serious trouble in the current world of movies and television; fragmented audience, vanishing audience, audience distracted by another screen … and a serious and largely unbroken run of unwatchable, unmemorable and unappealing content. Preachy, incoherent, tediously predictable, incompetently produced and marketed, generously insulting the audience, glorying in perversity … whatever reason there is for the precipitous drop, of late viewing audiences stay away in droves.
Hollywood is now paying the price for forgetting their reason for existing in the first place. We are no longer entertained at the mainstream movies. In the main, we shrug regretfully and wander off to venues where we find entertainment more to our tastes; foreign movies, streaming services, old movies and TV, multi-player role-playing games, YouTube… whatever.

I speculate that Hollywood – or the entertainment consortiums roughly categorized as such – forgot their purpose. Which was to entertain. Not just in the “Ow My Balls!” crude slapstick way – but to provide a full range of the movie experience, from slapstick to the serious, engaging and thoughtful. Memorable, engaging, educating us perhaps, but with a light hand and never going all preachy on us.
Perhaps the creators of our movie entertainment just got bored with providing that kind of movie and decided that theories and preaching to an audience were just more the current thing to do. It’s been suggested that the main problem stems from having fired all the old white guys (and gals) who knew how to do that and do it on a tight budget. The thought also came to me that this dreadful boredom with simply providing entertainment in the same old customary way was akin to what happened with modern art, modern architecture, and even something as mundane as teaching small humans their reading, writing and arithmetic. Forget about painting pictures that ordinary humans could relate to and appreciate: tape a banana to the wall and post a long screed about the theory of it. Never mind about building structures that might be comfortable or impressive and serve a specific purpose – best bow down to the fashionable theory and sock the suffering public with ugly, hostile – but cheap – structures that leak through their flat roofs and are money sinks to maintain. Oh, and never mind that generally the public hates and is baffled by the results. Theory uber alles…

Comment as you wish. Is boredom with the initial purpose and whoring after a trendy new theory to blame for unmemorable movies, fraudulent and unappealing art, and desperately ugly buildings?