Weekend Lounge ~ Why Films Don't Look like Films

Welcome to the weekend!

It's a bit late this week, but at least today's post is here. November is (thankfully) almost over, and with it this bizarre year.

I thought I would use the moment to state that the problem I was dealing with behind the scenes for the last month seems to be resolved. There is no longer a larger issue threatening me. That said, it will still lead to another related decision on my end, so the nonsense I went through wasn't all for naught. I apologize for the vagueness, but it's because of how convoluted this entire thing has been. I'll try to explain it later. Regardless, I want to thank everyone for their support and their prayers throughout all of this. It truly means a lot to me.

That said, let's get to today's topic! We have other things to talk about here at the Wasteland beyond personal nonsense. That being: aesthetic. We've talked a bit about this topic before, but never using examples from a medium in decline itself.

A lot has been said about the above video on what is missing from films today. You've probably seen it yourself. However, it's pretty undeniable that despite having more tech and more money to throw at movies than we did in the past, they do not look any better than they did half a century ago. In some cases they actually look substantially worse than what came before. There is a certain something missing from them that only ever seems to be captured in independent fare if they're recaptured at all, for the most part. It's a loss of the connection to reality.

That important connection has been lost sight of.

This chestnut has been getting a lot of use recently.

When we talk about "reality" in regards to art, we are speaking of more than whatever loose definition of "realism" we've been increasingly obsessed with since the 2000s. It's not quite the same thing, and I think that gets lost in a lot of these discussions.

This isn't referring to real world locations (or even sets, as one of the examples in the video shows) but in the strange lack of care about reality itself. Cinema is a visual art that requires more than "looking good" to be actually good. It requires immersing the audience into the presented world and the lives of the character, as if we are there with them living out the story alongside our lead. This is because we are. Their reality is just like ours in the way that matters: sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings, are all as important to them as they are to us.

Cinema as a medium requires the audience to experience them all tangibly through the screen. It's different from a book that is entirely through the imagination: in a movie the audience is a passive visitor to the world. Therefore the world should be as inviting to the viewer as possible, and all the heavy lifting is on those behind the scenes. It is why cinema has always required the biggest investment to get into.

 

All of this is to say that art is reality, not fiction. At least, not in a certain sense. The story comes from the imagination regardless of how factual the events might be in the end, and it is the job of the artist to convey it to their audience using all the senses they can. It's a shared experience, a way for us all to experience reality together from a new angle we might not have considered before. That is the magic of art and the wonder that comes from the Unknown. This is not missing (or even rare) today, but it is missing from the mainstream due to the remnants of the monoculture steering itself into an iceberg. If you don't look for it, you won't find it.

To be honest, this tangible relation to the world is the reason the controversial Avatar movies do so well. It is not for the story or the characters, but in the visuals and how the films easily inject the audience into this alien world they would not otherwise not be able to see. These movies make money purely for this, and the people behind them should get credit for knowing how to achieve this feeling even without having real life locations or sets on hand. The people behind them understand the the injection into the world is paramount above all else, and it clearly works.

Granted it comes at a high price (a cost that is probably not to be paid by the majority of other filmmakers), but it is still entirely used in trying to connect the audience to the world. They know what they're doing, and they do it better than any of the big dogs in Hollywood right now.

It also helps in that case that the world in that movie was meant to be a highly detailed alien world different from our own. Were it used to simply recreate Earth, audiences would be puzzled and asking themselves why not just use real location shots? Why is reality being deliberately obfuscated? At that point the tangible connection to reality is lost and the viewer knows its a movie meant to invoke emotions and feelings in them and they will detach subconsciously, or even consciously. The obvious end stage of producing content for mass consumption instead of art meant to invoke and engage. It's just passive consuming, and that's all it'll ever amount to being.

Thankfully there are plenty of others that have not abandoned or forgotten that important rule of engaging the audience. In fact, the ones who do it the best today are typically those with the lowest budgets and means to get their story across.

It's not really any different for cinema as it is for other forms right now, however the higher barrier to entry (the cost) is probably going to see them shrink in number in relation to other forms of art in the near future. That said, when it comes back, and it almost certainly will some day, creators will have learned most everything Hollywood has forgotten.

Much like NewPub taking over from OldPub's failures, there are new generations of creators willing to step up, just like always. When they do they will be a force to be reckoned with. It's just going to be a while before it happens on a wider scale.

Until then, keep digging! You'll never know what gems you'll find out there. And believe you me, there are plenty.

Have a good week and I will see you next time!

Check out my story "Void Railway", currently in Cirsova #22! What lies waiting in the void of space to threaten our heroic enforcers as they guide a merchant to safety on the closest planet? The answer might surprise you!

Memory Mirage

We're living in an age of nostalgia. That much is certain. However, what is the substance of said nostalgia? Is it centered around the good feelings and memories involved or on the products themselves? Do we even know? I can't answer that, and yet I doubt the entertainment conglomerates know either. It will require years of cultural studies to find out just where this whole thing came from and why no one can define it in concrete terms.

But the truth is that the past we all remember wasn't some Golden Age where everything was perfect and the sun always shined bright on the world. There were plenty of terrible things, and we know this. Remember Friends and Survivor? Try watching them now. Those haven't held up too well, and you won't find much argument to the contrary.

Some things simply don't age well, and sometimes those in charge completely misunderstand that. And sometimes they're more interested in re-purposing the old for sinister (and not-so-sinister) motives. Then, just as now, there existed a media that wanted to weaponize art and slander the past to create it. Either way they tend to misunderstand what made the original product hit the mark to begin with.

Even as far back as the '90s there were those who attempted to control discourse by gripping nostalgia by the throat and choking the life out of it. You don't have to look much further than video games and the attempted murder of 2D gaming.

It might have fallen down the memory hole for the general culture, but for those of us who didn't jump and clap our hands at the newest shiny toy on the block it remains fresh in our minds. An entire industry, and its sycophants tried to erase a genre overnight. Yes, this happened, and people in the industry deny that it ever occurred.

But it did.*

*Special mention must be made of several comments solely blaming Nintendo and/or saying this propaganda effort doesn't matter now. If you want to know why your hobby is a multi-billion dollar industry and is still dying then you can blame yourself for being completely unable to discern symptoms of the issues destroying it.

For those unaware, in the mid-80s when the video game industry was on its last legs, Nintendo came out with the Nintendo Entertainment System, a video game console that saved the industry with its focus on quality and stamping out the clutter and junk the shelves had been flooded with. The effort wasn't perfect as some quality was blocked from release and trash still slipping through the gates, but Nintendo's focus helped the hobby gain footing again.

By the mid-90s, video game systems like the Sega Genesis, Turbografx-16 and Super NES, had come around and raised the quality of the medium by putting fun first and creating the single best console generation of gaming to date. These systems proved video games were sticking around.

However, that was not to last. You can read the article to see why things changed and why the move to 3D was wanted by different companies, but it was inevitability either way. 3D was new and there were things you could explore with it that you couldn't in 2D space. I don't blame Sony, Nintendo, and Sega for pushing 3D (but I do blame Sony's anti-2D policy as directly harmful. Sorry, Dualshockers, we missed out on many 2D games because of Sony's censorship and no one in the industry ever calls them out on it) because there had never been a 3D console before. As far as selling points go, it was a great one.

What was damaging to the industry, however, were the game journalists who for the first time revealed themselves as corporate slaves more interested in pushing some nebulous form of progress while burning its roots to a crisp at the same time over promoting what the customers wanted. They deserve to be called out over this.

You see, 2D gaming is why the video game industry exists at all. It's where the medium started, where the top franchises emerged from, and where genres (including first person perspective games) were born. Without 2D your favorite video game would not exist because the medium wouldn't.

And game journalists fought to kill it. I had personally gotten into arguments on the internet as a boy with these very people who would give good ports of arcade games lower scores for being arcade games, lower price be damned. I'd seen 2D platformers degraded for being 2D platformers. I watched as sprite games were outright dismissed because they weren't overly blocky polygons. All this when less than five years prior games like Contra 3 and Axelay were praised for the inventive use of sprites and scrolling. Now these games suddenly didn't matter?

Meanwhile these journalists pushed 3D as the future of gaming and a step towards some utopian future for the hobby. Why both couldn't coexist was a mystery to me at the time, and it took until the Nintendo Wii (much to the chagrin of game journalists: they hated the Wii) and New Super Mario Bros. Wii (which IGN even wrote an article decrying Nintendo for releasing) being the highest selling game of the generation to show that audiences still wanted 2D. Because game journalists wanted it dead and relegated to 5 buck indie games. They didn't care that the audience made NSMBWii a higher seller than every Call of Duty game--they wanted their industry the way they wanted it.

Because of the success of that game, 2D came flooding back. One year after Mega Man 9's success and 2D was allowed to live on consoles again after being quarantined to handhelds (and with the rise of the Nintendo DS and then 3DS it was already being replaced by 3D) and saved from extinction. Years of quality games later and 2D is alive and well again.

No thanks to game journalists.

And with the recent success of the NES and SNES Classic, with the announcement of a Sega Genesis one, with affordable arcade cabinets coming into fashion and being sold at Walmart, with classic gaming merchandise selling higher than ever, the question remains. Was the audience actually tired of 2D, or were they simply not given a choice to get sick of it?

Because as much goodwill as the 8 and 16 bit generations have, the following one does not have anywhere near their popularity.

The uncomfortable truth is that 3D games from the PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo 64, have not aged well. While many games came out for those systems that were great, they suffered from problems later systems never did and it hampers playing them today or with fresh eyes. If there is a generation of gaming that deserves to be totally remade with modern hardware it is that one.

Ironic that the most "important" and "advanced" console generation aged the worst of any, but there it is.

But the generation before it? The SNES, TG16, and Genesis, have aged perfectly well. In fact, there was room for improvement. The SNES had problems with faster games, the Genesis couldn't output as much on screen as the SNES, and the TG16 was weaker than both despite the CD attachment giving it a boost of Redbook audio. Systems like the Sega CD and the Sega Saturn showed where 2D could have gone with multiple levels of parallax scrolling, large sprites, and imaginative and bright art design, but were too enamored with a graphical arms race that amounted to nothing in the end to pursue it. That road led to bloated HD gaming costs, closed companies, oversized teams, and a decrease in output from studios. But at least every game looks as exciting as a National Geographic photo. That blind obsession with progress is what led gaming down the hole it's currently sitting in. The pursuit of 3D derailed the hobby.

So why are gamers nostalgic for the past? I wouldn't say they are, actually. I'd say the 8 and 16-bit generations remain popular because they are objectively the best generations in all of gaming. It was the one that hit worldwide, where genres flourished, and where quality was more important than technology. It's the 32-bit generation that requires nostalgia to enjoy to its fullest, and the trends started under it are what led to every modern problem (Save DLC) that is currently stagnating the industry from cinematic obsession to a focus on "realism" at the expense of player agency and fun. There is nothing to miss from post-16 bit console generations because everything they started still remains.

It isn't that people think the past is better but that the present is so terrible that they have nowhere else to go, and that is because of a pointless and obsessive worship of the future that buried it all to begin with. When you stray off the path you need to retrace your steps to where you first got lost to find your way forward again. You don't blindly plod along in the dark toward the coyotes howling over the next hill. You know what they say about doing the same thing multiple times and wondering why you get the same results.

Maybe this will serve a lesson for Gen Z coming from Gen Y and Millennials not to believe the hype.  The hype is not on your side. Eventually it will turn against you.

And the problem has not been remedied.

Yes, we can say games like Cuphead exist now and sell gangbusters so the stigma against an entire genre isn't a problem anymore. But that would be a lie. Entertainment was disposed of for the simple reason that it was declared outdated by someone other than the customers. We were never given the choice.

The fact of the matter is that it happened, and could very well happen again. In an age where journalism is losing credibility due to hacks and liars working against their customer base, we must remain more vigilant than ever. They're not going to stop doing the same thing over and over.

Pulp, 2D gaming, action cartoons, adventure movies, and comics as a whole, have all suffered heavy blows from groups of people who hate what they stand for and will do anything to take them away.

None of this is anything new, so don't be surprised when they try it again.

Don't forget, because it's not over yet. Nostalgia cash-grabs exist because of the feelings corporations are hoping to invoke, not because they want to continue the lineage of the product you enjoy. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when those involved don't understand the appeal to begin with. That is how you take a billion dollar franchise and within three years release a movie that can't even break even. That's how you know they don't get it.

The truth is we're not in any Golden Age right now, but we have the tools to make one. While those who dislike us and wish to pilfer the last remaining bills from out pocket as we walk by their foreclosed business look at us with scorn, we actually do know what we want.

We don't want the past, we don't want the present, and we don't want the future. We want all three at once. And if you don't understand that then maybe that's why modern art fails to connect with so many people.

Screw your bloodless manic-depressive Utopian paradise. We deserve better.


I have two recent stories out in Storyhack #3 and one in DimensionBucket Magazine. If you are looking for good old fashioned action and adventure stories like they haven't made since the '90s then I've got you covered.

Someone's got to pull the slack, after all.

Rock n Roll is Dead! Long Live the Dead!

Take a few breaths and calm yourself to this

I tend to avoid talking about music on this blog for two reasons. The first is that it is easily the least popular topic and garners the least amount of attention, and the second is that it's just very subjective. I don't know anyone with similar musical tastes to each other let alone mine. Discussing sound is difficult outside of prose, especially when you're talking about a song you like and someone else just might not care for.

This is different. I want to talk about the dumbest music related quote I've seen in years. And if you've ever seen some of the stupid things record executives had said since they destroyed their industry back in 1998 then you know how idiotic it must be.  And in an industry that houses Ariana Grande and Katy Perry, and their millions of clones, that says a lot .No one takes these people seriously anymore, and for good reason. Whether you like Pop, Jazz, Metal, Rock, Rap, Classical, or Funk, I think we can all agree things in the industry are not looking up.

Ready for this quote? Your brain will not be able to handle this level in inane blather.

Though I suppose if you still listen to Pop music in 2017 you're probably already brain damaged to begin with. How many times can you listen to the same stale beats and hack lyrics, anyway?

Here it is.

Someone actually thought this was an important thing to say in Current Year. Someone thought this was worth saying. This is absolutely real.

Now I'm no genius but I think anyone who has turned on a radio or MTV in the last 50 and 30 years respectively (whoever there is still doing so) would be hard-pressed to tell you a single female pop star who doesn't write about the topic of sex. Because they all do. All the time. Incessantly. Without pause.

And yet this sort of thing is still said all the time. Is there an industry more out of touch with reality than this one?

But, you see, this industry is full of Important People who have Important Things To Say and we will cheer them on and swallow whatever they tell us no matter how objectively retarded it is, and how often it has been repeated, because they give us peasant ear candy that make us smile. They are above you and me. At least, that's what the record labels tell me. I haven't bought an album from them in well over a decade so you can forgive me if I'm a bit out of touch with their stagnant and unchanging practices. So little ever changes even after so many decades.

Because nothing in this festering boil of an industry has changed one bit in at least two decades. And I'm being very generous with that number.

Let's disregard the fact that all modern female pop stars are interchangeable. Let''s ignore the reality that mainstream music hasn't changed one iota since 1998 and is still praised as revolutionary by the hacks in the music press. Let's forget that Gangsta rap has left the world worse off both culturally and sonically and yet is still praised for recycling the same three topics ad nauseum after a quarter of a decade into its existence. Let's just bypass the uncomfortable truth that Kurt Cobain and Thom Yorke destroyed rock music with their terrible influence and obnoxious, holier-than-thou fans. Forget all that for a moment. All of that has contributed to the death of the music industry, but there's more to it than just that.

How out of touch with your own industry do you have to be to believe this? How dumb do you have to be to not know that hack musicians (and some good ones) have been writing solely about sex since the industry began? Name me a single female Pop singer with a hit from the last decade that that isn't about sex in some fashion. You can't unless you want to be pedantic. Because that's all they write about!

What else do modern female Pop singers sing about? What 95 Theses are they nailing to the door of their precious industry? What revolutionary message do they have to share with their fellow hacks? What are they doing that is different or worthy of praise?

Nothing.

They are doing nothing new or interesting. They have nothing at all to say, but they'll say it anyway.

And that is why this industry is a laughingstock and has been for so long. Mediocre thinkers that peddle tepid musical swill with 3rd grade lyrics and tired loping beats to kids and addle-brained pop culture whores are completely unaware of the very swamp they created. The very same creatively dead environment they still champion as if anyone outside their circle cares. Let's also not forget certain artists protest along political lines by withholding concerts to deliberately drive a wedge in their fanbase to get what they want. These musicians are a bunch of children.

And the record execs and "journalists" just nod along to it all like a '60s folk song that sounds deep but is actually about nothing.

Lester Bangs might have been a blowhard, but at least he was self-aware enough to know stupid when he saw it. Unfortunately, you won't find any music critic worth their salt these days calling out the stagnant and sour taste the industry has been reveling in or their undeserved diva behavior. When was the last time you heard of a popular music critic? there's a good reason you haven't. The record companies can't have anyone making them look bad, after all.

Heck, how Rolling Stone is even still in business despite being wrong about literally everything for the last half century is a mystery to rival the Transfiguration. Remember when they called Justin Timberlake's first solo album a masterpiece? Of course you don't, because you, like anyone with two brain cells to rub together, don't read the rag! And yet they're still running. Funny, that.

If you want to know why the music industry is a pile of burning oil rags you have your answer in that one tweet. Every aspect of the industry is that brain dead.

A simulation of the Modern Pop Artist's life

You might notice my tone is particularly rough on this subject. That is because the music industry is a whole other different kettle of fish from other entertainment sectors when it comes to stupidity. I've also been dealing with them longer than any of the others. There is no industry full of such complete ignorance about the future and such hatred of its own roots and none filled with anywhere near as many undeserved egos. Which says a lot when you remember that I'm including Hollywood in there.

The publishing industry is out of touch, but it has an independent and mid-tier world that are not. The television landscape is on life support, but it has growing competition in the online space. The video game industry has a thriving fanbase who aren't afraid to call a spade a spade. Even the movie industry is beginning to get push-back from online services and independents. There are wheels turning.

The music industry has none of that. There are independent artists, but they get far less exposure than they did even ten years ago despite the explosion of online streaming. Because it's all backwards. No one in the industry is going to give them a look. Not when they pay to manufacture their own artists and hits.

But what do you expect? The music industry is a rubber room of post-modern morons staring in mirrors, seeing their drooling faces, and thinking women should continue doing what they're already doing as if it is some radical statement. It's easier than ever to put out music with creative and bold sounds but no record company has taken advantage of it. and if they did they'd bury it like their late '90s culling of everything not bubblegum, gangsta rap, and rap rock from their artist roster. Twenty years later and how much of that has changed? One less genre.

They'd rather still push their swill peddlers who go on about the same stupid topics from the 1960s as if anyone still cares. You will never see another Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley again because of this. If they're this dumb is it any wonder that they've lost so much relevance?

Pop music is dead, Pop fans. We killed it. We let the record companies dump and screw bands and artists because they wanted to push their corporate mandated and manufactured stars on us. One day we were seeing the Smashing Pumpkins in arenas and the next they were replaced with a New Kids on the Block clone, and we shrugged and did nothing about it. We allowed payola to take Swing, Blues, Alternative, New Wave, Metal, Ska, Punk, and Rockabilly off the radio and didn't bat an eye. For all crap about how shady (oh, and they were shady) record execs were to people like Bob Dylan or Berry Gordy, the same exact thing still goes on today and is completely ignored. We razed this whole industry to the ground, but it still refuses to roll over and die.

But younger fans are smart enough to simply go indie to get what they want and make a career out of that. There is nothing to gain by feeding that fattened beast. Better to walk away and let the whole house of cards crumble at this point.

I'm also at fault. I walked away from the whole mess years and years ago. Stopped going to shows. Stopped hanging out with music snobs. Stopped hoarding CDs. Stopped dealing with musical elitists who couldn't stop huffing on their copy of OK Computer for the 500th time while ignoring the crumbling scene around them. I ceded the industry and walked away.

So let this be a warning to you, fans of various forms of media. Cede ground and you are giving it to the sort who will destroy what you love. You will be left with an industry of vapid fools who think stating something that has been happening for over 50 years is revolutionary. Fight for your hobby and your interests, because they will be taken away from you and ground into the dirt by clueless fools who are as brain dead as the product they put out.

The music industry is the lesson we need to learn, and oh boy is it a lesson to learn.

Happy New Years, everyone!

Reclaim what we've lost

*Note: Hey look, three songs in this post and not one about sex. Amazing what you can you do when you don't live in a box.*


My novel actually does have a lot of musical inspiration, but from far older than the current crap era of pop music. If you're a big fan you might even recognize a bit! Give it a look.