Aaron

As I read your article, which was well-written and interesting, certain phrases stuck out as unnecessarily negative with no basis or proof. While we could get into a debate on whether advertising and sponsorship ‘taints’ content, I think that your condemnation of advertising in YouTube should either be qualified or removed from the article.

Example: “Yet continuing to corrupting their content with corporate sponsorship filling up every corner of the video frame, doesn’t always ensure that their quotient of fans will keep increasing.”

“Corrupting their content with corporate sponsorship” is an unfortunately general and unsupported moral stance in this article and it detracts from the sentence’s point, being that making content FOR sponsors RATHER THAN viewers does not guarantee popular success on YouTube.

I would encourage you to watch videos by Casey Neistat or Colin Furze to see how casual sponsorship during videos is not a corrupting force on their content and often enhances it.

There have been some wonderfully ponderous fan-theories about the Joker in The Dark Knight series. One of my favourites posits that the Joker is actually the protagonist of the film. When you look at what he did for Gotham (yes, through violence, mayhem and injustice), the clear immorality of the character becomes muddied. Gotham, pre-Joker, had serious problems with organized crime and corruption, and a vigilante (Batman). Gotham, post-Joker, had much less organized crime, corruption, and a missing vigilante.

I think this consideration deserves some attention as your definition of film morality as “whatever is right from the point of view of the audience” could indicate the Joker as a moral character if the film portrayed him as a deeply flawed but pragmatic savior for Gotham.

Reading your article after watching the trailer for The Founder, the upcoming biopic of McDonald’s Ray Kroc, I’m beginning to ponder films celebrating the life and successes of captains of industry and the like. Steve Jobs is on the the to-watch list, but I’m reminded of my experience watching The Social Network. Although these kinds of biopics are generally celebratory of successful capitalists, their intrigue and challenges capture the dramatic flair necessary for a ‘good movie’. I haven’t seen Saving Mr. Banks yet but I’ve heard it missed the mark because of this reason.