Contributing writer for The Artifice.
Junior Contributor I
The Movie Sucked Because the Book Was Better?Everyone has heard the cliche review of just about any movie based off of a novel: "The book was so much better.." At what point can a film be judged in its own right, and at what point do the inspirations, sometimes inherently limiting what the audience deems as acceptable, deserve consideration? Many films often are portrayed in a negative light because of variations from the original inspiration, often noticed by the biased viewer, but does that actually make the standalone film poor in its own nature?
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Reinforcing the Traditional Patriarchal ideologies through Situation Comedies | |
This is why I think there is such a beauty to teaser trailers. I too try my best to avoid trailers of movies before I have seen them, especially if it’s within a few months of premiere. Of course you want to try and avoid ratings as well (every movie is better at its midnight premiere), but unfortunately we can’t all just see any and every movie we want, and we sometimes need more than just director and cast to decide if its something of interest. I too have always been a critic of comedy trailers, for that reason it’s my least favorite genre to see in theaters, and the least necessary for that matter. Other people, whose senses of humor don’t line up with your own, can really take away from your personal enjoyment of the film, especially if they are dying from the jokes you saw in the trailer a million times. But at the same time, trailers are a necessary aspect of promotion in modern day, and how can a comedy have a successful trailer without some of the better jokes included? Like in any film genre, it’s just a matter of finding the balance of how much to give the audience to make them want more. | Time to Trim Trailers? The Death of Surprise in Modern Hollywood |
Nice article! I wondered if you could elaborate on your thoughts on whether or not this portrayal is surprising to you, and what your reaction/article would have been had it been written in a different time period as oppose to in retrospect?
To me, it seems that media and entertainment, especially in regards to television more so than film, since extended over a longer, more thorough time period allowing viewers to connect more so to characters, the goal is to actually enable viewers to directly relate to the actors, and in the case of your article including but not limited to, the “situational” aspect of situational comedy.
I guess what I wonder is how rare is it for a program to not actually reflect the norms of a certain society given such a goal. And, is it possible to reflect those norms, allow viewers to relate, and not reinforce those norms, which in this case we can see today as ‘patriarchal’?
I find it difficult to speculate as to what social norms we aspire to currently that will be looked on so differently (and perhaps in a negative light) in the future. That’s just how human morality and our output of media/entertainment business seem to evolve :/