Corruption of the film industry, run away and hide while you still have the chance, run before you're programmed to believe in a sugar coated life, the perfectly calculated offspring of the Hollywood Studios. Lets have a look at what we're running away from....
High Concept
The process of taking normal, everyday life; taking away the lows and mundane aspects then boosting the highs. What dreams are made of, when you're walking through town and imagine what it'd be like to be a vampire. Maybe that's just me. So an example would be Twilight, where Bella, her father, friends and the majority of the people she knows are completely normal and average. Then she gets involved with a family of vampires, which is completely unrealistic aspect in a completely realistic world.
Karma
The understanding of the cycle of cause and effect. Do bad things and bad things will happen to you. If you've been under the upper hand but have always done the right thing then one day you'll break free from that and receive your due. In The Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith has a hard time throughout pretty much the whole film, but he's always kind, he always does or tries his best to do the right thing and secure a good future for his son. In the end he succeeds and all his hard work pays off. Of course.
The American Dream
Practically any traditional gangster film. Through hard work and perseverance you will achieve success and have a good life in the land of the free. Goodfellas shows this well, following Henry from his early teen years to his retirement. It shows the rise of a man with a dream, with a goal, of which he achieves through hard work. Maybe this is the dark side of the American dream but it's probably the most common interpretation in Hollywood films.
Escapism
The majority of the developed, film watching world lead very dull, mundane lives. Hollywood knows this. Hollywood also knows that this is a sure fire way to making money. Hollywood allows the audience to escape in to the film by creating worlds where we can place ourselves in, characters that we can relate to and scenarios we only wish existed. This could be to distance ourselves briefly from our own problems, simply to feel excitement or even to escape into someone else's problems and realise that your problems really aren't as bad as they could be. Have you ever left the cinema and walked/drove home in the role of the main character of the film you just saw? Imagining the world you're in is the world you'd just escaped to for the last hour and 48 minutes? Recently I felt this after seeing Contagion. I don't think I've ever been more paranoid walking down an empty road at night, I kept thinking diseased people were going to run out at me and try steal my supplies of water and microwave meals. It induced fear, real fear within me, gripped me and held me above a pool of sharks.
Manifest Destiny
Any American war film, any American war film will show American prevailing and getting what it wants, getting what it believes it's entitled to by simply being America. A troop of well equip American soldiers ride in to a foreign war zone and butcher a group of foreigners with the most basic arms and protection, everyone cheers. One American soldier receives one bullet to the arm and the whole cinema is furious! That's Manifest Destiny working it's magic. However an example of this would be in Rocky IV where Rocky actually goes to Russia to fight Russian; Ivan Drago... Guess what... The American wins! It was even cheeky enough to include the tagline "When East Meets West, the Champion remains standing" clear evidence of Manifest Destiny, implying that there wasn't even a point of having the fight as the "Champion" was always going to win.
Capitalism
Through one mans gain will be anothers misfortune. Imagine a man literally climbing on the heads of others, pushing them down, to reach the sweetest apple on the tree. Erin Brockovich is a great example as it shows capitalism in the way that a big power company pollutes a whole towns water supply and doesn't bother doing anything to fix it as that would cost them money that could be used on expanding the company further. It heavily focuses on the effects the pollution has on the people of the town and quite rawly shows how this capitalist company has gained whilst causing other people misfortune.
This summer was the hugely anticipated end of the highest grossing movie franchise the world has ever seen, this was of course Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2. I've never even read the books so I feel like I'm cheating to say I was a fan but I enjoy the adventures of geeky super wizard Harry, as much as the next guy. Given this I was quite eager to see the last installment of the series, so me and three other dedicated movie buffs made our way to the 9:10AM viewing the morning after our prom, with no sleep and some nasty headaches we gave the film the remainder of our attention and energy as we entered the emotional roller coaster world of magic. Two hours and ten minutes later the lights came up and the credits rolled, as if rehearsed, all four of us stood, grabbed our belongings and walked out in synchronization. Not a word was said. The picture explains how we were feeling. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating slightly. It was a good film, great production values, an excellent cast and an overall beautifully polished product but we were not amused. This was the end of a ten year journey, we'd followed Harry and his little friends since we were just starting to learn our times tables and the final destination just wasn't sufficient. This film, like the one before it, really changed the direction of the series, the quirky lighthearted humor that founded the films was replaced with the dark, dismal, gloom of He who shall not be named and the inevitable doom of Hogwarts, all in all making the franchise much more serious and targeting a different target audience, which is fine but to completely discard a winning formula was risky and for me it didn't pay off. I did, however, enjoy the huge twist at the end that revealed Dumbledore as the antagonist and Snape as the protagonist, I guess I should have seen that coming but either way I was very pleased (whilst quite upset) that things turned out that way. Harry Potter will be sadly missed but the films and books will live forever.
I've never given Big Brother the time of day and don't ever intend to but I have to admire their marketing campaign. It was really quite beautiful. About two months before it came on TV I started to see "The Eye" popping up in-between adverts on Channel 5, just for a second or two, then the same image was on billboards with the text "THE BIGGEST BROTHER EVER", then the full TV adverts started flooding Channel 5 and every billboard was pasted with "The Eye", seriously, for about two weeks I didn't see a billboard with anything else on it! I haven't followed the show at all, It's probably already over? I don't know and really couldn't care less.
"Panic on the streets of London, Panic on the streets of Birmingham... I wonder to myself". So this summer we had a little Anarchy on our hands in lovely little London town. The working and lower class set to the streets in their favourite tracksuits, hoods up and bandannas on. Looting various Poundlands and Footlockers throughout the land, smashing windows and setting fire to our beloved double deckers. Blue blooded murder of the English image. Millions of us sat glued to our TV screens to watch the same clip of that burning bus, repeated for hours on BBC News 24, whilst a journalist told us of the horrors of the rioting. The news channels encouraged us to stay in doors and lock up, stay away from town centers and check on your children. In reality the whole thing was blown massively out of proportion by all parties, when really it was a few days of panic and disarray which the country very quickly recovered from and reached equilibrium. Every one under 21 was blamed, the youth were once again kicked down by the media and to be honest, even as a teenager myself, who can blame them because most of it was just bored youths venting some frustration and taking it as an excuse to act up but for the actions of that minority the majority of us will have to pay for the next five years. We've basically buried any chance of having our views respected and taken on board by the government, which is just excellent with the rise of university fee's and apparent eradication of government funding of any student perks. Now we've just got to live with anything the government throw at us, let them trample all over us and what for? Because a few people wanted a free pair of trainers and a free 12 pack of Quavers.
