In Season 1 of The Film & Culture Series, Ross Douthat, NYT Journalist and Movie Critic for National Review, gives us a deep understanding of the landscape of Film today, where we’ve come from, and why “The Movies” are worth saving.
Film & Culture Series
With the rise of streaming services and smartphones as entertainment devices, movies have lost their communal and cultural significance, and become just another channel for isolated, click-baity entertainment. In this series, Ross Douthat presents a comprehensive understanding for the causes of decline, why we should care, and what we can do to reclaim the cultural common ground that film has the power to provide.
Season 1
March 10, 2024
When we speak about “the decline of cinema,” we don’t mean that the movies themselves are about to disappear. What we mean is that the movies—as a cultural institution—have ceased to be the central American art form.
March 16, 2024
Globalization, special effects, and the rise of the smartphone have—among other things—contributed to the general trend of declining quality of movies.
March 16, 2024
Globalization has caused a general simplification and “dumbing down” of movies in order to reach the widest possible audience, with the result that Hollywood exports the lowest-common denominator of American culture to around the world.
March 23, 2024
In the age of the internet and social media, we expect to receive video, images, and storytelling in extremely short, digestible increments that hinder our ability to engage with serious writing of any kind.
March 23, 2024
“The Movies” at their peak played a central cultural role in American life that provided a shared sense of culture. As successful as streaming television is, it relies on too many unique small-scale audiences to provide a real cultural common ground in the way that a hit movie did as recently as the 90s.
April 6, 2024
We’ve lost the opportunity for an actor to become a movie star—someone who remained themselves while also embodying widely differing characters in a myriad of different stories. Instead of an actor having a sustained identity while also taking on a set of characters, you get an actor who is identified with one character, their identity being lost in the identity of the character.
April 6, 2024
The movies as an essential cultural institution might be dead but there still are great movies nonetheless. Despite all the factors against them, Wes Anderson and Quentin Tarantino have somehow managed to craft deeply complex and fascinating films that still have a wide appeal.
April 6, 2024
While we might not be able to return to the glory days of Film, a reimagining of distribution models and the theater experience itself can allow for The Movies to have a future. But for this to happen, we need to recognize that Film is an art form that needs preservation just like most other art forms, and must do what we can to support and cultivate the production of quality films and a culture that supports them.
