Published: August 19, 2008 04:31 pm      

ROOT: Movies Versus Television

I saw Tropic Thunder over the weekend and it instantly reminded me of the Mel Brooks movies I loved when I was a teenager still growing up. The humor took a chance and told everyone that it was just a joke so lighten up. Some unexpected cameos in that movie that were very well-played made it a very entertaining and funny movie. I am not a racist and I have nothing against the mentally handicapped. I just thought the movie was funny. It was fun entertainment but, in this day and age, it is not without its controversy.

Then I went home and tried to watch the new Bob Saget roast on Comedy Central and I just couldn’t do it. The Friar’s Club, in my opinion, is in shambles. They will roast anyone now and they have completely lost the point of a really good roast. You don’t roast some foul-mouthed comedian who was on two successful shows that were successful despite his acting. You roast non-comedians who have accomplished something in entertainment and make jokes about them. The roast of Pam Anderson even made sense as you should, in some way, honor this generation’s Farrah Fawcett. But the Bob Saget roast proved that the Friar’s Club has been reduced to a bunch of barely known comedians roasting each other with Comedy Central footing the bill.

But then again television and movies have always been like that. With the movies you can take your time and make sure you get it right. With television you have so many channels trying to fill so many hours that you are bound to get mostly junk. But have you ever wondered why the “Golden Age of Television” and the “Golden Age of the Movies” happened at around the same time? The grand old time of the movies may have happened a bit sooner than the invention of television, but they still overlapped for many years. They were called golden ages because the content was golden. The “Golden Age of the Movies” helped to fuel television’s Golden Age because many of the early Golden Age movies found new life on television. That was the 1940s to the early 1960s. What do we have now?

Even when filmmakers are able to take their time today, they still put out junk. It used to be that you could see one good movie for every two bad movies you saw. Now you are lucky to get three or four good movies a year. If it weren’t for the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, and the Food Network television would be almost 100 percent garbage (minus sports broadcasts which are always golden, of course).

Hollywood in both its forms is a mirror of us. If there is nothing good being offered in society then there will be nothing consistently good offered by Hollywood. Television is probably the best mirror of the two of them as television is our day-to-day mirror that shows us how we really are. And how are we? Networks like CNN and Fox News are just about done destroying any sense of innocence and exploration that we have and they are also just about done scaring the public so badly that no one wants to leave the house anymore.

Did you ever think about that? Did you ever wonder why when you give a party, or plan any gathering, these days no one shows up? There is a definite battle going on between movies and television and it is more evident than ever. Television has figured out that if you are too scared to leave your house you will watch more television at home. The movies want you to leave the house and get to the theaters so they are pushing the envelope and bringing back comedy elements that worked 25 years ago but are highly controversial today.

So the epic battle rages on. My space here is limited so I recommend that if you want to get the full flavor of what I am talking about, check out my blog at rootsworld.wordpress.com and there is a companion to this column that explains in better and more detailed terms what I am trying to say. Basically, my point is that the elements that dictate popular culture, movies and television, were in harmony in the Golden Age and the world was a safer and more wide open place to live. Today, television and movies are in constant conflict, a conflict born out of one’s desire to keep you in the house and the other’s desperate need to get you out of the house, and our popular culture and our society are suffering because of it.

Television is winning and that is a very bad thing. When fear wins, then we all lose.

George N. Root III is a Lockport resident. His column runs every Wednesday. He blogs at http://www.rootsworld.wordpress.com. Send comments to georgeroot@verizon.net.