We’re Watching the End of the Movies

 

ROSS DOUTHAT

"That ending doesn’t mean that motion pictures are about to disappear. Just as historical events have continued after Francis Fukuyama’s announcement of the End of History, so, too, will self-contained, roughly two-hour stories — many of them fun, some of them brilliant — continue to play on screens for people’s entertainment, as one product among many in a vast and profitable content industry.

No, what looks finished is The Movies — big-screen entertainment as the central American popular art form, the key engine of American celebrity, the main aspirational space of American actors and storytellers, a pop-culture church with its own icons and scriptures and rites of adult initiation."

"Under these pressures, much of what the movies did in American culture, even 20 years ago, is essentially unimaginable today. The internet has replaced the multiplex as a zone of adult initiation. There’s no way for a few hit movies to supply a cultural lingua franca, given the sheer range of entertainment options and the repetitive and derivative nature of the movies that draw the largest audiences."

MORE IN THE ARTICLE BY ROSS DOUTHAT