Neal Gabler has a great Op-Ed piece in the LA Times called The movie magic is gone.
Gabler argues that movies have become less important than movie stars:
In this culture, the intrinsic value of a movie, or of most conventional entertainments, has diminished. Their job now is essentially to provide stars for People, Us, "Entertainment Tonight" and the supermarket tabloids, which exhibit the new "movies" -- the stars' life sagas.
Traditional movies have a very difficult time competing against these real-life stories, whether it is the shenanigans of TomKat or Brangelina, Anna Nicole Smith's death or Britney Spears' latest breakdown. These are the features that now dominate water-cooler chat. There may have been a time when these stories generated publicity for the movies. Now, however, the movies are more likely to generate publicity for the stories, which have a life, and an entertainment value, of their own.
Then he argues that the Internet's "social media" sites are providing a substitute:
But these sites are arguably not only diverting viewers who might be attending the movies, they are replacing one of the movies' functions: If stars' lives are superseding movie narratives, audiences are superseding the stars. Who needs Brad Pitt if you can be your own hero on a video game, make your own video on YouTube or feature yourself on Facebook?
The promise of an alternative life -- the vicarious thrill of escape -- has always been one of the movies' greatest blandishments. In the theater we could all imagine ourselves to be Cary Grant or Bette Davis. Now with avatars -- essentially masks that one can use to represent oneself on the Internet -- anyone can be Cary Grant or Bette Davis without having to imagine it. In effect, we have become our own movies.
That's just a 250-word summation of a 1,500-word essay, but you can follow the link to read the whole thing.
