Movies Can Never Be Art - So Says Me

Author's note: If you read more than a couple lines of this and don't realize I'm being facetious, then please go away. This article is a deliberate parody wherein I try my damndest to sound and monumentally stupid as I think Roger Ebert does in his blog post where he argues that games can never be art. No, I'm not going to link to his article because he's a closed-minded, out-of-touch hack that doesn't deserve the meager traffic I wouldn't send his way because no one reads this website.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that I’m vastly more intelligent than everyone else I’ve ever met. 

I mean, obviously. 

So it stands to reason that my opinion is the only one that actually matters. You’re welcome to consider it pretty much the textbook that defines our world. I highly encourage you to compare your own opinions to mine and see where you’re wrong. There are bound to be plenty of areas in which your opinion needs correcting, and nobody wants you to look like a misguided fool by showing the public that you disagree with me.

Maybe I should provide a handy checklist.

Nah, that would probably take too long.

Anyhow, I have recently had an amazing revelation that I knew I just had to share with the world. It has changed the way I view both art and entertainment. It has altered how I perceive the world around me. It had added an entirely new category onto the list of things which I do not understand and therefore rightfully despise. 

More importantly, it has kept me from having to waste any of my precious time watching those blasted moving picture thingamajigs. Anyone who spends their time watching fake people do fake things in a fake world according to the whim of some poor joke of a “writer”, who probably spends most of his meager salary on brownies and marijuana that he consumes in rabid binges while pretending that he doesn’t need any of that “human contact” that he’s heard so much about, is clearly a moron.

I mean, really, what’s the point? It’s all fake, right? What do you gain? Nobody actually gets the girl or saves the day or finds Nemo. Nothing is accomplished except staring at a screen for a couple of hours like a mindless automaton, possibly while shoving stale popcorn down your gullet and ingesting plenty of that toxic flavored soda water crap.

I want to be clear here. I haven’t actually watched any of these “movies”. I don’t feel the need to. It’s obviously a monumental waste of time. But the more I read about them, the more I feel a compelling need to denounce the entire medium despite my personal inexperience. The world is clearly clamoring for my opinion on the subject, and who am I to deny my humble followers the gift of my infinite wisdom? 

Even I will admit that it’s kind of hard, though far from impossible, to write about something which I have absolutely no experience with, but never fear, as I have found a solution. 

I waited outside of my local cinema for a little while until I found the perfect target. I then hijacked the group of small schoolchildren and forced them to tell me all about some of the movies they had recently seen. Once I promised them candy for their efforts they seemed quite willing.

I must say that I was expecting more. Their descriptions were nothing if not enthusiastic, but I can’t say I was overly impressed with the final result. The plots sounded like disjointed messes, the characters one-dimensional, and the adjective “totally awesome” was radically overused. If I may be frank, it sounded like I could find more compelling story experiences in the local funny pages of the newspaper that no one but me reads anymore. 

One confused little girl told me about a movie starring some teeny bopper named Montana or something. I don’t really remember. Anyway, she seemed so enthralled by this pointless endeavor that I really felt rather sorry for her. It seemed to be a movie about an actress pretending to be a person pretending to be another person. I don’t know how the poor girl kept this confusing twist of lies straight, much less derived any enjoyment out of it. I can only imagine what such devilry has done to her poor adolescent brain.

Another kid tried in vain to explain the nonsensical plot of some movie called Avatar. The little guy was quite fond of rambling and tried to tell me he couldn’t wait to buy it on deeveedee, whatever the hell that is, so he could watch it on some tiny plastic disc in the confines of his own home. Now that’s just crazy talk, but kids will be kids so I tried to just smile politely and let him have his little fantasy. Avatar seemed to be another case of an actor pretending to be a person pretending to be another person, only this time instead of pretending to be a terrible pop singer, some dude wants to be a ten foot tall blue alien cat thing. Blue Man goes onto save the day, so I am told, by hijacking a dragon with his hair tentacles. 

And people call ME crazy for not wanting to watch this schlock?

Thinking that I must have missed something, I decided that perhaps another source of information might be warranted before spouting off on this here blog. I did a few minutes of digging and came across some trailers of recent movies. Now, as these are perfectly accurate representations of the medium, two-minute-long doses of what it’s like to watch the movie in question, they seemed rather perfect. I wanted the experience of watching a movie without the bother of actually having to watch a movie.

Again, having subjected myself to a few minutes of second-hand experience of the medium that was nothing short of sheer torture for my superior brain cells, I found myself disappointed. So many people seem to like these movie things that I figured there must be something more to them. 

It’s clearly a medium that doesn’t allow you to think for yourself. Every movie had some annoying narrator or obnoxious text overlays or something that really got in the way of the narrative flow. How are you supposed to decide for yourself that the action is THRILLING and the story AN ADVENTURE OF EPIC PROPORTIONS when the movies themselves won’t stop telling you?

And don’t even get me started on the dialog. It was all a bunch of nonsensical, disconnected one-liners spoken by cliched characters that seemed to be in one hell of a hurry. Most of the time the second party in the conversation wasn’t even given time to say anything before the editor cut him off and moved on in a flight of frantic whimsy! 

What a tumultuous, disorganized mess of a medium. Who can take this stuff seriously, much less consider it art? The very idea of letting that trailer for Furry Vengeance into an art gallery is positively revolting. Yeesh. Blech. Patooey. 

And how am I supposed to take a medium seriously when every single entrant can be summarily reduced to a two-minute-long best-of reel? Why should I bother watching the real thing? I get all of the explosions and witty one-liners of the full movie without even having to pay. Most trailers pretty much give away the ending anyway. At least, I guess they do. It certainly looks that way, not that I’ve bothered to check. The entire medium reeks of trying too hard. It’s juvenile and overly simplistic. 

It’s also clear to me that the witless goons making these movies must have run out of ideas years ago. Some movies have been remade two or even three times because nobody could think of anything better to do. Some franchises have been brought back decades past their prime in some lame attempt to recapture the magic that just leaves the geriatric lead actor looking like he needs a nap and a good talking to. Some story ideas have been reused so many times that I’m not even going to bother coming up with a lame hyperbole for the situation because it really just makes fun of itself.

Anyone who wants to spend their life watching these laughable wastes of time is certainly welcome to. They don’t need my permission, though I would certainly appreciate them asking for it first. Clearly the movie-watching audience has a level of brain functioning roughly equivalent to that of chimpanzees, but I wish them the best and hope that they’re at least a happy bunch of monkeys. Me and my superior intellect will be going elsewhere for our entertainment however, thank you very much.

You may consider yourself enlightened.