Chatting with servers but not your friends or fellow patrons

Although people are much less socially inclined than in the good old days, especially toward strangers in public spaces, I've noticed that they are still fairly willing to chit-chat with their servers in a food and drink place.

"Still" might be the wrong word -- I don't recall people chatting with food servers that much in the '80s, whether from memory or in TV or movies. They were just sort of there to do a job, and if anything they seem to have been treated more carelessly. Some smartass tells you he wants you to "hold the chicken" between your knees, some bratty kid dumps an ice cream scoop into your apron pocket when your back is turned, some fat bald jerk shouts that the sign says 100% guaranteed "you moron," so you shout back that if you don't shut up, I'm gonna kick 100% of your ass!

So maybe it's more of a replacement of more formal interactions for the more informal interactions of before. You relate to your friends, your bf/gf or husband/wife, and your fellow patrons on a more informal level -- you all have roughly equal power or influence among each other, and you can take another person's perspective because some of the time you're playing the role that they currently are in the group dynamics.

Interacting with a server has more restricted, and more clearly defined boundaries around what's permissible. Less uncertainty, less risk, less having to figure stuff out and negotiate the changing conditions of real life. Also, you can't take the other person's perspective because you're probably not a food server who gets paid to interact with customers yourself. You never play each other's role, or any different role.

There's something of a guest-host feel to the interaction because food and drink is involved, and that's a prototypical scenario for hosting and being hosted. I don't notice people chit-chatting with the employees at an electronics store, a big box store, or really anywhere other than a place that serves food -- not supermarkets either, since they don't prepare you what you're buying. But even in the food service places, the fact that you're paying the servers and they're giving you a receipt to show that the accounts have been settled, kind of deflates the spirit of generosity and gratitude that fills a true guest-host interaction.

Sure, groups of people who show up together may talk a little bit, but it's typically superficial remarks and brief responses that don't build toward a sustained conversation where everyone's taking turns. And if they're born after 1984, they all wall themselves off with their devices, perhaps texting each other or leaving messages on each other's Facebook, rather than turn their faces toward each other, make eye contact, and speak and listen. Omigosh, like awkward, like creepy.

And forget about strangers approaching each other to shoot the bull for awhile -- a superficial remark, a dead-end response, maybe some nervous or forced laughter, and then back to total isolation. I've noticed that even compared to several years ago, strangers in public spaces are less likely to make a request that one of them watch the other's stuff while they go to the bathroom, smoke a cigarette, yak on their phone outside, etc. However minimal, that was still a form of reaching out to someone else for support, the other accepting, the first one acknowledging the other's helpfulness, and the other acknowledging the first one's gratitude. Again, particularly rare if they're from the Millennial generation.

Wait a minute -- public spaces that look abandoned, customers who are disconnected from each other, but where a food/drink server is at least showing them some attention and thought... I swear I've seen this all before. Oh yeah:

Earlier I touched on the theme of drive-in establishments and social isolation during the mid-century and Millennial eras. I didn't notice then that there's also a counterpart to today's reliance on more formalized interactions with the food servers, while being more distant from your peers. That included both same-sex interactions for just shooting the bull, as well as opposite-sex interactions to make it less awkward for men to talk to women, and to make it easier for women to shoot down men if necessary (against the rules). The same-sex interactions were guaranteed not to lead to a real friendship, and the opposite-sex interactions were guaranteed not to lead to dating or marriage, but at least it was something rather than nothing.

In the mid-century, there was the soda jerk; in the Millennial era, it's the barista. Then it was the car hop girl; today it's the Hooters girl.

Just like us, and unlike people from the '60s through the '80s, they were so risk-averse and socially-emotionally avoidant that the more scripted interactions with food servers felt more comfortable than interacting with their peers. The soda jerk and car hop girl became icons of the time, well loved by the general public. We'll have the same fond memories of the Hooters girl and the barista of our time.

But that shouldn't distract us from the fact that their popularity reflects a deeply rooted social anxiety and lack of trust of the average, everyday person, who is after all a stranger. And the absence of similarly iconic servers from the '60s, '70s, or '80s should remind us of how much our fondness for those times derives from the connectedness and sense of belonging across the entire neighborhood, community, and even nation, obviating the need for crutch-like relationships with food and drink servers.

The Great Gatsby as chick flick for SWPL Millennials

I'd heard that they were making another movie of The Great Gatsby awhile ago, but hadn't checked in on it until it showed up on the main page at IMDb. Jesus Christ, what a corruption of a classic!

Now, some adaptations are mere failures -- they don't try hard, don't achieve a distinctive look or feel, and generally have no personality or identity.

Then there are others that are memorable, but whose identity is the opposite of what they were meant to adapt. Titanic, a boring chick flick from the '90s, is a good example of one adapted from real events, whose evil rich and honest poor are more from the Gilded Age / Robber Baron era than from the Edwardian / Jazz Age period of the actual Titanic story. I can't remember too much since I couldn't make it all the way through, but that's my distinct impression.

Romeo + Juliet, another boring chick flick from the '90s, is an example adapted from an existing work of fiction. The 1968 Zeffirelli version was full of young people whose hormone-crazed choices bring about their tragic downfall, both in the domains of dating-and-mating and competition among same-sex peers. I can't say I remember too much of the later adaptation from the bits and pieces I caught when it was aired on cable.

But the romance plot had too much of a feel-good tone, where Juliet was basically living a juvenile "fairy tale" swept-off-her-feet romance, and so where her mostly passive role does not implicate her in her own downfall later on. Shakespeare's original, and the Zeffirelli adaptation, portray a Juliet who's much more active in chasing Romeo, even if it's in her own behind-the-scenes scheming feminine kind of way. Her boy-crazy designs on Romeo thus involve both her and her lover in their ultimate demise.

As for the male-male competition plot, there was too much of an Us vs. Them tone, emphasizing the never-ending state of the feuding between rival factions. It makes it seem like the individual murderers and their victims are just passively assuming their role in some hokey script. In Shakespeare's original, the group vs. group dynamics are minimized, and only serve to set up who has a natural beef with who else. But all of the characters are fleshed out as individuals, some more hot-headed and some more level-headed, and it is those personality differences that cause one to get involved in murder or not. That characterization makes it into the Zeffirelli adaptation as well.

Why spend so much time going over an adaptation that I don't remember too well? Because the same director, Baz Luhrmann, is back for the new Great Gatsby adaptation. He also did that boring historical chick flick from the early 2000s, Moulin Rouge (another one I gave a chance but couldn't watch for more than 10 or 15 minutes).

Although the movie is not out yet, we know roughly what to expect based on his earlier popular adaptations. First, the look of the movie will be overly stylized, perhaps based on Art Deco, but probably laying it on too thick and attempting more to beef up its street cred with the vintage-loving SWPL girl demographic. I'm imagining a new Pre-Raphaelite spirit for our neo-Victorian times today.

Second, they're going to give the story a huge chick flick orientation, perhaps even making it the dominant tone. There's nothing chick-littish at all about the novel, where the sub-plot about chasing after Daisy is just one example of an entire pattern of Gatsby's over-reaching ambition that brings about his own downfall.

Third, the female lead will be passive, freeing her of responsibility later on. A key point of characterization in a chick flick, since escapist female audiences don't want to see movies where they're told that their on-screen avatars are partly responsible for their own troubles. In the novel, Daisy Buchanan is not quite manipulative or deliberately controlling of men -- more like, effortlessly hypnotizes them with her speech and gaze, and she's aware of her power. She plays her own part in entangling her suitors into aggressive male confrontation, just as they do themselves with their competitiveness and jealousy.

And fourth, in general the tone will be fatalistic and bleak rather than tragic and stirring, appealing to -- well, I was going to say dumb teenagers, but they're probably college-aged through their mid-20s, only with stunted minds that make them resemble middle schoolers. I imagine one of the main audience reactions to be "Gosh, it's just so not fair!"

Moving beyond speculation, let's have a quick look at some of the knowns about the movie.

The soundtrack is full of indie dorks like Lana Del Rey and SWPL-approved hip-hop acts like Andre 3000. No covers of Jazz Age songs, although there are a couple of neo-Jazz Age, i.e. New Wave-y songs by Bryan Ferry to save the day. The other covers are from the '90s and 2000s, including one of an Amy Winehouse song. Sorry, but some bombastic crackho is not what springs to mind when I think of sweet, danceable melodies and delightful instrumental solos. Why no use of "Promises, Promises" by Naked Eyes, for example? "Edgy" white acts semi-allied with "edgy" black acts is obviously a neo-Beatnik ensemble, and so would be better suited to an adaptation of "Howl" or something equally Fifties in tone. The hot jazz style of the '20s was exciting and engaging, not dull, monotone, and off-putting.

The director, locations, and a good number of the cast are Australian, which is odd for an adaptation of such a specifically American novel. If they were all really into '20s America, maybe they'd be able to pull it off. But they don't, so it seems like too much will get lost in translation.

Speaking of the cast, why is the loathsome, beady-eyed Jew in the story being played by an Indo-Aryan with trustably full eyes? To "update" it for contemporary times, where Jews are more assimilated, while South Asians are looked at the way that Jews used to be? Lame. And South Asians don't have a long historical reputation for producing Meyer Wolfsheim types of characters. Is there some South Asian guy in Australia or the UK who played a major part in a conspiracy to fix their national sport's equivalent of the World Series in baseball? Or are they just going to make some shit up for the movie, to make it seem like South Asians are the new Jews, when they aren't?

Wikipedia notes that, "When asked about the movie, Luhrmann stated that he planned the remake to be more timely due to its theme of criticizing the often irresponsible lifestyles of wealthy people." Oh, I get it -- like, The Recession.

The exaggeratedly opulent production design and the hip-hop songs on the soundtrack suggest that it'll be all about excess, decadence, irresponsibility, etc. Those themes are only in the background of the novel, kind of like the urban yuppie excess of the 1980s in novels like Bright Lights, Big City. That atmosphere exists to tempt characters, who then reveal their true selves when put to the test -- some giving in, and some controlling themselves. It's not there in the foreground to serve as a skyscraper-sized target for the facile moralizing of hack writers.

Man, and I was actually planning to see this when I heard about it way back when. I definitely won't be paying to see it, so I may stand corrected in a few weeks about some predictions, though I doubt very much.

I haven't discussed the 1974 adaptation with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow because I haven't seen it. I've read that it overdoes the "boo, evil idle rich people" angle, though at least the look of the movie is more '20s -- stylish, but not all Pre-Raphaelite and emo exaggeration. And based on who's in the cast, the acting must be a million times better -- Sam Waterston is far more believable than Tobey friggin' Maguire as Nick Carraway, without even seeing their performances.

It seems like no one can make The Great Gatsby into a movie, whether as a faithful adaptation or in spirit. Fitzgerald's portrayals of the social lives of young people seem to do better -- Metropolitan is easy to interpret as a neo-Jazz Age movie about the new Flaming Youth of the neo-Twenties. The tragically ambitious individual has been done in film before, e.g. Citizen Kane, but the tone is usually so somber and dark. The world of The Great Gatsby is more heady and topsy-turvy than oppressive. It was the Roaring Twenties, not the noirish Age of Anxiety. Then when movies go for light-hearted or adventurous romantic dramas, they tend not to incorporate the "individual's tragic ambition" plot as well -- too much of a downer.

Maybe I'm just drawing a blank, but the closest thing I can think of where the movie incorporates both a story about a daring, entrepreneurial upstart whose reach exceeds his grasp, as well as a light-hearted sub-plot about winning over a woman who's already with another man, and also featuring lots of footloose fun while out at dance clubs with a '20s look to them -- is Scarface from 1983.

LOL, I know the tone isn't as tender and wistful as The Great Gatsby, and obviously a lot more violent. But that's my point -- Hollywood and indie studios alike seem so incapable of making the film version of Gatsby that something as distant as Scarface is the closest thing in terms of sharing distinctive elements. Please chime in with other suggestions, though.

Paleo bathing

Here is a brief post about the drying-out effect on your skin of taking long, frequent, or hot showers. Add to that the use of anti-bacterial soap, and it's no wonder why today's OCD population looks haggard beyond their actual years.

One thing that stands out so much about people's appearance in pictures or movies from the good old days is how shiny and glowing their skin is (no homo for the pics of dudes). Especially noticeable if the image was taken in warm or hot weather -- the skin looks glistening from the sweat that it never occurred to them to scrub off or prevent from forming.

For the past couple weeks, I've switched to a pretty minimal shower, and you can feel your skin being much less dry afterward. The only time I have the shower head on is to wash my hair and under my arms, maybe five minutes tops. Before that, it works well to just use water from the bathtub faucet to wash the face, feet, and groin. I don't bother using soap on my arms, legs, chest / stomach, or back since I don't roll around in mud on a typical day.

Aside from making your body feel better, you're in and out in much less time. You don't get that soporific effect of immersing your body in warm or hot water, like in a jacuzzi.

Going back to a more bathing rather than showering approach isn't even that paleo -- just 100 or however many years ago, people weren't treating their bodies like grease-caked pans that required 20 minutes of a high-pressure hosing off.

Helicopter parents going further to destroy playgrounds

Starting in the early 1990s, the ascendant helicopter parent army pushed for the destruction of good old fashioned playgrounds with dangerous stuff that built up our bodies and our character. Like, we're still here, aren't we? A few years ago, the typical playground had become so infantilized that the swings look like suspended car safety seats, and there are pointless safety warning stickers plastered all over the equipment.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, my brother sent me this picture of a new species of playground sign:

Fuck all of these OCD parents and their weak, stunted children too

Can't say I'm shocked, but it's still depressing how far today's parents are willing to go to ruin their children's childhoods and prevent any social group from forming among little kids. How could it when they have no unsupervised public spaces where they could gather, interact, and learn how to treat each other through experience?

Family interactions are fake for character building because of Hamilton's Rule: parents and even siblings will tolerate all kinds of shit that genetic strangers would not. Children need to interact with one another in face-to-face situations to prepare them for adult social relations -- which are not supervised and micro-managed. Sheltering your children from peers stunts their psychological growth just as strapping them in bed stunts their skeletal and muscular growth.

This phony anti-peanut crusade seems to be the application of the anti-smoking bans to the world of children. We all ate plenty of meals in restaurants where there were smoking and non-smoking sections, and like, we're still here, aren't we? Now you can't even smoke within five blocks of any building with more than three people in it. The abrasive and anti-social attitude of the anti-smoking crusade shows that it was clearly not motivated by health concerns, like ones related to the flu, asbestos, etc. Folks with the flu are not banned from leaving their homes, are they? And we know for sure that they're harmful, unlike the questionable / bogus nature of second-hand smoke pollution.

Well, children don't smoke, so how are helicopter parents going to use that same tactic to fragment the community among the under-12-year-olds? It didn't have to be peanuts, since any other food with a flimsy story about the risk posed to everyone or even a small minority would have worked. But the way it's unfolded, the peanut allergy became the wedge.

And let's be clear about what the purpose of the anti-smoking and anti-peanut signs are -- not to lessen the traces of cigarette smoke or peanuts, which is an instrumental or utilitarian goal. It is to poison the informal and easy-going atmosphere of public spaces, to cripple their ability to serve as places where groups of people can come closer together when they might otherwise not ever run into each other. Sober, formal, authoritarian signs like these ruin your mood right away, even if you weren't thinking of smoking or eating peanuts in the first place.

It puts you in that mindset of, "Oh great, this is one of those tightass places where everyone's being tracked by security cameras..." and you're prevented from enjoying a carefree state of mind. With that higher degree of self-monitoring, you can't forget yourself and join in the communal spirit and activities of a public space.

I think one of the first clear signs of the zeitgeist changing direction will be when normal people stop respecting all of these omnipresent, everyday authoritarian bullshit rules and regulations. Not necessarily in a self-conscious, middle-finger-to-The-Man sort of way -- just tuning them out altogether. Walking through grass instead of always adhering to the paved pathways, chilling out while sitting on a fence or rail or hood of a car, going out with no shirt on in warm weather, and all those other normal things that people used to do before we became so rule-bound.

Romantic comedies: Self-indulgent vs. other-focused

After watching this review of What's Your Number by the folks at RedLetterMedia and a female guest, I think I've finally solved the mystery of why some romantic comedies are good and others make your brain want to vomit.

In an older post, I took an in-depth descriptive look at how the somewhat enjoyable genre called the "romantic comedy" has devolved into another one called the "chick flick." This reflects the larger social trend away from guys and girls getting along with each other pretty well, and toward the re-segregation of the sexes, not last seen since the mid-20th century.

One way to see that is looking at the IMDb ratings according to sex of the voters. For the most successful rom-coms, those made from 1979 to 1992 were less polarizing between men and women than those made in the past 20 years. Yeah, sure, who doesn't like Big or L.A. Story? But Sleepless in Seattle, Amelie, What's Your Number, etc. make your eyes roll.

OK, but what is it about the movies of the '70s, '80s, and early '90s that make them palatable, even enjoyable, compared to the junk of the past 20 years?

In the good romantic comedies, the protagonist and perhaps also their love interest undergo some kind of personal, emotional, social growth. That growth makes them worthy of the love interest by the end, when at the beginning they were not worthy. In the bad rom-coms, the protagonist doesn't change in any deep way, and so their hooking up with their love interest by the end is more like a trailer park denizen winning the Powerball lottery.

The current state of romantic comedies actually includes more than the chick flick -- there's the schlub underdog movie too. In either case, the point of the movie is to massage the rightfully anxious egos of a target audience that is seriously flawed but wants to hear that everything's going to work out all right, and without them having to make any real changes in their personality, outlook, or behavior.

For chicks, they get to indulge in a juvenile fantasy that they're already a worthy princess, and it's only a matter of time before Santa Claus delivers their dream present. And not because they're going to improve themselves, be a better person next year. But because Santa just didn't get around to it this year. Just be patient, stay the way you are, and you'll get your dream present after all.

For schlubs, their fantasy is no less juvenile: they spend so much effort feeling sorry for themselves that, somehow, cosmic fate hears their whining and decides to take pity on them, and delivers an attractive woman who's willing to look past all of their pathetic self-disgust. Schlub guilt-trips Fate, so Fate hooks him up with a steady pity-fuck partner.

It's that same mindset like when you're six years old, and instead of earning something you want from your parents, you hesitantly address them ("Mom..."), then show some fake humility and cut yourself off ("Nah, nevermind..."), and after being prompted to continue, unload with the self-pity as well as feeling sorry for yourself because you have such an unforgiving parent ("No, really, nevermind... you'll probably just say No anyways...") If they actually do say Yes, it's like, wow, jackpot! -- easy money.

Now, if it's just some first-grader trying to squeeze a couple bucks out of their parents, there's nothing too degrading about that way of getting what you want, at least every now and then. But a romantic relationship, or any kind of enduring social bond, is way more serious than scoring some money to hit up the arcade (or whatever they do with it these days). One of the necessary steps is to dial down your individual concerns and change yourself to better mesh with the other person (or persons if it's a team, community, etc.).

The present obsession with "don't judge me" and "don't worry, it'll all work out in the end" reflects immaturity, as though they haven't even adapted to adolescence, when social bonds are supposed to form more naturally as juvenile egocentrism begins to erode. And so, watching these chick flick or schlub underdog movies can't help but make normal people disgusted -- the protagonist refuses to grow and yet gets rewarded all the same. It stings like a failure of cosmic justice.

And that's precisely why the romantic comedies where characters grow feel more satisfying -- they took at least some responsibility for their situation, tried to change things as best they could, and achieved their goals. The cosmic justice system works. Plus you naturally feel like cheering on someone who has earned their great reward, an urge that is wholly lacking when it's just some bum who happened to buy the right lottery ticket. And isn't that one of the most basic reasons for watching movies -- to resonate with the protagonist?

If the good rom-coms are more mature in their characterization, it shouldn't surprise us to find out that they overwhelmingly feature male protagonists, which might seem odd for a genre associated with chick flicks. Women are just too good at rationalizing, not to mention catty and stand-off-ish, for the average female movie character to take a long hard look at herself and decide to grow toward meeting others' needs.

Um, why would I need to do that when it's like blatantly the other person's fault? I mean, like, blatantly.

Guys are more likely to err in the other direction, wallowing in self-pity. Still, that shows that their general tendency is to be more honest with themselves and take more personal responsibility.

I can only think of three of the enjoyable set of romantic comedies that have a female protagonist -- Hannah and Her Sisters, Heathers, and Clueless. Mean Girls is an OK teen comedy about antagonism among same-sex peers, but there's little interaction between the sexes and hence no real romance going on.

All the rest have a male protagonist: Annie Hall, Manhattan, Big, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Barcelona, Coming to America, L.A. Story, Groundhog Day, My Cousin Vinny, The Princess Bride, Splash, Weird Science, When Harry Met Sally, and so on.

There could be a few others that I haven't seen with female leads (does Moonstruck fall into the enjoyable category?), but you can say the same for ones with male leads.

My hunch is that rising-crime times lead to more of the personal-growth rom-coms, and falling-crime times to more of the I'm-already-a-princess / schlub-underdog type. That's not to say that Audrey Hepburn's character doesn't change at all in Roman Holiday, but not in a transformative way, being broken down and built back up. It leaves you with a similar feeling as Amelie.

But I haven't seen too many of the classic rom-coms of the mid-century, so I can't say for sure whether they're more like those of the Millennial era. Already by 1960, though, they were starting to move in the direction of personal growth and taking control of your life, since that's when The Apartment came out.

You'd think that a movie genre that focuses so narrowly on one of the most important types of relationships would naturally include characters who grow or transform, given that the couple's needs are not the same as the individual's needs. Yet for the last 20 years, and perhaps during the mid-century as well, romantic comedies have starred self-indulgent protagonists instead. That would appear to be part of the broader cocooning trend, not trusting others enough to re-make yourself in light of what their needs are.

Movie posters: Cycles between illustration and photography

For lack of a better term, the visual culture of a rising-crime period is more stylized. It's clearly aiming away from photorealism, yet it's not minimalist or abstract, which are other ways of achieving that goal. In a falling-crime period, the visual culture looks more bland and uninspired, whether photorealistic or abstract / minimalist. In graphic design, this means a greater fascination with and reliance on photography in falling-crime times, and on illustration in rising-crime times.

From the turn of the 20th century through the early '30s, there was a golden age of illustration. From the mid-'30s through the '50s, that was out, and photography was back in (like during the falling-crime Victorian era). The Bauhaus movement promoted photography and sans serif typefaces during the 1920s, but nobody paid any attention to them back then. Not until the mid-century did their ideas finally find an enthusiastic audience.

Starting in the '60s and lasting through the '80s, the mainstreaming of Bauhaus was overthrown, as graphic designers returned to the stylized approach of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, with a more hand-drawn illustration look. Since the '90s, the pendulum has swung back toward photography and Helvetica once more. The collage-y look that Bauhaus propagandized for, but that only caught on during the mid-century, is back again, this time with a little help from Photoshop.

You can read about this in any good graphic design history book, with pictures from across a variety of visual domains. Here I thought I'd restrict the focus to something everyone knows something about, but might not have noticed the historical pendulum swings -- movie posters.

Aside from the greater use of illustration during rising-crime times, they're also more likely to use bold contrasting colors and bright-dark lighting contrast. The falling-crime fanaticism for photorealism can go so far as to include screenshots from the movie right there on the poster, not just any old photographs that might entice the audience.

I chose posters from movies that did very well at the box office, to make sure that we're looking at ones that resonated with audiences. Granted, they did well because of the movie itself, but the poster served to lure them in as well. I tried to cover a range of genres and years within each larger phase of the cycle. But to check on others -- your favorites or ones you're just curious about -- the movie's Wikipedia entry usually has a picture of the original poster near the top.

So, here's a quick but representative look at some posters from periods when crime was rising (1900 - 1933), falling (1934 - 1958), rising again (1959 - 1992), and falling again (1993 - present). Click any for a larger image.

Whatever you think of the movies themselves, their posters from the mid-century and Millennial eras sure do look bland in color and lighting, not to mention awkward and obvious in their reliance on screenshots. The photorealistic look doesn't mark itself or the movie it's advertising as something special, out of the ordinary, in the way that a stylized, charming illustration does.

It's not like the rising-crime posters are Caravaggio or Goya, but they're not supposed to be. They're part of our everyday lives, a kind of advertisement. But why shouldn't that stuff look cool too? Within reasonable, expectable bounds -- the studio isn't going to commission Rubens to slave away for who knows how long, just to come up with a large-scale ad for a movie. That still allows for creativity and enjoyment, though.

I can't stand the Puritanical strain in our culture that says we ought to just shut up and accept our boring, lifeless, and joyless popular culture, because none of that really matters anyway in the grand scheme of things. It comes from a seething misanthropy, whether the guy is a Baudelaire-reading emo faggot or a bitter reactionary/traditionalist. It's no different from the radical activist who loves humanity but hates people -- the main reason why "the movement" never lasts.

Whoever thinks that malcontents are going to prove to be any kind of guide out of our cultural mess is in for a real disappointment. If you aren't life-loving enough to enjoy cool-looking movie posters, everyone's going to tune you out when they might otherwise lean toward your side.

The '20s, the '50s, the '80s: Persistence and revivals

Some off-hand remarks in the comments section of the post below brought up whether the Jazz Age managed to leave much of an impression on the culture of the 1980s. Or at least, whether the '50s culture enjoyed even greater resonance with the '80s.

I've been meaning to outline some of the major, defining traits of each period's zeitgeist, and to show how they've cycled over time, with the Roaring Twenties and the Go-Go Eighties representing similar phases in the cycle, and the mid-century and Millennial eras representing similar phases on the other end of the spectrum. But that kind of panoramic detail is hard to pull together and display effectively in a post (with pictures, video clips, writing excerpts, etc.). It's more suited to a rambling comment, which I left two of, and won't cut & paste here.

Briefly, though: no, during the '80s, the culture of the '50s did not enjoy a special resonance compared to that of the '20s. Just the opposite. Mid-century retro has instead begun to thrive only within the past 20 years, from the swing / big band revival, to the return of isolated characters in film noir movies, to a renewed interest in burlesque and striptease (complete with Bettie Page wannabe hairstyles), video games reviving the horror comic's staples of gory sado-masochism and voyeurism, butt-kicking babes, fast-talking dames, neo-International Style architecture and design, drive-in restaurants, and so on and so forth.

The Jazz Age may be largely forgotten in 2013, but rewind a mere 30 years and it was still hot in popular culture. Here's the iconic song and music video for Taco's synthpop cover of "Puttin' on the Ritz":

Movie voices -- mostly mumbling, some shouting

One of the biggest problems I have with getting into contemporary movies is the robotic delivery of the dialogue. It's usually monotone, which also means low monotone (a steady high pitch being too much of a strain), with a kind of husky or mumbling register, and a self-consciously slow-mo tempo. Examples by genre follow a bit further down.

The words in a movie are meant to be spoken and felt, not appreciated more abstractly by reading them from the screenplay. Speech patterns may not be the high point of the overall sensory experience of a movie, but take them away, and it drains the movie of any power. Speech is such a constant presence in a movie, not like if the handful of action sequences are boring or if a couple special effects look dumb.

It's like when you hear contempo pop music, Norah Jones for example, and you want to tell them to wake up before they start recording the song. It smacks of disrespect for the audience, like "I'm too bored and tired to care enough about you all to sound dynamic, pleasing, or exciting." Turn off the fucking microphone then, you retard.

And while 99% of the speech is mumbling, there's that 1% where they go for broke and turn to shouting or shrieking. I guess they're assuming that they've already put you to sleep with their ordinary drone, so they need to launch a full-out assault on your ears to get your attention -- you know, instead of having it all along.

Again that's what contempo singing sounds like -- mostly that quiet flat tone, with the occasional random brief burst of volume. I think Natalie Merchant started that in the '90s, but it wasn't as bad back at the beginning of the trend. Try making your ear swallow a song by Regina Spektor without spitting it back out.

When so much of a person's speech has no sort of natural inflection, and therefore sounds totally careless as to the context (each context calling for its own sort of inflection), the audience gets the message that the speaker is bored by everything and couldn't care less about others. So when they hear that odd random burst of volume, they interpret it as the boy who cried "wolf." Just some egocentric twit who felt a sudden impulse to whore for attention.

I wonder how much today's audiences respond viscerally to their entertainment. It seems like being presented with such cold, distancing, and unlikable vocal delivery, they'd get turned off. But maybe they're all borderline autistic and their brains are filtering out the acoustic/phonetic detail, and extracting only the syntactic/semantic information.

To document what's going on, I'm certainly not going to go through every popular movie from the last 15-20 years. Just one for each genre, since the trend is obvious enough. Mumbling does seem to play different roles in different genres, though, so each case is worth a separate look. I'll also include examples from an '80s counterpart that show normal human inflection, just to show how recent this change is. The clips will be movie trailers, since they include speech from across the entire movie, not just a snippet from one scene only.

Indie movies: Mumbling as outward sign of inner existential drift

Note to artfags: "ennui" is just "boredom" with a college degree, hence no more interesting and equally irritating as a character trait.

Trailer, The Puffy Chair (2005)
Trailer, Heathers (1988)

Action movies: Mumbling as nonchalant invincibility

The occasional flat-toned wisecrack shows stoicism and cockiness from a vulnerable hero in the face of real danger. Always sounding bored and unmoved shows instead that the characters themselves are aware of being written as indestructible faux heroes in a CGI explosion movie.

Trailer, A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
Trailer, Die Hard (1988)

Comedy movies: Mumbling as makeshift deadpan

Deadpan is the use of an ordinary type of inflection (any of the many types used in ordinary situations), when an unusual type is called for. Mumbling doesn't sound like a familiar example of ordinary inflection, and so defeats the comic contrast between the expected unusual type and the actual ordinary type. It cheats and says, "We know we're supposed to be showing some kind of emotion, but we're showing no emotion at all," instead of showing ordinary emotion A when unusual emotion B is called for.

Trailer, The Hangover (2009)
Trailer, Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

Romance movies: Mumbling as impaired libido

When characters have so little inflection before they find each other, we don't believe they're all that excitable to begin with, and so not really driven as protagonists toward their romantic goal, nor having much long-term promise as a passionate couple -- which is the whole selling point of the movie. Decreased libido also shows up in the mumbling used to broadcast how not boy-crazy the girl is, and how "whatever" the guy feels about girls. And the occasional attempt to resurrect hall of fame mumblers Bogie and Bacall, wielding it as a weapon in a never-ending duel of shit-testing.

Trailer, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Clip, L.A. Story (1991)

Drama movies: Mumbling as forced reminder of seriousness

Characters find themselves in a predicament, sometimes a frightening one, that will take some kind of personal growth to get out of. All that minimal inflection achieves is to keep reminding the audience of the seriousness of the predicament -- like, yeah, we get it already. Fatalistic mumbling suggests, though, that the characters will just stay trapped in their troubles. A fuller range of inflection suggests that the characters have personalities that are dynamic enough to work their way through their unfamiliar situation.

Trailer, The Sixth Sense (1999)
Trailer, Big (1988)

...And that takes care of the major genres. The others are more or less a mix of the above uses.

You see basically the same picture by looking at the range of facial expressions. Today it's 99% blank -- vacant, mopey, smug, pouty, etc. -- and 1% kabuki mask, where before people showed a normal range of expressions. Now they look distancing by default, and we don't believe them when they briefly deviate by donning their kabuki masks. Before they were believable from beginning to end; some of them you could even relate to. The functions served by blank-face in each of the genres is the same as for mumble-voice.

Again, it makes you wonder how autistic the audience is today if they don't notice, or don't care, that the faces they're spending the whole movie staring at are completely devoid of normal emotional expressions for 99% of the time, and the other 1% are drawn with all the subtlety of pre-school refrigerator art.

These major failures wouldn't be so bad if we were reading a book, where only our own imagination is responsible for hearing the dialogue and seeing their expressions. But in a medium that you're supposed to have a more visceral response to, it's crucial to have speech and body language that you can connect with.

E.T. not as memorable as I remember

I watched E.T. last night for the first time in at least 20-25 years, and I was surprised how little I remembered of the plot and visuals. (I saw the original version, not the helicopter parent update.) Most of the main plot points had stuck, but not others -- I didn't remember that during the bicycle flight through the woods scene, E.T. set up his machine to phone home. Even more strangely, I didn't remember at all that E.T. dies near the end.

There were other small moments like that, too, where you think I would've remembered the plot point or at least the image. I had no memory of Elliott and E.T. having an interwoven psychic/emotional connection-at-a-distance, although maybe I was too young to appreciate that the last time I saw it.

I did recall some of the most iconic shots -- the bicycle flight and the shadow of E.T. and Elliott against the moon, Elliott's indignant face when no one believes his story ("It was nothing like that, penis breath!"), the warm-glow lighting of the closet where E.T. is holed up, and the sterilized white tunnel where Elliott makes his getaway at the end. However, I didn't remember the beginning or ending shots of E.T.'s spaceship, the strong dark-bright shots of the tool shed when Elliott and E.T. first "meet," or the entire hospital scene (although I did recall him indignantly ripping off the suction cups). Everyone remembers that E.T.'s fingertip glows, but I didn't remember his heart glowing, even though it's shown just as often.

Overall, it almost felt like I was seeing it for the first time. And '80s fan though I am, I have to say it was a good movie, but not at the level that its reputation would suggest. As in, Best This or Best That kind of movie. It succeeds as a movie that people of any age can enjoy, and without the tentpole pandering of '90s and 21st-century "family" movies. Still, it didn't do that much for me as a grown-up.

The same basic themes, plot, characterization, and visual style were light years beyond in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which was aimed more at adults. I can't stress enough how striking movies look when they're shot with an anamorphic lens, which unfortunately E.T. was not. The strong lighting contrasts, use of contrasting colors, shot composition -- the cinematography just looks better overall.

I thought it also did a better job of getting adult viewers to feel for the little kid who makes contact with the alien group. That scene at the end where the boy cries while saying good-bye to his alien friends felt more poignant than when Elliott gives E.T. one last hug good-bye. Maybe babies tug at the heart-strings more than 10 year-olds, I don't know, but it did feel more effective. Ditto for the reaction shot of the parent when she feels her child slipping away -- much more visceral when he gets pulled away in a tug-of-war than when she merely thinks that he's run away from home.

As for what grabbed me most as a child, it was definitely The NeverEnding Story -- unlike E.T., which I may have rented or caught on TV once in awhile, I used to watch The NeverEnding Story at least once a week for a good while there in elementary school. I saw it again a few years ago, and I hadn't forgotten anything, verbal or visual. It also has a catchy new wave theme song by the former frontman of Kajagoogoo.

Labyrinth had that same effect on me. My dad picked up a copy when the local video rental store was liquidating all its Betamax tapes, and I used to watch that over and over. Like The NeverEnding Story and Close Encounters, it was shot with an anamorphic lens (they really used to splurge on visuals in children's movies). After seeing it again for the first time in a long while, I remembered all of the plot, characters, images, and music. Yeah man, talk about catchy synthpoppy soundtracks. I picked that one up on CD a couple years ago, and it's still a fun one to listen to.

I don't mean to dump on E.T. like this, because it is a good enjoyable movie, and even though it's overrated, it's not one of those terrible "critic's darling" kind of overrated movies, where taking it down a peg feels cathartic. But it is worth noting that all the enthusiasm the movie receives is perhaps more driven by its iconic status, one of those movies that everybody has to cherish. While it is a successful fun-for-the-whole-family movie, it stretches itself a bit too thin and doesn't feel as satisfying to the child or adult viewer as a more age-tailored movie would. I'd go with Close Encounters for grown-ups and The NeverEnding Story for kids.