At the end of the “Something Wall-Mart This Way Comes” episode of “South Park,” Stan and Kyle are face-to-face with the evil force behind the town of South Park’s addiction to consumption: “Wall-Mart,” in the flesh. The town has been colonized with the irresistibly low prices and bargain deals of the “Wall-Mart.” The local community is disintegrating, because no one shops anywhere else. Stan’s father, Randy, is the town’s most helpless victim: a man who forsakes his job to work at "Wall-Mart" for the minute employee discount. In an absurd sequence of events — it’s “South Park” we’re talking about — the boys find themselves at the heart of South Park’s problems, as usual.
“Wall-Mart” instructs the boys to walk over to the plasma TVs in order to see the “heart” of “Wall-Mart.” They do so and find they are looking into a mirror. Humor aside, this, I think, is a brilliant critique of our consumer culture. The point of this episode is to say such massive companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Starbucks Corp., McDonald’s Corp., etc. exist because we want them to. We, as a culture, couldn’t care less about the local community, small business and the plight of the little man, so long as we have our creature comforts at an affordable price. These monopolies profit from our desires.
I use this example from “South Park” as a lens through which we can see a recent phenomenon: the rise of mega-computer-generated-imagery blockbusters and the obsession with sequels and remakes. Did we really need a new “Independence Day,” “Ice Age”or “Ben-Hur”? Or “Dumb and Dumber,” “Ride Along” or “Ghostbusters”? It seems as if I read almost every day that an old story is being remade or a once-dead world is being resurrected and expanded upon. What does it say about our cultural conscience that we would rather watch the same characters in the same worlds doing nearly the same heroic deeds against the backdrop of a dreadfully similar narrative tension than chance seeing an original film?
To see the movie industry lose grasp of its purpose — to not simply entertain, but to challenge beliefs, engage the imagination and allow the viewer to escape into other worlds in order to enlarge the experience of this one — is a travesty. If the purpose of film, of art, is to say something meaningful, then maybe today’s film industry speaks more to our culture than we care to admit.
Maybe we truly have nothing lasting to say and can only flee into the fleeting embrace of overblown visual effects and underwhelming character development. Just as the town of South Park cared only for their immediate pleasure, so too do we center our focus solely on quick bursts of entertainment rather than lasting and deep works of art.
When thinking of this issue, I am reminded of, ironically, a recent film: “Birdman or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.” A mega-celebrity tries to write, direct and star in his first Broadway play while battling internally with his alter ego: himself as the fictional superhero that won him his fame, Birdman. The play is costing him a fortune and his sanity. His alter ego tempts him with promises of easy millions made from empty sequels. In a disturbing moment, he kills himself onstage to the wild applause of his oblivious audience. The crowd members think they witnessed a great show, and they did. But they do not understand that it is their insatiable thirst for thoughtless entertainment that has killed him. The man wanted to create art; the crowd wanted him to be Birdman.
I wonder: What will we lose as a culture if the transcendent voice of good film, of art, is lost amid the incessant chatter of sequels and remakes? In the case of “Birdman,” the artist lost his life as the crowd cheered him on. At least it was a good show.
Scott Stinson is a UF English and philosophy sophomore. His column appears on Wednesdays.
