But we’re living in a time of extreme crisis almost nothing on TV or in the movies is designed to get us thinking about how to fix our problems. If anything, most of the stuff on TV is designed to jack up our anxiety level without offering any solutions except the short-term fixes of buying and eating — witness the endless reality shows in which ordinary people slave away and scheme against each other for weeks on end for a 1 in 12 shot at a (pick one) modeling job/date with a non-deformed, non serial-killing person/chance to be shouted at by Donald Trump.He's contrasting most film (he mentions "Law Abiding Citizen," "Fame," "Love Happens," and "Where the Wild Things Are") with Michael Moore's new documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, and arguing, basically, that Moore's willingness to deal with the economic condition of our country forgives (or at least mitigates) other issues with his filmmaking. Or at least puts him in a different strata than films designed to excite or titillate. This is a sort of modified Culture Industry position. Which is to say, he agrees with Adorno up to about the 95% line (yes, almost all culture is designed to perpetuate the economic status quo), but is willing to make allowances for people like Moore who explicitly seem to be contradicting the prevalent hegemony.
I'm a bit more skeptical. Taibbi writes, "At least Michael Moore is getting us talking about the right topics... nobody else out there, in the major media at least, is doing a freaking thing." But I think the places in which Moore fails (Taibbi rightly notes that the outrage Moore sparks in you seems, at least a little, designed to foster ticket sales and not galvanize political action: "How do I join Michael Moore in this movement? Am I supposed to watch the movie again?") are places where less politically obvious films can succeed. I haven't seen Capitalism: A Love Story yet, but I think Revolutionary Road made a very compelling case against a certain kind of Capitalist decadence, and even offered some practical suggestions (even if moving to Paris and living the BoHo life isn't available).
My only point here being that sometimes an explicitly political film can be cynically trying to sell you tickets, and that an explicitly art film can be trying to sell you politics.
Taibbi's structuralist reading of contemporary cinema:
The vast majority of our movies are either thinly-disguised commercials for consumer products (Law Abiding Citizen), remakes of old shows and movies designed to transport us back to the good old days when life was better (i.e. Fame) , or gushy nerf-tripe with no hard edges crafted to serve as escapist fairy tales for stressed-out adults wanting to dream of happy endings (Love Happens).
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