Susan Sontag

Have you ever seen Star Wars, E.T, Back to the future, Indiana Jones, maybe even Ghost Busters? These are all great Cinematic masterpieces, but they have ruined cinema. They made cinema extremely profitable; Cinema started making remakes. Cinema made too many movies just to sell merchandise, clothes, toys, posters, you name it the movies had it. There was a time when cinema was just done for the love for storytelling. There were people who went to the movies just to experience being in the movie theater. Susan Sontag wrote “A Century of Cinema”, in which she talks about how cinema today isn’t the same as cinema when it first started over a hundred years ago. Sontag defines cinephilia and describes what kind of film fits the tastes/ standards for them. The main problem with cinema today is that their only desire is to make money.  

Sontag created cinephilia to keep cinema alive. Sontag’s definition is “Cinephilia—the name of the very specific kind of love that cinema inspired.” (Sontag). Cinephiles surrender to the movie; they let their minds be kidnapped by the film.  Here, they can be kidnapped while seated in the dark next to a total stranger. Cinema has changed so much over a hundred years. Standards have changed in cinema as art and for cinema as entertainment. “The love that cinema inspired , however, was special. It was born of the conviction that cinema was an art unlike any other: quintessentially modern; distinctively accessible; poetic and mysterious and erotic and mortal—all at the same time.” (Sontag). Cinema is meant for entertainment. “The weird metaphysical implication of spoilers is that moviegoers and readers who fret about them want to regain their innocence, perhaps even their infancy, and experience everything as if it were absolutely fresh. From this standpoint, we shouldn’t even know what films we’re going to see in advance, or who stars in them, or who directed them, or what they’re about, or perhaps even where they’re playing.” (Rosenbaum).

Back a hundred years people who went to the movies went because they enjoyed it, it was an event. Now-A-Days people go just to see the latest blockbuster.  In society today we have too many ways to see movies: DVDs, Netflix, HBO and 300 cable channels. We have to many choices. Sontag says “The conditions of paying attention in a domestic space are radically disrespectful of film.” (“A Century Of Cinema”). What Sontag means by this is that we have too many distractions with technology. Hagner writes “The extreme close up, wipes, pans, video, DVD, downloads, clips: modern imagery flows by in a blur of perpetual motion, nothing privileged so no sense of self-presence.” (Cinephilia: Movies, Love and Memory). There’s too much going in cinema today with all of the various remakes and sequels.

Ever since the 80’s cinema has gone downhill. They keep making remakes and not necessarily good remakes. I believe that they have no original ideas of their own. Cinema doesn’t kidnap you anymore. Sontag writes “Cinephilia itself has come under attack, as something quaint, outmoded, and snobbish.  For cinephilia implies that films are unique, unrepeatable, magic experiences.” (“A Century of Cinema”) Cinema today will never compare to cinema in the 80’s. Cinema has turned into a money making only industry. “Now the balance has tipped decisively in favor of cinema as an industry” (Sontag). Cinema is turning into an industry more than a fun thing.

Cinema will remain dead until we get cinephiles and good films back. Cinema could one day be as great as it was before the 1980’s. They just need to stop making them for the money and do it for the pure joy of making them. Then the cinephile will come back the way Susan Sontag would want. You should go to the cinema for the experience, the art, and the entertainment. People should want to be a cinephile and understand the standards of the films. Cinema needs to stop making movies for money and make it in the standards of great cinephilia. Don’t see the sequels just to say that you have seen the latest Box Office Hit. Sontag writes “If cinephilia is dead, then movies are dead too… no matter how many movies, even very good ones, go on being made. If cinema can be resurrected, it will only be through the birth of a new kind of cine-love” (“A Century of Cinema”).