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| 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”).
