Featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono
Standard Podcast
Episode 206: In a Franchise Funk
November 19, 2013- Categories: Main Topic,
- Podcast
April 17, 2024
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Brilliant discussion. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a heavy-hitting deep SFC episode. My heart and mind has felt the profound issues explored here on a daily basis, for quite awhile.
It’s not a dissatisfaction with entertainment that I have, because what I am dissatisfied by is not what I allow to be entertainment. Anything I innately see as lesser, does not appeal to me. Nor does the term, entertainment. It’s quite an understated label that feels almost cheapening.
My two most beloved franchises and sci-fi loves of all time, the ‘Wars and the Trek, I would never simply label as “entertainment”, or simply “escapism”. Genuine stories with genuine character penetrates a deeper level of intimacy than that. And that’s why Ben’s words of how these roots of humanity’s resonance to story and their being abused by a mechanized system is so compelling.
Film and television are a battle between commerce, commercial sensibilities, frivolous delusions of mass-cultural fads, with true storytelling and the highest of human communication: art; which has always had a place at the soul level.
The Tolkien/Lewis point was extraordinary. Noise filtration is essential to being a creative force, not to mention a great human being, more now than ever. At the end of the day, everything we consume is what waters our intricacies of thought. Which can be frightening.
These subjects are ones that are very important to me, and I dare not begin writing a book, here. 🙂 Salutes for the episode and I’ll close with this…
There is something a little depressing and head-scratching when you walk into the movie theater and see that almost everything has a “2” or a “3” or a “4”, after the title. Then you look to your right and see the poster for the umpteenth installment of some animated farce with furry animals. (Franchise farces not limited to furry animated films, of course…)
People are sick of how things are going, but things aren’t changing because of Hollywood’s monopolization. Their quality control, distribution domination, and parasitical cultural penetration is all apart of that. There’s a lot to this theme of the franchise funk, indeed.