Featured today on ArtsJournal is Denver Post film critic Lisa Kennedy’s musings on the morality of the cinematic big bang – Why are movies killing our planet? I clicked on it because I thought it might be about poisonous gasses released by props, a movie set version of dumb bombs.
That story would be interesting, especially if they’d been made in China. But no. She’s upset about the morality of chaos narratives. Take it up with Homer, Ms. Kennedy. As long as the human race has told stories, we’ve entertained each other by imagining the worst.
She’s also miffed that the destruction is sometimes casual:
Only too often, the worst plays out like a blip in the screenplay.
Did she fail to read Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Before the story gets properly underway, a bully vaporizes the earth, almost by accident. Arthur Dent is on the road in space because he has nowhere else to go. It’s a comedy.
Wake up, old media. The clock’s ticking. Don’t you want us to remember you fondly? I do not claim that my defunct piece of the old media pie – the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – wowed its audience on a daily basis. However, this story would have been laughed off the computer screen before it got there.
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