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The US is losing culture.
Hollywood is a very vivid symptom of this.
The other day, I revisited an iconic US film distributed by Columbia Pictures – Dr. Strangelove.
One of the best political black-satire movies of all time. I saw it 3 times and still enjoy seeing scenes from it again.
I just came across another iconic film released by Paramount Pictures – Once Upon a Time in the West.
Both movies were provocative – in their story as well as in their cinematography. Both are masterworks.
We don’t see masterworks from Hollywood anymore.
And there is a profound lack of US films with an edge.
What is the reason?
There is no lack of money in the US movie industry. They constantly make one expensive movie after another. Mission Impossible No. 4002 and counting – Indiana Jones No. 284733 and counting. Super Hero movie no. 3 million and counting. Disney nobody-cares movie number gazillion. A lot of ink can be wasted about changes in movie-habits, on-line movie access etc. Is the collapse in US movie quality the consequence of that – or is the collapse in cultural quality of US movies an intrinsic, a deeper US cultural phenomenon? I believe the latter.
Even in the US, there used to be a market for niche films with less viewers – many of which like Pulp Fiction and the first Star Wars movie (yes, both were low-budget) became blockbusters. Earlier, the US was also able to make provocative films even in the high budget range. Apocalypse Now was extremely expensive to make, but the financiers in the movie industry at that time dared to invest in that movie which heavily criticized US behavior in the lost Vietnam war. And that movie became a blockbuster and a classic too. The Godfather series which showed a violent crime family in a somewhat human light was also provocative. Are there any provocations in US movies today? Look to Barbie. Ask Oppenheimer.
Something is lost in the US cultural sphere.
Are there other parts of the US cultural landscape which are blossoming instead? I don’t see signs of that. I also haven’t seen anything really interesting in the New York Times which loves to report on culture (they call it “arts” to be more snobbish). What about music? Rap was provocative – but that was then. Techno was underground and provocative – but that was then. Michael Jackson is outlawed, and there is no new one. There are no new cultural US musical mega-figures with strong personalities – nothing like Michael Jagger, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. There isn’t even a new Madonna.
It seems like the US society doesn’t further such culture and personalities. The US doesn’t even seem to have a thriving underground environment anymore. The US Left used to support such underground environments, but it seems that the woke US Left is itself becoming the arch enemy of everything “deviant” – the cancel culture of political correctness and artificial pronouns. An artificial “progressive” political movement which has infiltrated, infested, and cut down the productive growth environments of cinema, music, and culture in the US. Diversity, creativity, renewal, and energy come from things growing wild – and that is not allowed in the US anymore.
So maybe there we have it. A key reason for US cultural collapse.
It will have a profound detrimental impact. Both on the US internally – and on the US position in the World.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
