#Irrel­e­vant: Is Hol­ly­wood los­ing the fight against social media?

In 1949, the leg­endary film pro­duc­er Samuel Gold­wyn saw the future of enter­tain­ment. He used an arti­cle in The New York Times to sum­marise his thoughts: ​“Motion pic­tures are enter­ing their third major era. First there was the silent peri­od. Then the sound era. Now we are on the thresh­old of the tele­vi­sion age.”

Goldwyn’s pre­science is hard to deny. The 1950s saw tele­vi­sion sales sky­rock­et while atten­dance in US movie the­atres declined steadi­ly until the ear­ly ​’70s. From that moment on, film folk would not stop wor­ry­ing about their new com­peti­tor: the screen in everyone’s liv­ing room.

In 2019, that rival­ry is alive and well. Pub­lic spats between Net­flix and Cannes can attest to the ten­sion between big screen and small. Yet arguably more dis­rup­tion lies in wait, cour­tesy of the still small­er screens we all car­ry around in our pockets.

As Jere­my Deller point­ed out, in his cel­e­brat­ed BBC doc­u­men­tary Every­body in the Place, social media has dis­placed the once reign­ing cul­tur­al medi­ums of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. Pop music no longer holds quite the same esteem amongst teens and pre-teens who get their kicks from live streams, Insta­gram sto­ries and the free­wheel­ing meme-exchange of social networks.

From politi­cians to poets, every­one now accepts the gamut of Insta­gram, Twit­ter and Snapchat as the dom­i­nant means to spread ideas and infor­ma­tion. Sur­veys sug­gest that most of us are hooked to some extent: star­ing at our phones even when nom­i­nal­ly ​‘watch­ing’ tele­vi­sion. If TV killed the mat­inée idol, one won­ders what will become of both thanks to the gazil­lion tiny blows of Tik­Tok and Snapchat.

Social media plat­forms light up our plea­sure cen­tres in ways that films can’t equal. The lat­est to catch fire, Tik­Tok, is a light­ing-quick video app which pos­i­tive­ly rains con­tent onto your reti­nas in two to 15-sec­ond clips. The app fol­lows a now-estab­lished route to dom­i­nance in the online atten­tion economy.

Machine-learn­ing allows the plat­form to under­stand your tastes in no time at all. Cus­tom can­not stale its infi­nite vari­ety, as the clips arrive back-to-back – zoom­ing in with the quip­py speed of Aaron Sorkin’s dia­logue or Tina Fey’s gag writ­ing. The speed is a boon to view­er and pro­duc­er alike. Just as a stand-up can hone their craft in the real-time feed­back of an audience’s laughs, wit­ty teens can quick­ly dis­cern the tastes of their market.

Which is all good for light­ness and mirth, you might say, but what of the true dra­mas? The heartrend­ing romances and tragedies that require deep char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion and a rapt audi­ence? It’s hard to see how Tik­Tok can account for such enter­tain­ment needs. (Although Insta­gram and Twit­ter may well pro­vide an alter­na­tive thanks to the unend­ing hate-storms and dra­ma which rage across them.)

The more press­ing ques­tion is whether young peo­ple are even inter­est­ed. A report in the most recent issue of Pri­vate Eye sug­gests that BBC researchers, con­cerned by an inabil­i­ty to attract a younger audi­ence, are look­ing at ways to ​‘mute’ news con­tent which teens find ​“too depress­ing”. Enter­tain­ment purists may become like hec­tor­ing par­ents who plead with their kids to at least try some broc­coli before dessert.

Fac­ing sim­i­lar dilem­mas, film pro­duc­ers have notice­ably leaned-in to their own strengths. Fran­chis­es and exist­ing prop­er­ties which car­ry a pre-exist­ing audi­ence now dom­i­nate the major release win­dows. Just as major retail­ers have been forced to con­sol­i­date and restruc­ture in response to online shop­ping, big stu­dios have increas­ing­ly favoured grand-scale action adven­tures. The Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse can­not be beat­en for eye-pop­ping visu­al effects and the over­all scale of its nar­ra­tive. If any­thing is guar­an­teed to dis­tract teens for a cou­ple of hours, it’s the sight of fifty super­hu­mans rip­ping the uni­verse to shreds in Dol­by Surround.

For all the hand-wring­ing over shrink­ing atten­tion spans, how­ev­er, it’s worth not­ing that films – much like nov­els – may become less pop­u­lar, but are unlike­ly to dis­ap­pear. It’s pos­si­ble to imag­ine film becom­ing the opera of the 21^st cen­tu­ry: a minor­i­ty art­form, kept alive through gen­er­ous fund­ing grants and wealthy bene­fac­tors. If such a fate awaits, there’s lit­tle for film to do but stick to its own wheel­house: with a focus on sto­ry­telling, pho­tog­ra­phy and act­ing talent.

Yet some direc­tors are spoil­ing to bring the fight to social media. The Big Short has a cer­tain Youtube-ness about its use of voiceover, smash-cut­ting to still images for a quick laugh. (“Does it make you feel stu­pid?” Ryan Gosling asks, when describ­ing the impen­e­tra­ble lan­guage of finance execs, before an Insta­gram-esque pho­to of a dog wear­ing sun­glass­es appears on screen.)

Direc­tor Adam McK­ay seems con­vinced that his audi­ence won’t pay atten­tion with­out such inter­jec­tions, weav­ing in YouTube-ready scenes which include Mar­got Rob­bie explain­ing sub­prime mort­gages in a bub­ble bath. It’s most­ly tongue-in-cheek, but that hasn’t stopped it from rack­ing up views online.

Steven Soderbergh’s anti-cap­i­tal­ist state­ment, The Laun­dro­mat, takes this gam­bit even fur­ther. Rather than employ­ing voiceover, Anto­nio Ban­deras and Gary Oldman’s nar­ra­tors speak direct­ly to cam­era, deliv­er­ing a detailed expo­si­tion of the finan­cial chi­canery exposed in the Pana­ma Papers scan­dal. At times, it feels like an expen­sive TED talk, where the star pow­er of well-known celebri­ties is entrust­ed to rouse us from our pop­corn-addled complacency.

McK­ay and Soder­bergh are engag­ing in a sort of activism. Wish­ing to truth-tell about polit­i­cal and social inad­e­qua­cies, but they do so as Gen X film­mak­ers whose grip over pop­u­lar cul­ture is quick­ly wan­ing. With many of us look­ing to Youtube and Twit­ter for smart, snap­py explain­ers, it’s not clear that meld­ing doc­u­men­tary and drama­ti­sa­tion will help to keep film at the fore­front of sur­round­ing conversations.

Those of us who stayed behind for the mid-cred­its skit at the close of McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic Vice gained fur­ther insight into how he views slack-thumbed mil­len­ni­als. As a fist fight breaks out between two mid­dle aged men – one lib­er­al, one ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive – a young woman gazes into her phone and declares how ​“lit” the new Fast and the Furi­ous film will be.

It might be no more than a play­ful dig at twen­tysome­things or it could be a cur­mud­geon­ly gripe on behalf of an old­er gen­er­a­tion fac­ing up to a major shift in our cul­tur­al dynam­ics. Thank­ful­ly, in the Infor­ma­tion Age, we have Twit­ter polls to solve such conundrums.