The Art of Living Vicariously

I really like movies. I think I like movies more than a lot of people, at least more than Jimmy. But recently I've been thinking about the nature of film and it's status as an art and I've had some very unsettling realizations. 

Most art, paintings or music for example, all deal with some kind of abstraction that challenges the viewer in some way. Film is considered an art medium, but where is the room for interpretation in a movie like "His Girl Friday?" It seems like less of an art and more of an opiate. We don't go look at a sculpture for for hours, sit there comatose, while nodding or chuckling notes of approval at the right times. But that's exactly what happens with movies. (and maybe heroin)

Has our society come to a place where instead of having, for example, a romantic adventure, we would rather pay $10 and sit in a chair and have the adventure had for us? Are movies anything more than all the dried up dreams of a culture? 

But we need a place to sleep and food to eat. And of course that has to cost money. There's no free lunch after all. (Imagine what would happen if we had free lunches for God's sake!) So instead of having all the fun we can dream up and doing all the things we would love to do, we get jobs, work in cubicles, file papers on a sunny day.

 And then when we finally get our special "leisure time" (since time is as commodified as fun) we waste it. We go to the movies, we pay money sit in a soft chair in a dark room while we stare at a screen projecting all of our potential, getting glimpses of a world that could have existed. And then we leave. We go back into the suburban mall parking lot or the independent theater's foyer and somehow we accept that the exciting world exists in the screen and that the serious world exists outside. 

Film isn't to blame for itself though. I think they are more the symptom of a world slowly wrapped in concrete, we can't change anything by fighting a symptom. The saying goes if you want to change the world you have to change yourself. But the opposite is also true. 

Not going to the movies won't make real adventures and real experiences fall into our laps. But maybe in a different world, one without filing that needs to be done, without cubicles and without rent that needs to be paid, maybe in that world we could do away with suburban megaplexes, maybe they'll come to be seen as the temples of the age of consumption. A place where we used to to worship the giant screen gods of excitement and comedy. Maybe in that new world everyone will have adventures every day, and maybe get a free lunch too.