[ExI] squeeze the classics

Dan TheBookMan danust2012 at gmail.com
Mon Jun 6 02:27:51 UTC 2016


On Jun 5, 2016, at 5:08 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> From: extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan
> Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2016 1:11 PM
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Subject: Re: [ExI] squeeze the classics 
> On Sun, Jun 5, 2016 at 11:06 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> >>… Perhaps some here have noticed that our collective decreasing
> > attention spans apply to ourselves as well as the younger set.
> 
> >…I often wonder about this -- whether it's actually true, whether it's significant, and whether it's a bad thing. …
>  
> It has its redeeming qualities.  We can take in a lot more information a lot more quickly now. 

Yes. Some of this is because, in certain areas, the audience simply knows more so the creative artist can presume their target audience doesn't need to be spoon fed all the background information. 
 
> 
> Consider a movie that came out in 1977, before most of us had ever played a video game, the first Star Wars.  Do you remember how it made you so nervous it made you want to jump out of your skin? 

By the time I saw Star Wars, I'd already played plenty of video games. ;) And it was TV. ;)

Wasn't Lucas also referencing the dogfight films of earlier times and trying to get away from more cerebral SF like "2001"?

> Did me.  Doesn’t now.  What changed?  The pace of life in movies has increased so much, they get a lot more story is a lot less time.  Talking heads movies have grown rare.

It depends on the audience. "Casablanca" wasn't like the competing stuff targeted for younger audiences at that time. Look at "The Wizard of Oz." Much faster pace, no? 

Anyhow, I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from one film. "My Dinner With Andre" (01981) and "Serenity" (02005) are talky films from very different genres. What can we conclude from them?
> >>… Anyone who has tried to view the 1950s Perry Mason early TV
> > dramas, which were so excellent at the time, but unimaginable in
> > any courtroom today…
> 
> >…Have you been in any courtroom recently or back then?.. Dan
>  
> What I meant was it stays on the same camera view for several minutes at a time.  Nothing does that anymore, not even televised golf tournaments (golf, on TV.  I have never quite understood watching guys play golf, never mind having it on a medium such as TV.)
>  
> We are accustomed to taking in information much faster than we did even 40 yrs ago.

It might be a matter of having more competing sources of entertainment. After all, we're taking about entertainment. If you can easily choose another source of entertainment, do you need to slog through something that's boring you? And the technology and the ability to manage it is there to do these things. A few decades ago, having multiple live cameras on anything would cost a lot or be near impossible. (Wasn't the three camera thing a big innovation in TV during the 01950s?)

Regards,

Dan
  See my latest Kindle book, "The Late Mr. Gurlitt," at:
http://mybook.to/Gurlitt
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