Harvesting the Corpse: When Conspiracy Theories are Unnecessary

There’s a concept I’d like to explore here, about the inevitability of our current decline, and why trying to fight the tide is not just useless but counterproductive. And to illustrate this concept I’ll start with a simpler version, one which everybody should be able to understand: the concept of the visionary film maker.

There seems to be this particular class of geniuses – your Stanley Kubricks, Christopher Nolans, and James Camerons – who manage to put together these profound cinematic experiences that defy the conventions of the time. Men who somehow overcome the ‘studio meddling’ to put their own vision on the silver screen without compromise. Beneath them are a vast swathe of competent imitators, the studio lap dogs, the Joss Whedons and James Gunns; men who know how to paint a pretty picture, but who are unable to capture the essence of art. And finally you get the vast ocean of B-movie creators, the direct-to-DVD crowd and the sitcom writers. The rarity of true genius is something to behold – even without the budget or connections which Hollywood allows, one’s forced to imagine that their low-budget films would still have been revolutionary (incidentally, Memento had a $9 million budget).

Somehow these men are able to harness the energy of hundreds of people – from actors, to musicians, to set designers, to editors – and pull together a coherent whole which speaks to us on the level of dreams. Then – the project finished – they move on to something new.

Men like this have little interest in managing a franchise.

So what happens to the franchise they created? What happens to the brand? The spark of life might have died, but the corpse still has a lot of meat on it. Do you really think the studios will leave this cash cow to rot away?

Of course not. With the auteur gone, the artist is replaced with a decorator. Someone who, rather than challenging audiences, gives them exactly what they crave. More of the same, but different, with prettier actors and flashier special effects. At first it seems to capitalize off of what made the original special, but as time goes on the seams begin to show, and the audience begins to realize that the je ne sais quois is gone. The original’s ‘Lighting in a Bottle’ has faded into darkness.

From the studio’s perspective, this is exactly where they want to be. Film buffs might decry remakes, but so long as the bulk of the audiences keeps attending, the studio’s coffers stay full. More than any other form of creative expression, movies are in a constant war between economics and art, with the studios firmly placed in the camp of the former. Lighting in a Bottle is impossible to predict, it’s bad business; but once you have it, the smart money is in harvesting its corpse to put butts in seats.

But without artistic leadership, without integrity, it becomes inevitable that the fish rots from the head down. If the people in charge of the whole boondoggle are behaving with financial cynicism, why would anyone else on the chain be any different? Thus we get Conquest’s third law: everybody involved in the production is just looking to carve their own slice of meat off of the corpse, with no concern for the integrity of the product as a whole.

This is the primary reason behind political agendas appearing in established franchises. Once in a while you’ll see a director who mistakes ideology for wisdom (ergo Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sucker Punch), but in the majority of instances it’s just colonizers seeking a pay day. The mercenary director hired to make Scifi Classic: The Pre-Sequel isn’t madly obsessed with his creative vision about dreams and fatherhood; that part of his brain is filled to the brim with whatever ideologies are socially fashionable at the time. This creative bankruptcy leads him to invite his fellow ideologues to come participate, earning them a hefty pay cheque in the process. They suggest flagrantly and annoyingly inserting their own pet monkeys into the film, and he readily agrees – it covers up for his own lack of creativity. The eventual result of this is something so atrocious that the whole remake phenomenon comes to a halt. They killed the franchise, they alienated the public from the ideology they were shoving down their throats, and it’s finally time for the studios to search desperately for another great man, another auteur, who can pull everything together into an artistic vision which captivates the masses.

In Hollywood this pattern has a life-cycle about about 10 to 20 years; years of Oscar-bait, then some creativity and reinvention, then years of Marvel Movie clones, and then…

The important take away from all of this is that it’s not an explicit conspiracy; there is no centralized agenda to corrupt art, there’s just economic incentives and the pomposity of midwit intelligences. Artists don’t become studio execs, business men do. Geniuses don’t remake formulaic films to get butts in seats, interior decorators do. The ideologues shoving their ideology into films aren’t working as part of some vast, world-spanning cabal, they’re just ignoramuses looking for a payday, who ultimately wind up undermining the very causes they claim to support with their ham-fisted moralizing. It certainly looks like a conspiracy when you’re an auteur in the age of remakes, but it’s worth remembering that age old wisdom – this too shall pass.

The same goes for civilization, only the time scale is much longer.

Great men inspire the people and somehow manage to organize everything with the genius of a polymath – they improve the crop yields, commission great works of architecture, and turn the military into a force to behold. They pull all of society together into a high-culture flourishing… but with fait accompli – now what?

Inevitably they are succeeded by managers – since, the high culture having been achieved, there’s no enticement for the younger versions of themselves to take up the mantle of leadership (presumably these young Napoleons go into film). And these managers – like the studio heads who only want butts in seats – aren’t concerned with the vision that led society to greatness, they’re primarily concerned with maintaining what already exists. And given this lack of vision, they accept obedience when what society needs is commitment, and the bureaucratic class becomes a bunch of opportunistic peons, following the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit. And so, the gradual decline happens – every public servant carving off their own piece of rotting flesh, until the whole beast becomes so putrid that a change is demanded.

But until putrefaction thoroughly sets in, the pre-sequels will continue to be made.

Rebellions against this rot are structurally impossible. Whether your name is Donald Trump or Julius Caesar, the momentum is on the side of a rotting corpse. You might be able to inspire a small cadre of loyal followers – the passionate film buffs who demand true art, not cheap entertainment – but without the backing of the studios, without the resources which the system still holds on to, you’re at such a disadvantage that, at most, you’ll achieve some temporary victories before being assassinated by one of your most loyal followers.

Nobody wants a revolution when the system is still running at 70% efficacy.

“So now what?” asks Anonymous.

Weren’t you listening?

Now… nothing. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Carve off your own slice of meat, and scrape off the rotten bits. Or, abandon politics and get into film making. Blockchain is doing some interesting things lately. Stop arguing with the people who want to watch Kids Show: The Movie: With Sex and Guns; all those violent movies and video games have turned them into loose cannons, and they’re prone to physical assault if you undermine their fantasies.

But if you must remain committed to a lost cause, at least stop fighting your enemies when they’re making mistakes. Allow them to ruin the once-noble franchise – it’s long been dead, anyways. Don’t be the opponent they’re so desperately looking for – allow them to flail about in the dark. There are conspiracies everywhere, but the conspiracies are petty – a bit of graft here, a bit of spite there, but even if they wanted to take over the world, do you think these morons really could? The moment they gain creative control of the franchise they immediately set upon making it as unpalatable as possible.

Turn on, tune in, and drop out. Galaxy Wars: Transgender Turtles in Time isn’t your problem unless if you watch it. Look elsewhere, you might just spot opportunity.