The overseas market, specifically China, probably plays a much bigger role in self-censoring cinema than most people are comfortable admitting. Nobody wants good cinema, movies that dig into and challenge the human condition. They want money. In the last 20-30 years, we have seen the strip-mall-ization of the movie theater. Every city has at least one, they all look the same, and drop in at any time and you'll see the same kinds of movies: cool-looking, easy, bowlderized, with paint-by-the-numbers plots.

I love real cinema. For all intents and purposes it's gone now. We need a new art form to take its place.

A big part of the problem with any commercial art form is the plethora of folks who love to be reductionist in one way or another. Leads in TV shows from the 1950s forward wanted to know and control how many lines they spoke. John Wayne famously gave the advice to another actor that if you're leaving a scene, first move in the opposite direction and then leave the way you're supposed to. Gives you a bit more screen time. (Apologies that I cannot source that offhand)

Once everything becomes reductionist, it's then much easier to argue about some oversimplified version of the art than the contents of the art itself. Were there enough tall people in that film? Did that essay have the right amount of third-grade level adjectives? Is the playwright using a meter for the supporting roles? If so, what is it?

We can go on and on about such things because they are easier to measure, require almost no understanding of the art form itself, and lead to all sorts of debates. Sometimes I think the number one rule of modern media is "I don't care what you're arguing about, just argue about something!"

If we placed the story first, and only created anything in an art form to support and enhance that story, we'd get all sorts of interesting and self-challenging art, depending on which artist is telling the story. Whatever trivial reductionist thing you'd like to experience, there'd be art that let you experience it. But if we try to create and tell stories through art by way of committee and marketing research, it's just going to be more and more bland populist pablum.

The saddest part of all of this is not that businesses are acting in their best interests. The saddest part is what it says about the average consumer. I love modern theater even though it's a completely new art, but I try very hard not to do the "reverse math" and figure out just what the creators think of me. Otherwise I'd get pretty pissed.