Harrison Ford Is "Terribly Concerned" About Future of Moviegoing

hollywoodreporter.com

3 points·Michelangelo11··3 comments

Harrison Ford is right:

> There is no zeitgeist anymore. We’ve been disassociated. We’ve been purposefully disaggregated into serviceable political economic units. There is an empty center that needs to be filled, to bring the culture back together, to bring the culture and the movie business back together, for the movie business to be useful in the consciousness of an audience, a culture, a community.

I would say moviegoing was at it's zenith in the US around Great Depression, and has been on a downhill slide ever since.

Here is a video showing the Palatial Landmark Theatre in Syracuse NY opened in 1928 (they don't make them like they used to): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdCaX7WrpoI

Today the multiplexes are dying and the star system that put Harrison Ford on top has lost touch with the younger generation. The moviegoing experience is not, dead, though. It is artisinal. Check out you local community operated retro/indy/arthouse theatre, many have flourished in this post covid era.

Well that implies someone designed the movie business to be some kind of cultural binding agent. But its barely a century old and there are older mechanisms that bind groups together. Philospher Charles Taylors classic The Secular Age is worth checking out.

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