Week 10 Symposium

I thought that an interesting quote by Anderson was presented in Tuesday’s symposium. Anderson stated that “For too long we’ve been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching – a market response to inefficient distribution.”

This got me thinking of something that has always frustrated me about the success of films at the cinema. At the moment it is Term 3 school holidays, and for as long as I can remember, roughly a week or two out from the beginning of school holidays we see an advert on TV for a new movie that is to be released as soon as the holidays start. Generally it’s an animation of excellent quality itself, but B-grade content with largely bizarre concepts. These “run of the mill” films have been produced to please young audiences and families who are looking to do something during the holidays. I feel like Walt Disney himself would be turning in his grave if he saw some of the animation content being produced today, for the sheer purpose of profit at the cinema. Animation has become far less one-of-a-kind Toy Story iconic, and more-so fulfils the economical demands of the film industry and all those associated in film production.

What Anderson said corresponded with the way I feel about school holiday production. I feel like my grandparents when I say this but I think children should be shown Mickey Mouse classics, rather than some 90 minute film about underground cave-dwelling trash collector trying to save his friends from an evil exterminator (like seriously….what???…who even thinks of this stuff?!)