Essay, Research Paper: Hollywood 2

What are we creating?From the dawn of civilization, humans have bragged about their accomplishments. As the story was told over and over again it got bigger and better with each retelling, carrying it on to new people. Writing took the inconsistency out of the story but made story telling boring again. Then in the Twentieth Century man learned how to tell the story with pictures and Hollywood was born.Now throughout history man has had war and violence, without the cinematic perspective to shed light to the horrors. Only artist renderings from a distance that obscured the detailed drama that played out on the battlefield. An invention that could show the world what a cruel and heartless race we could be, instead we decided to write fictional characters that live unusual lives based on reality but in the most extreme cases. Myths and legends, stories of battle and conquests were based on events that happened far away and long ago. But in some form or the other the story was based on an actual event or person. Armageddon, not the Biblical, but a fanciful depiction of an Earth shattering asteroid on a course to wipeout the human race was a blockbuster hit. Some people still do not know that an asteroid was what killed the Dinosaurs. Again, one of the most powerful forms of communication is reduced to Gross Points and Box Office numbers. It is nearly equivalent to the Valley Girl butchering of the language to an unrecognizable form of semiotic English, like yea know? It has been put forth that Hollywood only dramatizes the reality of the world we live in. Close, but not entirely true. If it were simple reality it would not be worth our hard earned dollar, it has to be more complex and engrossing than the dull world-weariness of our own lives to captivate our short attention spans. A live execution on national television would have every john q. public attached to his lazy boy, beer in hand ready for one million volts to be passed though some scum bags body. American justice at its peak of perfection, or some director's academy award winning shot? We are thrilled with the harshness of a cruel world as long as it's not real or it's not us. Hollywood has dumped the Cinderella story and embraced the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. With a goal of shocking the audience and listening for the quiet gasps from the darkened theater, producers, directors, and writers have all lost the story in the action and the fake blood.Yes, Hollywood does depict reality, but they choose the side that they wish to show and too often that is the side that sells, sex and violence. Forgetting history and the human qualities of love, hope, and compassion which show the side that makes it feel good to be human and alive. They choose the side of human destruction to show most often with they gift of creation, and we wonder why our children are shooting each other in school on live television.