Four Dogs and a Bone
The dog-eat-dog world of the entertainment industry and a call to arms for a new Golden Age in Hollywood: analyzing its superficiality, corporate greed, cultural fanaticism and the rise of AI
From the film: Our Dancing Daughters (1928)1
It is a well-known fact among New Yorkers that while Los Angeles is comparable to New York in both size and cultural relevance, Los Angeles is a town full of “plastic”, “fake” characters, while New York is a town just as gritty and authentic as its denizens. You may have heard the colloquial phrase - New Yorkers are kind but not nice, and people in Los Angeles are nice but not kind. Yet, we still see - even on a subtle level - many New Yorkers move to Los Angeles and vice versa, desirous of that coast’s particular lifestyle. How could this be true, given the connotation of Los Angeles by New Yorkers (and perhaps, the connotation held by most Americans alike familiar with the city)?
I. Old Hollywood & Its Humble Origins
Hollywood began with very humble beginnings. Movies and motion pictures originated in the late 1800s with the use of a successfion of film photography frames into visual “motion toys” such as thaumatropes and zoetropes. The first movie was created in 1872 by Edward Muybridge using a sequence of a horse racing on a track in front of twelve cameras (see below). This first humble exploration of movement through film - essentially a succession of photographs - was succeeded by more complex black and white films in the 1900s; beginning in 1905, “Nickelodeons” (5-cent movie theatres) opened, increasing the popularity of the movie industry into the 1920s, leading to the rise of America’s first “movie stars” - leading with Florence Lawrence, Mary Pickford, and Charlie Chaplin, among others2. With the advent of silent movies - starting first in 1894 with small film parlors in Manhattan3 - cinema in America began to take shape with more narrative-based stories, primarily through accessible body language and an emphasis on aesthetic visuals rather than intellectual comprehension or verbiage. These were next succeeded by “part-talkie” films, which incorporated some dialogue, or human sounds that were merely implied or worse, cartooned to a cliché (think: early laugh tracks or slipping on a banana peel). Some of the most popular silent films - at least the ones now discussed in college classrooms, was “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) or else the mind-bending universes of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936). came a freedom of primarily physical expression and theatrical gesture on camera.
The first “movie” made by Edward Muybridge, 1872.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920 (Germany). Directed by Robert Wiene.
Modern Times (1936), directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin
It wasn’t until the 1930s onwards that the world began to see real movie stars as idolized celebrities and world-renowned starlets come out of the woodwork of this foundation of silent/ “part-talkie” films. Austrian-born Hedy LaMarr (1914-2000) worked in a scandalous film called Ecstasy (1932) that essentially both launched and tainted her career4, but she became a huge and unbridled star as she signed with the MGM studio magnate, and her legacy included actresses aiming to copy her visual image of glamour, such as Viven Leigh (1913-1967). Vivien was talented in her own right, rising to a unforeseen level of stardom with the success of Gone with the Wind (1939) and later A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), which further launched the career of male actor Marlon Brando (1924-20024). Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) spent her childhood in German-occupied Netherlands and trained as an aspiring ballerina before becoming a world-renowned actress known for her grace on screen5. Other actors - known colloquially as “The Last Movie Stars”6 included James Dean, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Warren Beatty, and more.
As you can see from the history of film - though it became a worldwide phenomenon in the early 20th century, there became a centralized focus to the West Coast for film production. There is a simple yet timeless allure to the West Coast. Since the Manifest Destiny7, people have been moving from coast to coast in search of gold. In those times, the pursuit was for actual gold, a limited resource; nowadays, the pursuit is for a more abstract gold - fame, money, and increasingly, social capital and influence (think, the rise of “influencers”). Out in Hollywood, there is a hierarchy of B-listers and A-listers, with the B-listers far outnumbering the A-listers, seemingly holding them up on their shoulders as they wait for their big “break” - aka, their “gold rush” - in the industry. This fame mongering is an important aspect of modern Hollywood that I will discuss further in the next section.
To this day, the public fanaticizes over the personas of these stars and starlets, imbuing them with God-like status. This is the cult of fanaticism which I believe has gotten out of control in New Hollywood, which I will bring up again in this essay.
II. New Hollywood
as defined by the figurative Four Dogs: 1. superficiality, 2. corporate greed, 3. cultural fanaticism and 4.the rise of AI
So what’s changed so much in “modern” cinema, that we have so strayed from those humble beginnings, which originated in an interest in exploring the medium of motion picture? Modern entertainment - including motion pictures, television programs, commercials, streaming content, broadcast, radio, video and audio recordings, and even music, book publishing, and video games - is a significant contributor to the nation’s economy, making up 6.9% of the nation’s total GDP and employing over 11.6 million Americans8; that’s about $1.23 trillion a year9. According to the Motion Picture Association, the film and television industry pays out $242 billion in wages across 122,000 creative businesses and 2.74 million creative jobs10. Evidently, there is a strong economic drive for creating entertainment (specifically, movies); and wherever there is a strong economic drive, there inevitably exists some form of corporate greed. I believe superficiality is a byproduct of such corporate greed, as the now bureaucratic movie industry trades nuanced, authentic, freedom-of-expression stories for discrete, easily consumable, easily marketable and sellable stories. Hollywood has become a factory line where the finished product is expected and contained, as is predictable in a society where capitalism drives production. Look at the fall of the Marvel Universe - Marvel hero movies are created and packaged to sell the story of the classic “superhero”, yet nearly every film series has an identical, predictable arc11. Marvel’s most recent Madame Web (2024) was the worst-performing Marvel film in history, as it was prematurely pulled from theaters and ended its box office run12. But beyond corporate greed and its engendering principles of superficiality, there are other nefarious forces at work in the Hollywood entertainment industry. Specifically, I’m referring to two phenomena - the cult of fanaticism and the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
As mentioned prior, the grip of stardom has its roots in early Hollywood; however, today it’s been taken to new heights with the rise of “celebrity” status. I practically grew up seeing magazines like People and Us capturing “candid” paparazzi pictures of celebrities out and about in Los Angeles, living their lives, with blaring captions such as “Stars - they’re just like us!”. I’ve seen interviews in which celebrities casually mention the various stalkers who have found their L.A. addresses and gone to extreme lengths to meet them. This idolization, fetishization, and fanaticism for celebrities in the industry has been evaluated clinically, and has been shown to affect primarily young adolescents. These same young adolescents who engage in celebrity worship “may harbor concerns about body image, be more prone to cosmetic surgery, and have a personality style characterized by sensation-seeking, cognitive rigidity, identity diffusion, and poor interpersonal boundaries”13. What’s worse is that the rise of social media addiction has further enabled such celebrity worship and garnering of followers, in turn creating the phenomenon of “influencing” and “content creating”14. It was announced by The Screen-Actor’s Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) that influencers and content creators with a certain number of followers could become members of the union, which garnered controversy among actors and stage performers in the union to think that popularity could now be a measure of talent viability15. Lastly, an important part of the cult of fanaticism is the tendency for young celebrities to quickly fall into public disfavor, or else falling into the trap of addiction. There is a well-known “27 Club” that links actors (among artists, athletes, and other celebrities) due to their tragic young deaths, primarily in Hollywood - think of older celebrities, such as James Dean or Marilyn Monroe, or else more modern ones such as Heath Ledger or River Phoenix16. But it isn’t just actors who are dying at 27 years old - there are countless other actors who have died of overdose in later ages (while still young!), including the beloved Philip Seymour Hoffman and Matthew Perry.
Philip Seymour Hoffman, Oscar-winning actor, who died at 46 due to a drug overdose in New York City.
In addition to the rise of cult fanaticism, we also see an unprecedented rise of AI usage in media. (SAG-AFTRA) strike, which started on July 13, 2023, recently fought against the unfair usage of AI in the exploitation of acting labor; however the issue will likely reemerge as AI technology continues to advance17. Platforms such as Sora threaten the very existence of filmmaking, and OpenAI is already facing many copyright infringement lawsuits of the AI software using art and videos from independent filmmakers and creators as source data for generative AI videos18.
III. Entertainment as a Mirror: Ushering in the New Golden Age of Hollywood
The state of our entertainment represents the state of our society.
What is entertainment if not play? And what is play if not a healthy expression of human vitality and spirit? I am not one to conclude that all art must be entertainment - in fact, I believe the catchall term of entertainment is not representative of all that we as a society consume - the more accurate term would be art, for art need not have an incentive (especially economic, which is the pitfall of art in capitalist societies), a lesson, a morale (especially religious, which is another pitfall in Western capitalist societies), or some other agenda. Some of the best art in history has not set out to entertain and make an audience glad or happy - instead, some of the best art connects with humans on its basis of the rough parameters of the human condition, specifically pain, loss, sadness, struggle, and death. In the past decade alone, the shifts in the entertainment industry - specifically, TV and film - have been astounding. These shifts have occurred both technically and culturally.
In terms of technicality - there have been changes across the board in the modes and formats of the media we consume; R.I.P. that childhood treasure that I used to know as Blockbuster down the street, where I would pick and preen my next animated Barbie movie as a youngster to watch at home in our VHS TV. How exciting it was to rewind the tape at ultra-high speed, even if it was annoying that the previous renter didn’t do it after watching the movie themselves! But what with the introduction of streaming (2007 was the first year Netflix launched its streaming services), theatres and the DVD/Redbox market have suffered a huge hit19. But even now, streaming services themselves are becoming more strict with their subscription packages, cracking down on accounts with multiple users. The regulation of how films and television are distributed is much more electronic, and thereby abstract and disconnected from a physical reality; there is something to be said for sitting down in a physical theatre with a crowd of strangers to witness a story together and feel mixed emotional reactions- it’s a type of ad hoc community that our culture needs, as a preservation of a third space20. While these overall technical changes in the industry are obviously significant, I’d argue that certain cultural shifts in the past decade have had an even bigger impact on the nature of our society’s entertainment.…. Firstly, and most importantly, was the introduction of the #MeToo movement. Second, the WGA and SAG strikes have had a tremendous impact on how the entertainment industry will come up against Artificial Intelligence (and also big industry entertainment). With this, I believe the public is clamoring for more indie, mumblecore pictures (cite recent examples), rather than the grandiose, overdone Marvel megalopolis (see . By the way, there is a new Coppola film called Megapolis. And lastly, I do believe there’s heightened attention around Nepo babies - according to the Suffolk Journal, “nepotism does more than just exclude amazing artists; it also contributes to a culture of mediocrity [where] stories go untold, voices go unheard, and the vibrant human connection, where an actor pours their heart out on a role they earned, is reduced to a monotonous chamber of privilege”.21
Some well-known nepotism babies.
So where does Hollywood go from here? The implications of new technology such as streaming, AI, and more have altered the entertainment experience for Americans. Sometimes, I think about how the 1920s Golden Age of Hollywood was engendered by the end of global war; and now, comparably, our world has just gone through the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic; therefore, our society is ripe for another Golden Age. Francis Ford Coppola predicts that we’re on the verge of a Golden Age22, particularly after the recent success of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”, which created an unprecedented drove of moviegoers to cinemas in the summer of 2023. And while it’s all well and good that these films have arisen - I’d like to argue that we need more attention to indie productions, rather than big-budget productions, if we really want to get back to a place of highlighting real human voices in the stories that are shared with the world.
If we want real experiences in entertainment, we need to clock back our scale of perfection.
I believe this is the best answer to our dilemma in entertainment. Considering that David Foster Wallace, whose tome Infinite Jest (1996) describes in abstract terms the very insidious nature of how entertainment affects our human condition, said in an interview - “[Entertainment] is fine in small doses. But that there’s something about the machinery of our relationship to it that…we don’t stop at low doses." In addition to recognizing that entertainment is both addicting and alienating in a Marxist fashion, he also acknowledges that it affects us on a spiritual level, sublimating and depressing our inherent mortal fear of death: “as entertainment’s denial of the truth gets even more effective, pervasive, and seductive, we forget the truth of what we’re denying - if we don’t know how to die, we don’t know how to live” (Flesh & Not, a David Foster Wallace essay collection published posthumously after his suicide). If our institutions of entertainment continue to obliterate us as human feelers and livers, prone to natural human error, we will forget the truth of the human condition.
I’ve finish this essay with two final quotes from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song, Californication, and the Eagles’ Hotel California, which I feel both perfectly encapsulate the dreaminess that Hollywood offers the public, especially those drawn to the world of fantasies, desires, and delusions that the entertainment industry promises. We must be wary of how these promises can very quickly turn into addiction, whether to fame, substances, money, greed, or whatever else - and how to preserve our souls to the fullest in the process, in order to more authentically experience the human condition, for that is the basis of all good and worthwhile art.
Destruction leads to a very rough road, but it also breeds creation / And earthquakes are to a girl’s guitar, they’re just another good vibration / And tidal waves couldn’t save the world from Californication / Pay your surgeon very well to break the spell of aging / celebrity skin, is this your chin, or is that war you’re waging? / First born unicorn / Hardcore soft porn/ Dream of Californication
A still from the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication (1999), showing the “game” of Hollywood.
Mirrors on the ceiling / with pink champagne on ice, and she said / “We are all just prisoners here of our own device” / And in the master’s chambers / They gathered for the feast / Stab it with their steely knives / But they just can’t kill the beast / Last thing I remember / I was running for the door / Had to find the passage back to the place I was before / “Relax”, said the night man / “We are programmed to receive” / You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave
“The Art Deco home of Diana Medford, played by Joan Crawford, in Our Dancing Daughters.” - Photo from Architectural Digest.
The first American movie stars of the 20th century, according to IMDB.
The origin and death story of silent movies, according to the Museum of the Moving Image (a lovely museum in Astoria, New York).
The life story of Hedy Lamarr. There is a great documentary of her life titled Bombshell on Netflix.
How Audrey Hepburn got into Hollywood.
Which is also a great 6-part documentary on Netflix directed and produced by Ethan Hawke.
The Manifest Destiny history.
How entertainment factors into the modern economy, according to the International Trade Administration (ITA).
The New Yorker: “How the Marvel Cinematic Universe Swallowed Hollywood”. Robert Redford, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul Rudd, and Angela Bassett now disappear into movies whose plots can come down to ‘Keep glowy thing away from bad guy’.
The failure of Marvel’s Madame Web (2024), by Forbes.
“I’m Your Numer One Fan” - A Clinical Look at Celebrity Worship, Innovative Clinical Neuroscience Journal.
The New Yorker: “A History of the Influencer, from Shakespeare to Instagram”. 2019.
the 27 Club History, according to Rolling Stone.
The SAG-AFTRA Strike is Over, But the AI Fight in Hollywood is Just Beginning. - The Center for Democracy & Technology.
The importance of having “Third Places”, according to the Atlantic.
Really cool history. I didn’t know most of that. I agree also with your feelings of disappointment and pessimism around entertainment. And it’s not just Hollywood; it’s in our smart phones and in Silicon Valley, where every new company and product is about convenience and ease and titillation, rather than meaning and usefulness. I see it in many of my peers who have careers that are great for producing income, but totally soul killing; “pointless jobs.”
I don’t think entertainment is bad, but specifically it’s our relationship with it that’s troubling. I’ve mentioned to you before about how I think being an active listener and consumer of entertainment, as well as being a producer of one’s own content, is the proper way to engage with it. Studying what we see so we truly understand it, or at least feel it deeply. Whereas most people just constantly fill themselves with passive consumption, often in order to fill themselves up so they don’t have to participate in real tasks or real relationships or real feelings.
The bright side is that due to the Internet, streaming services, AI, etc. there are opportunities in abundance for individual creators like you and me who really want to do something significant. Whereas in the past, it would’ve been much more difficult to publish something that others could see. The only trouble is that we just have to rise above the sea of shallow entertainment, and strike to the heart of audiences. But it’s possible and the journey is worth it, I believe.