Dumbing Down the Road (feelin' bad)
by Chris Dashiell

If a Mozart violin quartet were performed by kazoos, with sections of it cut out and replaced with excerpts from Marvin Hamlisch, would you consider it Mozart? Well, it has some of Mozart's notes in it, I suppose, but it fails to convey the spirit of Mozart.

Oliver Parker evidently felt that Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest needed improvement. He has therefore added pratfalls, flashbacks, fantasy sequences, a musical number, and some tattoos. Yes, that's right - tattoos. He treats the play as if it were a romantic situation comedy, while neglecting its great strength - the glorious, witty dialogue.

It's a truism that, in filming a play, one needs to "open it up," take it outdoors so that it won't feel too "stagy." There's nothing wrong with this, if the feeling of the play is respected, but this director is so intent on opening things up that it seems as if he's embarrassed his source was ever a play at all. His embellishments - having a character arrive in a balloon, setting an early scene in a dance hall - are stupid, but forgivable. The real problem is that Parker does not understand Wilde, or appreciate him - so then, why do him?

The story is a bit of wonderful nonsense about a gentleman of uncertain origin named Jack (Colin Firth) who, under the assumed name of Ernest, has won the heart of an heiress named Gwendolen (Frances O'Connor), whose mother, Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench) forbids the match. Meanwhile, Jack has told his pretty young ward Cecily (Reese Witherspoon) that his visits to town are occasioned by the misbehavior of a made-up brother named Ernest. Then, a friend of Jack's, Lady Bracknell's scapegrace nephew Algernon (Rupert Everett), goes to Jack's estate to woo Cecily in his friend's absence, pretending to be the prodigal brother Ernest. And so on.

The situations are silly indeed, but the play's brilliance lies in how they are offset by the characters' brittle, absurdly formal way of talking. This is not a "romantic comedy." In fact, Wilde is making fun of romantic conventions, with their emphasis on passion and the inner life, by portraying them in the guise of superficial people whose lives are governed by carefully crafted deceptions. They act dignified, and are utterly ridiculous, or rather it is their very dignity that Wilde shows us as ridiculous, through the medium of their elaborately worded, deliciously amusing pronouncements on life, society, and love.

In place of these magnificent examples of shallowness, Parker conceives of the characters as warm, lovable eccentrics, like the characters in Cheers or Friends, except English aristocrats. Firth acts desperate and exasperated - he's never funny, or fun to watch. The usually reliable Everett mugs his way through the picture to disastrous effect. O'Connor is completely wrong as Gwendolen - the character is supposed to be stiff and hilariously arch, but she plays her like some kooky little ditz. In the least demanding of the five major roles, Witherspoon manages to acquit herself rather well, maintaining a brightly artificial alertness, although Parker's leaden hand ultimately drags her down with all the rest.

I had high hopes, at least, for Dame Judi. Her character has most of the play's funniest lines. But Dench plays her as if she were a realistic person - an arrogant, practical-minded matriarch - and no one could be further from realism than Lady Bracknell. The lines fall flat, because Dench is simply not silly enough to speak them well.

The fault lies clearly with the director. He wanted everything broad and overbaked, and he got it. His previous Wilde adaptation, An Ideal Husband, although flawed, showed enough restraint, and paid enough attention to the play's wit, to make it enjoyable. This film, though, is a travesty - I would even say a betrayal. It seems as if Parker shares the discredited popular misconception of Wilde as a harmless, effete minor humorist, coiner of inconsequential bon mots, instead of the important figure that he was. I also suspect that he felt the need to have Wilde "dumbed down" for the general audience in order to get himself (and Miramax) an art-house hit. Perhaps he got his hit, but he's drained The Importance of Being Earnest of everything that makes it distinctive.

*****

One of the paradoxes of film culture is that the entertainment industry is always straining to reach the general audience, when the general audience is an abstraction that can't be experienced except through statistics. All experience is, in truth, that of an individual. All art, and all entertainment, is of course enjoyed by an individual. So much is obvious. What is not so obvious, but nevertheless true, is that what is best in art and entertainment, best in style, best in enjoyment, and best in all those qualities that cause us to continue to remember a film or any other work, is created by and for an individual. Those aspects that are aimed at the abstraction of a generality - those qualities of a work that are thereby less individual in character - are inevitably weaker, less enjoyable, and ultimately less memorable.

When I refer to a work being created for an individual, I mean that the artist is speaking as if from one person to another, or one mind to another. The more honest the work is, the more this tends to be the case, just as a person tends to be more honest when speaking to an intimate friend than when he or she is making a speech while running for office. This paradox poses difficult problems to the executives and marketers of the entertainment industry, problems they wouldn't have if they were only selling widgets. If they cared about the quality of film, they would try to strike a balance between the preconditions of art (that it is created by and for individuals) and those of commerce (that products are sold to the general public) so as to make both good films and money.

The old-fashioned moguls of the studio system cared about film somewhat - not enough to make the great movies that were possible, but enough to allow a certain number of good movies, and even a few great ones, to be made. The present corporate system has effectively ruled out any concerns about the quality of film, founding its strategy on the belief that the demands and preconditions of art have no relevance at all, and that films should become, as much as possible, like widgets. The qualities aimed for are those prized by pre-adolescent children: noise, distraction, and nervous excitement. The models for this new kind of film are the amusement park ride and the video game. Enough exposure to these novelties produces the belief that this is what is meant by entertainment, just as the proliferation of fast food produces the belief that this is what is meant by food.

The strategy has succeeded. The industry makes lots of money, without having to worry at all about the quality of film as an art form. We've all been dumbed down, and many of us have learned to like it.

As fait accompli, the marketing of dumbness presents itself as the only possible way to go - usually attributed to the desires of the audience itself - as in: if people didn't want this kind of movie, they wouldn't get it. Although there is something to this (never underestimate ignorance as a social factor in anything) it leaves out of account the fact that marketing quite consciously creates desire, or tries to, with statistically successful results. Perfect precision isn't possible; something new arises from time to time to startle the industry (Memento anyone? None of the big companies would gamble on it); but the exception always proves the rule when the rule is the "bottom line." That the paradigm of making huge blockbusters in the hopes of one big jackpot could be countered by other strategies - say, for instance, a greater number of successful pictures at less cost - is heresy in Hollywood.

Escapism is the popular apology for the state of American film. "I'm tired," (goes the refrain), "and I don't want to deal with serious issues in a theater," (note how serious always equals dull in this argument); "I only want to escape for a while and be entertained." I think I understand. Unfortunately I also understand the view of life that this reflects. It's a tiring life, spent performing useless tasks in jobs that we hate, a tedium only broken by our occasional distraction through the consumption of one product or another. Except for the annual ritual of voting, in which the majority of us no longer bother to participate, we are powerless to effect any meaningful change. Escape, then, is our consolation. Who escapes? Prisoners.

I read in Premiere magazine that the industry has divided us into four quadrants - men and women, older and younger than 25. A hit movie scores in all four quadrants, a successful one in three. I'd like to think that I'm not in a quadrant - that a film snob lives outside this four-sided box. But, I went to see Spider-Man the other night - a movie that scored in all four. I plead adolescent nostalgia - along with millions of others, I read Marvel comics as a teenager.

Somebody at Columbia/Tristar made a good decision in hiring Sam Raimi to adapt the Stan Lee superhero to the screen. Raimi is obviously a fan of the comic, and for the most part stays true to its spirit and feeling. Tobey Maguire's vague personality works for him in this case - he's playing an immature young man who stumbles on super powers, so confusion is in order. Willem Dafoe is a fine villain - until his face is hidden by an immobile mask that also disguises his talent. Kirsten Dunst plays the love object, and she's appropriately lovable. J. K. Simmons provides moments of true brilliance in his portrayal of publisher J. Jonah Jameson - what a surprise to be spurred to real laughter here - his part is too small, unfortunately.

The charm of superhero fantasy is in the artwork - no special effects can come close to it. The special effects in Spider-Man are as ubiquitous and as tiring as in any other Hollywood blockbuster. It seems to be a requirement that these effects be as overwhelming as possible. Will people really look back and remember scenes such as the final battle between Spider-Man and the Goblin, with fondness? Won't they rather be forgotten, along with all the other thoughtless, visceral excitations with which we bombard ourselves in order to create the illusion of being alive?

And I'm talking about one of the better examples of this sort of thing. Most are far worse than what Raimi is doing here. But, good or bad, they adhere to the formula of "one damn thing after another." They are only widgets, after all.

I honestly mean no offence by saying that it bothers me to see comic books and pulp sci-fi become the dominant form of narrative in American film. I don't dislike these genres - I just find it troubling that more realistic engagements with the world are pushed to the margins of film art. A strong culture is invigorated by a quest for meaning and truth, by the exploration of human lives through the vision - creative or destructive, celebratory or critical - of an artist. There will always be a place for pure entertainment - I would never deny that or wish to be without that pleasure. But increasingly, there seems to be no place for anything else, to the point where many don't seem to know or care that there is anything else, or why it could ever be necessary to our lives.

I believe so much in this "anything else" that I see a connection between the lack of it and the nihilism I notice more and more all around me, the cruelty and emptiness of public life, the viciousness of our so-called leaders, the entire modern predicament. And I don't want to escape - where would I go? I want to illuminate all this - through art, fiction, film, poetry - through a real culture, not this sham culture that trims the coat of meaning to fit the body of the"general public," but a culture that expresses the breadth and depth of who we are. It is difficult to grapple with this purpose, to be true to it and not be distracted from it. To be clear about where we are regarding such a goal, to actually work for it, is to set oneself against the age.

©2002 Chris Dashiell
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