USA: SHOW ME THE HEGEMONY

The death of cinema

Frankly, the UK film industry isn’t funny anymore — and so humorous drawings seem pointless. Of late my cartoons have been more about the US domination of world box office and the money-driven mentality that has slaughtered pluralistic cinema in the pursuit of the ‘juvenile special effects blockbuster’— a genre pioneered by Spielberg and Lucas. This has led to the exclusion of almost all alternative, political or intelligent movies. The better writers have migrated to television and, in cinema,  the confluence of the FX movie and the video game seems almost upon us. The director Lindsay Anderson once said (thirty years ago) that, “No art is worth much which doesn’t try to change the world. Of course no artist can be judged by his success or failure at changing the world because none of us ever succeed. We can only hope to change like-minded spirits or hearts by telling the truth.” The truth is that, in the short history of cinema, all these dreams, all these noble and lofty ideals of just what cinema — movies — could do, could achieve, could aspire to — from Griffith to Welles and from Visconti to Pontecorvo, has been totally corrupted and destroyed by two decades of creative puerility and greed

SEE GALLERY BELOW:

All cartoons © Alan Parker