Incestuous Cinema (Not like that one sleepover with your cousin. Something else)

[Disheveledamethyst]

There have been some articles written about this already, so I can't try to pass this as an original thought. As I have expressed before, I don't particularly enjoy Quentin Tarantino movies. I haven't seen all of them, but those I have seen have left me feeling uncomfortable, but I'd never been able to explain just why. After watching Kill Bill for the first time, I started to identify why I didn't like them.

Kill Bill felt like an incestuous product, which is a term I use to explain my discomfort. KB constantly bombards its audience with references to other cinema, many of which are very subtle and don't actually reach its audience. Sure, as film fans, we can see a close-up of Uma Thurman and recognize the auteur of Sergio Leone, but the average movie goer is just going to see Uma Thurman's face. While I at first appreciated these elements, it felt like I was playing I-Spy the whole movie and I found it ultimately unnourishing. Like sugary candy.

Tonight, I watched Insidious, which was a horror movie from earlier this year. I didn't hate Insidious, parts of it I really enjoyed, but as I sat with my girlfriend I found myself identifying tributes to other horror movies. The plot of the movie is essentially A Nightmare on Elm Street mashed up with Poltergeist with some brief visual references to zombie films. And honestly, that's exactly how the movie felt, like a referential mashup of two existing horror movies. I came away from the movie ultimately displeased.

In the last few weeks, there have been some news stories running a quote from famous comic-book writer Alan Moore regarding the stagnancy of comic books. Interestingly, he also uses the term "incestuous".

I think the point happened probably in the late 1960s where the previous writers, at least at DC Comics, attempted form a union or something foolish like that, and were immediately relieved of their positions and replaced by a generation that were comics fan writers, who were anxious to reference the stories that had affected them when they were growing up.

What this kind of results in is a kind of – in terms of the art form, it’s a kind of incest, a kind of inbreeding, where we – when I dropped out of comics, this was the case anyway – you have stories that are only capable of referencing other stories from five, 10, 40 years before. The point is sorting out bits of continuity that most of the readership that is currently around have never heard of and have no interest in.

Whereas comics was once a form for the imagination, I think those resources have dwindled by the diminishing genetic stock, if you will, if ideas, where everything has to be some kind of reference to some earlier comic. Inevitably, that’s going to make the gene pool dwindle, to the point where you’re going to get some fairly unhealthy specimens emerging from it.

In a way, I feel like this validates my feelings towards super self-referential cinema. References to other films has been around since the dawn of movie making, and the occasional and tasteful nudge can be very satisfying and supplemental (like Scorsese's recreation of the The Haunting's spiral staircase in Shutter Island). But with movies like Insidious and Kill Bill, I feel like I'm watching something rocking on the floor masturbating to a picture of itself. Which makes me uncomfortable.

Does anybody else feel this way? Or, to diversify the conversation, you can also detail incestuous flings you've had with your cousins.

[CJ138]

I don't have an issue with a nod to classics of a genre, but I do think there is a true lack of original writing and storytelling in recent movies.

[Gimpy]

That's just it, there's no creativity in Hollywood. What's unfortunate is moviegoers are fueling the problem. As usual in this modern society of garbage, money trumps everything else. You'll never see a Duncan Jones movie make a billion dollars, but you'll see Transformers make it. I like what Duncan Jones has done, his first 2 movies have been well done creative pieces but haven't got hardly the recognition they deserve. People like Michael Bay on the other hand, well his garbage speaks for itself. Sequels are given the go ahead after opening weekend, sometimes opening day...that's a little ridiculous.

Quite honestly the only movie I've seen that had a shred of creativity that made a lot of money was Inception. However that made money for the wrong reasons. 2 reasons in particular...Nolan fanboys (yes I'm going there ) and legitimate lack of intelligence and attention span. People went into the movie expecting a "mind f*ck" or a "blow your mind" movie, and quite honestly most of them got it which is incredibly sad. People today as a whole are incredibly stupid. If you paid attention to the movie, everything was fine. That's the problem, you have to pay attention. People don't know how to do that anymore.

Good films that could have great sequels are getting shoved off while mindless, cliche, boring, unsurprising and predictable, recycled crap is being made again and again.

As for the Tarantino movies though, I can definitely understand why people don't like them. Your reasoning speaks for itself. His movies are the definition of acquired taste. I don't mind them, some are hit or miss, but I certainly wouldn't put his work at the top of my favorites list. I do think he brings a respectable level of creativity to the table though.

No one cares about quality anymore because quality doesn't being in the cash.