Why Don't They Make Movies Like "Hopscotch" Anymore? a.k.a. Why the Heck Does American Culture Worship Power So Much Right Now?
tylersage.substack.com
When I first sat down to start writing about Hopscotch, Ronald Neame's enchanting spy caper from 1980, I thought I was going to begin by offering some words about the caution and care with which one should analyze one's own moment. I was full of a kind of righteous wisdom. I wrote several paragraphs about how the internet is cluttered with writers popping off about this and that, cranking out sloppy jeremiads about "the way we are now" and half-baked theories about "why movie X says important thing Y about American culture," while what we really need is to be meticulous in analyzing what's happening around us, refraining from large pronouncements and sticking to small, finely-tuned observations, because we're usually too close to contemporary trends in society to be trusted to think about them all that well.
Why Don't They Make Movies Like "Hopscotch" Anymore? a.k.a. Why the Heck Does American Culture Worship Power So Much Right Now?
Why Don't They Make Movies Like "Hopscotch…
Why Don't They Make Movies Like "Hopscotch" Anymore? a.k.a. Why the Heck Does American Culture Worship Power So Much Right Now?
When I first sat down to start writing about Hopscotch, Ronald Neame's enchanting spy caper from 1980, I thought I was going to begin by offering some words about the caution and care with which one should analyze one's own moment. I was full of a kind of righteous wisdom. I wrote several paragraphs about how the internet is cluttered with writers popping off about this and that, cranking out sloppy jeremiads about "the way we are now" and half-baked theories about "why movie X says important thing Y about American culture," while what we really need is to be meticulous in analyzing what's happening around us, refraining from large pronouncements and sticking to small, finely-tuned observations, because we're usually too close to contemporary trends in society to be trusted to think about them all that well.