The Great Shrug: Why's No One Fighting Back?
It can seem like we've all just given up. But it's too soon
This is something of an emergency edition.
As I prepared for my forthcoming State of the Industry in a couple of weeks, I took a good, long look at the mood and the state of things around here, and I don’t think my feelings about what’s happening right now can hold that long.
As we have noted, as lots of people have noted, these are some grim days around here lately.
We’ve become like the Amityville Horror house — a destination so possessed that everyone who walks in can’t help but ask, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice that screaming. Is there someone being tortured in your medicine cabinet?” Or, “I love what you’ve done with the place, but is that pig’s head with glowing eyes always levitating outside your kitchen window?”
No nearer an observer than El País noted in a headline the other day:
There are moments when the political, cultural and industrial trends overlap so perfectly that it is willful blindness not to see that something bigger is going on, that there are strong gale winds blowing over the whole firmament and bigger things at play than the latest quarterly numbers.
In Washington as in our own world, we are seeing the moorings come loose while the old order seemingly has no case for itself anymore. The lack of a real fight in Washington has only fed the fires of “it’s all doomed” here (and of course, there as well).
Yet all the bad news is being met with shrugs, ridicule, listlessness and indifference.
Our brand of disorder is defined by a slow, creeping sense of hopelessness and failure to react to the dangers in front of us. Our elites have entered a great moment of apathy and deep cynicism, a near-oligarchical state both there and here. Unfortunately, they’ve chosen the absolute worst possible time to lose faith. What this means in our world is an industry not just adrift but hurtling down the rapids.
After the disruption of our business model, the hopelessness for most of the streaming path, the failure to revitalize their commitment to film, Covid, the strikes, the flight of production and a good swath of our city being burned to the ground, the total lack of public leadership from this industry’s heads is becoming a serious problem. That vacuum is leading everyone to conclude that this whole thing just may be irreparable. The lack of passion about anything we’re doing here, about good results, bad results, whatever, is palpable.
The Great Shrug leads one to the feeling that the worst is yet to come, or soon to come — and our elites know it. If we’re going to stand in the way of the very worst consequences, we better start thinking now about what it is we stand for and what exactly we’re doing here.
Here, again, is my standard apocalypse disclaimer: I don’t believe the death of film, the end of Hollywood or anything like that, is inevitable. The need for entertainment is eternal, and no one on Earth surpasses us in creating it. But just like a person sitting on a couch isn’t destined to bleed to death tonight, if that person starts stabbing himself in the neck and won’t stop, odds are likely that the end isn’t far off.