I love thinking up Twitter jokes as much as anyone, but this morning, reading the sea of Oscar criticism, I’m sort of nostalgic for a day when we all watched on TV, were dazzled by the stars and excited by the movies, and weren’t so damn critical. Remember that? People used to enjoy stuff. Instead, we’re hooting and reading our little devices that give us a constant, instantaneous, frighteningly accurate reading of the national mood.

via When everybody critiques everything all the time. – By David Sessions – Patrol Magazine.

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Richard Clark

Richard Clark is the Founding Editor of Christ and Pop Culture. He is also the managing editor of Gamechurch and a freelance writer for Unwinnable, Paste, and other outlets. He lives with his wife in Louisville, KY and has a MA in Theology and the Arts from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
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4 Comments

  1. It’s been so long since the Oscars were an enjoyable way to spend time that I don’t remember if I’ve ever been a part of an Oscar-viewing as an enjoyable way to spend time. Sessions must be talking about some halcyon era that may only exist either as pure legend or as the nostalgia-skewed fragments of memory.

    And no. There was never a time when people didn’t snipe and snark at Hollywood’s incestuous royalty. The internet just makes it seem all the more ubiquitous. If I remarked to a friend or two that Jessica Biel wore a napkin, my comment is over and done with in a matter of moments. (Unless you are Jessica Biel, perhaps.) If I remarks such a thing on my Facebook status or something as insensible as a Twitter feed, that comment lingers like a stone cloud for days, allowing who I am and what I say to incubate and truly sink in.

    The Danes last blog post..20081119.ChurchLies

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  2. I think you’re right about the fake/nostalgic view of history. People always talk about the golden age of Hollywood, when culture was a “shared experience,” but I’ve always suspected that was mythology.

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  3. If you want an awesome and enlightening perspective on how things in Hollywood played out during the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, I highly recommend a book by David Nivens. Kind of memoirs. Well, his second book of ’em anyway. It’s called Bring on the Empty Horses and each chapter focuses on his recollections based around either a particular personality (Errol Flynn or Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart or…) or the kind of way things were back then. It’s absolutely fascinating and Nivens writes with humour and in such a familiar way that you can’t help but enjoy him.

    And through reading, it becomes plain how little has really changed since then. Despite the mythology we love that represents the ’40s and ’50s as safe, moral times.

    The Danes last blog post..20081119.ChurchLies

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