Why The Movies Don't Feel The Same Anymore

0:00 The manager of the National Theater in Westwood says that there indeed are

0:04 at least a dozen people who faint or become ill during every showing.

0:10 Let's start by looking at a scene from a movie that premiered in 1973.

0:20 I know the pacing is probably painfully

0:22 slow and maybe you're already mentally twitching,

0:24 wanting to pull out your phone or switch to another video.

0:32 But this isn't a scene from a meditative character drama.

0:34 Instead, it's from the biggest blockbuster spectacle of that year.

0:40 My legs are just going and I want to go in the lobby

0:43 and not watch it and I have to cover my ears.

0:45 There were reports of people screaming and running out of the theater.

0:48 I fainted like 10 minutes after the first beginning of the movie.

0:52 Becoming ill and vomiting, being carried out of the theaters on stretchers.

0:56 It incited a genuine moral panic with some

0:58 religious groups believing the movie was causing demonic possessions,

1:02 but it was also wildly popular.

1:04 Are you going to go back in and see more of the movie now?

1:08 Probably.

1:08 Yeah.

1:08 And scalpers reportedly would sell tickets sometimes for hundreds of dollars.

1:13 I don't know why I waited at 4 hours to see that.

1:17 The Devil Mater did it.

1:18 I bet the number one box office movie of

1:20 a movie that so profoundly shook the culture

1:24 that Jason Zinnman writing for Newsweek said

1:26 The Exorcist opened in theaters across the country

1:29 and since then all hell has broken loose.

1:32 This movie ran in the theaters for 2 years.

1:36 A lot of people credit The Exorcist for playing

1:38 a big role in starting up the Satanic Panic,

1:40 something that was still going on 20 years later when I was born in the '90s.

1:44 But if you released this movie now in 2025, what would happen?

1:50 It would probably do well at the box office.

1:52 Horror movies are still a pretty good bet.

1:54 And The Exorcist is a well- constructed scary horror movie.

1:58 But I don't think it's hard to argue

1:59 that it wouldn't have anywhere near the same cultural impact.

2:03 And this isn't just because culture has become less religious.

2:07 Jaws, which was released just a few years later,

2:09 inspired a similar kind of cultural panic.

2:13 Not a religious one, but one that has such a profound effect that to this day

2:19 some scientists call our collective irrational fear of sharks.

2:23 The Jaws effect.

2:24 Movies just don't have the same kind of cultural impact that they used to.

2:28 Sure, people still might flock to the theater

2:30 for a Minecraft movie or Barbenheimr,

2:34 but they're being drawn in by massive marketing

2:36 budgets and stories that draw from existing intellectual property.

2:41 I could be wrong, but while Barbenheimer might have

2:43 trended on Twitter and Tik Tok for a week,

2:45 it doesn't seem like either movie will inspire a shift in mindset

2:49 on Barbies or atomic bombs that will echo through the culture for decades.

2:54 At least not anywhere near the scale we

2:56 saw with something like The Exorcist or Jaws now.

2:59 You might think, and maybe you thought when you clicked on this video

3:01 that what I'll be saying is that movies just aren't as good.

3:05 But I think that's a little bit of a copout.

3:08 Sure, The Exorcist and Jaws are incredibly well-crafted films.

3:13 Friedken and Spielberg were basically at the top of their game technically.

3:16 They knew how to wield all the forces of cinema

3:19 that were available to them at that time for maximum effect.

3:23 Sure, in some ways the day-to-day fair at the box office might

3:26 not be at the same quality level as The Exorcist or Jaws,

3:30 but there are still incredible movies being made today.

3:32 And I don't think the shift in average quality is enough to really truly

3:37 explain the dramatic shift in cultural impact

3:41 that has happened over the last 50 years.

3:43 If you released a movie like The Exorcist today,

3:46 it wouldn't have the same impact.

3:47 That means something else has changed.

3:50 We've changed.

3:51 The culture has changed.

3:52 How we respond to the movies has changed.

3:56 And I'm not saying going to the movies isn't fun anymore.

3:59 There are plenty of movies that provide cool,

4:02 entertaining, even sometimes all inspiring experiences at the cinema.

4:07 But it doesn't quite feel the same.

4:10 And even in the last 5 or 6 years,

4:13 I feel like the experience of what going to the movies is has changed for me.

4:18 And I get the feeling that it also has for a lot of other people.

4:23 To get to the bottom of this, we're going to have to delve into film

4:26 history and we're going to have to dig a little bit into some media theory.

4:30 But I hope you stick with me because understanding

4:33 why movies feel so different now is just a window

4:35 into understanding why many parts of our culture feel

4:38 different now than they did even just 10 years ago.

4:42 You see, suddenly, if you've noticed,

4:43 the mood of North America has changed very drastically.

4:49 [Music] This video is brought to you by Ground News.

5:04 Go to ground.news/toomasflight to get 40% off.

5:10 Chicago, January 6, 1951.

5:13 The Zenith Radio Company begins testing an exciting new technology.

5:18 If you're one of 300 test households, for $1,

5:21 you can order a movie directly to your home

5:23 television set simply by sending a phone signal.

5:29 Seeing this, movie theaters and studios

5:31 already feeling pressure from antitrust regulations

5:34 and the rapid explosion of home television

5:37 feared phone vision posed an existential threat.

5:41 What will happen?

5:42 They speculate if movies can skip the theater

5:44 and go straight to people's televisions at home.

5:48 The industry pushes back,

5:49 even lobbying the government to try to ban early pay-per-view movies.

5:54 And while the technology didn't take off at the time,

5:56 their fears were not unfounded.

5:58 TV would not spell ultimate death for cinema.

6:01 But by the 1950s, theater attendance was already

6:04 in decline from its peak in the 30s and 40s.

6:09 [Music] It's hard to overstate just how big a deal

6:14 movies were in the first half of the century.

6:17 Theaters were a foundational American institution.

6:20 In 1940, some reports indicate that over

6:23 60% of Americans were attending the cinema weekly,

6:26 20% more than were attending religious services each week.

6:30 The cinema was a community gathering place.

6:33 Small local neighborhood screens would show one movie at a time.

6:37 The news reels that ran before films were often the only opportunity citizens

6:41 had to get a glimpse of the Second World War as it unfolded abroad.

6:45 This was the era of the Hollywood studio system with each

6:48 of the big studios cranking out over a 100 movies each year.

6:52 But by the 50s, cinema attendance was in freefall.

6:56 The Hollywood clergy and theater owners were panicking.

6:59 Could cinema compete with the ease and convenience

7:01 of the entertainment now available in the comfort of people's homes?

7:06 Some in the industry attempted to ease their worries

7:08 by recalling how Hollywood had already overcome significant threats.

7:13 One exhibitor told Box Office magazine,

7:15 "It was new and improved methods of presentation

7:18 that had turned the tide in cinema's costly,

7:22 discouraging, and prolonged fight against radio entertainment.

7:30 TV shook the industry and with antitrust regulations that made it so the studios

7:35 couldn't own their own theaters and other

7:37 post-war cultural changes happening at the same time.

7:40 By the 1970s, the number of theatrical admissions had fallen over 70%.

7:46 But the movies wouldn't die so easily.

7:48 To try to win back audiences,

7:50 theaters and the studios made the movies bigger and more exciting,

7:53 implementing widescreen cinemascope, 3D, and better sound.

7:57 Movies like Jaws, The Exorcist,

7:59 and Star Wars found people lining up around the block.

8:03 These new, bigger, bolder cinematic experiences

8:06 called blockbusters gave cinema attendance new life.

8:09 And by the 80s, movie going had stabilized.

8:11 And with rising ticket prices, box office income was hitting all-time highs.

8:16 But even though this new world of multiplexes

8:19 and blockbusters still had significant cultural influence,

8:22 the movies and Hollywood had changed forever,

8:25 they would never again represent the same thing

8:28 to society that they had in their golden era.

8:32 In January 2007, just 6 days after Steve Jobs

8:35 announced a technology that would shape the coming decades,

8:38 a company that mailed DVDs to subscribers, announced Watch Now,

8:42 a service that would allow consumers

8:44 to instantly watch a movie on their computer.

8:47 These two technologies together would set in motion a transformation

8:50 in how we consume media over the next decade,

8:53 eventually sending the film and TV industry

8:56 into the state of crisis it currently faces.

9:00 But as Hollywood faces this new threat,

9:02 I want to tell the story of a force that has already changed cinema irrevocably.

9:08 This is the story of how the movies have been reshaped throughout their history.

9:13 Not by what plays within the four walls of the theater,

9:16 but by everything outside those four walls,

9:19 and how cinema must respond if it wants to maintain its cultural relevance.

9:25 The cinema is it a language about to get lost and not about to die?

9:31 Um, it's obvious that it's on the way out.

9:39 Since cinema was born,

9:40 basically every generation has been grappling with what

9:42 it perceives to be the death of the medium.

9:45 Basically, every technological innovation has been

9:48 perceived as a threat by cinema.

9:50 Some of these have proven to be credible,

9:53 but other concerns like concern about color filmm or home video have proven

9:58 to be false alarms with theatrical

9:59 attendance actually going up during those periods.

10:02 But in 2025, I think cinema does face the most

10:05 credible set of challenges it's faced since the 1950s.

10:09 Like they did with TV,

10:10 studios initially resisted streaming before eventually scrambling to join in.

10:15 As streaming services like Netflix have grown into full-scale

10:17 studios and studios began starting their own streaming platforms,

10:21 it began a transformation in the economics of filmm

10:24 that we're still in the midst of now.

10:26 And when a global pandemic cratered the box office to all-time lows,

10:30 the shift to streaming felt like a lifeline for the studios.

10:33 Theatrical windows have shortened.

10:35 Already down from the 2 years we saw with The Exorcist

10:38 in the '7s to an average of 90 days.

10:41 Now we're down to just a few weeks or in some cases no exclusivity at all.

10:45 Consumers already burdened by lingering

10:47 pandemic fears and economic pressure combined

10:49 with rising ticket prices increasingly opt to wait for a streaming release.

10:54 There are reports claiming that Hollywood studio backlots once the site

10:58 of production for a global cultural force have been sitting dormant.

11:03 And in 2023, industry unions engaged in historic strikes

11:07 to fight for fair compensation in the midst of these changes.

11:11 And the movies themselves have been changing as bigger budget

11:13 narrative TV entered a golden era during the dawn of streaming.

11:17 The stories that made up many of the mid-budget romcoms,

11:20 adult comedies, and dramas moved to television.

11:23 This is how in 1980 you have a movie like Cattyshack for 6 million.

11:27 In 1996, you have Happy Gilmore for 10 million.

11:30 And then in 2025, you don't see

11:32 any mid-budget sports comedies released in theaters.

11:35 But you do get a show like Stick from Apple TV,

11:38 who likely spent much more than was spent on either of those movies on the show.

11:42 A show written and produced by Jason Keller,

11:45 who's worked almost entirely in film before this, and starring Owen Wilson,

11:49 whose career also used to be entirely in film before

11:51 it transitioned to television in just the last 5 years.

11:54 And Happy Gilmore 2 comes out,

11:55 but it goes straight to Netflix and skips the theaters entirely.

11:59 That's just one small example of the many

12:00 ways the lines between TV and film have blurred.

12:03 The types of content you're traditionally used

12:05 to seeing in a movie theater and the type

12:07 of content we call TV that exclusively streams

12:11 at home in multiple parts now often looks very similar,

12:14 is made by the same people using the same equipment and with similar budgets.

12:17 Over the last 20 years, while this transition has been happening,

12:20 for most Americans, the habit of going to the theater fell out of style.

12:25 The American audiences stopped going to the movies

12:27 and then deciding what to watch there.

12:30 Instead, they began going to the movies to see a specific film.

12:33 This change meant they needed to be convinced

12:36 to attend the theater by a film's marketing.

12:39 And facing more difficult challenges in drawing people to the theaters,

12:42 the studio execs found that movies driven by recognizable intellectual

12:47 property had built-in audiences that were much easier to market to.

12:51 This is how remakes, reboots,

12:53 sequels came to dominate the box office in the 2000s.

12:57 By 2024, not a single one of the top 15 box office hits was an original film.

13:03 This paid off in the short run,

13:04 like the turn towards blockbuster filmm in the 1970s,

13:08 the shift towards large IPdriven franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universe

13:11 and the resuscitation of Star Wars

13:14 has driven record-breaking box office receipts.

13:17 referring to these hits as tentpole films, distributors, studios,

13:21 even critics began to see IPdriven mega hits

13:24 as the only thing holding up the industry,

13:26 further pushing out smaller mid-budget offerings.

13:29 But this approach, which has worked relatively well in the 2010s,

13:33 is starting to see diminishing returns in the 2020s.

13:36 With almost no development of new original worlds, stories, ideas,

13:40 IP, major blockbuster films have become a kind of cultural oraoris.

13:45 Cinema no longer creates the narratives that define the culture.

13:48 Instead, it relies almost exclusively on its

13:51 own past cultural influence or existing worlds,

13:54 characters, and stories from other forms of media for its success.

13:59 All this while massive tech giants

14:01 throw billions into developing technologies which

14:04 threaten to undercut an entire workforce of crafts people in the industry.

14:09 Many fear AI tech will be too enticing for studios to pass up,

14:13 even if it's not what audiences want.

14:15 Like in the' 50s and60s, cinema is now poised at a decisive moment.

14:20 And just like cinema and its cultural

14:22 influence changed significantly from the 40s to '7s,

14:26 the movie industry that survives this current shift and its

14:28 cultural influence might look radically different on the other side.

14:33 Those within the industry and those paying attention to this are

14:37 already aware of pretty much everything I'm talking about here.

14:39 There's been plenty of commentary going on about what's happening

14:42 and how cinema might be able to weather this storm.

14:44 But this crisis I'm talking about isn't the story I'm telling today.

14:48 We're going to look at something underneath all

14:51 of this that has already quietly transformed what the movies mean.

14:55 A shift not in the movies themselves and how they're made,

14:58 but in the very way we perceive them.

15:01 A change that has already happened which may

15:04 be irrevocable but one which I think we need to understand if we want cinema

15:09 to survive its current crisis and maintain cultural relevancy.

15:16 They think that what they say is communication.

15:18 Communication is the effect of what you say.

15:21 To understand the force I'm talking about,

15:23 we're going to have to go back to the midentury.

15:26 The electric age is having a profound effect on us.

15:30 We are in a period of fantastic change.

15:33 A time which like today was experiencing a rapidly evolving media landscape.

15:39 Cinema, radio, television, the telegraph, color print, photography,

15:43 and magazines had all sprung into existence in a generation.

15:49 While these media feel commonplace to us today,

15:52 for someone living through that time, it was an incredible shift in the culture.

15:56 For some, this time represented an overwhelming but exciting new world.

16:00 One that was defined not by writing or the printed word,

16:04 but instead by prolific auditory and visual media.

16:08 Culture rushed to adopt these new forms of media,

16:11 but it was also grappling with the influence and power that they had.

16:16 For example, the advertising, the funny page,

16:19 the sports, the cross word puzzles.

16:20 I mean, so many people don't even read the newspaper for the news.

16:23 They read it only for these things.

16:25 And these are new little quickie magazines that you pick up

16:27 that are a few inches high and and in the radio you have

16:30 the five minute news spots and that what you only get is

16:33 is the most sensational aspects of what's going on in the world.

16:36 In 1928, the League of Nations Child Welfare Committee released a report saying,

16:40 "Some delegates expressed fears that cinema performances happening in the dark

16:46 with promiscuity of sexes and langorous

16:48 music should excite the child by appealing

16:51 to his lowest instincts and least noble passions and that bad

16:56 habits may result." This was a problem that could easily be remedied,

17:00 the committee said, if the technology was developed

17:04 that would allow cinema to be shown in broad daylight.

17:07 But there were also more serious concerns about the potential

17:10 for cinema to be used as a propaganda tool by authoritarian governments.

17:15 Television, of course, did not escape suspicion.

17:18 There was concern about the amount of violence shown

17:21 in the westerns and crime dramas that were incredibly popular.

17:25 But there was also concern about

17:26 the way television was changing people's habits.

17:30 A New York Times article from 1949 titled,

17:33 "What is television doing to us?" reports

17:35 that whether the art of one person talking

17:37 to another is to be killed by television

17:39 is the subject of much energetic debate.

17:42 What would this do to society?

17:44 Nearly half of the television owners acknowledge that their choice of an evening

17:47 to go out is influenced by what programs are on, reported Jack Gold.

17:52 Political groups and social clubs are feeling the rivalry of television.

17:56 In the burgeoning modernism of the 20th century,

17:59 whether it was cinema or television,

18:01 media itself was becoming the infrastructure

18:05 of ritual and community for American culture.

18:08 Increasingly, people were gathering for and around pieces

18:11 of media rather than civic or religious institutions.

18:14 Hoping to understand the implications of all this, new figures arose.

18:18 These new cultural commentators and critics sought to study and understand

18:22 the messages that these media conveyed and the influence they had on society.

18:27 In Toronto, Canada, one of the people trying to understand

18:30 this media landscape was a professor named Marshall McLuhan.

18:34 Advertising tells them how they feel about what they have,

18:37 not what they should have.

18:39 McLuhan's work was sprawling, controversial,

18:41 and shrouded in riddles and poetic language.

18:44 At the speed of light, there is no sequence.

18:46 Everything happens at the same instant.

18:48 That's acoustic.

18:49 And uh everything happens at once.

18:51 There's no continuity.

18:52 There's no connection.

18:53 There's no there's no follow through.

18:55 It's just all now.

18:56 But his core idea that the mediums

18:59 themselves were the messages would spark a school

19:01 of thought that would provide a new way of seeing how media influences culture.

19:06 The medium is not something neutral.

19:08 It it does something to people.

19:10 It takes hold of them.

19:11 It roughs them up.

19:12 It massages them.

19:13 It bumps them around.

19:14 The school of thought developed by McLuhan and expanded

19:17 by his followers would come to be known as media ecology.

19:22 For the media ecologists,

19:24 a individual medium represented not just a way of conveying

19:27 individual ideas that we could then judge or interpret.

19:31 It was a landscape that surrounded us.

19:34 One which could literally alter our behavior and even the way we think.

19:39 When you put a new medium into a play in a in a given population,

19:44 all their sensory life shifts a bit.

19:46 To understand this, think about how

19:47 your actual physical environment shapes your behavior.

19:51 If you live in an arid mountainous landscape,

19:53 this will cause you to live a very different life

19:57 than you would if you lived in an urban landscape.

20:00 These landscapes don't just affect our habits and lifestyle,

20:04 but also how we perceive the world.

20:06 So, think about how your physical environment might shape

20:09 the kinds of sensory information you're attuned to as a person.

20:14 Someone used to living in a city might

20:15 easily tune out the sound of an ambulance.

20:18 While someone living in a rural environment

20:20 where they're more exposed to the elements,

20:22 might notice specific shifts in air temperature

20:25 and wind direction that signal an approaching storm.

20:29 In the same way, the media landscape around you,

20:32 which is made up of the different individual mediums

20:35 that you interact with, shapes and influences your behavior.

20:40 One of McLuhloin's key ideas was that each medium extended one of our senses.

20:46 The wheel is an extension of the foot.

20:48 Book is an extension of the eye.

20:51 Clothing is an extension of the skin.

20:53 Electric circuitry is an extension of the central nervous system.

20:57 While this extension of our senses outward makes us

21:00 more attuned to certain kinds of information in the environment,

21:04 he theorized that it also numbs us to other kinds of sensory information.

21:09 The extension of any one sense displaces

21:12 the other senses and alters the way we think.

21:16 McLuhan and others theorized

21:17 that the fundamental technology was language itself.

21:21 In the same way your understanding of language and the words

21:25 in your language can shape how you think about ideas,

21:29 the other kinds of media that you use to communicate

21:32 and express yourself also shape the way you behave, see the world, and think.

21:37 To understand how subtle and nuanced the changes can

21:40 be that affect our perception of the media we're experiencing,

21:44 let's talk about something called the Fordham experiment.

21:47 In the Fordam experiment, they took the same video content and showed

21:52 it to audiences in two different ways.

21:54 For some audiences, the videos were projected onto a screen.

21:57 This means the light is bouncing off a wall and into your eyes.

22:02 For another audience, the videos were actually played on a screen.

22:05 This means illuminated pixels were shining directly into the audience's eyes.

22:10 Each audience would then write about what they watched.

22:12 And what the experiment discovered was that even

22:14 when they were viewing the exact same content,

22:18 there was a dramatic difference in what each audience would write

22:20 about depending on how they had viewed that piece of content.

22:24 So for example, for those that watched the content projected onto the screen,

22:29 only about 6% mentioned losing a sense of time.

22:33 For the group that watched the content from an illuminated screen,

22:36 like most of our screens are today,

22:37 the mentions of losing a sense of time rose to 60%.

22:41 And this happened with a lot of factors like whether or not

22:44 the audience would comment on a specific scene or the cinematic technique.

22:49 So a relatively subtle change in how the content is presented can

22:53 lead to a fairly significant change in how the content is perceived.

22:57 Changing what elements of the media we're more likely to notice or focus on.

23:02 Now that's one relatively subtle shift in form.

23:05 Think about what happens when there's a larger shift in mediums where

23:09 many factors of how a piece of information is conveyed change at once.

23:14 In in the 1860s, he would have been unthinkable because he he he can't talk,

23:23 but you put him on television and he's dynamite.

23:27 For a media ecologist like Neil Postman,

23:30 his primary critique of TV was not the individual programs,

23:34 but instead the landscape that TV presented.

23:38 The voice over says more shooting in Beirut today.

23:44 We see some film of a street perhaps in Beirut.

23:49 Uh a body on the floor.

23:51 We hear shots.

23:52 This image is powerful.

23:55 So people know of Beirut.

23:58 They know there's shooting in Beirut.

24:02 Do they know who's shooting at whom or why

24:06 or what is the historical context for this?

24:09 One of his main concerns was

24:10 the way television was structured around advertising.

24:14 the function of television in America uh is

24:19 to gather an audience which can be sold to advertisers

24:24 which he theorized significantly diminished its ability

24:26 to present the serious discussion of anything.

24:30 Uh American television knows that the best way to gather

24:35 an audience is to provide something that is amusing.

24:38 TV according to Postman and McLuhan converted

24:42 everything even disasters and wars into entertainment.

24:47 Film editing theory like the Kulashave effect which shows

24:51 that our perception of the meaning of a shot

24:53 can change depending on what the filmmaker cuts

24:56 to next can help us understand his critique here.

25:00 How is our perception of the meaning of a serious topic affected

25:05 when it's juxtaposed against and interrupted by an advertisement for dish soap?

25:09 During an air show at Hill Air Base in Utah,

25:11 a Thunderbird arabatic jet crashed, killing the pilot.

25:16 Hey, look who switched to Natural Light.

25:19 Through a traditional lens, we might examine television media by looking

25:22 at the violence in a specific western.

25:25 But through a media ecology lens,

25:27 we can see that the bigger impact that television had on our culture

25:30 probably had more to do with the way information was presented on there.

25:36 But when we adopt a new media landscape,

25:38 it also changes our social and physical habits.

25:42 The social gatherings in public that cinema provided gave way to more

25:47 time spent in intimate family gatherings around the TV in the home.

25:52 With the rise of TV, some parents were concerned about their children

25:55 spending less time outside while others

25:58 saw this as a good thing since it was keeping them off the streets.

26:03 When a large portion of society changes how it spends its hours each day,

26:07 the implications of this on culture are larger than

26:10 the influence of whether they're watching a violent western,

26:13 cartoons, or the evening news.

26:16 But perhaps the most important idea from media ecology for what I

26:20 want to illustrate for you here is that from a media ecology perspective,

26:25 a medium and what it represents and means

26:27 to a culture cannot be understood in isolation.

26:32 Because what a medium means to us, the message it conveys,

26:36 comes not just from its inherent properties,

26:39 but from how it relates to the other mediums around it.

26:43 And when we begin to understand this, we'll see

26:45 clearly how no matter where the industry goes from here,

26:49 cinema has already undergone a significant transformation into something new.

26:55 [Music] [Music] To understand how the meaning of cinema has evolved,

27:18 we must first look at what it represented in the past.

27:21 If we return to the midentury,

27:23 even though cinema had already fallen from its peak in the 30s,

27:26 it was still one of the most significant cultural forces.

27:29 This was a world where if you wanted

27:31 to know what was happening or be entertained, you could turn on the TV or turn

27:36 on the radio if you're fortunate enough to have one.

27:39 But using these devices, you would only be able to see or hear whatever happens

27:44 to be broadcast on the few available channels at that moment.

27:49 If you're not interested in what's being shown or said at that time,

27:52 you have no control beyond simply turning it off or changing the channel.

27:57 And these technologies were still largely built around communal spaces.

28:02 Families would gather in the living room to watch

28:04 TV or the radio might be on in the kitchen.

28:07 Your media consumption was often linked to the consumption of those around you.

28:12 To access more information,

28:14 you'd need to physically retrieve a newspaper or a magazine.

28:19 The information there would be dense and lowfidelity.

28:23 illustrations and photographs, written reports of things happening in the world

28:27 delayed by a day or sometimes weeks or months.

28:31 For musical entertainment, you could buy or listen to records,

28:34 turn on the radio, or go to a live performance.

28:36 Again, engaging with media experiences that were

28:39 both curated by others and communal.

28:41 And then in the midst of all this, say you decide to go see a movie.

28:46 The movies in this environment share a lot

28:48 of features with the other media at that time.

28:51 You still have limited control over what you consume and you

28:55 can only go see a movie at the specific showtime.

28:59 But the movies also stood apart as an entirely unique media experience.

29:04 In this landscape, the movie was arguably the pinnacle of sensory entertainment.

29:09 It was the biggest cultural spectacle media could provide.

29:13 Its images were the biggest and the most vibrant available.

29:18 Unlike books, newspapers or magazines and even the low fidelity of early TV

29:23 where you had to focus your attention and participate in consuming the media,

29:27 when watching a movie,

29:29 you could sit back in the dark and essentially allow the film to wash over you.

29:35 The movies guided you through the story

29:37 with an almost hypnotic translike quality.

29:41 You were absorbed.

29:42 They might sweep you away to another world, transport you to another time,

29:47 and all of this alongside a crowd of people.

29:52 It's not hard to see how the movies were one

29:54 of the most captivating and alluring media experiences at that time.

29:59 When cinema arrived, it didn't just bring new kinds of art and stories.

30:04 It introduced culture to a new kind of experience.

30:09 Today, the motion picture stands on a plane

30:11 of achievement few could have foreseen half a century ago.

30:15 It was partly a commodification of the theatrical experience,

30:18 but it was also a ritualistic,

30:21 social, and almost religious consumption of media.

30:24 Unlike a play, audiences from all around the country or even the world

30:28 could be united around having seen the exact same piece of media.

30:34 But it also introduced a new type of sensory experience.

30:37 These were large, exciting images that commanded the audience's attention.

30:43 A movie star could be lit, captured, and projected in a larger than-l life way

30:48 that would have been impossible in any prior form.

30:52 Taking into account the media ecology view, we must ask,

30:56 how did these movies change our perception of ourselves as humans?

31:00 Unlike the print dominant forms, cinema was a medium where images,

31:05 language, and music worked together to create feelings.

31:10 You could analyze movies, but unlike text,

31:14 they didn't really require analytical thinking to be understood.

31:18 All of this together meant that they were a uniquely powerful cultural force.

31:24 This distinct and uniquely evocative experience

31:27 that cinema represented within the culture explains

31:31 why movies like Jaws or The Exorcist could have so much impact and influence.

31:38 But what changed?

31:40 Well, [Music] but when I was a boy, we didn't have the telegraph.

31:50 Didn't have a telephone.

31:51 of course for their electric license or any of these other

31:56 things which have come up to bother and help.

31:59 I remember when we didn't have television and I was forced to be

32:02 creative all the time and to make up all of my own

32:04 games and to to play at acting all myself and nothing was

32:07 ever presented to me so that I could simply sit and absorb it.

32:11 The things that I'm seeing online just going to scroll Instagram

32:15 or something to kind of get my mind off of what's maybe not Instagram.

32:19 Yeah, I agree.

32:20 probably not Instagram.

32:21 Oh my god, what is this?

32:24 You wake up and immediately open your phone.

32:25 Whether you choose Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, or Facebook,

32:29 you're hit with a torrent of shifting

32:31 information algorithmically tuned to be the most interesting,

32:34 attention-grabbing content possible.

32:35 One flashy image or video after another.

32:38 You can see videos of the most

32:39 exciting or horrifying events happening around the world

32:41 delivered straight into the palm of your hand before you even get out of bed.

32:44 If you set down your phone and turn to your computer or TV,

32:47 you have access to almost every kind of recorded media from any time period

32:51 or part of the globe available for you to choose from at any time.

32:55 You can watch an independently produced YouTube channel.

32:58 You can watch the news in HD showing you violent or catastrophic events.

33:01 You can watch children's programs.

33:03 You can watch videos constructed entirely by artificial intelligence.

33:06 I tried asking for directions and got sent to a floor that doesn't exist.

33:10 Almost anything you can imagine lies at your fingertips,

33:12 completely at your control to pause, rewind, play again, or share.

33:17 A lot of attention is given to how

33:18 social media is shortening our attention spans.

33:21 But I think the story is much more complicated.

33:24 A full analysis of smartphones, internet streaming,

33:27 and social media from a media ecology

33:29 perspective could be its own hour-long video.

33:32 So, I'm just going to hit some of the highlights here.

33:34 From a media ecology perspective,

33:36 people have become acclimated to an environment of rapidly shifting context.

33:40 We expect an increasing variety of content

33:43 to be constantly accessible and easily switchable.

33:46 Increasingly, very little media consumption is communal

33:49 or tied to a specific time anymore.

33:52 You might watch a movie or some TV with friends or family,

33:55 but what you watch is now usually disconnected

33:57 from what most other people around you are watching.

34:00 Even if you and a friend are watching the same show,

34:03 the chances that you both watched the same episode the night before is low.

34:08 By allowing us to watch whatever we want at any time,

34:10 streaming has reshaped collective viewing.

34:13 For internet content, personalization algorithms only push this further.

34:17 And while the mediums that McLuhan

34:19 and Postman were examining were relatively simple,

34:22 with the introduction of the computer,

34:24 we enter an era that I would describe as hyper mediums.

34:28 These are mediums that themselves contain smaller mediums.

34:32 So if you're watching this video right now on your phone,

34:34 the content that I'm sending you is filtered

34:38 through the medium of the camera and film making.

34:41 There's certain biases and effects that are inherent to video content itself.

34:46 But then that's also being filtered

34:47 through the medium of YouTube, the algorithm, how it's presented to you,

34:53 the comments and other meta design elements that surround the video.

34:58 Your perception of what I'm saying is going to be impacted by how

35:01 positive or negative the comments are or how many views the video has.

35:05 And then beyond that, it is additionally being

35:08 mediated by the form factor of the smartphone itself.

35:12 the fact that you can carry the video around with you.

35:16 You might be watching this in bed or on the toilet or on the subway.

35:21 If you're watching this video on your phone while you try to cook dinner,

35:25 it's going to have a different psychological

35:27 impact than if you went into a classroom

35:30 and sat down and had to pay attention to one thing for 20 minutes.

35:36 For McLuhan, the mediums of the past become the content of the current mediums.

35:40 And we're seeing that happen right now.

35:43 If the video of cinema and television and the words

35:45 and photos of print are the content of our social media feeds,

35:50 what is the new medium we're consuming?

35:52 And what is the message of that medium?

35:55 Well, the medium is the feed itself,

35:58 the algorithm itself, and our consumption of that.

36:01 Tech writer Alberto Romero posited that when

36:04 we're scrolling through short form video,

36:05 it's not the content itself that delivers a dopamine hit,

36:08 but the moment we scroll,

36:10 the millisecond where we're anticipating what might come next,

36:13 whether it's something scary, funny, interesting, or boring.

36:17 It's the hit of anticipation that we're consuming.

36:20 Here, Neil Postman's concerns about the influence

36:22 of advertising on a medium rather than disappearing in the transition from TV

36:26 to social media only become more amplified.

36:30 Like television, the goal of the feed and the algorithm is to gather

36:34 an audience and sustain that audience's attention

36:37 so that it can show it more advertising.

36:40 The result of this is that it will show you

36:42 not what's best for you or the most important information,

36:45 but whatever is the most attention grabbing.

36:47 For mediums of the past, like cinema, a book, or record,

36:50 by the time you consume the content, you had already paid for it.

36:54 Those making the media were incentivized to make the experience

36:57 a good one so that it spread word of mouth

36:59 and more people bought it and so that you might

37:01 be more likely to buy something from them in the future.

37:05 But there was no specific incentive to hold

37:08 your attention for as long as possible.

37:10 That all changed with television with the move

37:13 to an advertising model where more time spent

37:16 watching by the viewer translated directly into more

37:19 money for those creating the content and distributing it.

37:22 This is an environment where subtlety, nuance, and quietude do exist,

37:26 but they're fairly niche products delivered to a minority of viewers.

37:31 The vast majority of what filters to the top of these algorithmically

37:34 curated platforms is the stuff that will grab and hold your attention.

37:38 And this affects everything from Netflix and Instagram

37:40 to the video you're watching right now.

37:43 A significant aspect of the smartphone is the way it

37:46 fuses the medium of the remote control with the media itself.

37:50 The medium of the smartphone is a platform that we use to bring

37:55 stuff to us or to control what we're seeing or the world around us.

38:00 There's nothing on our smartphone that we're truly

38:02 subjected to and don't really have control over.

38:05 Even the sensation of grasping it in your hand is kind

38:08 of the ultimate sense of control over the media you're consuming.

38:13 I'm not saying being able to control our media is bad,

38:16 and this might seem like a minor difference,

38:18 but I think it has a significant psychological impact

38:22 on how we perceive the media as we consume it.

38:25 The act of craning our necks downward for hours every

38:28 day literally reshapes our bodies and our experience of the world.

38:32 We doom scroll.

38:33 We talk about misinformation, internet bubbles,

38:36 and write think pieces about the attention economy.

38:39 Some people are quitting their phones entirely or doing dopamine detoxes,

38:43 but this is already the water we swim in.

38:45 If McLuhan and the media ecologists are right,

38:48 the shift to spending hours a day consuming media through a new medium,

38:53 our phone, changes not just how we perceive the media on our phone,

38:57 but the entire world around us.

38:59 We have stepped into a new media environment.

39:02 And now we must understand and respond to how it's reshaped our habits,

39:07 society, and perception.

39:10 The big takeaway is that in contrast to a lot of the media of the past,

39:15 the current media landscape emphasizes control, portability, individualization,

39:22 total participation in a global landscape of media,

39:26 and perception mediated by desires through an algorithm.

39:31 Now, within this landscape,

39:33 think about the experience that going to the movies represents.

39:38 In the 1970s, when you went to a movie,

39:40 you were stepping out of a world of relatively

39:43 lowfidelity visual media into an intense multi-hour visual spectacle.

39:49 In 2025, when you go see a movie, you're probably taking a break from the most

40:03 overwhelming sensory spectacle humanity has ever created.

40:07 When you go to the movies now,

40:09 you're committing to a single piece of media for multiple hours,

40:12 which you must watch at a predetermined time with a group of people.

40:16 a piece of media you have no control over.

40:18 The images on the screen move at a much slower

40:21 pace than what you're used to seeing on your phone.

40:24 And if you aren't interested in it,

40:26 you can't immediately change it to something else.

40:29 The movies right now,

40:30 they're one of the only mediums that can actually sort of force you to focus

40:35 on and immerse yourself in a single image for a long period of time.

40:41 You don't have the option of escaping what the movie is presenting to you

40:46 unless you literally physically move your body

40:49 out of the space it's being presented in.

40:51 Even big exciting action films can feel deliberate and calculated in a world

40:56 where you can watch this [Applause] [Music] or this or this at any moment.

41:10 So, cinema, the medium that used to feel like the height of spectacle,

41:14 which could send culture into a panic, now often feels like a relatively slow,

41:19 linear, and focused journey through a single narrative.

41:22 In this landscape, it's the phones and the content on the phones that are

41:26 inciting the kind of moral panic and cultural change that The Exorcist did.

41:31 The printing press, electricity, the telegraph,

41:33 and television weren't just tools of communication.

41:36 They allowed society to adopt new shapes,

41:39 new ways of living and interacting with one another.

41:43 The rapid adoption of smartphones,

41:45 social media, algorithmically tuned recommendation feeds,

41:48 and now AI is currently reshaping the landscape of our society,

41:54 the same way it was reshaped in the early

41:57 20th century by the mediums that arrived then.

42:00 And cinema's place within this new landscape

42:02 is different than it was 50 years ago,

42:04 just like it was different in the 70s than it was in the 1940s.

42:09 Now, collectively, on average, compared to all the other media we consume,

42:12 it represents something else, a different kind of experience.

42:19 My goal with all of this is not to construct

42:21 a narrative that phones are bad and movies are good.

42:24 For McLuhan, the media ecology approach wasn't about trying

42:27 to make moral assessments about which mediums were better than others.

42:31 I seek to perceive, not to conceive what's in front of me.

42:37 And perception is exploration.

42:39 Instead, he was more interested in trying to just develop

42:42 a clear understanding of the media environment we're actually living in.

42:46 I do think there are some notable downsides

42:48 to the hyperodern media landscape we all live in now.

42:52 And I think we should do everything we can to document,

42:55 understand, and then overcome whatever negative

42:58 effects these new mediums might have.

43:02 But especially for those old enough to have

43:04 one foot in the media environment of the past,

43:07 it can be easy to fall into a kind of understandable nostalgia.

43:11 But every time a new environment forms with a new medium,

43:14 people go back and live in the old one.

43:16 Where we hold up the mediums of the past as somehow

43:19 more morally pure than the mediums that are most popular today.

43:23 This has happened with things like the novel,

43:24 which was initially treated as populist distraction.

43:27 While today there's almost a moral panic

43:30 about the fact that fewer people read literature.

43:32 And we're seeing this happen with movies.

43:35 When the big blockbusters of the 70s came out,

43:37 a lot of filmmakers and critics wrote them off as populist escapism.

43:42 But now they're treated as something closer to a form of art.

43:46 It would be easy to romanticize film somehow

43:48 as a more pure or unblenmished form of media.

43:51 But that's not what I'm trying to do here.

43:54 The movies have downsides.

43:56 producing it is much less accessible to the average person

44:00 and so channels of distribution have

44:03 traditionally been controlled by corporate interests.

44:06 Right now, for example, No Other Land,

44:08 an Oscar-winning documentary about Palestine,

44:12 is not available for viewing in the United States 6

44:16 months after winning because nobody's been willing to distribute it here.

44:21 Cinema's power as a transporting, emotional,

44:24 and almost hypnotizing storytelling medium is what makes it so enticing,

44:30 but it's also what makes it a powerful tool

44:33 for intentionally and sometimes unintentionally

44:36 perpetrating harmful ideas and stereotypes propagandistically.

44:41 Cinema propaganda wasn't just an issue in Nazi Germany.

44:44 It continues to be produced in subtle and sometimes

44:48 insidious ways that audiences often don't even realize.

44:52 Another limiting factor for cinema is how it has been transformed

44:56 from an affordable cultural commodity into what is almost a luxury experience.

45:02 Back in the' 40s, when over 60% of Americans were attending the cinema,

45:06 a movie ticket was only 25, which would be about $4 today.

45:11 These days, for many Americans, a trip to the movies can be cost prohibitive,

45:15 pushing it further towards being an activity

45:17 reserved for special occasions and the upper class.

45:20 So, as much as I have deep

45:22 concerns about the new hypermodern technologies like phones,

45:25 social media, short form video, etc.,

45:28 this is not about vilifying or blaming those things in order

45:32 to say cinema is somehow inherently perfect or a great medium by contrast.

45:38 But neither is my goal to proclaim that cinema is dead.

45:41 This time it's real.

45:42 And now I've found the true culprit.

45:45 When Vim Venders made a documentary asking the question,

45:49 "Is cinema about to be a dead language?" Many

45:52 of the filmmakers he interviewed seemed to think it would be.

45:55 I think instead the opposite is true.

45:58 The language of cinema is far from dead.

46:01 Instead, it's been absorbed by the mainstream

46:04 culture as the primary language of communication.

46:07 A lot of the media we now consume on our TVs and phones uses cinematic language.

46:13 These mediums are essentially a form of post

46:16 cinema that adopt the visual grammar of filmm.

46:20 In this world dominated by visual cinematic grammar instead of literary grammar,

46:25 valuing and studying the cinematic roots

46:27 of all this is only becoming more important.

46:31 So I'm saying the movies have changed

46:33 and on average probably won't quite feel the same.

46:37 But that doesn't mean I think they've ceased to be relevant.

46:40 that they won't continue in some way to provide interesting, meaningful,

46:46 culturally relevant experiences and play a role

46:49 in the media landscape for a long time to come.

46:53 But if we want that to happen,

46:54 if we want movie going to continue to be an accessible medium for people,

46:59 we need to give up false hope that cinema

47:01 will magically return to what it was in a previous

47:05 time and stop trying to force it to compete

47:08 with the new media landscape by being something that it isn't.

47:12 Instead, the way forward for cinema is to understand exactly

47:17 what it has to offer to us that social media, phones, and television cannot.

47:44 So, let's talk about how cinema can survive.

47:47 It's very possible in the future we'll go down a path where a movie is

47:51 just a different type of content that plays

47:53 on our TV or phone like everything else.

47:57 In this future, theater screenings will be treated

47:59 as rare events or simply a marketing ploy.

48:02 We're already headed in this direction to some extent,

48:06 but I don't want this to happen and I think it can be avoided.

48:10 So, let's look at how.

48:12 First, like it did in the 20th century, cinema could once again become bigger.

48:16 This is already happening.

48:18 The increasing prevalence and promotion of IMAX represents

48:21 this century's version of this division or cinemascope.

48:26 And this does work to some extent.

48:28 better sound along with bigger, more immersive visuals can still provide some

48:33 of the grandest sensory experiences available in media today.

48:38 Some filmmakers like Michael Bay even seem to be competing

48:41 with the intensity and rapidfire pacing provided by internet video.

48:46 But while I love the trend towards impressive large

48:49 format film making with great sound design and watching

48:52 this scene from centers on a big screen is

48:55 one of the best media experiences I've had this year.

48:58 I think trying to consistently out compete internet media in terms

49:03 of creating the largest sensory spectacle is ultimately a losing battle.

49:10 Your phone might be tiny in comparison,

49:12 but it provides pure uncut dopamineergic entertainment and novel images in a way

49:18 that even the biggest cinematic images these days will struggle to keep up with.

49:22 I'm not saying internet video is better or that these bigger,

49:26 more cinematic movies are bad.

49:28 I just don't think cinema will win if

49:30 it's trying to be the entertainment spectacle of culture

49:34 when we're carrying around one of the most intense

49:37 media spectacles ever created in our pockets every day.

49:40 Instead, where cinema can win is where it

49:42 continues to provide something that your phone cannot.

49:46 And this lies in its ability to use

49:48 that sensory experience to immerse you in an emotional narrative.

49:54 The biggest advantage that cinema has going for it is time and focus.

49:59 Cinema is one of the only forms of storytelling

50:02 remaining that asks you to sit and give your full attention to a complete story

50:08 for an unbroken 2 to three-hour chunk of time.

50:11 Sure, you might binge watch a TV show or doom scroll for 3 hours,

50:15 but those aren't contained narrative experiences consumed in a single sitting.

50:19 Short form video shifts your attention every few seconds and TV breaks

50:24 for episodes and ads and happens exclusively

50:28 at home in a distraction laden environment.

50:31 You can listen to a podcast or audiobook for 3 hours,

50:35 but again that 3 hours won't be an entire complete

50:39 narrative and you likely won't be giving it your undivided attention.

50:44 You're probably listening to it while you do something else.

50:47 With a movie, you're locked into a single overwhelming

50:53 experience for hours with no breaks or division points.

50:57 And while obviously people are going to whip

51:00 out their phones even at the theater,

51:02 the key is that the intention of the form is

51:05 for you to be mentally immersed in a complete story without distractions.

51:11 And even if not everyone consumes it this way, this changes what it is.

51:15 A lot of TV is specifically made to be on in the background.

51:19 Netflix specifically produces what it calls

51:22 second screen content with the expectation

51:25 that audiences are going to watch it while they're on their phones.

51:28 So, this means that even if you sat down and completely immersed yourself

51:33 in one of these Netflix shows that is made to be on in the background,

51:37 you aren't going to get the same experience as if you

51:40 immersed yourself in something that was made to be immersed in.

51:44 This means that even if you aren't on your phone while

51:46 you're watching a show made to be on in the background,

51:49 you're still watching something that has been made

51:51 for the level of attention of someone who is.

51:55 Movies, meanwhile, are usually made for the theatrical experience where

52:00 an audience is going to give it their undivided attention.

52:04 When people hear filmmakers say this is made for the big screen,

52:07 I think it's sometimes perceived as elitist or nostalgic posturing.

52:11 But having the theatrical experience as the end

52:15 goal for filmmakers as they create the movie

52:18 really shapes the kinds of movies that filmmakers

52:21 will make and how they make them.

52:23 When a movie is made for an environment

52:25 where you're supposed to give it your full attention,

52:28 the effects of that will impact the viewing experience,

52:32 even if you end up watching that movie at home.

52:36 Cinema's unique demands on our attention and time

52:40 in this media landscape means that movies are asking

52:44 a lot more of an audience in terms

52:46 of time and attention commitment relative to other media today.

52:52 But this is exactly what makes them

52:54 a particularly powerful form of media in the landscape.

52:58 Given this commitment of time and attention,

53:01 filmmakers have a unique opportunity to sweep

53:03 up and transport audiences in an emotional,

53:08 evocative experience that other kinds of media might not be able to.

53:12 Movies that really want to succeed today

53:15 need to understand the bargain they're striking

53:17 with audiences and at least attempt to deliver

53:21 something worthwhile in return for what they're asking.

53:25 But within this space, movies also now have an opportunity to be

53:28 something much more inherently meditative and contemplative.

53:32 I don't mean that all movies need to be slow artouse fair,

53:36 although I think that's great and more people should give it a shot.

53:39 I mean even a basic drama can create

53:41 space to think about a single subject, character, idea,

53:45 world, or feeling for hours in a way

53:48 that audiences probably aren't doing with other media they're consuming.

53:52 I think the movies that will stay relevant will be the ones that use this time

53:58 in a way that rewards the audience for doing

54:00 so instead of just providing cheap entertainment escapes.

54:04 It's not that cheap entertainment escapes are

54:06 bad or that movies should never try

54:08 to do that, but those are now freely available in your pocket whenever you want,

54:13 and paying $20 to go sit in a room for a cheap entertainment

54:17 escape won't feel as worthwhile when you can get one for free at home.

54:23 We also need to recognize and lean into the communal

54:27 value of movie theaters and the movies themselves.

54:30 These days, I often hear people complain about the theatrical experience.

54:35 People are on their phones or there's distractions,

54:38 but there can really be a magic to watching a film with a group of people,

54:42 and the movies need to try to retain that.

54:45 Even when everyone is quiet, you can feel something.

54:48 The experience changes when you're with people.

54:51 And in the same way movies being made

54:53 for theaters impacts the demands they place on our attention,

54:57 movies being made for theaters also means they're

55:00 made to be watched with a group of people.

55:03 I love watching movies alone,

55:04 but most of my best movie memories involve a theatrical or group experience.

55:09 Even at home, the movie night creates

55:11 a unique social opportunity for a group to experience

55:15 a complete narrative together in a way

55:17 that pretty much no other media currently provides.

55:20 Sure, you can watch TV together, but it's hard to do that with a group

55:25 of people who are all living different lives.

55:27 You have to coordinate together to watch the same show

55:30 and all be on the same episode at the same time.

55:33 Consuming a movie with a group provides a unique opportunity

55:36 to all experience a single narrative together and then discuss it afterwards.

55:41 In our increasingly socially fragmented and individualistic

55:44 society where our media consumption is

55:47 more and more specialized and presented on tiny screens just for us to see,

55:53 there's a value in getting to experience something more communal.

55:57 And movie theaters with their progression towards

56:00 premium experiences and larger multiplexes have kind

56:03 of been leaning away from the value

56:06 of the communal experience rather than into it.

56:09 Theaters are often trying to compete with streaming by trying

56:13 to make the theater as comfortable as your living room.

56:17 But while I love a heated lounger as much as anyone,

56:19 I think this might not be the most productive approach.

56:22 Many of the best theatrical experiences I've had come from smaller,

56:27 less comfortable indie theaters in my town where even obscure movies would

56:32 sell out and there was a sense of community surrounding each screening.

56:37 Theaters can lean into this more by making

56:40 memberships more affordable and accessible and by providing lounge

56:45 and gathering areas outside the screens instead of literally

56:48 designing the spaces to minimize human contact and interaction,

56:53 shuttling you like cattle in and out of the screen.

56:57 I'm not insinuating these are the only things that make the movies valuable

57:00 these days or that this is an easy or surefire way to save cinema,

57:05 but I think if the movies want to continue to carve out a valuable, vibrant,

57:09 successful place in the media landscape of today,

57:12 they need to capitalize on what makes them unique.

57:16 instead of trying to morph into what everything else is

57:20 in order to compete with that or doing mostly what's been happening,

57:24 sticking its head in the stand, pretending the problem will go away while

57:27 the box office slowly continues to shrink.

57:30 This narrative I've been crafting focuses mainly on Hollywood American

57:35 movie going and the blockbusters that draw the largest crowd.

57:38 And while similar dynamics are playing out around the world,

57:41 each country has its own unique set of cultural,

57:45 economic, and political dynamics that affect

57:48 how well the theatrical experience thrives.

57:51 And the world of indie and international film,

57:54 along with many independent boutique theaters,

57:57 are already leaning into much of what I'm describing

58:01 here and how they make movies and present them.

58:04 If the studios want to stay relevant, Hollywood will have to catch on.

58:08 Otherwise, they're faded to continue down the path they're already

58:12 on towards simply becoming content production

58:14 engines for their own streaming platforms,

58:17 which will compete with all the other content on the internet.

58:21 The movies should be interesting, thoughtful, and worth your time.

58:25 They should continue to be immersive, visual, sonic, sensory experiences.

58:30 They should continue to be communal experiences,

58:33 an event that we go to or consume with a group at home rather than

58:37 just another piece of content to be

58:39 consumed the same way we consume anything else.

58:43 Not because of some kind of elitism where cinema is superior,

58:46 but because it offers us a unique media

58:49 and cultural experience that other forms of media don't.

58:52 Cinema will never again have the kind of cultural dominance it had in the' 40s,

58:58 and it's unlikely it will even return to the influence it had in the 70s.

59:02 To imagine it would would be wishful nostalgia.

59:06 But as the industry faces the biggest shakeup it's seen in 80 years,

59:11 I believe it can continue to be a valuable

59:14 and relevant cultural experience for a long time to come.

59:18 As long as we value it for what is

59:20 actually unique about its ability to transport us together.

59:25 When you sell them happiness, when you sell them narcotics,

59:28 when you sell them fictionalized news, uh to sustain their security,

59:33 they accept it and they begin to accept that is true.

59:36 One of the most important things we can

59:37 apply a media ecology lens to is the news.

59:41 We need to understand that it's not just

59:42 the content or information conveyed by the news,

59:46 but the way news is conveyed that shapes our understanding of the world.

59:51 And one of the best tools that I know of for understanding

59:53 the modern news landscape is my sponsor for this video, Ground News.

59:58 Ground News doesn't just show you the news,

1:00:00 it gives you the tools you need to truly understand the news.

1:00:04 Each story is surrounded by a bunch of meta context.

1:00:08 It tells you the political bias of each outlet reporting the story

1:00:12 and even lets you quickly compare and browse through different headlines.

1:00:15 So, you can see the way a story is represented

1:00:18 in a headline shapes our understanding of the events being reported.

1:00:22 Take a look at this recent story about Steven Coar's show being cancelled.

1:00:25 A quick survey of the headlines shows us

1:00:27 the contrast in how different media outlets represent this story,

1:00:32 which can give something a positive or negative spin.

1:00:35 One of my favorite features is the blind spots feed,

1:00:38 which shows you stories that are being under

1:00:40 reportported by both the left and the right.

1:00:43 Ground News is a great way to not just consume the news,

1:00:45 but I think understand the narratives that are

1:00:48 being conveyed through the news every day.

1:00:51 You can check out Ground News for free,

1:00:53 but you can get access to the blind spot feed and all

1:00:55 the other premium features when you sign up for a Vantage subscription,

1:00:58 which you can get for 40% off when you use my code at ground.news/toomasflight.

1:01:05 Click the link in the description below or go to ground.news/toomasflight

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1:01:14 I offer ground news some of the attention you've given

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1:01:21 When you become a patron, you can get access to the film club where I

1:01:24 choose movies for us to discuss along with movie reviews.

1:01:27 You can sign up at patreon.com/thomasflight.