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Victoria Coren: Time to bring back happy Hollywood | Comment is free | The Observer
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Feb 25, 2:13pm
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•http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr...
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Not sure about the 'bring back happy Hollywood' bit (having enjoyed many a film with a plot meandering in and out of melancholia) but I agree with the gist of what the article says.
From the page: "When I was a teenager, I knew a lot of boys who saw only nastiness in the world and wanted all art to reflect it. They wore a lot of badges on their donkey jackets and listened exclusively to music by people who had committed suicide. They watched a lot of Steven Berkoff plays. They liked films where everybody died. They smoked angrily at the fairground and refused to go on the Dodgems. I say teenage boys ; I was exactly the same myself. Luckily, we all cheered up once we started having sex.
But when these grumpy teenagers grow up into pretentious film directors, we should be careful not to revere a vision that we should actually pity. Don t let them make you feel stupid for wanting light with your shade and hope with your tragedy. They haven t hung on to a deeper truth that we ve forgotten, they ve failed to see a deeper truth that we ve learnt.
They scorn sweetness and optimism because they don't feel it, therefore they're blind to it, therefore a glimpse of better nature in narrative will strike them as sappy and bourgeois and misconceived. Frankly, they need to go on more picnics.
I don't know why these goths have got a sudden grip on Hollywood; perhaps the whole Western world is feeling guilty. Fair enough, but there's no point lying around flaying ourselves. A film could just as easily remind us that there is always a way to make things better and that's always what most people want. Horrible things happen despite, not because of, the deepest instincts in human nature.
Ignore these patronising movies that tell you the opposite! Slip into your flannel pyjamas tonight and root for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Then go out tomorrow, give somebody an apple and smile at a traffic warden."
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