I Just Want to Be Entertained

“I just want to be entertained.” I hear that sentence a lot from people trying to justify wading up to their ears in the sewage that makes up a lot of popular movies and television programs. Why are so many people terrified to do anything to improve their intellectual well being? These same people are often terrifically ambitious about improving their monetary or physical well being.

Take a look at a lot of the patrons of the gym where I go. The place isn’t exactly cheap so I would imagine that most of the members are doing fairly well financially to afford a luxury like a fancy inner-city health club. Now go and look at the magazine rack of the periodicals left there by members. Fucking People Magazine is about all you will find, that or some other rag that drools over celebrities (Entertainment, In Style, Cosmopolitan, etc). Call me a snob but I would just as rather scream over the gym intercom that I am a fatuous, brain-dead zombie than read one of those awful rags.

My other pet peeve at the gym (as anyone who reads Leftbanker already has been bored to tears hearing about) is the constant playing of CNN on the TV’s. CNN is the People Magazine of television news. On that channel today some Republican mouthpiece said that the movie Shrek II would be more factual than Moore’s film. I don’t know about that but I can say that CNN has spent more time reporting on Shrek II than about how the war in Iraq has affected Iraqi citizens.

What we refer to as art and entertainment these days contains very little substance. Many modern writers who I admire greatly have almost nothing to say about the culture we inhabit. When a writer writes about being a writer then you almost always know that the writer has completely given up on trying to understand the world around them.

I find it odd that people are so threatened by an artist such as Michael Moore who chooses to actually say something in a film. I don’t think Moore is any sort of intellectual but his heart is in the right place as far as I’m concerned. I do find him to be a highly entertaining and funny filmmaker.

In a culture of coma-inducing tripe like Dodge Ball and American Idol, passively watching the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 may be the first political act a lot of people in this country ever commit. I only hope that their second political act will be to vote in the coming election.