The Story Of Hollywood

If you make any effort to consume popular films and television shows, you will notice that much of the content is now locked away on streaming services. You will also notice that many films go straight to a streaming service, or they have a short run in theaters then get sent to a service. Everyone in the film business now has a streaming service and they need content. Like a great, gaping maw that must be fed, the services are sucking up everything they can find.

The funny thing about this shift is that the services are turning out to be a massive money loser for the industry. On the one hand, streaming robs from the theaters, especially small local theaters, by removing cheap content they would use to attract daytime audiences in the summer. On the other hand, the public has not embraced the streaming service concept as expected. Every service, except Netflix, is a money loser at the moment and none of those are close to getting in the black.

The prime example of the streaming problem is Disney Plus, which loses money every month despite having the massive Disney catalogue. It has the most subscribers and it does generate a lot of monthly revenue, but it also generates massive amounts of expense that swallows up that cash. Much of this is due to the many flops Disney has produced recently, but the concept seems to be the problem. That and the costs make pirating films much more attractive.

The streaming story is a good example of how culture is too complicated to model with a green visor and excel spreadsheet. The bean counters just assumed streaming would follow the model of the rental market, which followed the pattern they saw in the secondary theater market. Low budget films, mediocre films and even terrible films made additional money in the secondary theater market. When take-home rentals came along, these films often got a second life in this market.

It has not worked that way with streaming. A film like the live action Snow White, which was torn apart by internet critics, was a massive flop at the theaters, but then had no life in the streaming market. In the old days, it would get rentals from people curious about it or for get-togethers with friends to have a good time laughing at a bad film. That is not the dynamic with streaming. People will watch nothing rather than sit down to watch a bad movie or something unknown to them.

What streaming failed to account for is the social aspect of films. In the old days, going to the theater for many people was like going to church. It was a thing you did every weekend, not because of the content but because of the social aspect. The theater was where men took their dates and the choice of film or how they selected the film to see was part of the courtship. Friends went to the theater, even if the films on offer were unknown or not good, because it was part of the social event.

Today, the theater is, at best, a sterile place to just see a film. In most cases, it means wading through diversity and tolerating people screaming at the screen, or shooting at it, in order to see a film that will be streaming in a few weeks. The theater is also an expensive proposition now. While this still works for big blockbuster films with good reviews, it is a deal killer for everything else. The theater is no longer a community experience, but a transactional one.

A similar dynamic held the rental market together. People in the suburbs stopped at the rental place to shop for videos. Usually, it was with friends or family, as it would be part of the social experience. Young people with little money could rent some bad films, buy a pizza, and make an evening of it. At the rental place people often talked about the films, which could result in a low-budget film becoming a hit in the rental market as word of mouth boosted its appeal.

That social aspect is gone with streaming. It is a solitary thing for many people because of the atomization of society. No one deliberately watches a bad film on their own because the best way to enjoy that content is with friends. Mystery Science Theater 3000 became a hit because everyone could relate to it. At the same time, people are less likely to try something unknown because why waste your leisure time on a film that you have never heard of, that might be terrible?

Of course, the dynamics of the American film market is why the studios now look to foreign markets for profit. This means more films high on big flashy effects and low on sensible dialogue and plot. They went all in comic book films at the same time they went all in on streaming for the same reason. The flashy stuff on screen works for non-English speakers abroad, so maybe it will work on them at home. Maybe it will also rope in the valuable white audience as well

The reason Hollywood is in trouble, and they are in serious trouble, is they detached themselves from the social aspects of their industry. No other country was able to produce a movie industry like America, because America was a unique place that needed a popular culture to hold it together. In the 20th century, film, television and sports were what everyone had in common. Hollywood was part of the national social capital that defined "American" for people.

As we see everywhere, Hollywood looked at the social capital and wondered how they could turn it into quick cash. They were not alone and maybe not the driving force behind this phenomenon. Mass migration played a role. The desire to harvest American social capital was also behind mass migration. Hollywood, however, needs a shared culture to work and now that the national social capital has been just about consumed, Hollywood is just another commodity.

Wherever the current crisis takes us, it is likely that the story of Hollywood tracks the story of the crisis. An industry that was integral to the people who made it possible is suffering the same fate as the culture it helped destroy. You cannot have a common culture containing people from every part of the globe. At best, it is a somewhat peaceful marketplace where people retreat into their private culture to get away from the cacophony of alien voices in the public square.

Hollywood was always a product of the public square. For it to be Hollywood and not just a film production center, it needed that vibrant American public square created by the people who created America. The people who made Hollywood could not have done it anywhere else. Now that the public square is collapsing and the people who made it are marginalized, Hollywood is dying. The oxpecker finally found a way to kill the host and as the host dies, it dies with it.