Barnum and Mencken Were Right

"The following lines probably say something unflattering about America, but I'd rather not think about it too much:

"Pirates of the Caribbean: 36% positive reviews, about 4200 theaters.

"Midnight in Paris: 88% positive reviews, 6 theaters."

Greg "Uncle Scoopy" Wroblewski, othercrap.com, May 19, 2011


Disregarding the critical consensuses, at least for the moment: this means that even Woody Allen cannot get his new film on more than six screens nationwide.  (Let me guess: even Chicago is missing it for the time being.)  This is not some obscure avant garde experimentalist or nascent indie film parvenu.  This is an Academy Award winner and household name who is relatively commercial, reasonably entertaining, and enormously successful.  Six screens.  (Perhaps there are tentative plans to expand depending on the box office performance.)

Perhaps a better illustration of this unattractive truth, for reasons beyond the auteur's neuroses and scandals, is seminal Long Island progressive rock band Dream Theater, perhaps my favorite band (if there is just one).  (I have written about them extensively and may even publish some of the writing here even though their fans do not seem interested.)  They are largely unknown to their "fellow Americans," but, if they are known at all, they are recognized for virtuosic musicianship and operatic vocals in what is still a rock and metal context.  For years, I have been researching and cataloging the band's live performances.  I do not have attendance figures, but, for years, the band has consistently headlined arenas on most other continents, especially Europe and Asia.  (In Europe, they headline the same arenas that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band headline.)  This likely translates to average attendance figures of at least ten thousand people per night.  In their home country, they average roughly two thousand people per night.  (That is in the parts of the country where they have opportunities to play; promoters in some areas of the country refuse to book them.)  The band has considerable fan support in the parts of the country where promoters shrug, but those promoters require a certain amount of airplay and chart action, regardless of album sales or fan base size.  Meanwhile, those fans are constantly bombarded with advertisements (including concert advertisements) for tuneless dilettantes like the billboard that glowered at me over Sunset Boulevard last week.  (This billboard advertised a tragically successful and popular act that I plan to satirize in the near future.)

None of this has much to do with Woody Allen or Dream Theater, though I am glad I had the opportunity to see a double feature of the overrated Annie Hall and the underrated Manhattan at Los Angeles's New Beverly Cinema recently.  I am thankful for the opportunity to see Midnight in Paris as early as 12:01 AM Friday, though I may not see it at all.  And I will never forget Dream Theater headlining (though not selling out) the Greek Theatre in August 2009.  (They have a somewhat larger following around here, and Dweezil Zappa's Zappa Plays Zappa opened.)  Such opportunities are among the reasons why I tolerate "blue states," particularly New York and California.

This has to do with the fact that the toll of a century of progressive education, three decades of eMpTyV, and, perhaps and to a lesser extent, four decades of Children's Television Workshop, have solidified what was already a latent tendency in America, going back to the literature of Washington Irving at least.  In an age of false alternatives (including mind versus body, art versus entertainment, and art versus business), this country necessarily and consistently abandoned mind and art.

I am surrounded by philistines, and I am completely at odds with virtually every trend in my country, cultural and political.