I am a little looney, a student at the University of Central Oklahoma, a musician, and a wanna-be writer. I like beaches, sunsets, toilets, white walls, mops, and vacuums. Let's Dance!
Viewer Discretion Fundamental
From the dawn of talking pictures, the charismatic personalities of films have in one way or another shaped the foundation of most American lives. Cary Grant, Bela Lugosi, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, M.C. Hammer, Tom Cruise, Britney Spears, even John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan have all been attributed with the use of this magical medium to transform millions. Many more have and will continue to touch our lives through films. Therefore, as a democratic body, we the people have a great amount of responsibility for the allocation and direction of the power given by film. Each dollar spent on a film by the consumer is much like a vote being cast for the direction of the future.
Take a look at the Western film genre for an example. The stoic and passive until pushed cowboy of the Western film greatly influenced men around the nation who identified with and yearned to be the lone cowboy. James Dean is one of the best examples of a person so greatly influenced by the cowboys of Western films that it became his life. Hundreds of films with nearly the same story were made with great success. Then came Blazing Saddles, permanently turning the cowboy into a laughingstock, thus killing the Western genre almost completely. However, it wasn’t the film that made this huge change in viewing trends, but we the people. By supporting the hilarious image over the serious image in conversation and reflecting it in our consumer habits, Western genre films effectively became caricatures of themselves.
Although this example is limited to outcomes regarding the future of viewing options, there are much more relating to many aspects of our lives, such as what our children choose to wear after watching MTV, how we select a president by basing our opinions strictly on looks, our grocery habits by remembering commercial jingles, and ultimately our cultural values. It is easy to lay all of this responsibility on those who produce these films, but in our consumer-driven society, the responsibility for our future is entirely upon our shoulders.