What the Flick?! Podcast 11/20/18

Re: Trumphie, Trump, Trump

Gee, what I wonder is.

What did we do ten or twenty years ago, before we had men in power, to whom we could attribute the blame for everything practically that goes wrong in the world? The problem with the late Young Turks 2018 broadcasts, looking back at it from this remove – maybe is that they were rubber stamped by this ‘date stamp’ that said Post-Trump era.

I had a ‘real’ film experience this week, for the first time in a very long time. It was a ‘flash back’ film experience too. I saw a movie called ‘The Smartest Men in the Room’, and didn’t really understand it that well, when I saw it in an Art House theatre in Dublin when it was officially released. I was younger.

I watched the movie about a company that used to operate and employ people in Texas many years ago. The documentary about Enron, ‘The Smartest Men in the Room’, pre-empted the era of Schwarzenegger as Govenor of the state of California, when he took a break out from making movies.

What I enjoyed though, about re-watching this old documentary on a smaller screen (the main reason, why I believe this was a real ‘movie experience’), was that there wasn’t a shred of any mention, or hint of the ‘Trump era’. It had everything that was ‘wrong’ with the world in that old documentary about Enron company, and the financial collapse of stock market in early 2000’s.

However, the documentary about Enron was just made in an era that was pre-social media, pre-smart phone, pre-Trump, pre-peak-cynicism.

And that’s what hit me about ‘The Smartest Guys in the Room’.

What hit me about that movie, straight between the eyes. Is that even faced with the worst aspects of capitalism and free market gone out of control – that people who made ‘cynical’ documentary movies back in the early 2000’s – still weren’t as cynical about everything, as people who would make movies (or talk about them), now in 2018.

The reason that I had this weird, and very real ‘movie experience’ when watching an old documentary (that was intended to be cynical). Is that watching a movie about bad behavior at Enron, made back then, is this more ‘positive’ in it’s outlook – than that of listening to film critics talk in 2018.

That’s what hit me. The difference that 15 years of time can make. To society and the idea makers in society, at different stages in history. It made me wonder, do film makers and film critics really appreciate how extremely cynical they have become at this stage in history? In 2018? Because looking at what passed for cynical in documentary movies – that is, very good documentary movies – around 15 years ago. Doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what we call cynicism in 2018. All the best.