FINAL WRITING EXAM 10% - ESSAY

ESSAY – CINEMA : ART OR ENTERTAINMENT?

Cinema is probably the most widespread art form in the world today. Since my childhood it has always been my passion, and I always saw it more as an art form, an opportunity for artists to visually explore themes, ideas and feelings. Unfortunately, with the gigantic control Hollywood has on today’s audiences, such art cinema, or auteur cinema, has only limited importance. They have their place in film festivals, between critics and film aficionados around the world, but not in the mainstream field, not with the average moviegoer. College students, especially, tend to be more attracted toward Hollywood blockbusters rather than have the curiosity to seek out independent or foreign-language films. Our survey is intended to see if college students do indeed take cinema more as entertainment value rather than art, and to see if adults think the opposite.

We asked the same number of questions to college students and adults about different matters concerning our main question. The results indeed proved our hypothesis : adults do see more the cinema more as an art form than college students. For example, they were asked if they often went to see foreign-language films. Only 20% of the college students answered yes, whereas half of the adults claimed to often go see foreign-language films. This topic can be verified very easily in a daily conversation; ask any college student about Avatar or the latest Harry Potter film, and he will probably tell you he has seen it. Now ask the same person about the last Palme d’Or winner The White Ribbon, a black-and-white psychiological study by austrian master filmmaker Michael Haneke, or about A Prophet, the french crime epic that won 9 Cesar Awards this winter, and you will be lucky if this person has even ever heard of these films. The survey also showed us that college students prefer to go to the movies accompanied by friends, are basically drawn to see a particular film because of a friend’s recommendation or the appeal of the advertising, and were not interested in auteur cinema as much as in Hollywood productions.

If our hypothesis was indeed confirmed, I think it is mainly due to the fact that college students have only limited knowledge of art cinema, not because they are ignorant or deficient. Hollywood is such an important and influential business that it overshadows about anything else going on in the film business. Major studios have for principal goal to make money. They don’t have to promote what may be the greatest cinema on the planet, but simply to produce what is most bankable : formula-based, star-filled, crowd-pleasing genre films with easy appeal. If college students don’t want to be challenged when they go to the movies, maybe it is beacuse they simply haven’t learned how to.

Cinema is directly related to historical periods; back in the late sixties and early seventies, when anti-establishment conduct became the norm, young people were searching for thought provocation in the movies. It was a time when the cerebral filmmaking of Jean-Luc Godard was popular, and when american cinema, at time time strongly influenced by the Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave, took an enormous breath of fresh air with fierce works from filmmakers like Dennis Hopper, John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese. Today’s youth does not necessarily wants to be this provoked, and adults, when growing older, become more curious about culture. That is why, in my opinion, adults see the cinema more as an art form that college students.