Please Shut Up From Now On

Like this woman, David Mamet appears to be laboring under the misconception that he is intelligent, when in reality he is, like this woman, a gibbering idiot.

In language one can only conclude is meant to impress a “sophisticated” UK readership (they for whom Benny Hill was the apex of hilarity), Mamet declares that there really is an Illuminati cabal controlling the doings of mankind, and that in their inexorable pursuit of TOTAL CONTROL, theatrical release motion pictures are doomed to extinction.

I conclude that he is either telling an elaborate joke, which WOULD be pretty funny, or he has frittered away whatever functioning synapses he might have once weakly laid claim to via the long-term effects of mental masturbation like this:

I pray you bear with me as I exceed my brief.

The clan will have an elder to adjudicate disputes, but a society of several differing clans may require reference to mutually shared conceptions, thus giving birth to the lawyer. Travel and trade give rise to the necessity of credit, and bring into being the financier. Each expansion of social network, from the family to the clan, the tribe, the kingdom and state, will engender both an increasingly abstract philosophy and an increasingly elaborate mechanism of oversight.

Individuals known and responsible to one another live in groups that can enforce their norms through shame; less intimate groups rely upon the assignment of guilt to keep order. Guilt, as opposed to shame, must be proved, so legislatures come into being to decide – and policing organisations to enforce – the group norms. At this point, small imagination is required of the inspired individual to realise the benefits of collusion.

….President Monroe, in 1822, used the phrase “Manifest Destiny” to describe a moment of enlightenment that, perhaps, ran: “Looking at this map, I see the blue-coloured water starts on the right-hand border of what appears to be a continent; and, on the left-hand border, I see another expanse of blue. The state, being currently situated on the right, must not a sense of visual balance demand that we expand until our polity touches the other blue part?”

….So we see the rise of ultra-nationalism and the creation of the ne plus ultra of the exploitable group: everybody. This largest committee-of-the-whole is scattered, contentious, divided in language, culture, history, and every last thing save exploitability. Multinationalism is a brief to transform the entire world into that which the Japanese once, in their charming self-restraint, envisioned only as the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere”. A previous president spoke of Manifest Continental Destiny, a more contemporary administration latterly expanded the vision to include the Middle East.

As the captive, distracted, coerced or exploited group grows larger, a more vicious group of raptors is called forth.

….A recent summer movie featured two of the largest stars in the business. The film was excoriated and the actors spanked by the press. It did nothing at the box office and is accounted, in Hollywood, a historic and satisfying flop. It will lose between $80m and $100m and its title will become a by-word. Failure in showbusiness is, to everyone at some time, inevitable. And all strive to avoid it and the consequent shame, blame, and impoverishment. The studios test, poll, cajole, advertise, and inveigh in an effort to ensure against failure.

….The studios will note that – as in politics – vertical integration is the clear, essential, and sole answer to audience control. For the Droves have a choice at the box office, but they have no choice at home on the couch.

“If you want to see your favorite, X,” the studios will come to say, “you must buy from me this package containing whatever I say it will contain. It may be called entertainment, or news, or whatever I wish to call it. But your once-vaunted droves are no more.” As the canny politician has realised the error of the ballot box, the wise showman will see that it is only the existence of the theatrical release that contains risk.

….I will conclude in predicting the disappearance of the motion picture theatre within the next 15 to 20 years. [Guardian]

I will conclude that you are a supercilious constipated hack.