Senior Staff Writer Jimmy Gilmore signs off with final thoughts on industry
That’s Entertainment has been a part of this newspaper since Fall 2009. This is its last installment.
Considering it, as well as I, will be leaving The Daily Gamecock after penning many words and thoughts, it seems appropriate that this final column should try, however vainly, to act as a summary and provide some kind of conclusion.
You’ll forgive me if this gets a little personal.
This column, for those who faithfully read it, has hopefully provided a launching pad to think about a variety of issues in the national entertainment industry from different perspectives. From Roman Polanski’s 2009 arrest to Conan O’Brien’s decision to leave NBC to Charlie Sheen’s meltdown, this column hasn’t been so much about reporting the news as it’s been about interpreting it and finding a lens to connect issues I think are very important for our culture.
Whether or not I succeeded is ultimately up to you.
I want to leave on this note, and I want you to keep this in your head for as long as you watch movies, television or anything of the sort: This is a great time in our history to love entertainment.
If you think about our access to consume media, it’s unbelievably exhilarating. We can store thousands of hours of music as files on devices that slide in our pocket. We can watch movies on screens as big as a cinema and as small as an iPhone. Television is adjusting to our schedule with Hulu and DVRs. And with YouTube, the basic distribution of a video to anyone in the world is easier now than the cinema’s founders likely could have ever conceived.
We are living in science fiction, and we should never frown on that fact. We should embrace it.
We may bemoan 3-D movies and teen pop sensations like Justin Bieber, but at the same time we must acknowledge we can now see independent, foreign and classic films through Netflix, or discover independent bands through YouTube and iTunes.
This is the give-and-take of the entertainment industry, and one that has always existed. We hear people every day bemoan that Hollywood “just doesn’t make them like they used to,” but those people rarely stop to think that Hollywood has always made hundreds of movies each year, and maybe two or three dozen gain a shelf life. Much fewer gain immortal esteem in our cultural canon.
The challenge before us is to not just simply praise what we hear or dismiss what we see. The challenge is to develop an appreciation, a desire to approach things from multiple perspectives.
We are only as smart as we allow ourselves to be.
I love entertainment, and I always will. I love the cinema, the feeling of sharing images and narratives with a community of viewers, of being enveloped for two hours.
My greatest hope is to have shared this love with you.
When Conan O’Brien left NBC, he had one piece of advice: “Please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism; it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere.”
As I sign off for good, I implore you, don’t be cynical toward the entertainment industry. Our culture is not just about cheap reality programming, and deep down we all know this. There are deeper forces at work in our desire to go to movies and watch television with friends, in our desire to pay exorbitant prices to see our favorite artists perform live.
It’s because media and the entertainment industry are a shared experience. It has an uncanny ability to inform our culture because it unites us, however briefly and however fleetingly, with each other.
Maybe it teaches us things about ourselves, maybe it shows us fascinating sites. Maybe it doesn’t. At any rate, we share it, and it is a part of all of us.
That is, and always will be, Entertainment.
