Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Fear In The Film

Robert Prechter presents a case of the alignment of mass social mood with numerous cultural trends. One of his examples is the alignment of movie themes with the current mood. Here's an article of his on the subject.
http://www.socionomics.com/archive/negative-mood-themed-films.aspx

Recently, we went to see the box office phenomenom "Twilight". The movie is a love story about a girl and her love for a vampire. It wasn't my kind of movie, but while sitting in the theatre I couldn't help from noticing the darkness of the film. The scenes were dark (vamps don't like light) and the vampire theme, by it's nature, was dark.

The Batman sequel, "The Dark Knight", is smashing box office records. It's been categorized as a psychological thriller. The word "dark" is even in the title. Ironically, Heath Ledger, who played the Joker committed suicide and Christian Bale, Batman, has been charged with assault on his mother and sister. Were they impacted by the darkness of their film?

A quick review of box office sales reveals that at the inflection point from expansion to contraction, the top films in 2001 were Harry Potter, Lord of The Rings, and Monsters Inc. While the scenes in Potter and Rings were very dark, at least the Monsters were cute in Monsters Inc. Ironically in 2000, the year of the dotcom crash, Mission Impossible II was the top grossing film.

So what's the point? Keep your radars on for clues regarding changes around you. How will they impact us? What influence will these films have on our children?

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