Imagine going to a movie theater and being given a barf bag because the movie you are about to see is replete with unimaginable violence.
This is no joke. The movie "Raw" by French director Julia Ducournau has such graphic scenes of cannibalism that it has made many moviegoers sick to their stomach.
To obviate the need for cleaning up seats and the floor, management at a movie theater in Los Angeles handed out barf bags to its patrons.
I grew up on wholesome fare. I had no choice.
The theaters only played respectable movies like "Hatari," "Lawrence of Arabia," and "Sound of Music."
In the Hindi movies, even a kiss was not allowed. A director could be clever and show a man and a woman reflected in the waters of a pool or a lake, and let the waves bring them to osculatory closeness.
If the devil got his hands on a movie's script, the censors came down hard on such productions.
It was a safer world back then; a more serene world.
If there was a gruesome part to a story, the movie would get to that point and cut away, leaving things to the viewers' imagination.
Viewers were free to imagine the worst outcomes with full bang and color, but it was not there for everyone to see.
In "Psycho," for example, Hitchcock never felt a compulsion to show the knife and the gore in the shower scene. Shadow play and sound effects took care of the narrative to full effect.
Today, everything is "too real," and edgy. Everything is "in your face." Shock value has replaced subtlety, and all the soft touches are gone.
This hard edge afflicts romance, as well.
Coquetry has given way to coarseness, and the engines of new-found artistic liberty stitch everything together with bare skin and bombast.
The poetry in the gentle sliding of a gown from the shoulder to the ankle has given way to the ripping of clothes in passion's heat.
In the old days, a flash of skin was sufficient to titillate libido, but today a full gymnastics of love-making is needed to satisfy peoples' tastes.
Things have to be overblown and wildly exaggerated to snag peoples' attention. Poetry that doesn't explode and shed its clothes is seen as prosaic.
I have not been to a movie theater in over a decade. Somehow, the modern movies do not interest me; they do not satisfy.
I do not even partake in the remakes of the classics. The old black-and-white movies, with their fidelity to the original text, do nicely.
Who wants masterful works mucked up with new interpretations and artistic innovations?
A man reaches an age when he has no more time to meddle with mediocrities.
Why spend time with a modern-day bestseller when works by Hardy and Dickens are still sitting on the shelf unread.
Why go to a museum to stare at twisted shapes of metal and mere splotches of paint when Caravaggio and Titian beckon from ancient corridors.
And how much better and nicer it is to take in "Casablanca" than to be run over by the modern muse.
Published May 17, 2017 in the El Paso Times
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Published Newspaper Columns On Travel, Museums, Art, Movies and Music, 1998-2019
Non-FictionThese columns were published in the El Paso Times between 1998 and 2019. This selection focuses on the themes of travel, museums, art and music.
