Der Brucer and I were talking in the car yesterday. He was thinking about how much fun it would be to open a small movie theater and show old serials and such for a buck or two. Here in Rehoboth, he thought, it would be an interesting attraction, to bring people in for an hour or so, to entertain them when they want a break or when the weather isn't perfect. But then he had to stop. "None of the old serials were made in color, were they?" he asked. Well, no, by the time color became all-pervasive, the serials were no longer being made. But the conventional wisdom these days is that young people won't (or can't) sit still for a film shot in black and white.
And conventional wisdom might be right. I'd rather think that the "conventional wisdom" came from a pitch to sell the public on colorized versions of the old classics, but I could be wrong.
I can remember watching the old movies, like the Abbot and Costello films, or the old horror flicks (sometimes one and the same), every Saturday afternoon. They were shown in black and white, and I thought nothing was strange. The old films aren't shown on commercial television any more. They're passe, I guess. But damn, they were fun. And that fun is missing these days.
Instead, we get films like Pleasantville, where the gimmick is the special effect of turning a black and white world into color. Black and white is viewed as unrealistic, bizarre, constricted. Color is viewed as being liberated, fulfilling. But, if everything must be in color, isn't that just as restrictive as a world that is nothing but black and white?
(Yep, this is another "context" post.)
