So did American movie producers condition Americans to impatience or was it already baked in? It seems American movie-goers are all about the entertainment, not the art. The let's-get-on-with-it mentality causes us to lose the opportunities art affords for consideration of the depths of humanity. What's a good consumer of art to do? Art is a balancing act: too much reflection time risks the assessment that it's too slow (boring,) but too little avoids depth and meaning.
Great question. I wish I were qualified to answer it. Audiences have probably always wanted entertainers to entertain them, and artists have probably always longed to do something more artful. Remember Molière's resistance to producing farces instead of tragedies? I suspect the avoidance of dead time in American film comes from (1) passive audiences and (2) directors wanting to keep a tight grip over their product, even though the product exists only in the mind of the moviegoer. If the audience has to interpret a scene for themselves that forces the audience to work harder and the director to give up some control. Neither audiences nor directors have thrived with ambiguity or issues left unresolved.
So did American movie producers condition Americans to impatience or was it already baked in? It seems American movie-goers are all about the entertainment, not the art. The let's-get-on-with-it mentality causes us to lose the opportunities art affords for consideration of the depths of humanity. What's a good consumer of art to do? Art is a balancing act: too much reflection time risks the assessment that it's too slow (boring,) but too little avoids depth and meaning.
Great question. I wish I were qualified to answer it. Audiences have probably always wanted entertainers to entertain them, and artists have probably always longed to do something more artful. Remember Molière's resistance to producing farces instead of tragedies? I suspect the avoidance of dead time in American film comes from (1) passive audiences and (2) directors wanting to keep a tight grip over their product, even though the product exists only in the mind of the moviegoer. If the audience has to interpret a scene for themselves that forces the audience to work harder and the director to give up some control. Neither audiences nor directors have thrived with ambiguity or issues left unresolved.