Homogeneous Hollywood

Stories are meant to be human, something many modern writers fail to understand

This piece is inspired by a Note I wrote called “Homogeneous Hollywood.” I wrote the short rant in about five minutes, but here, I decided to praise the human spirit a bit more. Oh, and add videos. Enjoy!

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In the past few weeks, you’ve probably heard about the recent strike in Hollywood. That is, unless you’ve been more concerned with more important things, to which I would salute you.

To catch everyone up to speed, our core players are the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA). They have a litany of concerns, ranging from AI companies using actors’ likeness without their permission to writers being concerned about royalty payments in the age of streaming.

The strike has caused delays to many productions, including the third film to my beloved Spiderverse franchise.

But we aren’t here to discuss unions. Whatever your stance on the matter, I think we can all agree that entertainment is rather important in our lives. You may scoff and say, “No, it’s not!” But think…

Where did you learn your morals? Or how to think from a different perspective? How did you learn about different places in the world? Different time periods? How were new interests, or even obsessions, sparked? How did you explore pre-existing ones?

My best guess is that—in some way or another—it all links back to entertainment.

There are many members in WGA, SGA, and other entertainment guilds/unions that are afraid of Hollywood studios replacing them—specifically writers—with artificial intelligence. They’re afraid that, rather than pay a human for a script, Hollywood producers will simply open a software, put in a prompt, and—bam!—a new movie. A soulless new movie.

But here’s the thing—the human writers have been giving us soulless movies and shows for a long time. Disney and Pixar—politics aside—have been suffering in quality for years now. No matter what their box office reports show, their films have been lacking and are increasingly becoming mediocre. Not to mention the dull live-action films and repetitive sequels released year after year.

And it is a shame! Do you know why? Because humans are a species that thrive off of storytelling. It’s who we are. A child will recount his day, stumbling over words and jumping from scene to scene, reliving the excitement of simply playing with his toys. We can listen, mesmerized for hours, to an elderly woman as she tells us about memories from 50 years ago. We can spend hundreds of dollars on an enthralling video game series because the story and the world it depicts is just so engaging.

If you know even the slightest bit about history, you know this isn’t a modern phenomena. For at least 64,000 years, we’ve been telling stories. We painted our lives on walls, drawing stampedes and stylized creatures to illustrate our triumphs and sorrows. We showed the togetherness we felt with our clans through the chaotic murals of hands darting across stone—morbid and fascinating paintings made with literal flesh and blood.

As the ages passes we passed down our tales, and remembered these ancient stories in the form of myths. These myths passed down knowledge such as the precession of the equinoxes and haunting memories the Ice Age¹. These myths also taught us morals and valuable lessons (e.g., stealing is wrong). They taught us to dream. They taught us to fear. They formed religions and philosophies. They acted as guides for daily life.

Eventually, the spoken myths were written down. Our oldest records of writing date back to ancient Mesopotamia. There, we learned to never trust snakes, to beware of clingy goddesses, and to never get too attached to our clay friends. (Thanks Epic of Gilgamesh!)

Ancient myths were also recorded in song form—perhaps, the first form of edutainment. (Trust me, ancient edutainment is superior to the modern type.)

Interestingly, there’s a several thousand year gap between the first recorded written stories and the first recorded performed plays—though one can imagine that informal performances of myths and stories were held well before the ancient Greeks came on to the scene.

Originally, plays were literally just a single person standing on stage and telling the audience a story. (In modern times, this ancient format for both comedy and tragedy still exists in the form of Netflix stand-up specials.)

For hundreds of years, plays were adapted and reformatted, with different writers experimenting with various styles and themes to provide audiences with meaningful and impactful stories. At the same time, intriguing stories were also being told through books and poems, songs and chants. The spread of information was only bolstered through inventions such as the printing press.

Throughout the world, human experiences were being shared. More specifically, we were sharing our values, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our pain, and our love. We were sharing human emotion, and continuously found new ways to express our admiration and angst towards simply being human.

Whether the medium was opera, ballet, vaudeville, pulp fiction, religious texts, or the spoken musings of a jaded beatnik…we were always finding ways to experiment and tell our stories. Creators had to find a way to take what was in their head and coherently communicate it to the world. And the best works, audiences learned, were those filled with dedication and love of the very writers, artists, and performers responsible for them. When a creator put their soul on display, magic happened.

And then, at the turn of the 20th century, film entered our lives. A box with the right gears and calibrations and chemicals could record anything. And then play it back! Not just a still…but a real moving image! It’s a marvel of science we often take for granted.

This world of film unlocked a new wave of creativity. Sci-fi writers pounced onto the scene with films such as Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902)…

Meanwhile, eager artists were trying their hand at animation, creating stunning works that bent the very fabric of reality…

And who can forget the vaudeville performers, who took their acts to the silver screen and made us laugh and gawk at every stunt…

A hundred years later, and we’ve seen many interesting developments in film. Firstly, cameras can now record audio and color—something unthinkable once upon a yesteryear. We invented robots and puppets, realistic prosthetics, hypnotic dance sequences, and CGI…all in the name of telling a story.

Yes, there were, are, and will always be people who are just in it for the money. But the priority of Hollywood—and the film industry as a whole—first and foremost is one thing: storytelling.

And what would be the most logical way to make the most money in this business?

To tell amazing stories.

Unfortunately, however, Hollywood executives don’t think this way. They want to play it safe. They want to do what’s been “proven” and has “worked” in the past. Yet, the writers their companies hire imitate the past without understanding why something worked. They don’t understand why we cried when Mufasa died or cheered Rocky on for six films straight. They just think, “well, I have to add this in because it worked.”

What neither the WGA or studios understand is this: film is a balance between the chaos of art and the structure of business.

With just artistic expression, we get noise and abstraction—films without plot structure or rather confusing ones at that. These films may be jaw-dropping in visuals, but lack depth and meaning. They’re just…art pieces.

And with just business, we get boring, mind-numbing works. They’re formulaic, predictable. They follow the latest fads and trends because other industries do it, so why not films? These films are just…a product.

The best films are those that balance the yin and yang of art and business. Into and Across the Spiderverse are wonderful examples of this. Hypnotic, psychedelic visuals with a gripping story and strong characters. (Not to mention, music that fits perfectly with the style of the movie.) These movies taught us lessons of resilience and bravery, and has made children and teens think a bit deeper about who they call a ‘villain.’

Ultimately, these two films made audiences feel, be it happy, sad, crushed, elated, etc. It gave us human experiences without the politics (I don’t count the random flag or button pin in the second film, those were just props) and has made a generation eager to be alive.

Humans are creatures of creation. We were born to tell and consume stories—it’s who we are. They allow us to reflect on our own lives and the world around us. In our increasingly hectic lives, entertainment is meant to be a respite—an escape that lets us dream. We don’t deserve meaningless, formulaic garbage.

AI only “threatens” the writers who provide us with said meaningless, formulaic garbage. The only difference between an AI bot and a modern half-writer is that one scrolls on Tumblr all day and has to legally be paid.

Besides…AI isn’t the real threat. We all know who the real threat is. It’s the artists, writers, and performers who are putting their souls into every piece they make. These True Creatives are in an arms-race against AI—they’re pushing their own creative limits and pushing us closer and closer to a Neo-Renaissance.

No matter how much executives try to ignore them, True Creatives will always exist. And no algorithm can ever replace them.

1. Hancock, G., & Faiia, S. (1995). Fingerprints of the Gods. (An amazing book on lost civilizations)

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