Name: POP CULTURE: What Is Cinema For?
Uploaded: 2017-09-18T15:07:07.000Z
Duration: 9 min 55 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Cinema is the most prestigious cultural
activity in the modern world.

It is for us what theater
was in the age of Shakespeare,

or painting was in
the days of Leonardo DaVinci.

The art form with the biggest impact,
the largest budgets,

Collectively, we recognize that film has
an astonishing power to induce emotion.

But it would sound weird to stop and ask
what film was really for,

and why we spent
so much time in its presence.

We don't generally think of films are serving
any very strenuous or serious cause.

We ask for a lot of nice
but not terribly lasting things of films,

to while away the hours
of a long flight,

This is a great loss for us
and for cinema itself.

We should try to pin down more accurately
what films actually do for us,

then make sure we're reliably making
and finding our way to see the best,

that is, the most useful kinds of things.

We would ideally accept that film,
like all the other art forms,

best reveals its power, when we
conceive of it as a kind of therapy.

Let's consider five key problems and
how films can help us with them.

We get ground down and frustrated
by the problems life throws at us,

and we tend to react by
getting ever more stern and serious.

Certain films can beautifully
address this natural tendency,

when they show us people not
too different from ourselves,

in difficult situations,
except very much unlike us.

the exact things that really great
with excessive seriousness.

At their best, there's nothing trivial
about these comedies at all.

of sweetly etching us towards being
slightly nicer people to live around.

Sometimes in life,
an action that seems quite small,

You tell a little lie.
You steal a tiny bit.

You get a bit lustful and
carried away just once,

Films can help us by speeding up time,
and showing us in a matter of hours,

fearsome result of what we might
originally thought of as small failings.

Film can push the consequences
to the maximum.

it can make us want to
be the kind of person,

who is a touch more forthright,
and little more honest and moral,

readier to face an unpleasant moment now
and (thereby) head off a distant disaster.

We leave the cinema, less inclined to be
self-righteous about the failings of others

scared for ourselves and more
respectful towards things we hold dear.

but it's usually very healthy and helpful,

to feel that one's life is a bit special,

deserving of admiration and respect,
a little glamorous.

Glamour lies elsewhere, in the lives of
the famous in swankier parts of town,

in activities and jobs
far removed from our own.

It can put in front of our eyes
delightful images, many meters in size,

shot an extraordinary colors,
vivid and immediate.

Because so many films
glamorize the wrong things,

we used to thinking that an element of
alienation and corruption is a generic,

But in fact, film is well able
to show us the less obvious,

Whereas the worst sort of films
eject us back into our lives,

the best ones leave us ready
to re-engage with circumstances,

Cinema can help us love and
appreciate what we already have.

Because it tells us about categories of
people we want nothing to do with,

places that seem frightening, bizarre,
unremittingly depressing.

We going to think we're not at all
interested in people in Iran or Venezuela.

Our disenchantment make it expressed as
racism, arrogance, or just plain coldness.

Ultimately, what we suffer from is
a denial of our common humanity.

Cinema can perfectly compensated for
this withdrawal of emotional energy,

by showing us the appeal of
people far away,

we'd otherwise be
completely uninterested in.

we're reminded of an obvious
but so easily forgotten fact.

Our membership of the family of humanity.

We've gone so far down
the track of teaching ourselves

about the importance of
gentleness and compromise.

Many of us have unwittingly develop
problems around courage and self-assertion.

Decent people have learned so well
to suppress their own appetite for a fight,

But in a world where
conflict is unavoidable,

good people sometimes need to strengthen
their willingness to face down opposition,

not always to compromise and play it safe,

but to take risks, to get out and fight,
to relish victory,

and to be a bit more ruthless in the
service of noble and deeply important ends.

Sometimes, it's not enough
just to be right.

You also need to win so some of us
might well benefit from seeing films,

that tell tales of heroism to follow
someone who has to navigate the world,

The film shouldn’t ideally leave us just
in awe at the daring of another person.

It should do that for most valuable thing.

so that we too become just a little more
heroic and brave where we need to be.

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POP CULTURE: What Is Cinema For?

obvious

compromise

deserve

enormous