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I think this has also enshittened movies. When I watch movies made before 20 years ago, they seem like they were made by people who had life experience outside of filmmaking and celebrity scenes. Which is maybe strange, because Hollywood has been very nepotistic since the moment it came into being. But for whatever reason, Hollywood used to pull in more talent who had experience with life outside movies. There were soldiers, blue collar people, hippies, wild politically unorthodox guys like John Milius, and all sorts of other kinds of people who got into the film industry. When I watch modern film, on the other hand, I often feel like I am watching something made by people whose life experience consists of watching other movies and going to parties in New York and Los Angeles.
I could be biased, maybe my political opinions are filtering into my perception of movies. But this is how it feels to me.
No, because I noticed the same. The people making films today all come from the PMC for the most part and know no other lifestyle. It’s also just that in the 1950s society was much more economically integrated in the sense that the emerging PMC was very likely to grow up in neighborhoods and attend schools with the working class. Most of the generation that marched off to college after the war (or sent their kids to college) grew up working factory, sales, or skilled labor jobs or at least knew people who did. Modern elites are much less likely to have any significant contact with blue collar types, less likely to have served in the military, etc. so what they know about war, blue collar work, small towns, religion, and so on, come through narrative fiction.
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