20 January 2012 - commercial entertainment

Successful entertainment tends toward mass entertainment, and mass entertainment tends to become commercial—it takes money to promote, even where it may not to produce. The money has the power and eventually ends up making the decisions, which are risk-averse so that we get Hollywood cooking up a mash of cliches with, when we’re lucky, an occasional raisin of redeeming value. Failed entertainment is more interesting because it’s a mash of idiosyncracies.