Killing The Language Of Cinema?

By Less Lee Moore

The recent launch of Movieclips.com, a website featuring “over 12,000 movie clips” that one can “search, find, view, discuss and share scenes from” seems like a great idea. From a practical standpoint, trying to find YouTube movie clips can be challenging as they are often taken down due to copyright infringement issues. (Movieclips has the express permission of several of the major studios to showcase these clips.)

On the other hand, why would we need a site like Movieclips.com (or movie clips on YouTube, for that matter)?

For many people, watching a movie in multi-part YouTube installments is the norm. I love watching movies in the theater, but with a caveat: I hate dealing with intrusive cellphone conversations, obnoxiously loud patrons, screaming babies, crappy radio on the PA, and blaring advertisements and previews. Yet, sitting in front of my computer watching a movie on a tiny screen in eight parts is not my ideal cinematic experience. And I don’t have the luxury of my own private screening room or a massive Plasma TV and state-of-the-art surround sound.

I am a movie lover and all of these obstacles tend to cheapen the experience.

According to their “about us” page, the creators of Movieclips.com, are also movie lovers:

We at MOVIECLIPS.com are movie fans – no, we are movie freaks! We love movies. We love to see movies. We love to talk about movies. We love to discover, rediscover and relive movies. For this reason, we have created movieclips.com – to bottle that insane, enthusiastic energy and share it with the world.

I’m not exactly sure how 12,000 plus clips is the direct result of being a movie freak, but perhaps other bloggers see things differently. On Cinematical, Christopher Campbell (somewhat ironically) voices his frustration at not being able to express his frustration via a certain movie clip, in this case, Network‘s famous line, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” He even insinuates that the purpose of the site is “for fans to call up their favorite movie moments and quotes easily and quickly.”

Not that I’m not a fan of quoting movies as a regular part of daily speech (and in some cases, quotes about movies, à la old MST3K episodes), I’m still unconvinced as to exactly how a vast, high quality, easily searchable repository of online movie clips denotes movie love.

Once again, the same old man in me who hates the modern, cinema-going experience rears his crabby head. If I’m going to watch a movie, I want to watch the whole thing, not just one scene. And I’m perfectly capable of using a movie quote to make a joke or a point; I don’t need a clip to speak for me.

My hackles are raised further by the article on Digital Trends which states:

Movieclips.com hopes to earn money from referral fees from users who proceed from clips to retailers like Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes to purchase content. After the beta period, Movieclips.com also hopes to begin to generate ad revenue with advertising overlays.

I realize that even movie lovers need to earn a living and I certainly don’t begrudge the site’s creators for coming up with a creative way to monetize their obsessions. But there’s something about the out-of-context nature of it that still bothers me, something about reducing artistic endeavors to sound bites and online purchases.

I’m all for the democratization of film, where technology has advanced and become more affordable, but this is not the same thing. This is the devaluation of film.

On the “feedback” section of Movieclips.com, one of the suggestions is:

allow users to link (mashup) specific clip-portions together.
For example, be able to take 2 seconds from clip A, add it to 1 second of clip B, and so on. For example, you could make a montage of every movie with “do it:” in the dialog.

I’m a fan of the pastiche or even the mash-up, but without a greater point to make, what is the purpose? This seems to be the inevitable path of postmodernism, particularly as argued by Fredric Jameson, when he described postmodern pastiche as a ” ‘dead language,’ without any political or historical content” (Wikipedia, “Pastiche”).