David Cameron’s ill-conceived vision for the British film industry
Jack Blackburn 11.32am
David Cameron’s comments about the UK film industry have attracted a good deal of controversy.
The Prime Minister’s view is that the film industry’s primary concern should be to invest in films that are likely to be “mainstream and commercially promising”.
This is part of a wider range of government statements on the subject of British film, most of which will be formally set out in Lord Smith’s review next week. The emphasis is largely on the notion of making British film more lucrative than it is now, by appealing to broader international markets (i.e. America) and trying to maximise profits by investment in the aforementioned “commercially promising” projects.
The rhetoric has been brief and lacking detail so far but its tone is troubling. It sounds like ill-informed nonsense. While I have sympathy with the idea that so-called ‘mainstream’ projects should get a higher proportion of public funding than they currently do, this idea contains many problems.
Firstly, as has been widely commented, one cannot reliably predict which films are going to be successful. The two most successful British films of recent years, Slumdog Millionaire (2008) and The King’s Speech (2010), were not ideas which seemed “commercially promising” until very late on in their production. Who would have thought that millions would see films about the slums of Bombay, or a man’s struggle with his stutter? Famously, the former lost its American distributor a matter of months before it won the Oscar for Best Picture.
Secondly, given that you cannot make these predictions, if you are looking for potential commercial successes, you are more than likely to go for safe-bet ideas, which generally translate to the inane, the dull and the forgettable. If one looks at the most bankable films made in Hollywood, such as Transformers (2007) and Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, 2006, 2007, 2011), they are often (but not always) unremarkable. They frequently aim for the lowest common denominator and generate repetitive sequels. Are these the characteristics we want for the British film industry?
Finally, the philosophy behind these ideas is deeply distressing. It is unacceptable to presume that art and culture should only be there if there is an appropriately sized audience for it. Such a philosophy serves to create a narrow and homogenous culture, increasingly devoid of variety and vivacity, based not on the tastes of many groups but on the single perceived group of the “many”. This is undesirable, particularly as there is a vibrant and successful film industry in Britain. Based on its good track record, the Prime Minister could be well-advised to leave it to run itself.
This article was originally published on Jack Blackburn’s film blog, Reel 6.
Follow Jack on Twitter @BlackburnJA and the Reel 6 blog @Reel_6
