OFF: Obscurities

[Stephen Swann]

Torgo Sedler writes:
>
> Well, I'm a  movie buff of sorts, and I do see quite a few independent
> films. Why do I like these so much? It's easy math really. With
> independent films I usually have never even heard the title before when
> I watch one, so I basically know nothing about them going into them.
> This makes for some VERY pleasant surprises indeed.
>
> As for "mainstream hollywood" movies, I like these just as well,
> unfortunately many of these fall under the wheels of the great hype
> machine and therefore I expect more and they don't deliver. Holywood
> hype is like a television laughtrack for me. Tell me when to laugh and I
> probably won't, but slip something subtle by me with no warning and I'll
> laugh 'till I drop.
>
> So I guess if you apply my movie thinking to music, I could easily
> understand why people like obscure music so much. In that case, ignore
> my first paragraph please.  :^)

Well, I think this thread took a logn turn, when we started to
deliberate on the "fact" that people like to watch obscure
movies/listen to obscure music because it's obscure.

I think it's just that people who are really interested in a topic,
-any topic- chew through all the easy/well-known stuff pretty soon.
They like some of it, but find a lot of it very "same-y", and go in
search of something different to keep them interested.  If they stay
at it long enough, this leads them ever further and further off the
beaten path, until it looks like they're deliberately *avoiding* the
mainstream.  They're most likely not.  It's just that after a while,
they've heard what the mainstream has to offer, and it doesn't change
that rapidly that one needs to scramble to keep up with it.  :)

The music scene is shaped like a pyramid, with a handful of highly
visible artists making all the money and getting all the attention.
Meanwhile, for every one of them, there are 1,000 unheard bands who
are just as good or better.  On this list, we're mostly music fans,
so it seems like we're spending all of our time in pursuit of those
"other" bands, and we wonder why people would bother chasing down
"art house films" when Hollywood films are good enough.  If this was
alt.cult-movies, we'd be wondering why anyone would want more than 40
or 50 CDs, since collecting them takes up valuable time that could be
better spent trying to track down that rumored Tai Seng release of
The Bride With White Hair, restored from the original silver masters
(I made that up by the way, so don't any film buffs go nuts).  ;-)

Steve
swann at plutonia.com