Music vs Movies

Since the dawn of time when people told stories around campfires or made paintings on cave walls we humans seem to have a need to tell stories and a desire to let our imagination escape from whatever our day to day reality is. Music has always been with us in one form or another and the primal bang of a drum still affects even the most stoic of us in one way or another. Movies or the idea of motion pictures was made possible by technology but evolved from tribal rituals, stories told at gatherings, to Community Theater and later what we now see projected on a screen. Sound and stories acted out for our entertainment have always been with us in one form or another.

Now you can love movies and you can love music, it's not a matter of one or the other, but which moves you more? People often identify music with a particular era or time in their lives and movies give us a cultural frame of reference and a means of escape for a couple of hours; but which art form allows you to turn your brain off and makes the outside world disappear for however briefly? For me it's music. 

I love the idea of an individual or a group of individuals working together, developing their craft and producing sounds from their voice or their instruments that connect straight to you and take your mind off whatever has been going on that day, or can move or inspire you to action. Surely no movie has ever brought about as global a reaction as say Band Aid's 'Do They Know it's Christmas' did in 1984/85. A song that inspired USA for Africa's 'We Are the World' and Northern Light's 'Tears are Not Enough', as well as hugely popular twin benefit concerts in London and Philadelphia. 

That being said movies can have a longevity that few 20th century songs have, the popularity of films such as The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind and The Ten Commandments remains enduring to this day and is passed down from grandparents to parents and our own children. It would be unfair to compare film to the ongoing although limited appeal still of classical composers such as Bach and Beethoven however classic cinema's arguable historic equivalent - the plays of William Shakespeare do remain popular (although in a limited way) to this day. 

My main issue with movies is that I have trouble turning off my brain. Music allows me to do that, film engages me negatively and disturbs me more often than not. So much so that I rarely ever go to the movies and one day should make a trivia board game called "John Hasn't Seen It". I like silly comedies, such as the old Woody Allen films like Banana's or Play it Again Sam, I enjoy the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films and a few other silly ones, as well as a few classic westerns and older World War 2 films but that is pretty much it. I find that modern films have become ultra graphic relying on special effects and shock rather than acting and storytelling; movies as well have become less historically accurate, wanting to 'take an alternate' point of view deviating even more than they used to from what actually happened in the event they are portraying. 

Movies also initiate in me the impulse to wonder "what kind of person wrote this crap". Now that goes for music too, there is a lot more garbage than good stuff out there, fair to say. However most music is not mindlessly violent and lyrics still rely on metaphor (however crass) rather than being in your face. Anyone seeing the John Ford classic The Searchers would remember the scene where John Wayne's character Ethan looks into the burned out house where his brother's family were killed. The horror of what he saw was vividly portrayed by the expression in John Wayne's character's face, without saying a word he said everything you needed to know. Few actors and fewer directors would use such subtly today; instead you'd be treated to a graphic panorama of corpse's and gore just only for the purposes of a 'shock' moment, a director who’s never seen such a bloody scene in real life wanting to be ‘realistic’.

I cannot seem to get my head around what prompts people to sit down and write much of what we see on the screen and am still further mystified by why people view it as entertainment. Even a film like Star Wars - and I admit this is more an issue with my failure to turn off my imagination than anything else – the scene when the two storm-troopers go onto the Millennium Falcon to search it and are shot and killed by presumably Han Solo and Luke Sky-walker, how come there were no marks are their armour, would not stripping the bodies of their uniform been a hugely traumatic experience - especially for Luke seeing what would have been two dead young faces frozen in fear and pain, being stripped naked then having their clothing (likely with pictures of loved ones inside) caused both of them to throw up over themselves and break down. Now I know any time I've watched interview or spoken with soldiers who have examined and searched enemy dead in real life, it was hugely traumatizing and moving, most had to stop the camera's to collect themselves. But in Star Wars or other movies it's as routine as going to the store for a jug of milk. Also what happened to the bodies of the two storm-troopers, were they rotting on the Falcon for days or were they coldly jettisoned in space, was there a brief ceremony for them the way soldiers in real life pay respects? Why would we find something like this entertaining?

You see now how my brain thinks, why I just don't bother going to movies, and can't get my head around them. Probably just a John thing but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

As far as music goes, there are certain artists, certain voices and combinations of instruments that allow me to turn my mind off, that put whatever else went on that day out of my head and fill it with something I can't even explain. Loud of soft, fast or slow music seems to connect with me, with the human soul in a way no other art form can. Yes movies can make you laugh or cry, but can they bring you out of your seat and dance? Nobody has a party and puts on a movie, they instead turn up the tunes, open a few drinks and enjoy themselves. 

That is another thing in music's favour for me. Although you certainly can enjoy movies alone or with others, they're essentially not an interactive medium, you sit and watch. You may talk about it after but interacting during it takes away from the experience. Music on the other hand can be a foreground thing, as in watching a band or listening to the radio or can be a background thing enhancing the mood at a get together, with certain songs bringing back mutual recollections. 

Both movies and music are cultural touchstones that reflect where society is at the time in it's thinking and it's values but to me, If I had to choose between never seeing a movie again, or never hearing another song, I'd give up movies over music. That being said I'm glad we have both – I just have my own preference.