Into the debate about how technology affects our human existance comes exciting news from Hollywood: Sony announces a new romantic comedy promising to examine “the illusion of choice – and just how hard it is to find the right person in a sea of options”. Its title? Love in the Time of Dick Pics.
But then this is no surprise, for few industries – quilting, perhaps; crofting at a push – are as fundamentally tech-sceptic as film. For all the hoo-ha about special effects, when it comes to the digital revolution, the movies refuse to televise. Rather, they lobby endlessly against it. Even the most contemporary romcoms insist meeting cute always beats swiping right. It was inevitable the dating-site enthusiast in How to be Single would fall for the owner of the bar she frequents for its free Wi-Fi. I’d put money on the heroine of Dick Pics finding Mr Right round the corner, rather than amid the genital jpegs.
Sci-fi films supply apocalyptic visions of a flatscreen future, which usually conclude with a forced yet ultimately happier return to a luddite age. Cerebral dramas such as Ex Machina, Her and Demonlover caution that emotional investment in artificial intelligence is a slipway to suicide.
Why such hostility? Well, the internet is nicking cinema’s business – both by enabling people to watch films at home and by dangling an attractive alternative pastime. Worse still, it kills stories. Screenwriters must concoct loopholes so plots still hold water. For years, all that was required was a quick mention of how reception can be a bit patchy in this part of the woods; shame, what with that axe murderer. Now everything must be set pre-smartphones. Otherwise, all imposter plots are kaput, for a start. Wondering if that Guerre fella is totally kosher? Verification only takes a second with 4G.
It’s also, of course, that laptop-tapping is inherently uncinematic, compared to a car chase or beach clinch. No filmic language to cope with that fact has yet been developed, or ever may be. A few films do still have a pop at co-opting software into their narratives. In Lion, out early next year, Dev Patel tracks down his long-lost family in India with the help of Google Maps. But most have put themselves in reverse gear and slammed down the pedal. Nostalgia is their watchword, both in setting and aesthetic. La La Land – the musical that will win the Oscar for best picture next spring – isn’t just a hymn to golden-age Hollywood, it looks like a Fred and Ginger film, had Astaire had stubble and Rogers driven a Prius. The best compliment Mel Gibson has said he’s received about upcoming war epic Hacksaw Ridge is: “‘Wow, it’s like the way they used to make films.’ I said, ‘You mean like back in the 40s?’ And they said, ‘No, like back in the 80s’ – like it’s ancient history!”
Film-makers brag about the credibility afforded by aping the ancient. Out this week is Allied, the spy thriller its star Brad Pitt calls “a throwback to the old 40s films, when you’d see people in cars and you’d see the rear screen, and you know they’re just sitting on a set”. Ben Affleck has said similar about his new gangster throwback, Live by Night, ditto Warren Beatty with his screwball Howard Hughes biopic Rules Don’t Apply.
The question is: will this work with audiences? Surely, anyone outside Hollywood’s battened-down hatches will find such fogeyism off-putting? I suspect not. For evidence mounts that we are all reacting against the effects of tech – even as our addiction to the technologies themselves persists. Weaning ourselves offline is all but impossible. And we cannot simply maintain hostility, as Hollywood does. But we do seek to humanise tech, in form and function.
This week, two new apps were unveiled. One is an extension to Google Maps which feeds in live data to tell you how busy shops and cafes are. The other, the Catholic App, is an interactive church locator designed for those who need to confess, fast. Already dubbed “Sindr”, this official product aims to boost mass numbers and confession stats by offering “a companion that guides you through the digital noise and leads you to a sacred place”.
Sex and shopping have long been well served by the internet; now spiritual fulfilment and solitude are getting in on the act. Yet both are antidotes more than additions, attempts to slam the brakes on what can seem like an relentless gallop into a terrifying future.
In one of the most famous scenes in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, a post-coital chap impulsively “open[s] a can of red paint that was within reach of the bunk, wet[s] his index finger” and scrawls the words “This pussy is mine” on his lover’s tum, with helpful arrow. Whether Dick Pics can hit such romantic heights remains to be seen. But I bet it’ll try. Seeing someone get their hands dirty will always trump watching them twiddle their thumbs.
