My son mentioned to me the other day that he was feeling kind of pessimistic about things in general. He's an artist, and artists tend to live in the 'next' world, while most of us struggle to survive in this one. Artists perform for our culture the function that shamans, seers, visionaries and prophets fulfill in tribal cultures. Their function is to see into the future, or at least to show us the deeper implications of our actions in the present. They bring to the surface the objects of dreams and shadow. In times of great dislocation their lives provide models that guide us through the dark times while they explore the next ocean, the final frontier, the lands beyond the barriers and boundaries of common consensus. True artists continually explore new ground and I believe that art, to fulfill its highest function must break the rules, or at least subvert the expectations of its audience.

Collectively we are dreaming these days, rather fiercely, about the end of the world. 

Hollywood, having run through its decade long detour into a fascination with so-called independent film making has returned full throttle to its preference for studio driven big profit/big risk blockbuster movie 'events' like the ones I grew up with in the fifties and sixties. Movies that require tens of millions of dollars to make and feature a production cast of thousands have come to dominate the multiplex in the way that movies like 'Ben Hur', 'Cleopatra' and 'The Ten Commandments' did in those glorious days when the big studios controlled everything with an iron glove, from actors to projectionists. 

These days it's super hero dramas, disaster films (in which the world - not just buildings and ships are destroyed), fantasy spectaculars and historical epics are back and bigger than ever. The "Cast of Thousands" has been replaced by CGI hordes and the possibilities of translating imagination to flawless movie images has been advancing exponentially in the years since 2001: A Space Odyssey and the first 'Star Wars'. For a fan of science fiction and fantasy the possibility that movies will leave the formulaic stage and enter fully the philosophical and moral realms that are explored in the literature appears more likely than ever. What if, in the new film 'Avatar', for example, options other than spectacular cinematic mayhem were explored for dealing with the bad guys? 

When television was new, movies loudly trumpeted each new innovation and format as the dawn of a new age. The frame was stretched and split and saturated with new colors. Film posters shouted in huge letters, Technicolor, Cinemascope, Cinerama, Wide-Screen, and 3D! Big stars and big casts meant big budgets and an increased reliance on formulaic storytelling. When we went to the movies it was to enter an imaginary world that would overwhelm and sweep us out of the mundane dimensions of everyday life. Meanwhile in the low-budget new frontiers of television a new generation of visual storytellers was coming of age. With the phenomenal success of movies like 'The Godfather' and 'American Graffiti' and 'Jaws' young directors like Coppola, Lucas and Spielberg swept the old studio system aside and created space for a vast expansion in the vocabulary of American film making. For a generation the movies were dominated by the creative spirit of directors, actors and artists who strove to challenge themselves and their audience as well as entertain them. 

With the rise of new media the movies are once again challenged to offer something beyond what we can experience in our living rooms.  With the rise of digital media the independent artist is once again being relegated to the small screen while the studios rely on an exponential development of new technologies to awe and attract their audience to mega-sized spectacles. Once again the pressure for rapid innovations in technology has become a major marketing thrust. Once again we don our 3D glasses, only these are made of plastic instead of the paper flimsies of yesteryear. 

The price for innovation is too often the reduction of plot to formula and the reduction of movie art to the most obvious forms of crass entertainment. Once again mainstream cinema has become the playground of accountants and producers who are less willing to take creative risks unless they are backed by technological bells and whistles. Sooner or later this phase will run out of steam and once again be challenged by a new generation of artists coming out of the worlds of digital experimentation. Meanwhile artists are making the best of it and some are even able to manage this hugely expensive, complicated and collective art form in a way that is both innovative and that challenges the way we view the world. 

The mega-feature has, almost by definition, to take an epic view of human behavior. Theater blockbusters have taken the place of opera as a mode of drama that displays the archetypal over the personal. The characters in these movies are largely outlines, like the characters in comic books, played by familiar actors with established personas that are able to easily absorb our projections, making them vehicles by which we are guided through whatever world the graphic and digital artists create. To the degree that a movie relies on special effects and computer generated imagery (CGI) for its impact there is more demand for elements created totally by imagination. This has led to the rise of animated features and the emergence of fantasy, science fiction and historical dramas as the most popular genres in present-day cinema. What can be more epic than a disaster film, particularly if it depicts the fate of an entire world?

Having always been a fan of fantasy and science fiction literature as well as historical fiction I can appreciate the creative opportunities these styles offer. Displacing our imaginations from current events, the artist is free to explore the psychological and visionary implications of our actions in the most extreme situations, and we can approach both the emotional and philosophical backdrops of the present through metaphor. When we revision history we dream of our past in a way that changes our perceptions of who we are. 

Even more intriguing is the ability of film makers and artists to influence or subvert our self-image as a culture. The holiday movies this year are full of subversive images, some of them dread and frightening, some of them amusing, all directed at things we as a culture hold sacrosanct. While we act in daily dread of our civilization meeting ruin we appear to enjoy nothing better than to watch it being devastated by various natural and man-made disasters. 

Roland Emmerich continues his joyful obsession with blowing up or otherwise destroying the most notable monuments to western civilization. He did in our major cities in 'Independence Day' and 'The Day After Tomorrow' and in '2012' he throws in Las Vegas, but the most subversive image in '2012' is the splitting apart of the Sistine Chapel ceiling right between those famous fingers of God and Adam, and then the collapse of all that architecture on the Bishops below and all of the praying parishioners.

I've yet to see the movie based on Cormac McCarthy's novel 'The Road', but having read the book I can't imagine anything more dark and dreadful as the end of all things depicted therein. 

Finally, does anyone else notice the bizarre dichotomy between the 10 minute military recruiting short shown before the previews, with its rapid cutting images of the military in action, and images of similar soldiers and equipment being brutally decimated at the end of James Cameron's current long-awaited epic, 'Avatar'? This movie, against a breathtakingly beautiful and fully imagined natural landscape, depicts a slightly futuristic version of the American military machine as a force of sheer corporate and imperialist brutality and then gives us immense pleasure in watching it being torn to pieces. Cameron's earlier blockbuster 'Titanic' commented on the injustices of a society divided into classes of rich and poor, and his other movies have had their share of commentary on human irresponsibility and hubris, but  here he tops them all with a final image of beaten soldiers being frog-marched off the world they threatened. One of the final lines is an oblique reference to his earlier film 'Aliens', referring to the humans as alien monsters being sent back to their "dying world." 

This is strong stuff, and none of it new to science fiction and disaster films. What's new is the amount of sophistication and the amount of money being poured into them and the enormous positive response, both popular and critical, to these scenarios of civilization crashing and burning. Apocalypse sells these days, whether you are a true believer or not. Maybe we're all becoming true believers in the face of the dire predictions and the proliferation of global conflicts. Deep in our collective psyche is a story we've implanted over the centuries about one world coming to an end so that a better one can rise from the ashes. Maybe all of this is nothing but escapism in the form of wishful thinking. If I were from another planetary culture I'd be convinced that as a civilization humans have become noticeably impatient for some radical change in the way our lives are lived.  

As I look at our political landscape tearing itself apart while we inch forward at an unbelievably slow pace toward the most rudimentary solutions to our most common problems I'm also tempted to be pessimistic. Although I enjoy as much as anyone watching these cinematic scenarios of destruction I would like to see more visions of the way we will make it through to the other side. I think that these visions are coming, but first I think we've got to get beyond our apocalyptic fantasies of the future and start living in a world of beauty, in the present.