by Rachelle Rouse

Sometimes I think there is hope for the movie industry. Many recent films have blurred the line between "artsy" and "popular" resulting in something you might call "pop art." Quasi-indie flicks such as The Virgin Suicides and Dancer in the Dark have won critical acclaim and achieved popular success featuring the music or acting of semi-underground but popular musicians. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon drew hoards of Old Navy wearing red-blooded Americans to view what may have been their first foreign film outside of high school Spanish class. Their comments? "Like, weird, man...but cool."

This pretty much defines pop art in my opinion. First, a movie is popular because we can all relate to some aspect of the story. The plot can be about an experience or a setting many people can connect with like in The Virgin Suicides. Most audience members can relate to teenage angst because they have been through it or are currently undergoing it. Like the girls in the movie, as teens most people rebel against their parents and other institutions of authority. This is what makes films about shared experiences interesting: people from many walks of life can relate to them. In the American melting pot, the common experiences are only available in very limited quantities. Thus, they are somewhat of a phenomenon and can make for popular and sometimes very good films.

A movie can also be popular if we can relate to something in it as being cool. For Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it didn't matter that the movie wasn't in English. The martial arts and interesting special effects were enough to fill America's cavernous, plush theatres to capacity. Yet the cinematography of the film was artsy enough for the audience to take notice of the lush, fog-shrouded mountains and harsh deserts of China. Crouching Tiger seemed to be derived from some exotic fairy tale, making it weird, different...artsy. Film as Art. Quite a concept, huh?

However, the success of many pop art films of the past year is due to the amount of media hype they received. Whether or not they have a message to impart is debatable because the old Hollywood standard rings true: the more publicity the better. Gladiator and The Cell are prime examples of this. Both movies are excellent eye candy, but the art direction is too conscious of itself. Shallowness and vanity are the resulting essences. Do we really need any more of that nowdays? Still, these two movies are popular and artsy as well. Does this make them pop art?

The issue of visual interest alone is not what defines art. It is visual interest combined with a message: somethin' to say, a lesson to teach. Art is weird because not only are you supposed to stare at it or listen to it, it's meant to make you take notice of something new.

The movie industry does believe that people can handle thinking, but only in small doses. Obviously you can cogitate about almost any movie, but very few popular movies actually induce their audiences to ponder meanings and potent visual images, even if it's only on the most cursory level. Here's a few more films made in the year 2000 I think qualify as pop art: Almost Famous, Chocolat, Requiem for Dream, Shadow of the Vampire, Traffic.

They'll make you think, but only as hard as you want.