Bangin and Blowin

Let’s talk about why Megalopolis is short-circuiting Hollywood

Many years ago I was in a performance art collective. We held a monthly cabaret at a really dodgy pub with a heavy drinking criminal clientele. And we closed every cabaret with our house band

Bangin & Blowin

Nobody in the band could play their instrument, so the “gig” was to just keep…banging and blowing…until the pub had emptied. It was a good way to get rid of the drunks.

Notably, the hardened criminal element hated the pretentious art student cabaret. Except for Bangin and Blowin, which they really dug.

Because they got that it was aggressive. A big “F U” to the audience.

Bangin and Blowin was straight out of the avant-garde art playbook, inspired by the Paris cabarets of the late 1800s.

Megalopolis doesn’t go as far as Bangin and Blowin, but it’s definitely an avant-garde movie. As commenters on the main essay pointed out, Megalopolis has a big debt to Fellini, one of the great avant-garde movie makers.

Avant-garde techniques are a product of a power struggle between the audience and the artist. The audience thinks the artist is there to satisfy their expectations. The artist has other ideas.

So avant-garde techniques deliberately “break” audience expectations. Narratives that break familiar structures. Imagery that is deliberately obscure. Dialogue spoken over other dialogue. Musicians who can’t play music. Etc.

Because it’s only in the space that opens after the expectations are shattered that you can actually get people into new and original ways of thinking. It’s only after our expectations have been shattered that we can get beyond them.

If you look at audience responses to Megalopolis they all focus on the ways it failed expectations. “Dialogue doesn’t work like that”, “the narrative structure is garbage”. It’s been such a long time since cinema was even slightly avant-garde that it has completely bamboozled the entire movie industry.

I think we’re going to see a lot of avant-garde art penetrate the mainstream over the next few years. Cinema and other mass media have reached peak commodification, and the only way to excite jaded audiences now is to bang and blow a bit.

Final point – imagine if Coppola had delivered a slicker movie, with an immersive world and satisfying narrative arc.

We wouldn’t be talking about it now.

Watch the full video essay