In the mid-1990s, British director Peter Greenaway began to proclaim, through his voice, the idea that cinema is dead. Or rather, that the act of looking at a screen and only one thing happening would be a thing of the past. The idea was naturally provocative, born from the desire to mix different media and reflect on the use of television control, the possibility of choosing what you want to see. The concept of choice was something that he had already put into practice in his films, especially noticeable in “The Books of Prospero” (1991), reaching its apogee in the trilogy “The Suitcases of Tulse Luper” (2003-2004): there were often small windows on the screen (sometimes two, that is, three actions happening at the same time) and the viewer decides what to follow, with a relative impact on the idea of the narrative film they are watching. Greenaway’s attempts took place closer to the video art than as a communication tool for the evolution of the audience with a screen. Greenaway, however, was right.
The Internet has changed the way we see things, it has changed, above all, the attention we give to what we are seeing. Distraction is frequent and it is relatively easy for some audiences to find certain narrative tools boring: not that they are, but because audiovisual consumption –and the tools to consume it– have changed. YouTube has had an impact, but also the proliferation of web series since the end of the first decade of this century. In recent years we can talk about stories of Instagram or TikTok videos. Naturally, these advances, new ways of building narratives, take their place on platforms with a more established audience, that is, one that pays to see more traditional content. And so, toward the end of the second paragraph, we can talk about Issa Rae’s new series, “Rap Sh!t,” which premieres Friday on HBO Max.
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Source: Observadora
