On October 4th, 2019, critically acclaimed director Martin Scorsese gave an interview to Empire Magazine where he was asked his opinion on Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. His response was fairly simple, “I don’t see them. I tried, you know? But that’s not cinema.” Little did poor old Marty from Flushing, Queens know that his 2019 remark would begin the most asinine and eye-roll-inducing pop culture war of all time, which has continued to this very day. Martin Scorsese, Academy Award winner, auteur, a man who many would probably call the “greatest living director,” drew a line in the sand that day, daring the slavering masses to challenge him on what was art and what was schlock.
Now, I’m inclined to agree with Marty, I wouldn’t call movies like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania or Avengers: Endgame quite of the same caliber as movies like Taxi Driver and The Last Temptation of Christ. Of those movies, I’ve only seen Avengers: Endgame, but it’s something you don’t need proof to know is true, like gravity or that aliens touched Goldie Hawn’s face in her 20s. Martin Scorsese doesn’t make “movies” to make “money” and spawn a dozen “sequels” (2 King 2 of Comedy, Goodfellas vs Taxi Driver - Requiem, etc.), nor, frankly, does Disney churn out a million Marvel movies because they believe in the power of “art” and some “higher calling.” Fundamentally, the pursuits of these two powerhouses are disparate, they answer to different masters, Scorsese cinema, and Disney Marvel profit. They’re not doing the same things, and they’re not for the same people, but what I beg the Letterboxd Mafia, and the podcastosphere to realize is that that’s okay.
I’ve had a bite of Wagyu beef exactly one time in my life. When I was in college my aunt took me to a swanky steakhouse in Downtown Chicago owned by the former anchor of E! News. At the time I had never tried steak before, so when we sat down to order I ordered some kind of fish because I’m an idiot and was afraid I wouldn’t like the food provided to me at this fancy establishment I’d probably never have the money to return to for the rest of my young adult life. Luckily for me, my aunt did order steak, a cut of Wagyu beef sliced thinly into little squares, and she was generous enough to let me, her only nephew, have a taste. That bite of pampered cow meat was one of the best things I’d ever eaten in my life, and I can still remember how it melted on my tongue like butter, it was sublime. Since then, and that was probably four or five years ago by this point, I have never sat down to eat at that restaurant again, nor have I eaten a cut of Wagyu beef, as a matter of fact, the only time I even eat steak is on my birthday when I go out to eat with my loving boyfriend.
When I’m not being shown the upper echelons of Chicago fine dining by my aunt, or being wined and dined by my boyfriend on my birthday, I eat just like all the rest of you people. I order McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King if I’m feeling like going to the bathroom all night, I make spaghetti and ramen, and sometimes I even whip up scrambled eggs. I can’t stress enough how I am just like you, I’m normal. And because I’m so normal and eat normal food every day (just like you), it makes eating something decadent like Wagyu beef, or even just a non-Wagyu steak at a nice restaurant on my birthday, feel that much more amazing. If I was eating lobster and steak and black truffle aioli everyday life would feel simple and dull, because you don’t know how good it is when you have nothing worse to compare it to.
Now imagine Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas is a prime cut of Wagyu beef, sure, we could sit around and watch Goodfellas all the livelong day, but it’s two and a half hours long, and while I’m sure it’s good (literally never seen it), I’m sure your eyes would start to glaze over after a while. Sometimes you just want something simple, something cheap, something fattening, filled with microplastics, and cooked in a kitchen where the bygone days of food safety regulations are a thing of the past! You want two six-pieces of Wendy’s spicy chicken nuggets, a small fry, and a medium root beer (and you want to order it that way because it’s cheaper than the meal). You want Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder. Sure, it kinda sucks, and sure, for some reason this is the level of special effects used in a $250 million movie, but it’s easy and you don’t really have to pay attention to it and hey, look there’s Christian Bale!
I talk quite a lot about movies in this newsletter, and I’m sure if you compare what I’m saying here to my earlier comments about Marvel movies and how shitty the box office is getting you’d probably say that I’m contradicting myself, but that’s only because I contain multitudes. The fact remains that I’ve only seen one Martin Scorsese movie (and that’s only because I found out he directed Shutter Island as I was writing this). I don’t particularly care for Marvel movies anymore either, but the same thing could be said for any media.
I would never read a Colleen Hoover book (in. my. life.) because I’m a homosexual aesthete sophisticate who reads Bret Easton Ellis and has several Joan Didion books prominently displayed on my bookshelf. Still, there’s no denying the lady is getting people to read. Though her books may have no substance, and you can probably get through them in a day and a half, she’s getting people out of the house and into Barnes & Noble so they can buy 10 of her books to finish over the weekend. I mean, can you imagine how exciting it will be when the Colleen Hoover fans finally get their hands on a copy of My Year of Rest and Relaxation? And maybe they will hate it, maybe Ottessa Moshfegh isn’t for them, and that’s fine, read whatever you want, I’m feeling generous today.
A prime example of this dichotomy in the music industry, and my own brain, is illustrated between the greatest living songwriter of our generation Lana Del Rey, and whom someone such as myself would call her “dark sister,” Taylor Swift. And I know what you’re already thinking, “why do we have to pit women against each other?” yada, yada, yada, whatever, but walk with me for a moment. Taylor Swift is the musician for the masses, you don’t have to have a genius-level IQ to understand the wide appeal of a simple upper-class girl who grew up on a Christmas tree farm sky-rocketing to fame and superstardom. She’s got a BIG reputation (amiriiiiiiite????!). Coincidentally she’s not for me, I prefer the sauntering, haunting melodies of Lana Del Rey, a humble girl from working-class roots who crawled her way out of the trailer park and into the hearts of many.
Like it or not, they offer two separate ethea when it comes to music. One of being the biggest popstar imaginable and touring the world and making a movie out of it and selling merch and making a ton of money, the other of making music that may not generate billions in revenue, but comes from the heart and speaks to who you truly are… and also releasing a book of poetry. I don’t mean to pit the two lovely ladies against each other, I really don’t, I’m just trying to illustrate a point. I’m sure they’re friends and they’ve even kinda sorta worked together one time. You know what? I would even encourage you to be fans of both, because I truly believe you can’t fully appreciate the lyricism of “Find your astral body, put it into my arms/ Give you two seconds to cry/ Take you home, I’ll give you a blanket/ Your spirit can sit and watch TV by my side,” without first hearing “Draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man” (just be thankful I didn’t bring up “spelling is fun”).
Lana Del Rey vs. Taylor Swift tangent aside, my point still stands, however elitist it may come across. Martin Scorsese movies are better than Marvel movies, but I think that’s a fact that is best left unsaid. These conversations about the difference between material created for the sake of art and material created for profit are fruitless and dumb because they compare two completely opposite things. You can’t compare an apple to a cement mixer, you can’t circle the square. I find it annoying when Marvel-shill-podcast-bros talk about how Scorsese movies are “boring” and how “watching the murder of Osage tribal women doesn’t sound like fun,” but it’s even more irritating when Poindexter Scorsese fans push up their glasses, cross their arms and attempt to explain how best to prepare Wagyu beef to the men on the factory floor whose job it is to throw baby chickens into the meat grinder to make Chicken McNuggets.
People can like different things! That’s okay! You don’t have to like Scorsese movies, I don’t have to like Taylor Swift, and no one has to eat Wagyu beef if they don’t want to! McDonald’s isn’t going anywhere, and the E! News restaurant surely isn’t going to be the one to put them out of business. What you, as a pretentious person who only eats Wagyu, must realize is that you need McDonald’s, you need the schlock because the schlock’s main job is to make your food taste better. If every director was Martin Scorsese then, sorry to say, Martin Scorsese wouldn’t look that impressive. Instead of turning up our noses at the trash loved by the masses, we must embrace that trash and thank it for making our treasure look so much better in comparison.
Love it.
All of this