Reflecting on our culture’s penchant for remakes in the NYTBR, James Parker traces the phenomenon to a “commercial factor here: the enormous built-in timidity of the culture industry, which will always be happier with a remake than a new thing. Once youve assembled a hero, a hero that works, you should keep using him. Those weird 70s movies about nobody in particular, with bad lighting and sort of a bummed-out feel at the end who wants to watch them anymore?”
But we don’t just leave the old heroes as they are. We need to find flaws and peccadillos: “We have to give them something, a niggle, a neurosis, some baggage of private pain. Bond goes all stubbly and alcoholic in Skyfall; Willy Wonka had an evil dentist father in Tim Burtons Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Who can touch the deep sorrow of Wolverine? And so on.”
I would add: And on and on and on.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
