Fearing the Sting of Death
This week's New York Times Magazine examines " How Hollywood Killed Death ." Alexander Huls recalls the temporary loss of Captain James Kirk, Pepper Potts, and Loki in last year's batch of action/superhero product offerings: "Death is no longer just a transparent formula; it has been hybridized with something worse: Business strategy. There is no greater force in the world for wringing the passion out of human affairs than the desiccating logic of quarterly earnings reports. Of course, Hollywood has always been a business...[But] no matter how much movies or comics depart into realities with superpowered beings, technologically advanced futures or fantastical worlds full of impossible creatures, they still need to do what all good stories should: Tell us something about being human. But most of today’s movies are telling us death doesn’t matter. And it’s hard to imagine a more inhuman observation than that."