Even so, if I gave you just 5 seconds to come up with the name of last year's Oscar winner for Best Picture, I wonder how many of you could give me the right answer. And the year before? Last year's winner was Argo, and I haven't the faintest idea who won the year before that.
My point is that nowadays films, even the best of them, are eminently forgettable. Five minutes after coming out of the cinema, I can't even remember what the film was about. I exaggerate, of course, but not as much as all that. The other day I went to see a film called Philomena and enjoyed it very much, but, I don't know, even a film as well made and beautifully acted as this fails to linger in the mind for any length of time.
Is this because films are not as good as when I was young or because my braIn has deteriorated over the years? I think we can dismiss the second suggestion for the rubbish that it is, but the first one doesn't bear serious examination either. The truth is, surely and rather obviously, that we are today overwhelmed with sounds and images and each wonderful moment is almost immediately replaced by another. Everyone will soon be famous for 15 minutes, Andy Warhol once said (famously). Fifteen seconds more like.
This phenomemon of satiety is apparent in just about every area of public, and for all I know, private life. Looked at from the point of view of the spectator, i.e. of someone not personally involved, no event, scandal or disaster is so momemtous that it will not have vanished from our consciousness in a matter of days.
If I were prime minister my first act would be to ban all 24 hour news channels as they contribute so much to a condition which is at once stressful and comatose.
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