Dangerous Idea - Gather for Disputable Reasons

Unhealthy peace is equally as dysfuctional as unhealthy conflict, so embrace congregating for disputable reasons that won't be for everyone.

As per ususal, I’m fashionably slovenly late to Ted Hope’s latest inspiration challenge: “Dangerous Ideas”. Also, per usual, this Dangerous Idea pertains to both the Film and Wine industries equally. I’m supposed to make a <5 minute video discussing the idea, so here that is. Then I’ll continue to expound upon it below:

This idea is not really mine, but was directly taken from Priya Parker and her book The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters. On a recent podcast interview with Ezra Klein, Priya said:

“When you’re gathering about everything you’re kinda gathering about nothing. When I started researching for The Art of Gathering, I wanted to basically demystify how anyone can create a meaningful, transformative gathering. And I interviewed over 100 types of Gatherers, who other people always credited with creating transformative gatherings. A Hockey Coach, a choir conductor. And they all had two things in common:

1) They didn’t have a mental image in their head of what ‘hockey practice’ had to look like, or what ‘choir practice’ has to look like.

2) But the second thing was: they were okay with not being for everybody. They were okay with having a disputable purpose that not everyone would agree with.

When you are thinking about bringing people together, you have to start with asking ‘Why do I want to do this? What is the need in this community, in this workplace?’

And a disputable purpose allows people to understand: what is this for?”

The whole interview is dynamite and full of gold nuggets, big fat recommendation for those with an hour to spare:

She also mentions how we need to embrace conflict in a constructive, healthy way, as gathering humans together will always bring friction, bring different views and beliefs together in ways that shouldn’t be avoided - bringing them together is the point!

Equally as dysfuctional as unhealthy conflict, is “unhealthy peace”. Conflict avoidance wihtout actual purpose, essentially. Peace for peace’s sake. Instead, embrace congregating for disputable reasons that won’t be for everyone. That even the people its for, will hash out the specifics and the takeaways and shape the gatherings going forward.

An Unhealthy Peace (Monoculture)

Elsewhere on Substack, Rodrigo Brancatelli argues that the falling out of the middle of monoculture is about venues and products (restaurants and food; theaters and movies, etc.) being for fewer and fewer people, rather than being for everybody. The prime example being A24 films: they’re objectively better than a lot of the “midddle” tier movies of the past, but they’re catering to a more niche crowd.

I can’t argue with the symptoms he lays out, or the timeline of them, but I think his prognosis is precisely flipped: middle tier films are for fewer people because they have to be, and should have been all along. I’d actually argue most of them have been precisely this - middle tier films were rarely released “wide” in terms of absolutely everywhere. They played dozens or maybe hundreds of theaters back in the day. Even at their height maybe 1000+ theaters vs. the 4000+ that a truly wide release would play. That’s because, even back then, we knew these films wouldn’t play for everyone.

Rodrigo seems to be remembering the middle tier of the 90’s with someewhat rose-colored glasses and at least a whiff of revisonist history. Or maybe he, like me, always lived in cultural hubs where it seemed these films were ubiquitous because, for our area, they were. Or maybe he, like all of us who grew up with video rental stores, is misremembering whether these films were as present in theaters as they were, or whether they were discovered in a Blockbuster. That sounds mainstream, but that Blockbuster probably had single digit copies of the middle tier film, vs. the 100+ copies of Mission Impossible 1.

The middle tier was never for everyone. They’re movies for specific tastes, POVs, interests, and moods. They are movies made for disputable reasons.

Here’s where I agree with Rodrigo 100%: the middle of “middle America”, of monoculture, dropped out because we were priced out of giving a shit. For $20, we’d take the family and accept what we were spoon fed. For $100, we decided to stay home and each watch our own movies in separate rooms. We don’t believe the megaplex monoculture theatrical experience for a 4-quadrant family is worth $100, not often anyway. But we do believe seeing a movie we feel a deep resonance toward is worth $25-$50 for the 1-2 people who eagerly want to see it.

The theatrical experience is going to continue to hemorrage the bland, inoffensive, nobody-actually-cares tentpoles and fully unremarkable upper middle tier ($20M-$100M), whereas streamers will continue to thrive with such films, reaching a global subscriber base that can all be a global monoculture together, for a film or two or three. Then the nooks and crannies of streaming will be filled with, and arguably the meat of theatrical going forward will be movies made for specific audiences. Movies made for disputable reasons. Movies with purpose. Because those are the films that audiences will believe are worth the time, effort, and money necessary to experience theatrically.

Monoculture, in many ways, is an “unhealthy peace”. Togetherness for togetherness’ sake, but to no real purpose save its own existence. It keeps the culture blind to too many critical issues, seen only through the POV of specific groups, rather than allow for the actual variety of POVs that make it up.

Reject unhealthy peace. Embrace gathering for disputable reasons. Don’t be for everybody. Because that’s the same as being for nobody.