Movies aren’t cool, but Charli XCX is. At the end of her set at Coachella Saturday night, Charli announced the official end of Brat Summer, then passed the torch, with a series of fast-strobing slides suggesting where the culture’s attention might or should go next. Amid the salutes to other pop artists with highly-anticipated albums or tours on the way—”Lorde Summer,” “Ethel Cain Summer,” “Haim Summer,” “A$AP Rocky Summer,” etc.—what caught many cinephiles’ eyes were the numerous shoutouts to filmmakers: David Cronenberg Summer, Ari Aster Summer, Celine Song Summer, Kogonada Summer, Darren Aronofsky Summer, Sean Price Williams Summer, Joachim Trier Summer, and PTA Summer. So maybe movies are kinda cool.
There are few things movie buffs (and the movie industry) love more than speculating about precisely when and how movies have died (or will die.) The endless cycles of “it’s so over” and “we’re so back” on social media every time a movie flops or succeeds is all many of us have left. Movie theaters have never been more in decline, Netflix has cornered the market on streaming slop, and cinema simply isn’t at the center of mass culture as it had been for much of the last century. To enumerate all the reasons for this would be an endless endeavor—Inflation! Competition! Lack of quality product! Capitalism!—but cinema’s crisis of relevance is very much a product of the increasing siloing of culture. One wonders how many people watching the Coachella stream have even watched a movie in the last month, let alone know who David Cronenberg is. Charli XCX shouting out filmmakers shouldn’t be notable, because pop music and popular cinema should be in conversation. They used to be.
Take it back to the talkie era, when synchronized sound at the movies was instantly put to work promoting the popular jazz standards of the day. The “Tunes” in Looney Tunes is a literal reference to the music the early shorts would be set to. It didn’t take any sort of business genius to understand the synergies available when two modes of popular culture worked in tandem. The movies promote the music, and the music returns the favour. The ‘80s and ‘90s were the heyday for the movie tie-in soundtrack, composed of songs featured in the movie, and often a bunch that were not at all. Album sales are mostly a niche thing these days, and the number of non-score soundtracks put out pales next to the old days, though the occasional Barbie the Album arrives to taunt us with possibilities.
Because the problem right now is that a movie is cool, but movies are not. Barbie, cool. Oppenheimer, cool. Dune: Part 2, cool. Sinners—that’s looking pretty cool, too, and it’s got a companion soundtrack! Movies in general, though? The simple fact is, what was once a pretty routine thing—going to the movies—is no longer a real part of most people’s lives. To the extent that “water cooler” discourse still exists at all, your participation in it doesn’t depend on being in the know on what’s playing anymore. Moviegoing is an activity with little cachet, the kind of thing that seems like a waste of money—unless it’s an event, something to participate in, that people are actually talking about. Something cool.
There are signs of that something bubbling up, and not just from Charli XCX’s Coachella set. Steven Soderbergh may be right that the failure of Black Bag at the box office doesn’t bode well for the future of a whole category of grown-up movie, and theaters continue to struggle, but there have been signs of life in unexpected places. The rep cinema scene has been booming in cities around the world, with a surprisingly young cohort of cinephiles filling screenings of a wide variety of classics. They’re getting excited about seeing movies projected on film, an experience the older among us likely took for granted when it was all we had, but might be totally foreign to a 20-year-old. Most importantly, they’re logging it all on Letterboxd. So is Charli XCX.