Capitalism and the Death of Culture

How the shakeups at Turner Classic Movies are illustrative of the broader problem of late capitalism's devouring of culture and history.

Like a lot of other people, I’ve watched with horror as David Zaslav, the CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery, has taken a wrecking ball to HBO Max, one of the best streaming services out there before the merger of Warner Bros. and Discovery. What before had been a prime location for all sorts of great cinema and TV from both past and present, was suddenly a clearinghouse for all sorts of dreck, particularly from the Discovery catalog. Suddenly everything was just part of a firehose of content, with very little to distinguish the genuinely noteworthy from the utterly expendable. This even extends as far as the revitalized app’s interface, which now shows little regard for what separates the most unseemly of reality TV shows from the genuinely great programming that the streamer once had to offer, damaging HBO’s brand in the process. 

Now, it seems, it’s TCM’s turn. 

As a millennial, a lot of my exposure to the glorious, glamorous world of classical Hollywood cinema came from watching TCM with my grandmother and my mother, both of whom harbored a great love for both the films of the period and the network in particular. I fell a little in love with the avuncular Robert Osborne, whose introductions and interviews were a key part of what made Turner Classic Movies such a popular destination for so many. The merry sparkle in his eyes spoke of a passionate love for movies old and new, and this made him the perfect conduit for my burgeoning love of film. Since his death, Ben Mankiewicz and others have capably stepped into his shoes, even as TCM has also worked to broaden its appeal and the types of film history it makes available to its diverse publics. 

TCM is, in other words, far more than just a cable channel. It's a curator of our shared cultural history, providing many everyday Americans with access to a film history they might not otherwise experience. If you’re not fortunate enough to be enrolled in a film course at a university, this might be the only chance you have of seeing some rare and hard-to-find gems, or even some of the higher-profile films that don’t have the ubiquity of, say, Casablanca. What’s more, the hosts and programmers at TCM have shown, year after year, how much they truly love what they do and how committed they are to preserving these cultural milestones for future generations. It’s a labor of love, and it’s one in which we were all invited to share. Rather than buying into contemporary Hollywood’s mentality that anything and everything that can’t be made into immediate content or profit–or written off in order to get a tax break–they seemed to be true believers, and we were lucky to have them.

All of which is why the news that many of the network’s top brass were being axed came as a devastating blow to those of us who have spent much of the last quarter century tuning in to TCM not just for the films but also for the hosts, the commentary, and the film festivals. Speaking bluntly, this is just another indication — if any were needed — that billionaires like David Zaslav have little to no concern for history or culture or even the longevity of their own business. Having been reared on the pernicious ideology of vulture capitalism, they see no value, cultural or otherwise, in holding onto or preserving anything of the past. In yet another instantiation of this phenomenon, as I started to write this very newsletter the company just announced that it was planning on selling off a significant chunk of its music assets.  

In many ways, though, this whole fiasco — the merger, the  firing of TCM personnel, the selling of studio assets— is but the culmination of a process that’s been decades in the making, and it’s not even the first time that the conglomerate Hollywood mentality has worked to jettison the industry’s own history (looking at you, Kirk Kerkorian). Coupled with the vulture capitalism that became ever more prominent in the 1980s (for a great look at this particular process, check out Kurt Andersen’s Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America) and particularly in the 2000s and 2010s, it’s easy to see how this was always going to be the endpoint. Now, it’s all about immediate shareholder value; nothing else matters. Not culture, not history, not the welfare of employees, literally nothing. 

Of course, this is made all the much worse by the rise of streaming, which has made culture itself all that much more ephemeral. As has been amply documented, Netflix broke the system and then, when everyone else started jumping on the bandwagon, only to find out that streaming wasn’t the immortal golden goose they thought it was going to be, they had no idea what to replace it with. The result is all sorts of scrambling as various entertainment companies try to rebuild the business model they were so eager to destroy. In the minds of many corporate executives, what matters is creating content and gathering eyeballs. Art, either with a capital “A” or otherwise isn’t anywhere on their horizon, nor is history. Hell, the future doesn’t even matter to these people (if this isn’t a brilliant illustration of Frederic Jameson’s notion of the postmodern condition, I don’t know what is). What matters is producing as much content and as much profit as possible and then, once the center of a studio brand has been hollowed out, selling it off for parts.

So what comes next? I wish that I could be an optimist about the future of Turner Classic Movies, because I love being an optimist and because it can be very fatiguing to just indulge in doom and gloom all the time. The ugly truth, though, is that Zaslav doesn’t really seem to have any more commitment to the history or brand image of the company he bought than those in charge of any of the other studios. With each revelation of his actions, it seems more likely that, like so many before him, he’s simply going to gut Warner Bros. from the inside out, selling it for parts before dumping it on the market.

If there’s one thing that continues to characterize capitalism, it’s its ability to manufacture its own demise, only to rise up and make life miserable for the vast majority of the public all over again. However, one can’t help but wonder just how much longer such a model can be sustainable, or how long the viewing public is going to remain complacent about such a naked effort to obliterate a cherished American brand. At some point, we can hope, this relentless spate of cultural vandalism will come crashing down. When it does, let’s just hope there’s enough left upon which to build something more lasting in its place.