Pop Culture at Nadir

 We watched more Hallmark Channel Christmas movies a couple nights ago. It was interesting to compare Hallmark to the Lifetime Channel ones we had seen in Salt Lake City.

As we suspected, Hallmark is a higher caliber product. Among its strengths is the art design---the locales, the interior, and the props. This is to be expected given Hallmark's brand.

The stories are better as well. They are more interesting scene-by-scene. 

Among the Hallmark channel movies we watched was one that newly released in 2020. Watching that one, we noticed the comparisons to Lifetime that I mentioned.

But the biggest surprise was not this comparison between the networks, but the comparison between old and new, as we also watched a Hallmark Channel movie that was six years old. We knew it was old from the start because it featured a veteran television actor in a supporting role who had passed away a few years back. It must have been one of his last roles.

Watching this older Hallmark movie blew us away. We were taken into a completely different America. In this America, strong male characters existed. Men had passion and drive. They had purpose in life. They were not wandering around in life looking for the woman who could help them find their way in the world.

The current crop of Hallmark and Lifetime movies have universally weak male characters. The men are all at sea. They need a woman's help and direction at every turn. Old men fretting like women take direction and counseling from teenage girls. It is disgusting.

There is no romance in any of the current crop of movies. The two main characters usually have no chemistry. The story is the narration of a business arrangement. The two characters go into business together as romantic partners at the end, or so it is implied. 

The movies today are sterile. Only one kiss is allowed as a remnant of a canonical scene from earlier Hallmark movies---the tantalizing stolen kiss scene. We saw such a scene in the 2014 Hallmark movie we watched with the veteran actor in the supporting role. 

The man and woman were in his kitchen, where he is master of his domain, and is teaching her how to cook (mansplaining). As he gives her sauce to taste, holding the spoon, there is a moment of palpable romantic tension. We see that both characters feel the moment, and that for the moment, the moment is not about sauce. 

They almost kiss. He calls it off, and takes them back to the cooking lesson.  Then he teaches her how to stir the sauce with a big spoon. As she stirs, he puts his hands almost over hers. 

At this point we were falling out of seats laughing.  This was beyond risqué. This implied the characters actually had baby-making energy.

The most startling aspect of the 2014 movie was that the heroine had a rival for the man's interest, and she was attractive. I realized I had not seen a single instance of this formerly common storyline, the rival story, in any of the current crop of movies. 

The difference in the realities of the 2014 movie versus the one portrayed in this year's movies on both networks is a chasm as big as anything I have experienced in my life time, including the mid-late 1960s.