Creative types who are accustomed to lavishing money on moderately appealing projects will have to do more with less. Or they must learn how to move between big-budget blockbusters and niche, small-budget fare, observing the different genre and budget constraints that apply in these worlds. A few forward-looking folks, such as Steven Soderbergh, a film-maker, are already doing this. Some will find shelter. Premium television channels such as HBO, which are built on passion more than popularity, offer some protection from chill market winds. So do state broadcasters like the BBC.

 

Thinking people naturally deplore the rise of lowest-common-denominator blockbusters, and wish that more money was available to produce the kind of music, films and television programmes they like. The problem is that everybody has different ideas about exactly what they want to see. Some may thrill to a documentary about Leica cameras; others may want to spend an hour being told how to cook a better bouillabaisse. But not many want to do either of these things, which explains why such programmes are niche products. There are only a few things that can be guaranteed to delight large numbers of people. They are known as blockbusters.
 

Plenty of surveys and studies have linked poor media habits with rising violence, childhood depression, attention deficit disorders and declining educational standards. Yet we also hear entirely the opposite: IQ scores are rising, and have been since at least the 1950s, when television was becoming common in our homes. What's more, regular gamers seem to perform better at tests of visual attention and spatial awareness. So what are the effects of modern media on the brain - especially young, developing brains? Are TV and computers boosting our mental and social networking skills, or making us stupid, isolated and aggressive, with the attention spans of gnats?

B

One thing researchers concur on is that any technology we use will change the brain. There's nothing surprising or sinister about this, says Martin Westwell at the University of Oxford's Institute for the Future of the Mind. "You are who you are largely because of the way the brain cells wire up in response to the environment and the things you do," he says. "If you change the wiring you will change how we think." So how is the wiring changing?

C

Some say we're getting smarter. Steven Johnson, author of the book Everything Bad is Good for You, argues that the increasing complexity of media presentations and games, with their multiple plots and sophisticated layers, calls for more complex pre-planning and problem solving than ever. Far from dumbing us down, popular culture is stretching us, Johnson claims, and the rising IQ scores are a testament to that. There is some evidence to support such claims. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester in New York have shown that regular computer gamers have improved visual attention and can take in more information. They are better able to pay attention to things that are further apart or more rapidly changing, and can switch attention more quickly. Even short-term play produces immediate improvements.Jonathan Roberts of Virginia Polytechnic Institute found that women, who usually fare worse than men at spatial rotation tests, improve when exposed to 3D video games.

D

When it comes to TV, however, there's no getting away from the fact that the bad news outweighs the good. One of the biggest studies was done by Jeffrey Johnson and colleagues at Columbia University in New York, who followed more than 700 families for 17 years, recording their viewing habits, health, backgrounds and various behavioural tendencies. Their findings confirm those of previous, smaller studies showing that the amount of TV watched during childhood and teens correlates with changes in attention and sleep patterns, among other things. The group's latest analysis will be published next month, so Johnson can't reveal details yet, but says: "High levels of TV viewing may contribute to elevated risk for a type of syndrome which is often characterised by two or more of the following types of problems: elevated levels of verbal and physical aggression; difficulties with sleep; obesity and long-term risk for obesity-related health problems from a lack of physical exercise; and attention or learning difficulties."

E

One of the smaller studies, by Dimitri Christakis at the University of Washington in Seattle, found that young children watching double the average TV viewing hours (which were 2.2 per day at age 1 and 3.6 at age 3) were 25 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with attentional deficit hyperactivity disorder at age 7. Some research even hints at a link with autism, although this is very far from proven.

The overwhelming majority of studies about modern media and the mind, however, have focused on violence on and off the screen. Although there has been more than 50 years' worth of research, most people seem to have the idea that, while these studies suggest there might be a small link, the jury is still out. Wrong, says John Murray, a developmental psychologist from Kansas State University, one of the editors of the book Children and Television: Fifty years of research and author of US government-sponsored reports in 1972 and 1982. Murray is exasperated by this kind of ambivalence. He says it is impossible to conclude anything other than that violence on TV has raised the level of violence and aggression in our society - and while research on computer games has begun only recently, what there is suggests violent games have an even stronger effect. “Video games are more worrisome than TV because they are interactive," says Murray. “Children learn  best  by  demonstration  and  then  imitation,  with  rewards  for  getting  things  right.  That's exactly what video games do," he says. Not everyone is affected, and we are not all affected in same way, but overall, media violence does affect viewers' attitudes, values and behaviour, Murray says. Hundreds of studies demonstrate this, so why the doubt?

G

One reason is that media reports tend to give equal prominence to the naysayers. The debate also has its hired guns, with industry organisations such as the Motion Picture Association of America sponsoring prominent books arguing against any links. And whatever their motives, it is easy for critics to highlight the limitations of the science. The ideal experiment would be to divide a large number of children into groups, expose the different groups to different types or varying amounts of TV or computer games for several years while keeping all other experiences identical, and then to follow their progress for life. This will never be possible or ethical. Instead, researchers have to rely on long-term surveys that don't prove causality, and lab experiments that do not demonstrate long-term effects. Nevertheless, the results from all these different types of studies add up to a compelling case. 
 

THE increasingly stunning animation emerging from the United States (in films like “A Bug’s Life” and “Toy Story 2”) is, quite literally, child’s play alongside the full-length animated films that have been pouring out of Japan since the early 1980s. Nothing could be farther from the comforting world of Bambi, where formulaic characters and storylines are never allowed to frighten or offend, than Japan’s edgy, provocative, documentary-like “anime”. One is eye-candy for kids; the other a demanding rollercoaster of a ride for people of all ages willing to explore the outer limits of their fears and longings.

 

Until recently, anime (a Japanese abbreviation of the borrowed English word) had little more than a cult following outside Japan. However, animation epics such as Hayao Miyazaki’s “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds” (1984), Gisaburo Sugii’s “Night on the Galactic Railroad” (1985), and Katsuhiro Otomo’s “Akira” (1988) have been an inspiration for a younger generation of film makers in the West. Luc Besson, the influential French  director  of  “The  Big  Blue”,  ranks  Mr  Otomo’s  nervy  “Akira”  alongside  the  very  best live-action films from the legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.

 

Recently, a wider audience has begun to appreciate the efforts of such groups as Studio Ghibli, Production

I.G. and others within Tokyo’s talented anime community. Much of the credit goes to Disney’s art-film unit, Miramax,  for  translating  Mr  Miyazaki’s  “Princess  Mononoke”  and  releasing  it  in  a  selected  number  of theatres in America last November. The film—which pits a medieval people with their greed and thoughtlessness against the forces of nature in an epic confrontation that leaves both sides in ruin—is the biggest domestic box-office success of all time in Japan.

 

In  America,  “Princess  Mononoke”  opened  to  rave  reviews  but  less-than-spectacular  receipts.  Families, expecting typical Disney fare, may well have been shocked by the film’s mature themes. Of all Mr Miyazaki’s work, this is his darkest and most disturbing film, with a generous  share  of  brutality,  death  and  even  sexuality, as well as a conclusion that seemingly resolves nothing. Disney has, to its credit, followed up with another of Mr Miyazaki’s masterpieces. His animated classic, “Laputa, Castle in the Sky” (1986), which is loosely based on a passage from “Gulliver’s Travels”, is expected to go on limited release this spring, though probably not at its original three-hour length.

 

Half a century ago, it was the rich imagery and psychological insights of Japan’s live-action cinema that astonished and captivated the West. Films such as Mr Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” (1951) and “Seven Samurai” (1954), and Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953) set new standards for film makers everywhere. For the past couple  of  decades,  however,  Japan’s  mainstream  cinema  has  been  in  decline,  at  the  same  time  as  the country’s avant-garde animators have been reaching new artistic heights. “It appears that anime is taking centre stage in the Japanese film industry, pushing live-action movies to the wings,” says the author Kenji Sato.

 

Why should this be so? Cost is certainly part of the answer. Hollywood has raised the ante in live action to a point where no one else can match the sums that go into making films like “Titanic”. Though not cheap, animation offers a way of making stylish films without spending anything like as much.

 

Another factor is the help that anime has had from its close cousin, manga, the Japanese comic books that have become pervasive since the 1970s. A number of successful full-length animations, including Mr Miyazaki’s  “Nausicaa”,  have been  based  on  popular manga stories,  and  many  of  today’s  animators  honed their skills in publishing.

 

But is this enough to account for the Japanese partiality for animation over live action? Why should they feel more comfortable with a reality that is decidedly two-dimensional? Could it be—as Mr Sato wrote in a Japanese magazine, Echo, shortly after “Princess Mononoke” was released—that the Japanese moviegoers’ flight to anime is part of the ethnic abstinence that has suffused Japanese society, particularly since the end of the second world war?

 

Bent on achieving the twin goals of modernisation and westernisation, Mr Sato claims that “the Japanese have rejected their own history and traditions and sought to become Nihonjin-banare (de-Japanised)—a generally complimentary term implying that one looks and acts more like a westerner than the average.” As Mr Sato points out, an enduring feature of anime as well as manga is the way that the characters, the females especially,  are  drawn  with  a  blend  of  Japanese  and  Caucasian  features.  “In  short,”  says  Mr  Sato,  “the characters of anime show the Japanese as they would like to see themselves.”

 

This may be going too far. What is for sure, however, is that in their haste to catch up with and overtake the West, the Japanese have allowed their delicate framework for dramatic expression to disintegrate. Most people in Japan today find it perfectly normal for western actors to express emotions in a direct and forceful way. But if Japanese actors do the same, the result comes across as corny. Ironically, for many Japanese the thin, insubstantial reality of animated film may well appear more alive—more animated, literally—than the flesh-and-blood reality of their own live-action films.