ONE OF the best values TCM offers by its high quality film programme is its predominantly positive and morally uplifting narratives linked to social attitudes heroically championed by the Hollywood film industry during the Utopian yet painfully contradictory events of post-World War One and Two 20th Century history.

If in looking at such films today they seem, to some extent, unrealistically optimistic about the sustenance of the best human values, at least in Westernized societies, that is a feeling reflected in the jaded indifference of a relentless barrage of present-day film scripts we are acquainted with. In other words, TCM release their full human value when seen in the comparative mirror of present day mainstream American films, whose visual narrative focus is far less concerned with a wide in-depth array of creative, or constructive values, which Susan Sontag, in her essay, ‘On Style’, once said is “morality”, based on “the nourishment of consciousness”.

What TCM offers
By looking at specific TCM features, including more recent American film classics hosted mostly in the daytime by the young film historian, Ben Mankiewicz, we need to understand at least two important points: The first of which defines the difference between American of Hollywood film productions of today (from the 1970s to the present), and that of a past period (the 1930s to 60s), from which most examples of TCMs classic films are selected.
The second point defines the unique difference (or originality) of American or Hollywood films from all other (except perhaps Latin American creative films) film productions, socially established its profound international reputation and human relevance.

First difference
The first difference and its effect, we have to admit today, is that the moral and artistic commitment and enthusiasm of past filmmaking is eroded and weakened by the sheer quantity of films that have been made and accumulated (with a lessening of detachment from callous social ‘trends’) over almost a century of production, as well as their commonplace availability as small discs, in contrast and comparison to those decades, from the 1970s back, when the presentation of films on the big screen of cinemas was a major daily event filled with collective excitement, curiosity, fashion-conscious social interaction and glamour in anticipation of curtains drawing back to reveal narrative experiences often of profound critical significance that was influential on the aesthetic development of our sensibility, and hence on social stability.

Loss of special value
Assisting classic cinema’s committed role in spreading human understanding, caring sentiment, and intellectual sanity, were an enormous amount of classic film posters, often in various sizes and differing graphics created by dozens of commissioned artists.
Because film has become often nothing more than commercial visual technology and less of a creative act of dialogue, narrative, voice-over, with believable experiences concerned with problems of everyday living, it has lost much of its contemporary human meaning and value.
This is further proven by the fact that films, by becoming mere duplicated mass-produced small items, even found thrown away in rubbish dumps, make little claim to being permanent productions of human value, and have been reduced to the disposable consumer status of the average consumer accessory, no different than shoes, shirts, blouses, purses, wares, cutlery, cars, shampoos, etc, devoid of any precious memorable inner experience or vital mental value one wants to keep, or live by.

Perennial values
The importance of the TCM programme today is that it gives us access to a popular art form during a beautiful optimistic period of earthly life. This period of filmmaking helps us to see both our optimistic aspirations as well as our naïve prejudices.
By looking at such classic films today on TCM, we become mentally immersed in creativity unaffected by the fast, thoughtless continual buildup of eroded social values in a present communicative consumer world, saturated by quantity rather than quality.
What is the difference between film production today and in its heyday of films now seen as classic? The difference is that we should not be surprised if contemporary filmmakers are a cynical product of this very indifference caused by the current superfluous availability of film, any film, as mere personal consumer items, often literally made just to fill up time, and largely seen without the conscientious mirror of social interaction cinemas provided.
If the filmmaker adjusts to this situation, his or her films would merely be another commercial adjustment to ‘trendy’ indifference.

America’s cinematic uniqueness
Nevertheless, we have to admit the special human value of American or Hollywood films which TCM is specifically concerned with. Actually, Hollywood’s special human value may be more closely relevant to societies, which, like North American society, are filled with people of different races, or ethnic cultural baggage, such as belongs to Native Indians, Africans, various Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, and in fact people from anywhere, and their miscegenated development.
American or Hollywood films of both the classic and present eras remain popularly relevant to the societies of Canada, the Caribbean and all of South America, because such films reflect the problems and pleasures that result from the daily presence and interaction of such diverse peoples.
On the other hand, films made in Japan, China, Korea, India, Africa, and even numerous European films, of the past at least, do not contain much interaction with other races, because they do not reside in those countries, whereas an enormous amount of American or Hollywood films do, so that their content is therefore relevant to the everyday reality of populations in Canada, The Caribbean, and South America.
Yet, if ethnicities in these countries retreated to an exclusive art of their own ethnicity while being part of a daily cosmopolitan reality, the possibility of unnecessary social problems developing due to a denial of their interactive reality with their everyday reality would be obvious, since art is largely related to its functional everyday reality, or environment.
TCMs televised film programmes are, therefore, often relevant to societies throughout the Americas.