Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Peter H-son (A) on November 02, 2007 at 13:46:19

In Reply to: RE: Perhaps I should have said "good or great art." Isn't posted by tinear on November 02, 2007 at 11:49:24

Music is unique in that it has no borders. But not even that is true. You couldn't sell black music in middle-America in the 1950s. Still, that music transcends everything is still largely true.

Nobody wanted Rembrandt's last and finest painting, not even the Dutch. But that's unrelated.

Some people here, like you, are better than most at appreciating, let's call it the different. My reaction was more about the general idea that art transcends. Some art does. But it's not a measure of the greatness of the art.

Would Dostoevsky have been considered a giant of literature in America and Europe if American and European critics had understood what they read, that Dostoevsky was in fact anti-West? But the question is probably moot. I don't think most critics tried to understand. We in the West usually don't try to understand other cultures. If we do not understand, we tend to assume it's because they are wrong. We are content imposing our culture--the RIGHT culture--on others. Granted, it's not the one-way street it used to be. You will be hard pressed to name one major Hollywood production made the last decade that wasn't a remake or rip-off of an Asian movie. But one thing remains. Most people do not want to see the Asian original. They rather watch the culturally cleansed Hollywood version. God forbid they should ever get exposed to anything remotely new or different.