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In Reply to: Re: Huh? posted by jamesgarvin on March 15, 2005 at 13:32:48:
Allow me to pontificate: There are inevitably those film watchers who liken themselves "high-brow." I assume that you are that type of viewer based upon your use of the word "middle-brow", because it is not a complementary term, and I assume you do not put yourself among them.I don't consider myself high-brow; what I identified as middle-brow were films with a set of cynical features designed, or whose unwitting function is, to appeal to the insecurities, aspirations, and sense of cultural obligations certain people have regarding art.
You know, the type that are too smart and intelligent, too experienced to enjoy those things enjoyed by the masses.
You're being ironic or anti-intellectual (an unintended irony in your intellectual stance here) or both, since otherwise being smart (and intelligent!) wouldn't be taken as some kind of handicap; and in generalizing that such a person can't enjoy anything enjoyed by the masses you are as snide as you presume your strawman to be.
The masses are too dumb, not smart enough to know what is good and not good, to know what is "art", and what is not "art."
Maybe they are. So what?
If the masses enjoy something, such as Mystic River, then it must not be good because, if they enjoy it, by definition, it is middle-brow.
It follows that something must be bad if the masses like it no more than that the masses must like something if it is bad. "Middle" and "low" brow are not intrinsically bad; nor is so-called "high" brow intrinsically good--I'm not even comfortable with these terms in the present context because I think something becomes low, middle, or high brow as a result of cynical, almost extra-artistic intentions or effects. Art succeeds according to its own terms; it can also fail on its own terms and earn meretritious praise from those predisposed to like it if its primary function is to employ a set of features to flatter or affirm its target audience. This is when something becomes low or middle or high brow. You might have on occassion written a film off as pretentious high-brow trash, because you think it's playing to the egos of its intended audience. I think that's what Mystic River and The English Patient do.
Never mind that it is one of the most celebrated films in the last five years or so, by both patrons and professional critics.
You could say the same of The English Patient and Forest Gump. Care to defend those? So what? A million people can't be wrong, I guess, and on that note you need no specific argument in favor of the film because you have the weight of popular acclaim to decide the case for you. Indeed, why even engage me here? "It is one of the most celebrated films in the last five years or so, by both patrons and professional critics!" Nuff said. I'm a high-brow elitists because I didn't like it, because I thought its patent shortcomings were exactly those things that played to its fans and earned their acclaim; worse, I'm not a professional critic (you seem not be against so-called arbiters of taste--but they must be professionals!)--or have those professional critics who didn't like the film, who think Eastwood is a wildly overrated director (David Edelstein comes to mind), disqualified themselves for agreeing with me and disagreeing with you.
It is middle brow precisely because it is enjoyed by so many people.
It would have been middle brow if it had flopped because of who it targets and, more importantly, how it targets them.
The film industry did not annoint Mystic River anything. If you read anything about Clint Eastwood, you would know that with both Mystic River, and particularly Million Dollar Baby, he largely raised his own funding because the industry did not consider those films marketable. The industry showed no interest in those films. The interest in those films arose because of the many patrons that saw them. Notice how there was very little marketing of Million Dollar Baby. Particularly in comparison of other films, and particularly for an academy award winner.
Well that's interesting to know. How consistent in style is Million Dollar Baby compared with Mystic River? Maybe that's not even an issue. I'm not quite sure what Eastwood's style is: I thought Bird and Unforgiven were pretty good. Whatever the case, maybe the industry will have hipped themselves to the Eastwood magic by now. Between Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, he's got some cache now. I doubt he'll meet the same resistence to his next film. I wonder how differently a film like Bird would be received were it not made when it was but fell next in Eastwoods canon instead.
Your post strikes me as arrogant and snobbish because you set yourself up as the arbiter of what is middle-brow entertainment, which, obviously, cannot be enjoyed by anyone who has developed tastes such as yourself.
As I've defined it above, indeed I don't think anyone with developed taste can enjoy such entertainment.
You know, those rubes who go to a museum once a year to make themselves feel edumacated, to feel like they belong with people like you, and can never appreciate those things reserved for the sophisticated people.
It's the desire, the sense of social obligation, of people to make themselves feel educated in place of the desire to be educated or always learning that bothers me. And it's "art" that makes people feel educated that bugs me more for encouraging what I deplore.
Fools, thinking they are culturally literate.
And?
Of course, the culturally literate are the same goofballs who proclaimed Jackson Pollock a great artist. I saw his artwork first hand with I visited New York last spring, and no great artist is he.
Yeah, dude. I bet you could have done his shit with, like, your eyes closed when you were in diapers.
Elitism sucks unless it's your own. Now who's the arbiter of taste?
This attitude seems to pervade the Northeast. I remember a couple of years ago when my brother in law gave me a Nascar video game. I asked him why he would think that I wanted the game. He replied that he thought everyone in the Midwest liked Nascar. Oh well, he spends a lot of time in museums.
I don't know, after that Pollock comment, I might have considered buying you that game, then thought better so's not to encourage you.
Your comment about basketball is ironic, considering how many high brow types go to basketball games to be seen, trying to convince people they are hip. Damn slummers.
There's truth here--basketball is all the more ironic for being as expensive as it is to attend while also appealing so strongly to poor black urban youth. Baseball is more solidly populist; basketball tries to get it both ways by being glamorous and elite and gheto at once.
Me, I would prefer to pay $5.00 for the cheap seats at a baseball game, drink a few suds, hang out with a few friends, rather than go to a museum every week, or however many times you think it is necessary to get into the club.
The club? If you have to ask you can't join. . . .
You can go to the museum. I'll have more fun. Oh yea, Mystic River is a very good film, despite it's working class surroundings.
Perhaps, in response, you can specifically address what it is about Mystic River that you disliked, and what so many intelligent people have missed rather than spew forth name calling and insults to the people who actually enjoyed the film. Or is that the style of your ilk.
As for a specific argument against the film, I'll have to admit, it's not so fresh now. Maybe later. You might do a search in this forum and look at the arguments there. But in response to your "despite its working class surroundings" jab: are you actually working class? Do you know anyone who might be so classed? Because Mystic River was anything but: its depiction of working class life, its dialogue, its presentation of values, was so this-is-what-they're-like. That's partly what's so middle-brow about it: it convinces the suburban middle class that they've somehow been offered a window into this rough, streetwise world. It's hollow melodramtic bullshit.
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