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In Reply to: Re: Huh? posted by jamesgarvin on March 16, 2005 at 15:41:28:
Well, that is a conclusion. The meat on the plate is providing specific examples in the film that demonstrate your argument. That is called analysis.Well, no shit. Perhaps I'll netflix it and offer up some kind of dissertation sometime soon. Until then, search out past conversations had when the film was in theaters. I may be mistaking private e-mail discussions with this forum, I don't know. Rhizo has pretty well captured my response to the film, however.
You appear to regard films as something more than what they are, and at the end of the day, they are really entertainment.
What a cop out. You want me to provide examples, analysis, and then trot out this criticism-obviating cliche. All art, at the end of the day, is entertainment.
And anyone who watches a movie to learn about life, art, or anything else, needs to get out of the house.
If art is so bottomlessly frivolous to you, why dwell so much in the house of even step into a theater in the first place? Again, if all films for you are at bottom merely entertainment, what's the point of analysis or criticism, professional or otherwise? All we need to hear is the democratic voice of the people as expressed through ticket sales.
Your arrogance is in assuming that people who watch the film are doing so to learn. If you left your ivory tower, you would find that not to be the case.
No, I know that's not the case and I think it's unfortunate.
What insecurities are you referring to? Aspirations? Cultural obligations? Films are designed to entertain. Some people, present company included, feel some need to seek more than entertainment in the films they watch. They seem to feel that if the film does nothing more than entertain, then it lacking in some way. This is arrogance because you define the intrinsic value of something according to your own value system, and insult those who enjoy a film for it's simple entertainment or story telling. 'This film is designed for you dolts to feel like to are actually attuned to the artistic world of me and my class.' Well, no, a, well, we just thought it was good entertainment, not a mechanism to change the world, or to feel smart, or "artsy." Or to be educated.
And yet any critique you're going to find of this or any other film is going to be centered on it's success as entertainment and story telling. A mechanism to change the world? Why resort to hyperbole? Who expects that of any film. A mechanism to change an individual through profound if imperceptible ways? Sure. Arrogant to judge something according to my own value system? Maybe--to the extent that's unavoidable. After all, from what, if not from your own values, does your exception to my criticism proceed?
My point was that there are a group of people that think because they are smart and intelligent, they cannot enjoy what the masses enjoy, because if the masses enjoy something, and they are not as smart, it must be without merit.
Likewise, there are people who believe that what "smart" and "intelligent" people enjoy cannot be enjoyed by them. Both kinds of people are depriving themselves of the broadest range of possible artistic experience.
Your original post, by implication, argues that you have "found" the insult which the film perpetrates against the viewers, leading them to believe that they are witnessing art.
And, short of a scene-by-scene analysis, I think Rhizo's general remarks will suffice to this great "discovery," which took little effort to find, being the big circus elephant in the room that it is.
The real insult is that you believe that the common viewer not capable of that which you are capable.
I don't believe that at all. I believe them exactly as capable; there would be no justification for being so exacting otherwise.
Perhaps the average viewer looks at Mystic River an entertainment, and not some form of high art.
What is this "high art" you're referring to? What is its function? What are its conventions? How is it subject to standards of, say, story-telling, characterization, logical consistency, any differently than, what?, the somewhere-below-high-art of Mystic River? Low art, high art; low, middle, and high-brow: I'll have to give this more thought, but I think these are categories in which a work situates itself only by virtue of a cynical appeal to a particular audience: it's a function of a work's concern for its marketing over the concerns most proper to it as art--story-telling, characterization, logical consistency, yes, entertainment.
Intelligence and being smart can be a handicap if you allow those things to cloud the view.
How can such things cloed one's view?
Placing more significance in a film than is intended.
Except that Mystic River intends a degree of significance it just doesn't bear. That part of the point.
I remember a music course in college when the instructor played a portion of a symphony (time does not permit me to remember the title), and analyzed it according to the "symetry", or some other nonsense. I am thinking, just listen to the freakin' beauty. He was so smart, he never listened to what the composer intended because he was too busy analysing.
Good God, man. You think this instructor hadn't devoted a good piece of his life to that recording? You think his analysis of symetry wasn't something arrived at after a long and deep acquaintance with this piece of music and that it wasn't motivated by his initial apprehension of its beauty? When, after respond negatively or positively to a work of art, we ask why and turn to the work to find out how it achieves of fails at bringing off its effects, that is criticism. It's not stolid academization--it can be in isolation, if studied only as the mechanics behind the effects instead of in conjunction with them--it's enriching. Poetry for example--or, better, verse. Learn a thing or two about meter and form and you haven't reduced poetry to mere mechanics, you've become more acquainted with its language and with half the field (formerly concealed to those not hipped to it) on which the poet works his art.
Well, the first thing you have to do is define middle-brown entertainment. Which, if I understand your posts, Mystic River, in your opinion, qualifies, because it attempts to acheive some fraud on the filmgoer. You failed to see the purpose of the film, but rather judged it based upon your erroneous understanding. The purpose of the film is merely to entertain, and tell a story, nothing more, nothing less, then your definition is incorrect.
Whatever I may have failed in, you've not pointed it out here. The film does perpetrate of fraud on its audience, and it does so exactly through those things it employs to entertain its audience.
And what is developed taste? Who defined that term? You? At least have the backbone to admit that you are arrogant and/or a snob.
Why should I admit to such a thing? Why can't there be developed taste or knowledge vis-a-vis art as this is in any other profession? There are limits to subjectivity. That we've having this conversation in which we fully expect to be understood (nevermind that we both probably feel ourselves to be talking past each other) demonstrates that to an extent. Someone watched and liked Mystic River: theirs is a valid to response to the film as they perceived it. I'd argue, though, that they've missed a thing or two, and if they weren't so on the defensive against someone for presuming to know more than they--and here anti-intellectualism exposes itself as fundamentally defensive in nature--they might learn a thing or two. (Admittedly, strong negative responses to things we like tend to do that to all of us, though--passions run high, don't they?) But whether a convincing analysis could be produced or not often matters little, since, if such an analysis is even asked for, it's likely done perfunctorily with little expectation that it could possibly be convincing. "Yeah, whatever, I know what I know."
I know what you mean here, but am not sure how that applies to Mystic River. You seem to be of the opinion that being educated in the things that you think are important is of great importance. How does "art" make people feel educated. When Rembrandt was painting, who was he trying to educate? When Bach was composing, who was he trying to educate? When Shakespeare was writing, who was he trying to educate? Even with your blinders on, do you really think that Eastwood was trying to create some "art", similar to these gentlemen?
You're using "educate" in a parochial sense I neither expect nor want of art. And, yes, I think Eastwood was trying to make something profound and enduring. I think he failed. Why wouldn't I be miffed at and baffled by its success?
This notion that one must have some level of education to appreciate "art", and that "art" educates is, again, elitist pap.
I agree to an extent. On the other side, your statement is populist, complacent, anti-intellectual pap.
I have never heard an actual creator utter such statements. You know, the person who was actually involved in the creation, to which you fawn. It is always the patron, the person who sat on the sideline. Some patrons have some need to separate themselves from the herd. You do not have the education to appreciate our art. We define the value of your "art" by our education. And, as a bonus, we define your entertainment according to our notion of art.
You're talking to a strawman again.
The last deperate attempt: rewrite what I actually wrote. I never wrote that Pollock was without talent. Or that I could have done his "shit" (I see your vocabulary is middle-brow) when I was in diapers. I believe he had talent. I think that lifetime minor league baseball players have talent. I could never play minor league baseball. But I do not try to convince myself, or others, that a lifetime minor league baseball player can play in the major leagues. Pollock started out as a traditional artist. What prices do those paintings command? How many of them are in museums? He had talent, but he was a minor league baseball player. The fact that he failed as a traditional painter is not my opinion. But fact.
Really? A fact?
Your elitism is fully evident here. Basketball is popular in the inner city NOT because of the N.B.A. It is popular in the inner city because it requires no more equipment than a ball. And you can play it by yourself, with two people, three people, etc. Can't do that with baseball or football. But then, inner city youth are not educated to appreciate art, so why bother with them? Those dolts.
Please, dude. Innercity, high-school, and college basketball, beyond the intinsic interest in the sport (it's really fun) and the fact that the little space and equipment it requires makes it much more accessible than other sports, are driven by the NBA Dream. Don't be naive.
Education and intelligence are two different things in my mind. If inercity kids aren't educated in art, that's a tragedy. That doesn't make them dolts.
Not a surprise. Much easier to state conclusions and generalize. Ask for particulars, well, I'll get back to you. MESSAGE: DO NOT LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF YOUR OPINION. The only thing that is important is if Eastwood is popular, well, then bash him.
How lame. When was the film in theaters? Obviously I didn't love it so much I bought the DVD for repeated viewing. Take it easy, dude. You've got the masses behind you. And you're not interested in particulars anyway, as you've demonstrated they can't possibly make any difference.
Really? Please provide me your curriculum vitae of the streetwise world. You do not know why inner city kids play basketball, so I suspect that your streetwise credentials are probably lacking. Do you know if Eastwood visited the locations he filmed? Talked with people there? Studied anyone?
C'mon, dawg, I got tons of street cred. Just ask. . . . I see, Eastwood interviewed a bunch of walking cliches and put their likeness up on the screen?
Presentation of values? Such as? Bacon has a daughter and estranged wife that he cares about.
Yeah, I remember the lips.
Penn loves his family, particularly his daughter, and works hard.
The daughter who was easily mistaken as a love-interest when she was introduced and who put on the laughable teens-gone-wild routine at the bar before she was killed.
Robbins was raped and has experienced torment since that day.
Contrary to much of the criticism of the film, I think Robbins put in perhaps the best performance.
Okay, which of those values is out of place in the "streetwise" world? Or are they only interested in fighting, drugs, promiscuous sex?
You're so bent on seeing me as some kind of prude. Hilarious.
The film could just as easily taken place in silicon valley.
And with its red-herring sexual abuse backdrop, general humorlessness, flat and overwraught dialogue, and BIG, BIG ACTING, it may well have come off as all the more absurd.
The purpose of the film is to entertain. To tell a story. The backdrop is a working class neighborhood. That does not mean that Eastwood is trying to provide you a window into a working class neighborhood anymore than he was providing a window into the old west in Unforgiven, or he was providing a window into space in Space Cowboys. Instead of looking at a film for what you THINK it is trying to accomplish, take off the blinders to look to what it is really trying to accomplish.
Well, obviously it failed to entertain me. I think it failed to tell its story. The backdrop was wholly unconvincing, and if it's true he wasn't trying to provide me this window, that might explain the failure. No, the stage isn't the point of his films and shouldn't be in any film: but the stage is essential, esp. when the film clearly pretends to a certain level of realism and human significance.
I've added Mystic River to my queue. I'll get back to you.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Huh? - Bulkington 06:51:14 03/17/05 (0)
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