>It was years before books had chapters, indices, chapters, paragraphs,
>etc. In fact, it took about 50 years from the Guttenberg's invention of
>the printing press to the full development of the book as we know it.
>EVERY medium takes quite some to develop its maturity. Are you REALLY
>arguing against this? On what possible grounds?
Yes, I'm arguing that media have histories like everything else. That history didn't end when immigrants settled in to watch stories.
>As for your faux populism
Accusing someone of elitism is not the same thing as claiming to be a populist. You're reading stuff that's not in my message if you think this is about being down with the people.
>the immigrant communities that were the first
>mass audience for movies in America were FAR more interested in
>narratives that validated their lives than in the primitive spectacles
>that preceded them.
That's only because filmmakers hoped that the mere sight of a moving picture would be enough to entertain indefinitely. Of course it was for a time, and then they had to find something new.
>The former are what really began to draw people
>into the movies in droves during the teens.
Sure, but does that mean from "Birth of a Nation" (the canonization of which any leftist ought to view with great suspicion) forward, any film focusing on something other than narrative and character development makes people supid, or that any film with narrative and character development makes people smart? That was Carl's claim, to which my flame was originally addressed. My answer is no. Together with the claim I made above -- that film continues to have a history *after* it incorporates narrative and character development -- one might consider that basically since the invention of the little flashy box that makes noises in your living room Hollywood has consistently sought to define its market niche through doing things that televisions couldn't do. One of these things would be increasingly massive and capital-intensive special effects (though there have always been special effects in movies, as Catherine said, starting with the film itself), which has greatly influenced a certain set of Hollywood films coming out since that time. Now, the real question for Carl is whether those immigrants sitting in the theater watching silent pictures while the musicians drew their union wages were *smarter* for having gone to the film than their grandchildren who went to see Star Wars, or better yet, one of its bad knockoffs from the late 70s. I say you can't tell by looking at what kind of film they watched. Carl says you can.
Moreover, it wasn't simply content that allowed film to grow. Take a look at the consolidation of the industry and the changes in exhibition practices. You build theaters and advertise films (as opposed to incorporating them in, e.g., vaudeville shows) and *boom*, you suddenly have bigger film audiences.
My point is simply that media have histories, they don't reach "maturity" like a plant or a person. They're institutions and ought to be considered that way. They aren't texts that people encounter in a vaccuum that then hypodermically inject stupidity or intelligence into their audiences.
>As for "What's necessary about linear plot and character development in
>creative art anyway?" Gosh, I don't think ANYONE thinks its necessary
>in a string quartet, a raga or the art and architecture of a Mosque.
Some people who like string quartets make arguments equivalent to Carl's all the time -- about the inherent superiority of the sonata form, e.g.
>Furthermore, for all its episodic
>character, the long arch of the Oddessy provides a classic example of
>what I'm talking about, and it has its parallels in various forms all
>around the world.
Yes, there are indeed stories and characters in the Oddessy. Can't argue that one.
--J