> At 8:28 PM -0700 4/21/99, Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:
>
> >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.
Well, of course not. But I wasn't the one who introduced the origins of the movies as a point of argument. Nor did I approvingly support that line of argument.
> >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.
I'm all ears, Johnathan.
If you're not getting all critical of elitism on populist grounds ("When in human history has the written word dominated imagery except for the smallest fraction of people (like academics, for instance)?", etc.) just exactly WHAT grounds are you laying claim to???
Enquiring minds want to know.
> >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.
So much for the theory that narrative filmmaking is an elitist (academic?) plot.
> >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)
("Genuflect! Genuflect!" -- Tom Lehrer, "The Vatican Rag")
> forward, any film focusing on something other than narrative
> and character development makes people supid,
Good lord! You actually think "Birth of Nation" focused on something else? What, pray tell?
> 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.
But that's NOT what Carl actually said, it's a considerable embellishment, courtesy of you. Carl simply wrote:
>The art of special effects has advanced at the expense of
>characterization and plot development. Movies have contributed vastly
>to the domination of imagery over the written word and to the
>stupefaction of people in general.
I would agree with this as an almost trivially obvious statement. It's a LONG way aways from claiming "that any film with narrative and character development makes people smart."
> Together with the claim I made
> above -- that film continues to have a history *after* it incorporates
> narrative and character development --
Some of which -- the best stuff, generally, BUILDS upon the intelligence developed in learning how to appreciate film 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.
Oh, God, such crude reductionism! But beside the point, really. For the sake of Carl's complaint, what difference does it make WHY it goes on?
> 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.
I say that there are multiple forms of intelligence, but that the loss of narrative-oriented intelligence is visible everywhere around us, and most certainly undermines the capacity for sustained critical thought. In those terms, it's a loooong ways down from "The Twilight Zone" to "The X-Files".
> 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.
I was referring specifically to the much earlier period, pre-WWI, when the audiences exploded in purely working-class settings. It was this growth, based around simple narrative filmmaking, which laid the foundations for the later growth you're speaking of. Of course it wasn't simply content, but it wasn't done without content, or in opposition to content.
> My point is simply that media have histories, they don't reach "maturity"
> like a plant or a person.
I disagree. People continue to grow and develop after reaching maturity, but in more subtle ways. So it is with media as well. Each has its own particular basic "language," it's "grammar" which derives in part from chance and convention (which way you write your language before you even invent the book, for example) and in part from the nature of the medium itself. Once this basic stuff has been worked out, then further growth and development is WITHIN the framework of it's mature form -- (even including that which is AGAINST it).
> 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.
A rather bad dichotomy to foist off on anyone, I should think.
> >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.
The Late Quartets RULE, dude! Everyone knows that.
But there was a reason it took the music world nearly a century to be able to comprehend them. It took that long before they learned how to "read" them. This is because there IS an element of necessity at work in art. It's the existence of this necessity which gives creativity to work with -- and against.
> >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.
Not my point at tall, Jonathan. But, another time...
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"