> Paul Henry,
>
> I'm going to try and get to the crux of this disagreement this time.
>
> At 8:29 PM -0700 4/22/99, Paul Henry Rosenberg wrote:
> >> >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.
>
> That's Jonathan. And we'll talk about the difference between Cultural
> Marxism and populism another time.
Okay, point taken.
> >So much for the theory that narrative filmmaking is an elitist
> >(academic?) plot.
>
> I'm an academic. Observing that this line of work privileges the written
> word over other modes of knowing isn't an attempted slight on the people I
> spend my working life with.
Surely you're familiar with leftist academic status compensation. You may, of course, argue this is not such an instance, but it sure smells like it from here in Californ-I-A.
> >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.
>
> Here's where we disagree. I would like to see this statement
> actually argued for, demonstrated, substantiated, rather than
> hearing about its obviousness. As Stuart Hall says, "what's
> most obvious is what's most ideological." Other writers on
> ideology make a similar point.
It's also trvially obvious that California is hotter in the summer than it is in winter. Is that ideological, too?
Depending on the degree of rigor you require, this could well be a lifetime project. Sorry, but I decline. I'm busy. I'm trying to find ways to get thru the stupefaction you assure me doesn't exist. I note that this is a qualitatively DIFFERENT kind of struggle than back in the Twilight Zone days.
> Carl's claim and your reassertion are not obvious to me.
Not obvious what we're saying or not obviously true?
> His claim about the web being the revenge of the literate
> (revenge against whom?) is both factually incorrect and
> rather curious given his general suspicion of images.
I think it's a case of naively appealing optimism. It reminds me of 1992 or 3. I wish I could share his simple faith, I really do.
> But then, maybe *I've* been stupefied by watching the Matrix!
> I should have thought of that sooner. This is your big chance
> to get me back on track.
But I didn't think "The Matrix" was stupefying. Didn'tcha read my post comparing it to Philip K. Dick? I'm not down on special effects per se. It's just that almost all moviemakers can't hold their liquour.
> >It's a LONG way aways from claiming "that any film with
> >narrative and character development makes people smart."
>
> No, but it does claim that movies contribute to making people stupid.
> That's straight outta Carl's quote.
To the extent that special effects have pushed everything else to the side. Note that I have explicitly identified narrative intelligence as just one form -- albeit a crucial one for the purposes of sustained critical thought.
> I think he's wrong, and I'd like to see that assertion backed
> up with something other than reassertion.
And I’d just LOVE to be proven wrong. I’m always rooting for the triumph of intelligence.
> >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?
>
> Well, I'll plead guilty to nonsequiter and issue a retraction.
> Reductionism, well, I don't think causal arguments are always
> reductionist,
I never said they were. You cleverly removed the text I was responding to with that remark. Why not take a look at it again?
> and if they are, I can think of no better example
> of reductionism than to assert that the very presence of special
> effects in film contributes to making people stupid.
>
> >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".
>
> So you can tell by watching the X-Files that people have less
> "intelligence" (your word, not mine) in whatever form than those people who
> watch the Twilight Zone? What about people who watch both?
You are recasting this into a personalistic framework. Carl and I were both addressing mass-audience effects. What are these shows trying to do? What assumptions do they make about their audiences? These are the kinds of questions we’d ask in coming to the conclusions we reach. Twilight Zone assumes *at least* a kind of latent critical intelligence on the part of its viewers that is witlessly mocked by the X-Files.
> >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).
>
> I don't believe this on its face, and I don't know of any credible media
> theorist or media historian (I don't just mean academics, I mean people who
> have actually spent some time thinking about this stuff before writing
> about it) who makes this argument. If you do, I'd love to read them.
Oh, shoot, check out Janet Murray’s _Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace_ for starters. She has plenty to say about this process as its unfolding today, and draws parallels to the evolution of the book as well as movies. Got references, too.
> Sounds a little McLuhanite, with that structuralist twist of saying
> everything is just like language. Along with C.S. Peirce, I'm of the
> school that language is a special instance of communication, not the other
> way around.
I’m of the same mind. That’s why I put them in quotes. I've argued several times onlist against folks who say that all thought is language. I'd do the same with those who say all communication is language. But that doesn't mean language isn't a useful cognitive metaphor for describing either thought or communication. It clearly *IS* a useful cognitive metaphor for both, but NOT a literal truth for either.
> >> 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.
>
> OK, if you show me how you can tell that people are dumber by looking at
> the X-Files and comparing it to the Twilight Zone, then I'll agree that
> it's an unfair dichotomy.
As I explained above, it’s NOT an individualist argument Carl and I are making here. We're talking about historical processes, too, not individual works of art in splendid isolation.
> >> >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.
>
> D00D!
>
> >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
>
> There's that bare assertion again. IS NOT, I say. Argue your point: don't
> just assert -- after all, you're the one who signs off "reason and
> democracy." Let's have some reason.
Look, you’re making some intelligent points in this post, but any argument is going to contain assertions in it. Jumping in like you do right here is what gave me a bad impression of your argument in the first place. If you want to object, then object to the whole statement, not to a common linguistic form which will be found almost anywhere you care to look.
It’s well-known that it took a looong time for the Late Quartets to become popularly understood. They were widely dismissed as “not musical” as “unplayable” or as symptomatic of Beethoven’s deafness. The first public performance wasn’t until sometime around 1900. It wasn’t until the time of Mahler that there began to be enough people around who knew how to comprehend them. This isn’t really an argument on my part, it’s simply a recitation of musical history. The argument, such as it is, consists of saying that this famous example has universal import. That comes next:
> >an element of necessity at work
> >in art. It's the existence of this necessity which gives creativity to
> >work with -- and against.
>
> I know creative people have to eat like everyone else, and I believe that
> creativity (in whatever form) is a necessary part of life for people to be
> happy. I have no idea what you mean by "an element of necessity at work in
> art" in the above statement.
I mean that art has rules, that it MUST have rules. The freest art--free jazz, Duchamp, John Cage, what have you--comes not from having no rules, but from having the deepest understanding of the rules. It need not be conscious, of course. The understanding can be deep in the bones. But these rules have to be grasped by the audience as well, or else they won’t be able to comprehend the work. (They might still get something out of it, the might like something relatively superficial about it, enjoy some facet or another, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s because they understand only part of its necessity.)
Over to you, Jonathan.
-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net
"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"