[lbo-talk] Re: John Ford (was: Kael)

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Mon Nov 27 17:39:52 PST 2006


Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> I also wonder if 500 years from now -- if film as an art and as a medium survives and if humans in civilization or as a species survive -- anyone will be able to tell the difference between a Hitchcock film and a Disney film.... ??

There is an interesting review of a new Pynchon novel in the current New Yorker, the review ending (after a chaotic list of [some] of the elements and echoes in the novel): "This was all surely part of the intention, a simulation of the disorienting overload of modern culture." There has been for many years buzz about "information overload," but that is seriously misleading. What we have is an overload of important knowledge, of great works of art, of tremendous beauty. It is too much, too much. And it is not only in film but in painting, poetry, fiction, philosophy, that the auteur theory, the focus on the great artist, is dead dead dead. In 500 years not very many people (only specialists hidden away in research libraries) will be able to tell the difference between Tolstoi and Milton, Picasso and Rubens.

Carrol



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