Letters to the Editor
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I remember the art houses too!
Yes, Camille, "Blow-Up" was a fantastic adventure, though the climactic Yardbirds performance is of "Train Kept A 'Rollin',"
with Jeff Beck *and* Jimmy Page on guitars, not "Smokestack Lightnin'." I was fortunate enough to be at Columbia in the late Sixties. We'd walk down to the Thalia on Ninety-Fifth and see films like "Breathless" and "Pierrot Le Fou." Belmondo was my hero, a permanent influence on what I choose to call my existential persona. There was an acceptance, even a longing for the European way of life. My only regret is that I didn't travel or live there, but I was busy as a rock musician in New York, and that was its own brand of cinema verite.
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Another Report from Grandma About How Much Better Things Were Back in the Day.
Thanks again, Grandma! Can I get you a glass of warm milk?
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Oh boy! Cammy's back!
I haven't even read the article and I'm excited, on account of cuz the letters are always so good. I'm sure there's all sorts of 'Democrats have vaginas' stuff in there ... I'm ready to plunge in!
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And but so no she didn't.....
Wait, what? Did she just like, pretty much crown Kelly Clarkson the current and future savior of music (and the fine arts in general.) as a vital art form?
Wow – just wow.
What a hack – she slips closer and closer to self-satire with each and every column.
Irvine:
Are you there?
Are you watching me?
As I lie here on this floor
They say you feel what I do
They say you're here every moment
Will you stay?
Stay 'till the darkness leaves
Stay here with me
I know you're busy, I know I'm just one
But you might be the only one who sees me
The only one to save me
Why is it so hard?
Why can't you just take me?
I don't have much to go
Before I fade completely
Can you feel how cold I am?
Do you cry as I do?
Are you lonely up there all by yourself?
Like I have felt all my life
The only one to save mine
How are you so strong?
What's it like to feel so free?
Your heart is really something
Your love, a complete mystery to me
Are you there watching me?
As I lie here on this floor
Do you cry, do you cry with me?
Cry with me tonight
Are you there?
Are you watching me? - Kelly Clarkson
Visceral intensity and exquisite poetic shadings?
Hardly.
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CP is right...
Today's mainstream "art" is absolute crap. But so it was in the 60's with regards to film. "Sound of Music" anyone?
As usual, though, if you scrape beneath the surface, you'll find gems. But you won't find them listening to Matt Drudge (although I do like the vocal work of Clarkson on Irvine - she makes the lyrics sound more profound than what appears on the written page.) And before you think I'm a defender of Clarkson, I'm not, that's the only song of hers I've ever heard that I remotely liked.
Paglia works at a school which specializes in the theater arts (I know quite a few graduates) so you'd think she'd have more knowledge of the myriad of great films and musical artists bubbling underneath the mainstream to which she seemingly limits herself. Myself, I can't find enough time to spend with the numerous examples of great film and music out there.
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She's a film critic?
Ms. Paglia sure is sloppy.
Consider this one excerpt:
Aside from Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" series, with its deft flashbacks and gritty social realism, is there a single film produced over the past 35 years that is arguably of equal philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution to Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" or "Persona"? Perhaps only George Lucas' multilayered, six-film "Star Wars" epic can genuinely claim classic status, and it descends not from Bergman or Antonioni but from Stanley Kubrick and his pop antecedents in Hollywood science fiction.
First, she's inaccurate. Only "Godfather II" is characterized by "deft flashbacks." The first and third are structured quite linearly.
Second, "gritty social realism" is an awfully general way of assessing this series, and a nice, all-pupose cliche to use in describing any movie less fanciful than say, an MGM musical.
Third, if Ms. Paglia is so knowledgeable about film, how can she limit the roots of "Star Wars" to Kubrick and Hollywood science fiction without making at least equally passing references to John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Joseph Campbell, Arthurian legend, and/or Homer?
Fourth, what does she mean by "classic?" If by "classic," she means Bergman's "philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution"--as her writing implies--then how can she claim that the "Star Wars" trilogies can be granted this stature *to the exclusion of everything else the last 35 years have seen*? She can't really mean that Bergman's classics,
Or, if she means "classic" in a more generic sense, then her writing is painfully unclear (following, as it does, "philosophical weight or virtuosity of execution"), not to mention silly.
If she's employing a broader definition of "classic," does she really mean to argue that the last three "Star Wars" movies will endure, but "Rocky" won't? Or "Do the Right Thing"? Or "American Beauty," "Goodfellas," "Brokeback Mountain," "Network," "Taxi Driver," "The Shawkshank Redemption," "Pulp Fiction," "Alien," "Chinatown,"... You get the idea. These won't be classics, but the "Star Wars" series--fully half of which is composed of Episodes I, II, and III--will?
Either way, her logic breaks down. Moving on...
Fourth, I agree that the hypervisual quality of so many movies is not a good thing, but if you trace it back (as Ms Paglia does not), it's as rooted in art and experimental films as are the lyrical long takes Ms. Paglia waxes on about.
Fifth, she might want to dwell more on the fact that moviegoing is no longer the quasi-mystical experience she remembers not only because of the movies, but also because of the moviegoing experience. It seems that Ms. Paglia's formative movie experiences all predate the multiplex, the shoebox theater, long lines, truly outrageous prices for tickets and refreshments, and certainly, the intrusion of cell phones and texting.
Sloppy thinking, sloppy prose. (Though I admit that I thought "Today, anything goes, and nothing lasts" was a nice turn of phrase. So she has that going for her.)