Letters to the Editor
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Camille, You have just insulted an entire generation of great artists
How dare you wield Bergman and Antonioni as a weapon to say there are no great art films anymore? Have you watched IFC, or Sundance? What the hell are you even talking about?
There are so many things wrong with this piece I couldn't sufficiently respond to all of them, so I will bottom line it for you. You are a crabby old babby-boomer who should be ashamed of herself for insulting every single artist who has busted his or her ass to make something real and beautiful for YOU in the past 25 years.
Star Wars???! Rolling Stones?!!! Screw You! If you can't find any films or music better than these your an idiot! I'm not even going to list any because your the one who is supposed to be the journalist!
You baby boomers really need a reality check! Spoiled rotten! Always have been. All the sex, drugs and rock and roll you could eat, then you got married and turned into money worshipers, and now your all a bunch of middle-aged burnouts who can't understand your own kids and grandkids. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe because You sold out art, AND rock and roll and the younger generation has been paying for it ever since.
Did you ever once consider that the younger generation has it harder then you did? Maybe great artistsic film-makers today have a much harder time getting seen? Maybe great musicians have a harder time getting heard? Do you know why? Because YOU solled them out. You sold the country out. Baby Boomer rock is used in TV commercials, and art films can't get shown because you all would rather see Harry Potter.
Make an effort. I know it's hard to be a baby boomer and actually exert yourself, but try.
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Paglia's ridiculousness
But things will be vastly different: no more happy facade of pacification and reconstruction; no more corrupt protectionism of commercial contractors; no more costly police or military training of volatile, faithless local recruits; no more intrusive neighborhood patrols with our soldiers blown to smithereens by cheap booby traps. It will be real war, heavily applied by air force, with maximum damage inflicted at minimal cost to our troops.
This paragraph shows Paglia has no concept of what's going on in Iraq, and has no credibility. The "costly" police training is what might save Iraq; many of the "faithless" local recruits are the Iraqi patriots willing to stand up for their country. Who would the "maximum damage" in Paglia's "real war" be inflicted on? The populace? The police? Who? Didn't we already have the "real war?"
It's hard to respect Paglia as anything but a moderate Republican who calls herself a "Democrat" so she can be paid by Salon for a column that wouldn't be published if she was honest about her real identity. But, her complete misunderstanding of reality in Iraq is something that can't be ignored.
I am a freelance writer and just returned from a monthlong embed with the 82nd Airborne...that's a drop in the bucket compared to what our soldiers spend there, but in that short time I can promise you I am well aware that Paglia has no idea what she's talking about, and in the words of an 82nd NCO, she and other living room patriots should "keep their crazy ideas to themselves."
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Another artform prematurely pronounced dead.
I find something incredibly boring about this article. Having to read through Miss Paglia's diatribe against the current film industry when it is abundantly obvious that genius in filmaking hasn't died, just her passion for the art form.
Please, tell us more about how starry eyed you were, coming out of art houses in the 60s. Your arrogance in claiming there is nothing out there to compare to the masterpieces in your youth makes you just another old-fogie, telling us how much better it was back-when. Well, I'm still moved, consistently, by films I see made today and when I delve into those made back-when. I think you just have to find a way to refresh your passion for the artform and perhaps learn a good way to dig through the muck, lets face it, there is a lot more of everything out there, you have to develop the skill of sifting.
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Once again:
Wow, it’s tragic that you are obviously the last intellectual with a taste for avant-garde art house cinema. The only one mourning its loss. Didn’t a whole school of theorists study this before your self indulgent babbling?
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Some things never change
It's nice to see Paglia still has a good grab of the bait and switch article - that is to say, she starts out seemingly criticizing her Boomer Generation, but in the end she's really saying what we are all sick of the boomers saying: nothing matters as much as the things that mattered to (and were made by) my generation when we were young.
She even cites how excited she was to see a film that everyone else in the theater left 'cept her and her friends remaining in the front row.
This is different than arthouse film now?
While mainstream film is the bascially same as it ever was, there are some more in roads to the arthouse asthetic these days (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind anyone?). Arthouse film remains - only now we have more than merely European and American auteurs.
And, with the advent of the DVD, companies like Criterion make the artfilm much more available.
Paglia is just too lazy to look the way she did in her youth.
And this is doubly true for rock and popular music. While the industry is in major flux - and the mainstream is a little more suspect than ever - there is more amazing music than ever. Rock will never quite have the relevancy it once did, just as doowop, western swing and big band jazz before it no longer do as well.
But if she were to look below the surface, she would find an amazing selection of sights and sounds from around the world.
Paglia just seems to no longer have the stamina required to be on the cutting edge (one has to search for this stuff, or have a friend who does the work for one... it won't be spoon fed).
This does not mean great, meanignful artfilms and rock don't exist and/or are no longer relevant. Though it's all apparently just not relevant to Paglia.
As an early poster wrote above, I don't have the time or inclination to rattle off a list of great art films of the last 35 years nor the amazing amount of current music (and, yes, much great rock music) that exists. But if she were to expend the effort to look around, I would happily help point her in the right directions.