Been noticing in the last few months, esp since guys like Reynolds have stopped posting, that there's been a fair bit of angst relating to the hot new thing, relevance of music, what's 'important', radical, political, Marxist enough, capitalist enough etc..etc..
I read an interesting article in FILM COMMENT magazine written by esteemed film-maker and critic Paul Schrader talking about 'cinematic canons'...Schrader was approached to write a book on Film canons, he started and subsequently gave up as he felt the task was too enourmous to take on. Still he put a case forward discussing canons and the like and related it to the history of art in general...
But one of the main points he made was about the importance of things like film (and perhaps music) and important artworks in this era. He basically stated that cinema was the premier art-form of the 20th Century, but that in this new millenium it isn't..He argued various ideological flaws of critics, be stated that the changes in technology and whatnot is part of what's shifting the way things are interpreped, absorbed, critiqued and the like...
He was basically saying that things are 'finished' that culture is at it's end, but that it's shifting into a different format, what exactly that is, is still to be defined...
Another interesting and probably disturbing things for alot of the one-eyed post-modernists that frequent this board, is that he feels that canons or whatever must rely on strict guidelines. He goes to say that if Shakespear is the canon for literature, then Renoir is for cinema, if I had a punt, I wager Howling Wolf, Bob Dylan, Phil Spector, the Beatles, the Velvets and maybe Kraftwerk - call me racist, boring, dull etc or whatever - as justifable canons for pop music (we can argue above and beyond) but they still hold true and solid despite the post-modern theorists attempts at otherwise.
I guess it all goers back to that old adage 'you must know (or stick to the rules) the rules to know how to break them'...
I read an interesting article in FILM COMMENT magazine written by esteemed film-maker and critic Paul Schrader talking about 'cinematic canons'...Schrader was approached to write a book on Film canons, he started and subsequently gave up as he felt the task was too enourmous to take on. Still he put a case forward discussing canons and the like and related it to the history of art in general...
But one of the main points he made was about the importance of things like film (and perhaps music) and important artworks in this era. He basically stated that cinema was the premier art-form of the 20th Century, but that in this new millenium it isn't..He argued various ideological flaws of critics, be stated that the changes in technology and whatnot is part of what's shifting the way things are interpreped, absorbed, critiqued and the like...
He was basically saying that things are 'finished' that culture is at it's end, but that it's shifting into a different format, what exactly that is, is still to be defined...
Another interesting and probably disturbing things for alot of the one-eyed post-modernists that frequent this board, is that he feels that canons or whatever must rely on strict guidelines. He goes to say that if Shakespear is the canon for literature, then Renoir is for cinema, if I had a punt, I wager Howling Wolf, Bob Dylan, Phil Spector, the Beatles, the Velvets and maybe Kraftwerk - call me racist, boring, dull etc or whatever - as justifable canons for pop music (we can argue above and beyond) but they still hold true and solid despite the post-modern theorists attempts at otherwise.
I guess it all goers back to that old adage 'you must know (or stick to the rules) the rules to know how to break them'...
Last edited: