Ah, youth.

As a radical capitalist, I don’t fully agree with Professor Waller’s perspective that capitalism is somehow a cause of anti-intellectualism, particularly among 20-30 year olds. I would argue that the more correct term is ‘consumerism’.

There are those in that age group who are writing and discussing film in a fairly intelligent manner, and have expressed openness about learning more about film. But in almost all the opinions I’ve read or listened to, I’ve found that theirs is the voice of a consumer, not critic.

Film culture is not dictated by the creators (which in our Hollywood system is almost purely market-driven), but by the consumers. Thanks to broader means of communication, some consumers have become, for better or worse, influencers.

Armond White was a guest on another podcast, and he articulated the distinction between film criticism and film discussion. And he believes that in order to truly be a film critic, you have to thoroughly study the art form, not just see lots of films.

Perhaps there isn’t a place for true film criticism in pop culture outlets, but instead in more academic, peer-reviewed publications — places very, very few of us tread, particularly this age group.

In other words, the consumers aren’t interested in critical thought, and don’t look to film reviews to expand their knowledge of cinema, but rather to let them know whether a movie “sucked” or not.

While one could be accused of the ‘kids get off my lawn’ syndrome, (and of course you have to quote this famous bit: http://www.bartleby.com/73/195.html ) I think Prof. Ray is really onto something here.

I’d like to write more – but I express myself best on the show = will talk about this comment in this week’s or next week’s show

Also, I am motivated to revisit the issue of Mr. White because I have recently felt so disturbed by the brash insensitivity, the almost thuggish obnoxiousness, and the utter pettiness and smugness that is characteristic of the ignorance I see displayed by 20-30 year olds on the contemporary American university campus and in the university classroom of late.

The topic of how the younger generation thinks, what they value, how they see reality, and what they mock or believe in is a big issue in popular culture right now as NY TIMES, NEWSWEEK, NPR, and every other major media outlet is running stories on and analysis of the issue of the generation who will run the world as the last of the baby boomers finally die off and/or retire. I myself am on the cusp between the baby boomers and so-called ‘generation X’ which had itself aged gradually into ‘generation Y’.

Anyway, I am not alone in dwelling upon this issue, because everybody and their mama is asking lately, ‘whassup with that gosh-darn generation Y’? As Jet Loe alluded to at one point in a blog entry he authored, the younger generation is into capitalist realism. I myself call them context-challenged: they often cannot put things into historical, social, or political context, do not care to try, or are often simply hostile toward the idea that they ought to do so or that they ought to value or respect people who do (people such as Armond White). Where film, literature, art, and culture are concerned, what this comes down to is an inability on their part to understand ALLUSION in art, in culture, in life itself.

Film, as Pauline Kael, Susan Sontag, and other serious critics have urged us to see, is allusive, by its very nature, by virtue of its form (dialectical), and by its fusion of artistic disciplines.

Armond White is utterly, in fact even mundanely correct in saying that films are ‘art objects’. Of course they are. “Louis Malle’s “Au Revoir, Les Enfants” (1981), considered an ‘art film’, is obviously an acknowledged art object, but so too is “Transformers,” and so too is John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos” (1972), because no matter whether a film is foreign or domestic, funny or serious, creative or crap, it is the very nature of film as a product of a cultural moment, as an artifact of a market-driven industry, and as an art, a craft, and a production process, that each individual film whether we like it, honor it, study it, sneer at it, or hate and ignore it, is a cultural artifact and an Objet d’Art.

A confession, for illustration’s sake: for a good fifteen years I’d despised Quentin Tarentino as a schlocky, derivative, offensive dweeb whose films were, in my opinion, one step removed from auto-erotic violence-porn; they were awkward attempts, I felt, at parody as homage. Nobody could dissuade me from this belief, not even my cine-phile daughter, Lena, sympathetic as she was toward Tarentino’s then extant ouvre. (A lover of world cinema since the age of ten, she was thirteen when she blew my mind by referring precociously to “Soylent Green” to illustrate some preternaturally sophisticated analysis of a Tarentino joint. I protested, incredulous, saying, ‘You’re a child! Have you ever even SEEN “Soylent Green?” She replied, “No, Daddy. But it’s a classic.”) Well, after years of being a Tarentino hater I listened to a FILM TALK episode in which Jet articulately argued a way to look at Tarentino that pierced my own shallow pedjudice: Jet argued that T. is the ‘ultimate lover of cinema and of cinematic history,’ and that his films are more than simply homages–they are thoughtfully creative deep-text allusions to the great films, great directors, and great film grammar of the world cinema of our lifetimes. That analysis by Jet led me to go see “Inglorious Basterds” (2009) which I watched without pre judging it. I had one of the most profound cinematic experiences in my recent memory: I was astounded by the vision, subtlety, emotional impact, and masterful suspense of the opening sequence featuring the French dairy farmer who is questioned by the ‘Jew Hunter’, played by Chrsitoph Waltz. The day after I saw “Basterds” I re-screened several old Tarentino films and was amazed by what I has missed in them when I’d viewed them years before with a sanctimoniously closed mind.

There was a lesson for me in my sudden transformation into a fan of Quentin T. The very fact that a film can elicit our love, contempt, opposition, allegiance, or boredom, is what makes a film a cultural artifact, and an art object to be read as a text, to be taken seriously as itself even if ultimately dismissed. Isn’t this idea exactly why so many critics, film lovers, film artists, and cultural critics have given a strange sort of honor to one of the worst filmmakers in American history, Ed Wood? Wood’s films were so horrid, and horrid with such a grand aplomb and intensity, with so great a sense of Woods’ own devotion to the crap he made, that they are seen as attaining a sort of dignity not just as trash, but as ‘Kitsch’ (see? that’s an allusion, of the sort that my students typically sneer at because its in another language and because it’s ‘taking things too seriously’).

Capitalism, the world-view of my students, sees value only in what is ‘heimlich’ (what is familiar, easily categorizable in an endless commercial replication like mass produced objects as opposed to personal, idiosyncratic, individual art objects). History, philosophy, global difference–in short, allusion, is unheimlich, and thus too much trouble to go through, too serious, too suggestive that reality is more than a surface, and that reality has facets, complexity, depth. Jet has commented about the younger generation that:

“It seems to me that we have a whole generation of folks who’ve been raised since the cold-war’s end who, raised in a world where there is no visibly prominent alternative to Capitalism, see, however unconsciously, criticism as inherently promotional – in fact, everything, and everyone, has to constantly sell itself/themselves – because there’s nowhere else to go/no other way of being – and folks like Armond rock the boat.”

As a journalist, writer, literary critic, editor, and university professor I am appalled by the cult of stupid that holds sway over American public life lately, which has poisoned American cinema. My students are proud of not knowing things. To be stupid is a mark of honor. They openly mock me for trying to teach them things, though they are college students and I am a professor and the whole purpose of our meeting in a classroom on a campus full of books and other such references to the past and to allusive fact is…well, is for me to TEACH them things. The whole purpose of film criticism is to REFER to things–to society, history, psychology, politics, aesthetics, philosophy, race, war, love, death, etc., because film is a dialectical medium–it’s not static or flat. It is a combination of all the other art forms (dance, music, theater, literature, and painting, not to mention fashion design, set design, pantomime, folktale, mythology, and on and on! Film IS ideas). Adolescence is about ‘emotions’ and ‘experience’ (vague as the word, ‘experience’ is). Adulthood is about ideas. A “Rotten Tomato” commentator on Armond White recently betrayed the real root of the younger generation’s problem with intellectualism and intellectuals:

“He [White] is a critic, yes, of contemporary society, of certain ideas he disagrees with, of the overbearing, ill-informed white culture, of whatever ideas or concepts you choose. But to truly be a film critic, you need to critique the film in front of you, not bring in tangential ideas that have, for most of us, absolutely nothing to do with the idea of understanding how a film attempts to communicate a certain experience or set of emotions.”

And of course this disaffection with intellect, with intellectuals is automatically a disaffection with Armond, who goes far beyond the quarantine of hermeticism, and the decidedly priggish hypoallergenic quality that sometimes adheres to the worldviews and the protestations of the younger generation (and also of the older generation like myself who sometimes happen to share this disregard for the unmanageability and the challenge, the apostasy that marks real intellectualism, and that ought to mark film criticism, for that matter.

As Dean Wormser says in the film, “Animal House”, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life’ Son.” Armond doesn’t deserve to be attacked because he is offering something more than a commercial break to sell beer and chips; because he has no interest in ‘selling’ the films he critiques (how hideous IS it that newspapers and TV now habitually limit their most energetic commentary about opening films to how much ‘box office’ ($$) each film pulls in on an opening weekend??); because he has ideas, not just ‘emotions’ and ‘experiences’.

Not that a site called ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ that is distinguished by its decidedly adolescent buffoonishness rates such an extended Philippic on my part, such a screed, such a Jeremiad (I couldn’t resist tossing in a few allusions here). Ultimately, they aren’t worth all that. As one Rotten commentator points out over there, if you are against White, just ignore him rather than drawing attention to him. I am guilty of the same hyperbolic flattery of that which I rebuke. And as far as that goes, it IS only a WEBSITE (and a poorly produced, awkwardly sophomoric TeeVee show) that in the end is guilty mostly of a sense of play, of silly fun, really. Which, I guess, is not a sin in itself.

Even Lena would say that “Rotten Tomatoes” doesn’t rate all this analysis, but certainly the subject of cinema does, and certainly Armond White deserves to be taken seriously. He sure doesn’t deserve to be maligned and mocked because he gives the cinema what the art form deserves: he takes cinema seriously.

Geez, is that so wrong??

Which reminds me:
I don't mean to demean contrarianism, being somewhat of a subscriber myself. So I probably should have also noted my TFT impressions of AWhite as being a funny, genuine kind of guy who was enjoying the conversation with his hosts. Maybe his contrarian passion for movies came through to me as a sort of via negativa. He held out enough for the possibility of Film that he relentlessly zeroed in on movies that fell short of it…and called them crap (in interesting ways). He knows what Film *ain't*. Maybe at some level he rescues me from giving too much of myself to what I think is a good movie. I'm such a sucker for that. What Would Armond Say?

The link between Capitalism and censorship is too far fetched.

Hey, what goes around, comes around. Karma is a bitch.