Thanks to Lloyd, once more.
...taken from Pop Matters.
Critic-turned-screenwriter and director Paul Schrader (“Taxi Driver,” “Affliction”) has argued that, as a society, we have become so afraid of being branded elitists that we are loath to judge films according to artistic excellence.
In an essay modeled after Bloom’s book, Schrader says academics and journalists have abdicated their role as arbiters of taste. He argues that film profs are more obsessed with analyzing the political subtext of movies, while the media churn out best-of lists defined by money and celebrity, not aesthetics.
Schrader argues that the “great middle” of film criticism — serious yet accessible film discussion — has disappeared, pushed out on one side by jargon-filled academic studies, and on the other by mass-media film reviews that are little more than consumer guides.
This actually hints at something I've been considering a lot lately, which I'm sure must have been considered by countless others before, (and excuse me for perhaps jumping off topic) but who decides who should be an 'arbiter of taste'.
ReplyDeleteThe article infers that aesthetics should be the stick which such arbiters use to measure art, but then, isn't aesthetics fundamentally a virtue that is extremely difficult to measure? Also, why is political subtext delineated from aesthetics? Can they not be mutually constitutive?
I'm not saying I have any answers, but these are questions which I feel fundamentally challenge the legitimacy of criticism in many frustrating ways.
they don't mention what the essay is - might be worth harassing the author for it?
ReplyDeleteIn response to Darragh, to a lesser or greater extent a critic is 'an expert'. Try applying the same criteria to a carpenter, or a nurse.
ReplyDelete