(no subject)

[rm]

On the 28 Days Later website, is an area called testimonials, that has both critic and fan reviews. The fan reviews are unedited or filtered by the maintainers of the site, and they are a stunning example of why anyone who wants to do anything remotely creative has to be absolutely out of their fucking mind.

No, my issue isn't that some people loathed this film (some people will -- it's grotesque, long, the first third is almost entirely silent, the plot definitely has three very different acts, it's not a typical horror film, and digital video, while serving the story well isn't what we're used to on the big screen, etc). My issue is that nearly everyone who posted, regardless of whether they were in favour of the film or not, couldn't construct a sentence in the English language if their life depended on it. My issue is that, at least fifty percent of the commetary said things like (and these my friends, are actual quotes):
"it was like watching Giligan's Island, a far more messed up situation", "I don't know how, but this english artsy fartsy fucked up a zombie movie... this just goes to show that independent film and the english eat shit" "the film was very european and unscary" and finally "this is a gay resident evil rip off." Also to the dude who said Shakespear [sic] couldn't write such irony, IT'S NOT FUCKING IRONIC.

Anyway, the whole thing made me depressed. You make art for, among other things, the audience, but if the audience has the IQ of a toadstool and will hate you forever if you don't provide them with exactly what they expect, you are damned damned damned.

Our culture is astoundingly fucking lazy about everything. And hateful. That's what really amazed me, how much of the things on the site were about slagging people and things that had nothing to do with the film, or saying things like "I wish I had me a woman like the one in the movie."

*shudder*

Comments

I wish I had me a woman..?

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Eeep. Maybe they wandered in the wrong door of the multiplex and thought they were watching James Bond?

I probably won't get a chance to see the film, but I fear that your cultural observations are spot-on. Sigh.

terrifying, isn't it.

[spiralflames.livejournal.com]

these are the things that truly terrify me as a teacher- what's happened to "average" in our society. i spent a good deal of time online, and am accosted by messages-- from adults-- that read "wazzzzup, how r u 2day" i usually reply "more than happy to respond to someone who has the time to type a three- letter word'...sigh.

[mcsquare.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Intelligent criticism is one thing, but mindless, spewing hate is quite another. Of course, those people pretty much rebut themselves by that kind of behavior.

Our culture is astoundingly fucking lazy about everything. And hateful.

Do you think it is just our culture that's this way? Or do you think every country has some version of this kind of thing?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I'm sure most places have some version of this sort of thing, but America does really win the prize in terms of the average person thinking hostility towards intellectualism and art is a virtue or at least utterly acceptable.

[orobouros.livejournal.com]

did you read the "editorial" in The Onion this week?

[rm.livejournal.com]

No, why?

[orobouros.livejournal.com]

I think you'll find it amusing :)

(not the "sperm" one, the other one)

[rm.livejournal.com]

My inner Hermione Granger and I need to go scour ourselves with brillo now.

[orobouros.livejournal.com]

yeah, me and mine are too. :)

I do want to see 28 Days Later, though. But I think I'm going to go see Capturing The Friedmans this afternoon, first. I also picked up Hell House yesterday. The documentary about the fundamentalist Christian "haunted house" in Texas. Haven't had time to watch it yet. Waiting for that "perfect" moment.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Just make sure you see 28 Days Later on the big screen, because I suspect the digital video will get even murkier on the small screen and not work.

I should see Capturing the Friedmans, but it's a hard thing to get excited about going to see. And you must tell us about Hell House.

[mcsquare.livejournal.com]

::dies::

Unfortunately, I think that article actually captures the attitude of a lot of people. Scary.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Gods yes, the times I've visited Britain have been very enlightening - average people not only lack any significant suspicion of or hostility towards intellectualism, they even include a significant intellectual endeavor in their hobbies. The time one of my parent's friends (who was otherwise a perfectly ordinary shopkeeper) took us on a tour of her garden and proceeded to provide both common and latin names for all of her favorite plants, not because she was showing off, but because she thought it was important to be clear. I don't know the origins of US anti-intellectualism, but it is vile and disturbingly pervasive.

[rothko.livejournal.com]

there's plenty of anti-intellectual hate-spewing in the UK, too; and as here in the states, it's honestly not that hard to find. stupid and evil people are everywhere, it's not like we've got a monopoly on that here. americans are just louder than most, i think.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I hope there isn't as much as in the US, I've not seen it, but I've only visited the UK for a short time so that isn't terribly surprising. I now wonder if there is anyplace on the planet where the life of the mind is accorded anywhere near the reverence given to sports and similar feats of physical prowess

[delchi.livejournal.com]

IMHO when you create anything, there will be people who call it crap. Either out of rote or because they have ( in their minds ) legitimate reasons. To me coming to terms with that is part of the creative process. That being said, anything film wise that is not playing in the ultramegaplex is lost on Americans as a whole. You are really fortunate to be in a city where it gets taken seriously. As for someone outside of that city, if you say 'indie film ' or ' art film ' most people respond instantly with a quip about gay cowboys eating pudding ala South Park.

As far as a resident evil rip off, the tool in question probably is not aware of the films that resident evil ' ripped off ' in the process. Recall the old movies such as ' the quiet earth ' and such where SOMETHING happens and only one person is left on the planet, who finds two more ( a man and a woman ) and the rest is history. There are at lest 3 films and one Twilight Zone episode based on this. Each version brings a new flavor to it. My personal favorite is in " The Quiet Earth " when the lead chr runs into a church wearing nothing but a white slip and carrying a shotgun. He skids to a stop in front of a hanging crucifix, places the shotgun under the chin of J.C. and screams " ALLRIGHT, SHOW YOURSELF OR THE KID GETS IT!! ". All in all , simply becaseu something is similar is not an instant reason to discredit it. Hell, sometimes it's better.

If all else fails, watch Dark City, Equilibrium , and The Matrix back to back. Am I the only one who saw THX-1138 in Equilibrium?

This is yet again another reason that I cite that you are a necessary element in the lives of the people, to remind and educate us about such things, and to weed out the people capable of appreciating film from the pudding eaters.


Aside Question : have you seen " Last Night " ? The final scene in that messed me up quite a bit.

Anti-Intellectualism

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Is pretty much the standard in America. Although it's bad everywhere, it's worse in certain areas. This is why it would be hard for me to live to far away from a big university or college - despite all the silliness in that culture.

I wonder, though, as the media becomes more and more intrusive and people get swept up like lemmings into the "society of the spectacle" if we aren't all contributing to this problem...? It seems to me that when you see average, college educated people reading nothing but poop - if they read at all - we sow the seeds for this down the line. Do people read books that challenge them and make them struggle? Or do they read fantasy and sc-fi that enable them to drift and dream like little kids going off to sleep? A culture that is fed on a diet of nothing but escapism breeds this sort of problem.

Re: Anti-Intellectualism

[rm.livejournal.com]

Art is often about spectacle and it's what I do, and if dreaming were only for children, so much achievement would simply never happen -- people would decide to stop taking risks, stop moving forward, stop challenging their world and become drones at "adulthood".

The problem of prolonged adolescence and childhood in American culture is real. But I don't believe the answer to that is being dour, anymore than I believe the culprit is any particular genre of art, entertainment or mass media or culture. We are, among other things, a culture of addictions, many of them made up so we can avoid responsibility. That to me is our great national weakness, not this really annoying (and obviously bait material) notion you have that a book in the sci-fi genre could never possibly be intellectually challenging. How narrow-minded of you to be so utterly certain you know exactly how the world works. Most of us have the good sense not to even presume we know it for ourselves, much less other people.

The concepts of high and low culture exist so that we can feel better about what we do and don't like, without having to examine why, which doesn't do much to better either end of that very artificial spectrum.

I don't want to get into a discussion of what the purpose of art is, or even if it has a purpose, but if its goal is to move an audience -- emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, politicallly -- whatever -- shouldn't as many different languages as possible be available in the creator's toolbox?

To me, the only thing fundamentally wrong with pop culture, is that as a nation we don't seem to grasp the artificiality of our reality TV, and that in order for much of the self-proclaimed intelligencia to condemn current spectacles, we try as hard as possible to avoid learning anything about how they evolved, often from so-called high art, into being.

Bait?

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Sci-Fi can be, of course, very challenging. Not all "high culture" or adult culture, or challenging culture has to be "dour" either. If we fail to draw distinctions,hough, how can we critique the same responses you did in your post?

Re: Bait?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I agree "high culture" doesn't have to be dour, but it's the way you tend to present it, rather agressively too, I might add. (also, I'd be wary of equating "adult culture" and "high culture" even if, or particularly because, I'm not entirely sure what anyone means by those terms).

And while distinctions and details are obviously necessary to discussion, I think high and low culture are crappy, artificial and ultimately meaningless distinctions, because we pretend they are absolutes, when a variety of artforms, subject matters and producers of entertainments have been categorized at different ends of that spectrum at different times, even as the material has not changed.

Opera, which we generally consider to be high culture these days, was often the trash of its time. When Puccini wrote Boheme it was a scandal that he would compose an opera about ordinary people, leading ordinary and tawdry lives. As came up in a discussion with my roommate earlier, "don't you know Mimi was a ho?" And Puccini is far from an isolated case of many operas being the trash of its day, it's just what I happen to know about with any detail right now, and something sykii could in particular speak to more knowledgeably. The bawdiness of Shakespeare is another excellent example, especially if you're at all well-read on the nature of the theatre going experience of the time.

Calss Distinctions

[keith418.livejournal.com]

Are not really the only ones I want to make here.

What I would am interested in examining is, what I detect anyway, a growing desire to escape. Is our passionate involvement in escapism and popular culture really a result of our deep understanding that the writers on "Buffy" will be revered like the Bard of Avon some centuries hence? Or is it because we are running away from the demands that real and advanced culture makes because our inner urge to flee is so strong and our standards have been in decline?

Do we see a desire to escape growing greater and greater? If we don't, then little of my argument has any merit at all. If we do, then what is causing it?

Some sorts of culture are like dessert. As part of a meal, they are fine. There are good desserts and bad desserts, and some desserts that are even healthy. But if you have a family that eats nothing but dessert, how healthy will they be - especially if the dessert they eat is full of empty calories? Little kids think, often, that the perfect meal is just dessert. Adults know this isn’t a good idea. However, it appears that some adults eat nothing that isn’t dessert. We see them every day. How healthy do you think their kids will be?

If we are all bent on escape, what are we escaping from? Is it the responsibilities that call us to fix the problems we want to run away from? Does culture offer us a respite from these problems and concerns, or does it serve to point us back to them and reveal new ways of looking at them? Personally, I observe a culture more hell-bent than ever on escape, and less and less choosy about the escape route offered.

Re: Calss Distinctions

[delchi.livejournal.com]

"that the writers on "Buffy" will be revered like the Bard of Avon some centuries hence? "

No , but I think that Gene Roddenberry , and Star Trek will.

I'm not saying that as a sci fi geek, I'm saying that as look at the amount of influence ST has had in our culture , our shopping habbits, and way of life. It's going to be a serious ripple down the line.

Re: Anti-Intellectualism

[mcsquare.livejournal.com]

I don't think fantasy and sci-fi are necessarily inherently non-intellectual. It's possible to have intelligent sci-fi and fantasy just as much as it's possible to have idiotic non-fiction.

I won't pretend to know the roots of American anti-intellectualism, but I really doubt that the popularity of fantasy and sci-fi has anything to do with it.

The Best Sci-Fi

[keith418.livejournal.com]

I have found, isn't really about the past, it's about the present. PKD's novels, for example, are an almost sneaky way to make people look at contemporary issues - and they are among the finest Sci-fi has had to offer us. I was brought up with sci-fi, fantasy, and other escapists parts of popular culure and I celebrate them as much as anyone else.

But...

I think the steady diet of escapism is having an effect. Standards are slipping and this has a negative effect across the board. When the highest parts of high culture are really performing, it's a tide that lifts all boats. In this fashion we can see even the lowest parts of pop culture sinking lower when the really challenging standards aren't in place. The stupid reaction [Unknown site tag] objected to is bred by lower standards - and I'd like people to look at and question whether their own poor choices aren't contributing to the problem. A diet of nothing but dessert makes for some pretty fat people...