From: yunus@loro-next.Stanford.EDU (Jonas Sami Celebiler)
Subject: Re: Trash
Organization: DSO, Stanford University
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 92 01:14:18 GMT

In article <JTV8RB2w165w@depsych.Gwinnett.COM> rc@depsych.Gwinnett.COM  
(Richard Carlson) writes:
> 
> I think so, but I might be wrong.  Dr. Louis Sullivan, the Surgeon
> General in a letter to the N.Y. Times the other day defending the
> National Institute of Health's research on the causes of violence
> cited a recent study that seemed to conclude that the single best
> predictor of subsequent violence was the actual experience of
> being abused and victimized as a child.  That would suggest that
> the real causal influences and forces are non-cultural -- they're
> some kind of Pavlovian-like conditioned responses that are best
> studied at the behavioral and neurological level, and the cultural
> ambience and the mores and norms communicated in cultural vehicles
> such as the trash narratives we are inundated with are largely
> epiphenomenal.  Such a view might be true.  It would mean we are
> all wasting our time thinking about narratives for any purpose
> other than entertainment.

So now you're condemming the entire thought process, because of some dinky  
claim by the Surgeon General, of all people.

> Thank God for Danny DeVito!  I recall an appearance by him on some
> talk show when the picture first came out where the host commented
> that he played the "bad guy" in _Romancing the Stone_.  Danny

If it was on TV, it must be true.

> There's an example where the obvious shortcomings and biases of
> the picture became so obvious they were corrected.  Of course that
> happens in serious art with well-crafted narratives as well.
> Several writers through the years have rewritten _The Merchant of
> Venice_ to have Shylock win in the end because they saw the
> original narrative as unfair.

> That phenomenon of the victory of American culture is itself an
> interesting one.  Why?  The music and movies get worse every year
> any yet they supplant the native culture wherever they go, like
> kudzu or like rabbits in Australia.  The majority of the French
> people would rather see Arnold and Sylvester shoot up a gaggle of
> bad guys than watch the great French classics by Francois
> Truffault and the other old New Wave movie makers.  Even for
> nostalgia the French prefer to look at Bogie in _Casablanca_
> rather than at Jean Renoir's _Orpheus_.  French intellectuals have
> tried to use their structuralist and post-structuralist and
> semiotic theories to account for this bewildering fact but they
> haven't come up with any really satisfactory explanations.
> Meanwhile the French movie industry is dying faster than
> manufacturing in America!
> 

Victory of American culture? Is this a war, an intended effort to  
eradicate all ways of thinking foreign to those that are supposedly of the  
"United States of America"  ?
Secondly, what do you know about what french people "prefer" to watch?   
Many people despise movies from the U.S.A.  The only reason I see why  
movies from the U.S.A. "make money" is because there is an entire nation  
that believes blindly that these movies are better.  The sheer economic,  
and societal force of that is all that drives it.  Other cultures are open  
minded enough to think that maybe their movies aren't the best, even  
though in my opinion, and probably in reality they have a great chance of  
being the best.  And anyway, what does it mean to be the best?  Beauty  
lies in the eye of the beholder, or to not use a cliche, beauty is  
subjective, and french among other people are intelligent enough to see  
that maybe what they deem beautiful is not in some one else's opinion.   
But America judges the beauty of things, or the "greatness" of movies, in  
a way that they think is "objective".  Witness your implied claim that  
some French people go to see movies from the U.S.A. and these movies "make  
a lot of money", ***and that therefor these movies are better***, they  
have "won a victory".  It doesn't matter to you that the kind of French  
that go see these movies are generally of the more uneducated ones, that  
they usually come out of these movies saying they were terrible, that the  
only reason they go is because the U.S.A. has enough economic power that  
these movies get all the advertisement and hype.  And with that blind  
faith that Americans have, that "logically" and "objectively" their  
"culture" is "better," they have a power.  It is as mao said:"if a nation  
has a dream together, it is no longer a dream."  Those blind beliefs that  
people from the United States of America will defend (as you no doubt will  
try to do) vehemently give them a power, though a very negative one.

And to me it is very sad that Richard Carlson should have these ideas  
while writing in the same time about postmodernism.  Postmodernism, should  
give people the power to transcend such notions of good better best.  What  
is unthinkable or self-critical (reflexive) or could be deemed "ugly", in  
postmodernism acquires new life.  Under Richard Carlson's way of thinking,  
all that doesn't make money, or isn't expressed by a famous person on a  
talk-show, or generally isn't approved by "the U.S.A. society" is no good.   
And all that is approved can't be criticized, and if it can be, than it  
will fix itself (dinky modifications in Romancing the Stone part II to  
cover up that it is a jingoistic racist propagandizing movie, made for  
"entertainment"), and that then all is hunky-dory.

You claim that modifications to change biases happen as well in real art.   
Wait a minute, I think you've lost track of "real art."  As far as I can  
see, "real art" is meant to express something, and if you don't agree with  
what it expresses, than it is bad art.  And what I've said is that  
Romancing the stone is just very very bad "real art".  Biases as strong as  
those in Romancing the Stone and most U.S.A. movies, should not be  
allowed, accepted, condoned.  And if they were present in "real art", i  
would not condone them either.  But there definately is an attitude in the  
U.S.A. that biases and general shit thinking in "not real art" should be  
condoned because it is "just for entertainment."

I'm American, and I lived in France, but I really wonder what ths U.S.A.  
is coming to, if people as supposedly educated as you, don't see what's  
wrong.