From: rhogan@phakt.usc.edu (Ron Hogan)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Re: Ron Hogan on Criticism
Date: 21 Jan 1993 20:30:36 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
NNTP-Posting-Host: phakt.usc.edu

s1mbm@isuvax.iastate.edu (michael bruce mcdonald) writes:

>Ron, I was so impressed with almost everything you said in your long
>post on film that I was going to cede the ground to you and your legions,
>but one thing you said has been troubling me *greatly* all day.

>Can you really mean what you say when you say something to the effect that
>it's hard for you to imagine someone being a good film critic who has not
>been moved by the performances of Marilyn or Marlene?  I assume you're a 
>teacher.  Do you judge your students' work according to the emotive responses
>your students muster toward film?  Does the quality of your students' insights
>depend on their ability to be moved by certain performances?

Gosh, I'm flattered, but I should disabuse you of the assumption that I'm a
teacher.  I'm 22, and a first year master's student in film.  If I were a
teacher, though, I would not judge my students work on an emotive response
rationale for two reasons.

1)  As I said in my post, I was moved by Tony Randall in SEVEN FACES OF DR.
LAO.  And since I recognize the intellectual absurdity of that emotive
response, I can hardly expect others to adhere to my standards of emotional
reaction to film.

2)  The sort of stuff that I would teach is the sort of stuff that I'm
most interested in studying, which is *not* the aesthetic categorizing of
film into a tradition of 'masterpieces' or (to use Sarris' term) a 'pantheon'
of great auteurs, or a canon of great performances, etc.  Much of early film
criticism was, fo course, devoted to legitimizing film as a medium worthy of
intellectual discourse by validating film as an art, and then arguing over
what the exact nature of that art was: for example, the realism versus
expressionism debate.  What I'm more interested in, rather than arguing over
what constitutes 'great' artistry in film, is how film exists as a cultural
entity within the larger cultural and social framework.

On that level, *any* film provides an opportunity for insight into the
filmic medium, since regardless of artisitic merit, every film is the
nexus point for various cultural forces-- economic, technological,
social, historical, etc.  See Robert Allen and Doug Gomery's FILM
HISTORY: THEORY AND PRACTICE for a general overview of this position.

My own research, at least that which led to my senior thesis last year
and will probably eventually lead to my master's thesis, has for the
last year or so been focused issues surrounding postmodern historical
(especially biographical) fiction and films, so most of my work deals
with genre and discourse.  Rather than focus on what the members of
the canon should be, I am concerned with the ways in which that canon
is constructed: why are certain figures considered worthy of biographical
treatment?  what is culturally at stake when an historical figure appears
in a 'distorted' way, such as Albert Einstein in YOUNG EINSTEIN, or Emily
Bronte and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Kathy Acker's novella MY DEATH< MY LIFE?
what does Julian Barnes' chapter on the shipwreck of the Medusa have to
tell us about how history is created, and what does that have in common,
for example, with Simon Schama's DEAD CERTAINTIES and Joseph Heller's
PICTURE THIS?  why do we care so much about Elvis that hardly a year goes
by without another pseudo-biography, or tv movie/series?

That's the sort of stuff I'm involved with, rather than trying to determine
what is film art.

Now, as for the broader questions that you've brought up.  Of course, I
would agree that a knowledge of Shakespeare does not *necessarily* enrich
an understanding of ENDGAME, as in your example, but would you agree that
it might lead to an understanding of the literary tradition against which
Beckett was 'rebelling'?

And on the subject of film--  anybody who is going to write sensibly about
film, particularly about film criticism, has to be sensitive to artistic
achievement at some level...I wouldn't give two hoots for a writer on film
who didn't recognize or appreciate the power of film.  Obviously, what one
critic feels best exemplifies the power of film is going to be different
from another's critics feelings on the subject-- the key point is that
that recognition of film's power *must* be present in some form or another,
even if it's not necessarily emotional.  For example, I don't exactly get
choked up about Roy Liechtenstein's paintings, but I do feel that they
strongly articulate a certain position within artistic tradition, and I
recognize their unique power.

On the subject of Marilyn and Marlene--yeah, recognition of their power and
their status as those who participated in filmic events which most closely
articulated the medium's potential does not *necessarily* lead to any
insight on SLACKER or THE CRYING GAME.  I'll stick with THE CRYING GAME for
the rest of this discussion, because SLACKER is so much a reaction against
the normative style of filmmaking that it begs for separate discussion that
I can't provide now.  Knowledge of, and some level of appreciation for, the
work of Marilyn and Marlene can lead to auxillary, or *deeper* appreciation
of THE CRYING GAME-- for example, the fact that Dil (this is the correct
spelling, btw) performs as a singer in THE CRYING GAME can be linked to the
evocations of a cabaret tradition within film, especially with Marlene but
also with Marilyn to some extent, and how that tradition ties into larger
issues of gender identity.

Or, to take another example from THE CRYING GAME-- the fable of the scorpion
and the frog does provide a closed-circuit understanding of the 'nature' of
the film's characters and what Jordan is saying about acting according to
their inner natures.  By 'closed-circuit', I mean that you don't have to
refer outside of the film to get a good sense of what is going on.  But by
stepping outside the film, and realizing that the fable of the scorpion and
the frog is 'appropriated' from Orson Welles' film MR. ARKADIN (also known
as CONFIDENTIAL REPORT), the viewer is able to place THE CRYING GAME within
a larger tradition of films (and possibly more specifically 'thrillers')
that address the relationship between a person's nature and a person's actions,
and the attempt to discover the exact 'contours' of a person's nature.

I realize, of course, that this argument relies on the nebulous concept
of "filmic events" that "realize the medium's potential" which could be
rendered meaningless by debate over what the potential of the medium is,
and therefore which filmic events most effective validate film, which is,
as I said, not an issue that I'm interested in perpetuating.  The film
studies departments of a lot of universities do have a certain amount of
'barbarians at the gate', but overweening obsession with legitimating film
as an art, or legitimating certain films as art, is as counterproductive
as aesthetic ignorance, IMHO.

Damn...I'm still impressed that you thought I was a teacher...
I'm going to be riding the adrenaline boost on that one through
the weekend...but the truth is pretty surprising as well, I guess.

Ron Hogan

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