From: bew@brahms.udel.edu (Ben Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies
Subject: ACTING - just what is it?
Date: 20 Dec 92 18:58:49 GMT
Organization: University of Delaware

All these posts on most overrated/underrated actor/actress leads my more
philosophically-based mind to ask the question that Greg Bole is leaning
towards.  I.e., just what is acting?  (I won't even try to get into what is
the basis for this American obsession (disease?) with needing to rank 
EVERYTHING!!)  I don't really understand how people can judge how well other
people can act.  We are all acting really.  I think you have to lay out
some claim to knowing what is the reality behind the 'act'.  Why do people
claim, for example, that Julie Roberts can't act.  Because they think they
can see something in her behavior on film that reminds us of people we know
in real life trying to be someone else who we know they aren't really.  Do
any of us really 'know' who Julie Roberts is, for example, as opposed to who
she is pretending to be.  Or who the media has made her into.

The basis of these claims of acting ability/inability I get the impression is
by looking how well these 'actors' can play different roles in different
movies.  Is that really what makes an actor good or bad?  Can we not say
whether someone is a good actor just by seeing one of their performances?
Well, if the criterion is how well they can play different roles, then I guess
the answer is 'no'.  And yet, think of actors like  Cary Grant or Humprey
Bogart.  They didn't seem to have much of a range in the types of characters
they played.  Does that mean they were poor actors?  Maybe acting means how
well they can convince the audience that the role they are playing is really
them.  Well, I still don't see how you can judge what the role someone is
trying to pretend to be is.  An actor is being directed to act in a certain
way.  How much of the way they act is the responsibility of the person
directing their actions?  Or of the person who has created the lines, movements
etc they are to perform?  Maybe the judgement of acting ability is that of
consistency.  If they do something which to us gives the impression "Oh, he/she
wouldn't do that," because we somehow think we know how some person like this
person they are trying to act like would act.  Do people really think that they
can categorize people into different groups, with members of each group each
acting pretty much consistently the same way (hints of classism/rasicm)?  No,
acting ability isn't acting consistently the way a type of person is supposed
to act, so much as it is acting consistently in that role/set-of-behaviours
that the actor has established through the course of his role.  Is that it?
And yet that still seems to be more the responsibility of the screen-writer
(in the case of movies).  Is it possible that a good actor is just someone
we enjoy watching perform?  Or try to perform?  Oh well, I don't know...

But when I see people arguing about something such as in this case acting,
I always want to point out that you need to come to some common basis of
just what it is you are talking about.  The more strictly you settle on the
definition of the terms, the less there can be to disagree on.  Its as
simple as that.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Williams
bew@brahms.udel.edu

               What we got here is a failure to communicate... 
Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies