This tendency has reached absurd extremes with the recent efforts to elevate the banging and shouting of rap music into some sort of noble art form. Consider, for a moment, the recent obscenity trial of 2 Live Crew. One of the expert witnesses who helped secure the group's acquittal was a professor of literature at Duke University named Henry L. Gates. Professor Gates went on to compare their achievements to those of Shakespeare, Chaucer, and James Joyce. In film, the art form which I most regularly consider, the process of degradation has already reached levels that should lead all thoughtful critics to despair for the future of the medium.
Indescribable gore drenches the modern screen, even in movies allegedly made for fami- lies.
Goodfellas, the winner of nearly all the most prestigious critics' awards for 1990, is a ease in point. Technically, it is indeed a brilliant achievement, and it features superb performances by a number of talented actors. Because Goodfellas, with its fascination for its own collection of lavishly loathsome characters, never engages our sympathy or our concern. This has been a problem with scores upon scores of recent American films. From Miller's Crossing to Dennis Hopper's The Hot Spot, from After Dark, My Sweet to State of Grace, to David Lynch's Wild at Heart to Robert Redford's Havana to Jack Nicholson's Two Jakes, Hollywood has been creating central characters with all the warmth and charm of poisonous lizards.