We’ve had an interesting discussion of Godard’s relationship to Brecht in comments, and I thought I’d highlight it here.
Charles Reece started it off by comparing Brecht to Godard in his post on One Plus One.
As our reality was becoming increasingly mediated by images, where the representation of life was replacing life and human relations were displaced through commodities (compare Pierrot le fou’s famous dinner party scene in which the guests communicate through ad-speak to Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle), Godard radicalized his films in Brechtian fashion by subverting cinema’s conventions, calling attention to their mediating effects (albeit Debord and the Situationists weren’t fans): music pops up arbitrarily, dialogue doesn’t sync with the images, quotes (both visual and textual) are used in abundance but frequently have no logical connection to what little plot is involved, etc.
This prompted a series of interesting responses in comments, first by Craig Fischer:
I think you’re the first person to invoke the “B” word in your post–labeling Godard’s films “Brechtian”–and I’d agree that SYMPATHY’s separation of elements, etc. follow the techniques of Epic Theater. Personally, though, I’ve always had trouble with Brechtianism, because (a.) it presumes that the author (or auteur) can create a text that can effectively govern reader/audience reactions, and (b.) it assumes that escapism is a bad thing. What about the counter-argument, made by the great Hollywood director John Sullivan, that escapism is “all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan…”?
Then Andrei Molotiu responded:
You’re making Brecht’s point for him. Of course, escapism is never “all some people have.” A choice to educate oneself (for example in critical theory, which is only as far as the nearest public library), or to be a creator rather than just a passive consumer, is always possible. But the entertainment industry would like people to believe that is all they have, so as to keep them coming back as obedient consumers. There is a clear connection between corporate interests, the promotion of escapism, and the definition of film as exclusively narrative, fictional and diegetic (therefore providing a story and a place to escape to). From this point of view, “Brechtianism” is exactly the corrective that is needed. Furthermore, if I’m not mistaken, Godard is influenced by Brecht from the very beginning; the jump-cuts in “A Bout de souffle” are already such a verfremdungseffekt, though later they get absorbed fully into narrative filmmaking, forcing Godard to push alienation further and further (especially in “Weekend” and “La Chinoise”–I haven’t gone back to read your review of the latter since reading this comment, but I’m not sure how one can enjoy it without being aware of exactly that intent–I mean, it’s pervasive!)
(I’d also like to point something out here–about how your comment seems to posit “escapism” and “Brechtianism” as the only two choices… But discussing that would take forever. Let’s just say I see it at least as a sliding scale, with many hybrid possibilities in the center, and also other approaches–Brakhage, say–that do not fit on the scale at all, though a Brechtian approach certainly could prime viewers for them.)
Your other “trouble with Brechtianism” is that “it presumes that the author (or auteur) can create a text that can effectively govern reader/audience reactions.” But isn’t that exactly what Hollywood does–indeed, isn’t that Godard’s main problem with the Hollywood institutional style? It’s just that Hollywood does this through emotional manipulation, counting on an (ideal) ideologically-blinded viewer, while Brecht (and again, I haven’t read him in decades, so I’m working from memory now) undertakes to educate the audience as to its own risk of being manipulated, and then refuses to manipulate it emotionally (for example, through catharsis, which, IIRC, was one of Brecht’s bugaboos), rather trying to educate it and therefore (hopefully) to help it judge rationally the presented ideas and narrative?
Well, that’s the theory, at least. In practice, as shown by Godard, verfremdungseffekts can clearly be used without a single-minded didactical purpose, can be used more “modernistically,” I guess you could put it, but, nevertheless, the Godard/Brecht notion involves a more aware cultural consumer, one who is conscious of the possibility of his or her own ideological manipulation–a much more positive scenario, I’d say, than the ideal consumer of Hollywood spectacle that Sullivan’s comment implies.
And then Craig again:
My mistrust of Brechtianism stems from Brecht’s assumption that much of the misery in life is a product of capitalist ideology. Brecht, like Marx, is at heart a utopian; if we offer the masses an alternative to mindless escapism, Brecht says, they can take steps towards liberation. The problem with this, however, is that sometimes life can be brutal in ways that have little to do with ideology. People die and shit happens regardless of the nature of the social order, and during those times escapism can be a balm. The examples that come to me are personal ones—how after my mother’s death I re-read old comics to escape into a nostalgic haze for a while—but I do think that SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS is a credible rebuttal to Brecht. Sometimes life sucks, and escapism helps.
In some ways, we’re on the same wavelength here: we both lament the overwhelming dominance of Hollywood escapism, and you’re right when you say that Brechtian aesthetics are a corrective. Given that Hollywood operates within a pathetically narrow narrative field, other types of films—Brakhage’s closed-eye abstractions, Bergman’s psychodramas, Antonioni’s languorous ennui, etc.—function as radical alternatives. I’d also agree that it’s a sliding scale between the extremes of Hollywood storytelling and Brechtianism, a point that Brecht himself acknowledges when he categorized his own plays into “culinary” Epic Theater (with enough old dramatic tropes to give pleasure to a mainstream audience) and Lehrstucke (much more experimental, and designed for already enlightened participants).
I’d disagree, though, that the Godard of BREATHLESS was Brechtian. The jump cuts and formal play in his earliest movies jolt the audience, but many of the pre-1965 Godard films don’t follow that jolt with any political content or point-of-view. There are plenty of exceptions—the Algerian War in LE PETIT SOLDAT, or the critique of consumer culture in A MARRIED WOMAN—but movies like BREATHLESS, A WOMAN IS A WOMAN and BANDE A PART give us Brechtian form but virtually no radical content. In his book A CERTAIN TENDENCY OF THE AMERICAN CINEMA, Robert Ray points out that plenty of late 1960s-early 1970s Hollywood films (BONNIE AND CLYDE, FIVE EASY PIECES) borrow flourishes of Godard’s style, but since the content (and the emphasis on narrative) doesn’t change very much, the result is a jazzier version of Hollywood business-as-usual. I’m reluctant to call a text “Brechtian” unless it has both radical form and content.
Also, I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer about my “trouble with Brechtianism.” I’m perfectly happy to extend my skepticism about texts controlling audience/spectator/reader response to ALL texts, Brechtian, Hollywood, and otherwise. I stick close to the Cultural Studies belief that a text generates a multiplicity of responses, only some of which were anticipated by the creator(s) of said text. That doesn’t mean that Brechtian movies can’t have a radical effect—just that I think our assumptions about their radicalism should be humble and skeptical until proven otherwise.
In her book INTERPRETING FILMS, Janet Staiger argues that films (and the historical moments in which films are watched and discussed) generate a plethora of reading strategies, though some of these are much more dominant than others. I relied on Staiger’s work in my dissertation, where I argued that US critics read Godard’s late 1960s and Dziga Vertov films in many different ways, though by far the dominant reading was to co-opt them into a conservative “Godard as auteur” paradigm. That’s happened here at HU too: the thread following John and Sandra’s post is a list of favorite directors formidable enough to make Andrew Sarris blush. But is there tension in claiming that Lynch, Bresson or Godard are “radical” while admitting them to the canon and labeling them “great artists”?
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Images of Godard and Brecht with 3-D glasses from BRRRPTZZAP! the Subject.
The index to the Godard roundtable is here.
If I’d know you were going to do this, I would have proofread my comments! Man, run-on city…
But, since you did, I guess I should answer Craig. I think, despite him saying that he disagrees, we’re largely on the same page as to Godard pre-1967… maybe we just value, or interpret, what Godard did, differently. I did say Godard shows that “verfremdungseffekts can clearly be used without a single-minded didactical purpose, can be used more ‘modernistically,’ I guess you could put it.” That “single-minded didactical purpose” is the “political content or point-of-view” that Craig says is missing–and, due to the absence of which, he denies the Brechtian aspect of early Godard.
Yet, two things. I think, as a matter of record, Godard’s early “joltings” of the viewer *were* inspired, at least partly, by Brecht. So, if the result is not ultimately political, the inspiration, at least formally, is still Brechtian–which is all I had claimed (“Godard is influenced by Brecht from the very beginning”).
Secondly, though, at this point we see the development of a discourse of the subject that sees challenges to subjectivity itself–as for example, the challenges to the subjectivity of the viewer/reader/receiver in modern art–as political. So to challenge the formal system of Hollywood narration is to challenge the ideal subject addressed by that system (and who is then primed for ideological manipulation, etc.)–and therefore is a political move anyway, even without sticking a verbalized political message there. (See David Rodowick’s “The Crisis of Political Modernism” for a lot of this.) I don’t know if this notion had developed so clearly by 1959 (it’s certainly there in Cahiers criticism by 1966), but Godard seems to be using or responding to, at least, an early, inchoate form of it.
As for your opening paragraph, Craig, I doubt that Brecht would have denied that death and disease happen–though maybe his works are not designed to provide solace at such points, but rather to address issues of hegemony, revolution, etc. Not every work of art works for every occasion! Yet I can imagine him saying that perhaps a better response to personal tragedy would be, say, reading Montaigne or Lucretius (as many had done for centuries), an active engagement with processing the tragedy rather than attempting to flee it into an escapist fiction. Yes, escapism can be soothing at times… But I don’t see how that denies the power of Brecht’s emphasis on education and liberation. Also, I’m not sure how “SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS is a credible rebuttal to Brecht”–because, frankly, it’s one of my least favorite movies ever. Again, I haven’t seen it in over two decades, and maybe I’ve mellowed since then, but at the time it struck me as essentially an elaborate excuse to keep doing business as usual in Hollywood–and even more, to an excuse for viewers to keep enjoying that business-as-usual.
Lastly, that Cultural Studies notion you mention… oy. Let’s just say that, in its celebration of a putative pluralism of responses, and when divorced from a rigorous critical-theory perspective, more often than not it strikes me as complicit rather than “liberating”–essentially complicit with the corporate entertainment industry’s formation of the subjectivity of its intended viewers, together with the narrow range of choices they are given (while believing they are receiving a full spectrum of them, and that their own reactions span a full spectrum of possibilities; most often, this strikes me as just ideological blindness). This is also at the root of my increasing discomfort with the term “fan,” which I refuse to use anymore in my teaching or scholarship…
Re: your notion that Brecht would recommend Lucretius for the bereaved. Isn’t there arguably a problem with a bourgeois intellectual telling a random working class person how that working class person should grieve? I mean, if someone gets more comfort from Johnny Cash or the Beatles or Louis Armstrong or Mariah Carey (all except the last from working class backgrounds, by the by) than from Lucretius, does that really mean they’re deluded fools? Or is it possible that people from your historical moment and (no less) class background can sometimes speak to you in a way that more distant idioms don’t?
I think it’s certainly true that cultural studies can lead to an absence of critical engagement; Tania Modleski characterized it acidly as the line of thinking that says “I am progressive; I like Dynasty; therefore Dynasty must be progressive.” I think, though, that it’s important to realize that that reasoning is not solely restricted to genre fans. Plenty of high art fans can use the same reasoning — i.e., “I am progressive; I like Godard; therefore Godard is progressive.”
Or to look at it another way; the subjectivity of the bourgeois avant garde is not necessarily as opposed to capitalism or corporate entertainment as it sometimes likes to fancy itself. Tom Frank has talked, for instance, about how the Beats have been thoroughly assimilated by corporate culture. I think the same is true of the entire avant garde to no small extent.
“I am progressive; I like Godard; therefore Godard is progressive.”
Exactly, that’s the notion of political modernism in a nutshell.
I should add that I’m trying to follow a Brechtian/critical train of thought, here, not so much to fully embrace it. As far as I’m concerned, I’m “progressive” (though I hate that term), but I believe avant-garde art is important for its own sake, not for any political significance it might have. On the other hand, I fully believe that the traditional Hollywood storytelling mode–including, and especially, escapism–is used by the entertainment industry to manipulate subjectivities and render them passive so as to maximize their profits, and experimental art can help break that hold. But that is a more limited perspective than simply associating “avant-garde” with “progressive” in general. For example, Ezra Pound’s poetry was avant-garde and transformative within the limited scope of literature, while his real-world politics were abominably right-wing. But I’d rather read Pound than some lame right-thinking poet of the period.
In any case, I think the avant-garde in France learned this the hard way after the dissolution of their enchantment with Maoism in the mid-70s, after the publication of “The Gulag Archipelago,” etc–at which time Philippe Sollers, for example (to use him as a synecdoche for the larger crowd) retreated into an “art-for-art’s-sake” rhetoric (about the same time that the Dziga Vertov group called it quits).
Also, my usage of “Lucretius” (I was thinking of how Stoics advised mourners to grieve for centuries) might have turned into a red herring. But your bringing in of class into the discussion is equally a red herring. While Brecht may have emphasized the liberation of the working class, issues of, say, hegemony and ideology concern as much middle-class, or even uppper-middle class, subjects, as anyone else. (And isn’t Johnny Cash, for example, no matter what his social origins, at this point a cultural icon for middle class hipsters rather than working people?)
The point is that one can see recommending not escapism but an active involvement with and processing of the grief, whether that processing is done by reading Lucretius or self-help books, or by discussing it with your therapist, your social worker or your pastor. And all those figures might suggest that escapism might only delay and avoid the processing that needs to be done. I’m not necessarily arguing this, just that “escapism” is NEVER “all some people have.” To convince them that’s all they have, as for example “Sullivan’s Travels” might be seen to do, to convince them escapism is the best way out, could ultimately be hurtful to them.
Johnny Cash won the CMT best male vocalist of all time poll a few years back. Hipsters love him, but the more downmarket mainstream music audience also reveres him. As they should, damn it. Because he’s great.
I don’t think it’s crazy in a Marxist context to suggest that there’s maybe something problematic about turning to bourgeois artists while denigrating working class ones, though. I mean, Johnny Cash actually addressed class politics with some regularity. “Ira Hayes” and “One Piece at a Time”, to name just two examples, are a lot more directly engaged with issues of imperialism and capitalism than is Godard’s “Contempt.” So are lots of hip hop songs. I know there are other Godard films that are more politically engaged (and certainly Johnny Cash songs that are less so), but I just find it hard to accept that the avant garde form so thoroughly trumps content. Especially in something like “Contempt”, where the content, at least as far as gender politics go, doesn’t seem especially insightful.
It’s maybe worth mentioning that “Ira Hayes” doesn’t seem especially like escapism to me. It’s a pretty thoroughly depressing song — I remember hearing it when I was 9 or something and being freaked out, and I still have something of that reaction to it. I don’t know Sullivan’s Travels, unfortunately…what is it about that movie that is escapist, exactly, if you or Craig wouldn’t mind explicating?
At this point I think you’re just arguing with yourself, Noah. I never called Cash “escapist” because I never brought him up, you did. I like him but, really, I have no position on this issue.
Well, fair enough! I didn’t mean to say you thought Cash was escapist in particular. I’m more arguing with Brecht, I guess, about whether popular entertainment automatically serves the capitalist beast, and about whether avant garde form is the best way to push back against that.
Andrei (and Craig as well), probably the best discussion of the value of pop culture escapism is Carl Wilson’s “Let’s Talk About Love,” in which he makes the case for Celine Dion. It’s pretty great, though I had some problems with it. I don’t think he talks about Brecht specifically, but it’s certainly relevant to that discussion.
Well, because this is a roundtable on Godard, I’ve been talking about escapism specifically in film (and, well, comics are implied to)–I’ve been talking about narrative, diegesis, etc. I wasn’t thinking about music at all, and I’m not sure this discussion, or at least what I’ve had to contribute to it, can be stretched that far. FWIW, I don’t think I’ve ever applied, or though of applying, the term “escapist” to music.
If I had to do it, however, I would most likely apply it to what used to be called “melodic” or “cheesy” trance, back in the late ’90s, like Paul Oakenfold or Paul Van Dyk. Which I really used to like. But, really, I don’t think I have anything interesting to say when it comes to “escapism” as applied to music. It’s a totally different construct than what I’ve been talking about here.
So the escapism you’re thinking of would be specifically narrative? I guess when thinking about grief and comfort, I naturally think about lyrical responses (music, poems)….
Sorry I’ve been away from this discussion for the last day or so. Next time we schedule a debate, can we do it during a week when I don’t have 40 papers and 100 final exams to grade? Please?
Anyway, like Noah, I’m a fan of Carl Wilson’s Celine Dion book, though I wouldn’t say that he “makes the case” for Dion: rather, he complicates Dion’s music and star image. He examines Dion for several different perspectives—her Quebecois identity, her participation in a tradition of over-the-top pop crooning, her appeal for drag queens—even while he confesses that he doesn’t much care for (and as Noah points out in his review points out, is downright ashamed to listen to) her music. I found Wilson’s book fascinating because he challenged my preconceptions—Celine Dion sucks!—and taught me a lot about the Bourdieuian politics of taste and the dangers of dismissing any form of culture, no matter how reviled or low-brow (comics, anyone?).
Andrei, I of course know that you’re an amazingly eclectic thinker, interested in form (particularly radical form) as much, if not more, than the “progressive” politics of the art and culture that you analyze and support. And we agree more than we disagree; I’d argue that the Brechtian CAHIERS position really came together with Commoli and Narboni’s seminal “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism” essay (1969)—which is basically where the idea of the need to for radicalism in both form and content comes from—but sure, the ideas were kicking around long before that. (And I apologize for missing your “modernism” comment—yes, another ground for agreement between us!)
But I can’t get behind what appears to be your support for Political Modernism. PM generalized too much about the nature of film spectatorship, with the canonical example being Mulvey’s male gaze theory. When SCREEN published “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in 1975, it was a revelation: classical Hollywood cinema seemed inherently sexist, cut to the nature of patriarchal desire. Except…what about the women who watched Hollywood films and enjoyed them? (Mulvey addressed this issue in a follow-up essay to “Visual Pleasure,” but I’ve never found her argument about psychic transvestitism particularly convincing.) What about gazes predicated on the sexual frisson of masochism rather than sadism? (Gaylyn Studlar’s work.) What about those genres and films that encourage men to identify with female characters? (Carol Clover’s work.) And so on. What seemed initially self-evident (Celine Dion sucks! Hollywood is sexist!) is much more complex than anyone initially expected. Mix in other film studies paradigms—particularly Bordwell/Carroll/Thompson neoformalism, which calls PM a bankrupt body of thought which “impeded research and reduced film analysis to the repetition of fashionable slogans and unexamined assumptions” (the last page of Noel Carroll’s MYSTIFYING MOVIES)—and we’ve got ourselves quite a mess. I don’t believe that all “fans” are emancipated producers, but neither do I believe that Hollywood is the stereotypical boogeyman of high PM thinkers like Mulvey, Stephen Heath and Peter Wollen. Thoughts?
One more red herring in our argument: there’s no way that Preston Sturges (the scriptwriter and director of SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS) believes that simple escapism is the ONLY thing some people have (although he does put those words into John Sullivan’s mouth). Given that SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS undergoes an abrupt (almost Brechtian?) tonal shift in its last half-hour (and Noah, I won’t spoil it for you!), Sturges is not just dishing out (and rationalizing his adherence to) Hollywood formula.
Mulvey’s kind of awesome, is the thing. I’d hardly say she set back film studies; her questions and ideas have been the basis for a huge amount of productive thinking, including that Clover book (which I love.) And she definitely has at least some Hollywood films dead to rights…certainly it’s complicated, but there really is sexism in Hollywood films, and it does (not always, but not infrequently) operate in terms of the male gaze that she outlined.
After mentioning Wilson, I’ve been trying to listen to Celine Dion today, and I have to admit that I can’t hack it. It doesn’t repulse me the way, say, High on Fire does, but listening to one big mushy ballad after another does wear on one (and that’s from someone who likes Mariah Carey.)
But yes; Wilson’s book is very thought-provoking. As I said in the review, I think he eventually ends up in something of a dead end — if democracy is the highest value, and democracy is defined largely in terms of consumer choices, on what grounds can you ever criticize any bit of culture for anything? On the other hand, he also outlines really clearly the problems with attributing false consciousness to the masses and simultaneously claiming you are speaking on their behalf….
Re Mulvey: you said what I wanted to say, Noah, only better. For me, the problem is that high Political Modernism tended to think in global terms–as in, for instance, the last paragraph of “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” where Mulvey calls for nothing less than the complete destruction of Hollywood cinema and the suspect pleasures it provides.
I’d absolutely agree that Mulvey ideas have prompted lots of interesting projects and refinement, including many that begin, metaphorically speaking, with, “But wait! What about…” and go on to challenge her generalities.
Mulvey did rework a lot of those generalizations herself, in later work…
That Celine book sounds preposterous, but I’ve only read Noah’s description. For example: (1) It’s reactionary populism of the sort “X is loved by many common folks, therefore to hate it is to hate common folks.” (2) Imagine Celine Dion accompanying the pictures of some great tragedy — now keep that in mind when you decide to play that shit at your grandmother’s funeral. (3) The fallacious assumption that choosing between something like Celine and Sonic Youth is purely between equivalently available options given the power structure that’s heavily weighted in the former’s favor. Celine really isn’t harmless. (4) Then there’s the genetic fallacy of assuming just because a taste in X comes from, say, a class position that this justifies or condemns the taste. Putting aside the fact that it’s probably the bourgeoisie who are most likely obsessed with Celine, who cares? All of it just sounds like a reductio ad absurdum of reader-response theory, which is bad enough without making it even more ridiculous. There’s some middle ground between dismissing all of popular culture and accepting it all, such as thinking Johnny Cash is great and Celine Dion is self-evident shit.
Wilson addresses many of those criticisms more or less.
1. He has a number of smoking gun quotes where various critics actually use their hatred of Dion to express their hatred of common folks; 2. I have to say I don’t really get this objection (why is it worse to play Dion than anything else?) but he talks about how Dion was meaningful to him when his marriage collapsed; 3. He makes a decent case that the power structure is not always/everywhere weighted in Dion’s favor — she’s beloved in poor communities in Jamaica, for instance; 4. he doesn’t exactly do this; he more argues that critics often assume that Dion is evil/supports the power structure, and he argues that if you actually look at her historical position and class position, she is not necessarily aligned with the power structure, which doesn’t make her music great, but does make the easy dismissals of her unconvincing.
What do you have against her anyway? I don’t really like her music very much, but I don’t exactly see how she’s harmful. It’s big crappy ballads about the power of love, from what I’ve listened to. I don’t find that anywhere near as offensive as, say, Vampire Weekend’s smug bastardization of world music, or High on Fire’s desecration of metal.
I second Noah’s comment there — Celine Dion is squarely in a tradition of glitzy entertainers. Nothing has ever made more sense than her opening in Las Vegas. I don’t see how you can critique her structurally (as opposed to musically), without sweeping up, say, Dean Martin and Les Baxter and Wayne Newton right along with her.
Hold on to your hats (if you’re retro like that)– I agree with Noah. I have a lot of sympathy for the pose of radicalism in art, but it is a pose, like everything else in art. Art doesn’t change the world, except insofar as it reflects posing. This is my whole beef with the “false consciousness” concept. All consciousness is fallen, and therefore false.
Which doesn’t mean Contempt isn’t way more attractive and insightful than, say, Transformers 2. But I think Terminator 2, on the other hand, is better than many films far less fun to watch, based on its clear and moving eschatological vision.
Caro, that would be a problem with a purely structural dismissal wouldn’t it? The problem isn’t with her glitz, it’s stuff like the particular blandness of her delivery or weak song material — not something that I’d say of Dino.
Noah, (1) All I can say to that is common folks like good music, too, so I’d disagree with those critics. I wouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Celine is nothing but garbage (musically speaking, of course). (2) You don’t think Celine’s music accompanying the images of some mass death would be any worse than Shostakovich’s? Either one didn’t love one’s grandmother, or didn’t possess enough music choices when selecting Celine Dion for the funeral … or maybe grandma had really bad taste. (3) Do you think those poor communities in Jamaica were just as likely to hear Sonic Youth? (4) Related to 3, isn’t it more difficult to expand your choices with less money?
And, if that didn’t cover this question: “What do you have against her anyway? I don’t really like her music very much, but I don’t exactly see how she’s harmful.”
A personal story: My aunt wanted “Amazing Grace” played at my mom’s funeral. Okay, I thought, what’s a more obvious choice than Mahalia Jackson’s version? No, she and my cousins specifically requested Anne Murray’s rendition … Anne goddamn Murray! Well, my mom had shit taste in music, too, so that’s what I went with. Evil lurks.
1: I don’t think we disagree.
2: I think it’s really, really problematic to tell individuals how they should grieve. I wouldn’t want Celine’s music at my funeral, but if someone’s grandmother wanted it at hers, I wouldn’t really feel I had the right to criticize. If you’re talking about news footage or a documentary, on the other hand, it would really depend on the context. I don’t really see what in Dion’s music makes it particularly evil or inappropriate.
3. That’s an interesting question…but folks in Jamaica do in fact have access to lots of local music, surely? Jamaica has a very extensive musical tradition. It’s not like it’s Dion or nothing; they could listen to Bob Marley if they wanted, I’m sure. If they like Celine Dion, they like Celine Dion. Making it about their poverty is really the worst kind of false consciousness; you’re literally presuming they’re stupid because they’re poor.
4. Again, the assumption that money gives you better taste just isn’t something I’m particularly convinced by. Historically, poor and marginal communities have been the source of much of the world’s greatest music.
I’m still curious what about Dion is so horrible? I agree the songwriting is bad and it’s not an idiom I like much, but why the virulent dislike? Formal incompetence is just formal incompetence, and it’s not like she’s critically overrated or anything.
I have to admit, I don’t think I’d ever heard anything by her until just now when I decided to listen on Wilson’s recommendation. I guess if you’d been subjected to her against your will on numerous occasions that might produce a fair bit of bile.
The fact that Noah has never heard Celine Dion is the most preposterous thing here. It’s also just about the only thing that could make one more sympathetic to Wilson’s book that Wilson seems to be himself (if Craig’s account is accurate). The sheer ubiquity of her on the radio in the ’90’s, the fact that she could not be escaped (thanks alot “Titanic”) is part of the visceral distaste many have for her. Big power ballads utterly lacking in nuance… a singing style defined only by the ability to hold notes for an exceptionally long period of time and at an exceptionally high volume…. and stalking you wherever you go… it really was difficult to stomach for the better part of a decade. Let’s not forget the music utterly devoid of rhythm, groove, or, really, much of a melody. I personally never listened to Top 40 radio…or soft rock radio…of my own accord (even though I like plenty of top 40 music…and soft rock), but, of course, one does leave the house on occasion. Celine could always find me at work in those years. The overwhelmingly negative critical response can be based on 2 things… 1) the music really is bad. 2) realizing that music THAT bad could be THAT popular could potentially make one’s lose faith in humanity. I joke and exaggerate only marginally.
Of course, there is plenty of horrid music that is popular (and obviously, we’ll all disagree on exactly what’s horrid), but something that horrid and that popular is a disturbing combination.
The thing about the turn to Vegas seems to be that she’s pretty much disappeared from everywhere else….which I suppose is what makes her recuperation possible. Or, I’m so old now that I don’t notice her presence in pop culture.
Hard to believe that the Brecht/Godard discussion has been hijacked by Celine Dion! She really is everywhere.
I’m pretty sure Wilson didn’t think I was more sympathetic to his thesis than he was. Thought I say many positive things about it, I end by suggesting that he’s mistaken aesthetics for morality and Celine Dion for Christ.
Some emotional music just isn’t rich enough to handle the emotional depth of certain situations. The problem with Celine Dion is that she is structured as a popular default position. I don’t see this as having anything to do with stupidity: if people only have potatoes, they eat potatoes. The rich will go with the default, too, even though they have the potential for a wider access of possibilities (I live in Hollywood, after all). And, yeah, of course, poor people have created a lot of great folk music, but as music became increasingly available as a commodity, that tradition began to wane. People didn’t have to play music to hear it. Celine Dion is filling the void.
Are you sure it began to wane? When exactly? Since hip hop, I presume….
There’s tons of hugely popular recorded music that is much more critically validated than Celine Dion. I’m pretty sure Jamaicans could get their hands on 50 Cent or Eminem CDs if they can get their hands on Celine CDs. But they chose Celine. Making them dupes of capitalism explains why they are listening to hugely popular american music, but it doesn’t explain why they’re listening to this particular hugely popular American (or Canadian) music. So, even putting aside the issue of whether it’s condescending, I still think what you’re saying is incoherent.
I’d suggest that Eminem and 50 Cent are part of the same problem.
It’s hard not to see hip hop sampling as a folk outgrowth of commodification’s diminishment of folk traditions — at least, it makes sense to me. But (1) let’s not conflate all hip hop as equally valuable and (2) that doesn’t mean there’s not been an overall decrease in folk music being played.
There’s a huge difference between Eminem and Dion, though. Saying that they’re “the same problem” seems pretty reductive. I mean, is the problem simply that they can hear American music in Jamaica? If that’s the case, then the quality of Dion’s music has nothing to do with anything. It’d be the same problem if they were listening to Coltrane, or whatever music you consider to be aesthetically acceptable.
I don’t like Eminem very much, honestly; I find the misogyny and violence tiresome, even though I can appreciate his formal talents.
I think hip hop was an amazingly brilliant reaction of folk culture to the opportunities and difficulties of commodification. Be that as it may, I’m open to the argument that global culture takes a toll on local cultures, and that that’s a problem. Again, though, that doesn’t really manage to explain why Dion is more of a blight than Radiohead or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or whoever.
Has anyone seen that web page / Facebook meme about the 10 disappointing facts about popular music? http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/entertainment/10_disappointing_facts_about_popular_music.html
It’s pretty obvious that if you’re mourning Barbara Streisand’s popularity vis-a-vis Pearl Jam and Tom Petty, you’re not really concerned about quality. Something else is goin on.
Pearl Jam! There’s a band I actually believe is a moral sewer.
I suspect a lot of that list can be accounted for by a combination of population growth and the massive shift from album sales to singles…
Also, just listened to Flo Rida’s Low, and it’s definitely better than Hey Jude.
Craig, this thread has drifted far enough that I think I’ll have to give you my thoughts somewhere else…
But, speaking of Eminem and folk music (really? We’re still worrying about keeping the “authenticity” of folk traditions?), here’s something that you may not find all that funny unless you’re Romanian, but maybe I’m wrong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQRisJHPkmI
And, if you want to talk escapism in music, try these on for size:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ktrCP2j7WM&ob=av2n
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri6Efk1SPJc
… but maybe you had to be there.
Please please Andrei, save the thread from pop music.
Charles, yes, I think it’s about the structural argument, not a musical one. I’m skeptical that Dion is part of a different power structure than Dino or Newton etc. This: “the fallacious assumption that choosing between something like Celine and Sonic Youth is purely between equivalently available options given the power structure that’s heavily weighted in the former’s favor. Celine really isn’t harmless.” Meaning, if she’s dangerous, how is she a different kind of dangerous from comparable entertainers?
Sonic Youth compatriot and former Minuteman Mike Watt has a good song about the danger of white nostalgia: “The Kids of Today Should Defend Themselves Against The Seventies.” Sung… by Eddie Vedder.
Well, ok, since Caro asked (though I don’t know if I can save it, though.)
Craig wrote:
“I’d argue that the Brechtian CAHIERS position really came together with Commoli and Narboni’s seminal “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism” essay (1969)—which is basically where the idea of the need to for radicalism in both form and content comes from—but sure, the ideas were kicking around long before that.”
There was an article on Brecht in Cahiers in 1962, wasn’t there? And I’m sure he was mentioned long before that. “C/I/C” came out in Cinethique, did it not? But the notion–of the studying of the cinematic apparatus as an ideological tool, and studying it via psychoanalysis–can be found in Cahiers, and elsewhere, as early as 1966. In many ways it’s just a translation to cinema of notions about literature and ideology that were in Tel Quel by ’64-’65. 1969 seems like a pretty late date to give as a start for it. But that’s neither here nor there…
“But I can’t get behind what appears to be your support for Political Modernism. PM generalized too much about the nature of film spectatorship, with the canonical example being Mulvey’s male gaze theory. When SCREEN published “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in 1975, it was a revelation: classical Hollywood cinema seemed inherently sexist, cut to the nature of patriarchal desire. Except…what about the women who watched Hollywood films and enjoyed them? (Mulvey addressed this issue in a follow-up essay to “Visual Pleasure,” but I’ve never found her argument about psychic transvestitism particularly convincing.) What about gazes predicated on the sexual frisson of masochism rather than sadism? (Gaylyn Studlar’s work.) What about those genres and films that encourage men to identify with female characters? (Carol Clover’s work.) And so on. What seemed initially self-evident (Celine Dion sucks! Hollywood is sexist!) is much more complex than anyone initially expected.”
My first tendency is to say, yes, yes, we know all that–one problem I have with many debates here and elsewhere on the internet is that the same discussions get rehearsed over and over. I don’t want to deny anyone their pleasure, but my sense is that such retorts to the rhetoric of PM hold less and less water, if they ever held all that much, in the corporate world of the present–they ultimately risk becoming rationalizations for accepting the passive subject position intended for you by the entertainment industry, and enjoying it too! If anything, they should be used as correctives or amplifications of a more subtly applied ideological critique, not as negations or dismissals of it, as they often have ended up. Many film critics and scholars are like comics scholars: they have come to film as a result of their pleasure in mainstream products, and will often jump to the chance of having that pleasure validated and negative responses to it dismissed. But without an ever-present ideological-critique conscience, so to speak, even if we don’t foreground it in our critical work (as I don’t), we’re likely to become the dupes of an entertainment industry that limits the available choices and that welcomes and ravenously re-appropriates any would-be aberrant fan responses it can. I guess my point is that, even in those cases when you think a plurality of viewer responses exist, that plurality was already envisioned and encoded by the system. Anyone can feel free to keep enjoying the work even once they know that, once they have made a conscious choice to do so, but as an educator I feel I need to at least expose my students to that knowledge, and to other alternatives. Hey, I enjoy plenty of crap, I enjoy even plenty of “good art” in the knowledge that my subject position has already been mapped out to me by the elements of the industry that are designed to cater to and curate for a more “elevated” taste–the Criterion Collection, the Comics Journal–but at least I try to understand the ideological charges and demands involved in all such choices. And I make no bones about feeling the need to encourage such a self-knowledge in my students. It is an unregenerate Enlightenment position, I’ll admit, but it’s the only defensible stance I can see.
“Mix in other film studies paradigms—particularly Bordwell/Carroll/Thompson neoformalism, which calls PM a bankrupt body of thought which “impeded research and reduced film analysis to the repetition of fashionable slogans and unexamined assumptions” (the last page of Noel Carroll’s MYSTIFYING MOVIES)—and we’ve got ourselves quite a mess.”
God, that sounds even more horrid than when I first read it! Some analytical points in Bordwell/Thompson/Carroll are valid, and I have turned occasionally to their formal discussions, but such rhetoric (which I remember more from Carroll–again, I’m not up to date on my film scholarship) is simply reactionary, and quite similar to, say, the New Criterion’s war against “theory” or “deconstruction.” Mutatis mutandis, it’s not so far off from the know-nothing wilfull blindness of many Republicans these days. In that very move it dismantles any claims it might have on my attention.
As for the mess–well, it’s still a tidier and more manageable mess than, say, in literary studies. Deconstruction, for example, never got a hold in film studies. We all try to make sense of the mess as best we can, in each of our fields of interest… Yes, I know that’s a totally empty sentence.
And, thank you, but man do I hate the term “eclectic,” especially when applied to moi. See above for why.
By the way, for some reason Craig and I have continued this discussion on my FB page, so I guess y’all are out of luck… or in luck, as the case may be. :)
“Meaning, if she’s dangerous, how is she a different kind of dangerous from comparable entertainers?”
What I meant was content matters, not that the same structural arguments can’t be applied at all. For example, you weren’t going to find blues as easily accessible back in the 50s as Dean Martin, but that’s still better than if you replaced him with Celine Dion.
“for some reason Craig and I have continued this discussion on my FB page, so I guess y’all are out of luck”
Damn social networking and its capitalist cornucopia of options….
Andrei, is it available to read for those of us who refuse to get a Facebook page (for many of the reasons discussed here)? If so, what’s the link?
Well, hey, feel free to visit!
Oop (only one “oop”), that was a response to Noah. If Craig’s ok with it I guess we could copy and paste here… But, really, you’re not missing much.
In the meantime, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp9Y0Mw0ggc&feature=related
(the whole film is there, in six parts; and it only gets better)
I’m lost in the long paragraph up there about political modernism, Andrei. I thought Craig’s point was against the totalizing/generalizing tendencies of modernism, not against the notion that recognizing a plurality of subject positions also involves recognizing a plurality of competing ideological positions, especially since subjectivity is also itself ideological, as is pleasure. So I don’t think I disagree with you…but I also don’t think I disagree with Craig, so clearly I’m missing something…help?
Caro–well, that’s how it should work, but in practice the Cultural Studies paradigm (let’s call it CSP for short) took over after PM, and it was seen by many as a kind of, well, paradigm shift, leading them to abandon the advances of PM (this includes Rodowick, in the really disappointing conclusion to “The Crisis,” where he makes a conscious choice for CSP over PM). So, while general discussion of ideology of course remained, the important emphasis of PM on the ideological apparatus, read psychoanalytically (especially the notion of suture) was largely abandoned. It was really a matter of fashion, and I remember being told by at least a couple of film scholars that nobody talks about suture anymore. So an entire hermeneutic apparatus–one that allowed us to establish the interface between form and ideology–was lost as an explanatory structure. And the loss of the “apparatus” (as defined in PM) and suture I think left a lot of the ideological moves involved in the very structure of IMR (as Noel Burch calls it–Institutional Mode of Representation) harder to read and harder to unveil.
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Bert Stabler says:
…I have a lot of sympathy for the pose of radicalism in art, but it is a pose, like everything else in art.
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You’re arguing that every emotion or attitude expressed in art is phony, insincere? Say it ain’t so…
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Art doesn’t change the world, except insofar as it reflects posing.
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So, Dickens had no effect in altering Victorian attitudes toward its harsh treatment of workers and the poor, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book had no effect on attitudes about slavery?
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This is my whole beef with the “false consciousness” concept. All consciousness is fallen, and therefore false.
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“Fallen” in what way? And “false,” how?
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….But I think Terminator 2, on the other hand, is better than many films far less fun to watch, based on its clear and moving eschatological vision.
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Heartily agree there!
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Noah Berlatsky says:
…the assumption that money gives you better taste just isn’t something I’m particularly convinced by. Historically, poor and marginal communities have been the source of much of the world’s greatest music.
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Sure; yet — because of cultural isolation, lack of a substantial education — they have (outside of what they are familiar with) don’t have better taste, the ability to distinguish between what is artistically rich and worthy and what is cheaply flashy, glitzy schlock.
Like the American Indians who sold the island of Manhattan for a batch of beads, or the South American Indian kid carrying a boom-box blasting out Menudo (“the envy of al the other kids in the village”) in Crumb’s Where Has it Gone, All the Beautiful Music of our Grandparents?, they are dazzled by surface appearances, anything new. All this extends to their home-decorating style, as well, once they have access to the “treasures” of mass-produced Western society.
“Like the American Indians who sold the island of Manhattan for a batch of beads,”
For fuck’s sake; that’s a racist myth. The Indians sold the island for a box of beads because *they didn’t own the island*. It’d be like you selling the Brooklyn bridge.
The whites took land by stealing it with guns, not by buying it from ignorant Indians. And this is exactly the sort of prejudiced crap you stumble into when you assume that people are stupider than you simply because they have less money or come from more marginal communities.
“All consciousness is fallen, and therefore false.”
Oh, and I love that quote from Bert. He’s saying that human beings don’t perceive the world purely or correctly; we’re all flawed. Therefore our consciousness is not a perfect reflection of truth; it’s false.
The Straight Dope had a piece about the selling of Manhattan here. (Scroll down for the discussion of how the Indians were deliberately selling what they didn’t own.)
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Noah Berlatsky says:
For fuck’s sake; that’s a racist myth. The Indians sold the island for a box of beads because *they didn’t own the island*. It’d be like you selling the Brooklyn bridge.
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Oooh, it’s racist! The ultimate in badness!
If I were to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a bunch of naive foreign visitors for a sack of empty tin cans — rather than a truly substantial amount, much less anything remotely near what it was actually worth, wouldn’t that reflect poorly on my bargaining acumen?
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The whites took land by stealing it with guns, not by buying it from ignorant Indians.
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Except when they didn’t. Does the latter cancel out when the former happened? And what about how the Quakers actually bought land from the Indians at a fair price, and were despised by other colonialist for it? But this messes up the simplistic “the whites took land by stealing it with guns” argument; “Never mind!”
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And this is exactly the sort of prejudiced crap you stumble into when you assume that people are stupider than you simply because they have less money or come from more marginal communities.
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Not “stupider,” which is saying they’re inherently intellectually inferior; but certainly vastly more likely to be ignorant and naive.
But I guess it’s a “racist myth” to maintain that pupils in barely-functioning, understaffed and poorly funded ghetto schools, or some isolated Appalachian hamlet, are much less likely to be well-educated; have a broader perspective on the arts and cultures of the world.
Is saying that these groups are much less likely to be well-educated, or have a broader perspective on the arts and cultures of the world, to be dismissed as “prejudiced”? Therefore giving right-wing politicos the excuse NOT to increase educational funding for them?
There’s a difference between “well-educated” and stupid. You’re trying to blur the distinction.
People who don’t receive a lot of education are not well-educated. But they are generally able to figure out their own interests given their current situation. And…Indians weren’t underprivileged or uneducated. In fact, they had a great deal of knowledge and expertise about the environment in which they lived which was invaluable for Europeans.
Again, Indians weren’t outsmarted by Europeans; they were outgunned by them (and, especially, out-plagued by them.) You’re retailing a myth about Indian incompetence to present them as naive and, yes stupid. And so, yes, that myth is racist, not because it’s the most evil thing ever, but because it’s a racist stereotype.
“If I were to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to a bunch of naive foreign visitors for a sack of empty tin cans — rather than a truly substantial amount, much less anything remotely near what it was actually worth, wouldn’t that reflect poorly on my bargaining acumen?”
You’re shitting me, right? If you sell something you don’t own, you’re ripping off the person you sell it to, no matter the price (and indeed, you set the price low to make the gift enticing and to make sure they pay you. A random foreign tourist isn’t going to have the actual price of the Brooklyn Bridge in their pocket. I can’t believe I’m having to explain this. Sheesh.)
Anyway, back to Manhattan; the description in the Straight Dope article makes the whole thing sound more like a mutual symbolic exchange of gifts to establish friendship rather than like an actual trade in which one or the other party came off worse, is the truth.
This thread has several lives of its own (Celine Dion! The price of Manhattan Island!), so I won’t try to yank it back to a discussion of Political Modernism at this late stage of its evolutionary development. But thanks for the vigorous, challenging discussion, everybody! (Maybe we should pick it up, later on, with a roundtable of its very own?)