Dilbert_X wrote:
Uzique The Lesser wrote:
this is such an inane post. you can tell you are straining to make an argument, because all of your counter-points are tortured reductio ad absurdum's. yes, it is unfortunate if you have to watch a film on a "PSP", or "stick figures on a tiny screen with a half-inch speaker". but nobody is making arguments for watching feature-length films on PSP screens, are they? make a real fucking argument, for christ's sake. stop setting up straw men and then burning them for your own satisfaction, ahead of time. there is a whole scale of technology (especially nowdays) between the 1930's-esque monopoly of the cinema reel to the home environment. what exactly is missing from a person watching a film on a large HDTV with hi-fi speakers? and where do you draw the line, or the crucial distinction, on this inane argument? where do you arbitrarily distinguish between a 'valid' film watching experience and a not-technologically-capable one? do you need the large canvas? perhaps you need the cigarette blotches? perhaps you need a folding chair? in arguing for what is 'essential' about film as an artform, you should be able to make a convincing argument for all of the extra-artistic/contextual elements of the cinema - as both location and as a trip/experience/ritual. you can't do that, though. it's too vague, too nebulous. that's because nothing inherent in the cinema is essential to film. i can watch my favourite films in good-quality on a decently sized monitor with more-than-adequate sound hardware. today, in 2013, this is even easier than ever, what with the downsizing in size and affordability of televisual technology. you could have maybe made an argument along these lines in 1950... but not now. 'film' as an artform has been brought resoundingly out of the arthouse cinema elite and the franchise-cinema blockbuster crowd. and it's a good job, too. it frees the artform of all sorts of economic constraints (only a small and affluent minority can reasonably afford to go and see every film that appeals to them in a franchised cinema).
And cinema technology has moved on from 1930s technology has it not?
And have directors not expanded their style to encompass it?
Cinema has been a media for the masses since it was created, hardly a small and affluent minority.
as for "hipsters" disliking the spectacle... yawn. this is you being you to a boring extreme. again. what do hipsters have to do with a critique of the spectacle? the concept of the spectacle goes back in aesthetics for almost 200 years. were they hipsters in ruskin's day? whenever you talk about a subject you evidently know little about, you resort to these idiotic hipster comments. ditto with john galt - so you're keeping good company there, in this mightily intellectual debate. there's nothing hipsterish about distrusting spectacle, especially films that are ALL spectacle: they mask a complete lack of content and aesthetic/artistic merit with the ephemeral trickery of technological invention. i.e. explosions, 3d effects, silly novelties like that. there's nothing artistic or of real value in this - they just overwhelm the senses and cause a temporary impression (in both senses of the word). you feel short-changed when you leave the cinema, though. because it's just that: a fucking spectacle.
What is so terribly wrong with spectacle? Its part of the art form just as lavish sets are part of opera.
If Gesamtkunstwerk can be an art form I don't see why spectacular cinema can't be, why so much hate for spectacle amongst the 'arts' crowd?
lol at quoting gesamtkunstwerk as if that has anything to do with anything in this discussion. if you even understood the literal definition of the term 'gesamtkunstwerk', you'd kinda know that it's A LOT more than spectacle. would you like a nuanced discussion on aesthetics? because it seems you are more than a little out of your depth, here.
and wrong: cinema was never an 'art for the masses', not cinema in the form you're talking of, anyway, i.e. cinema trips and visits to the 'picture house'. that was only actually affordable by the salaried classes - clerks and above. the working classes never made it into cinemas, historically, and today in many countries with emerging forms of modernist media (i.e. latin americas in more recent history), only something like 10-15% of the population (the affluent, educated minority) actually make it into the middle-class/bourgeoisie
leisure category of cinema visits. the rest actually watch bootleg films and thrive on a huge DIY/amateur scene. cinema has always had haughty connotations, especially in its early instantiation as 'film'. talking about the continental tradition here, and film qua artform. the american hollywood studio thing was always its own separate show. but don't make the blind historical assumption that, because hollywood was the centre of populist entertainment in america, that cinema has always been about 'the masses'. early cinema and film in europe, where it was originally developed and explored as an artform, was just as exclusive as any other form of 'high art'.
and yes, cinema technology has moved on. and yes, some directors and films do move to take advantage of that. some films are better as 'IMAX experiences', no doubt. but this is far from a majority of films. there is nothing inherently wrong about watching a film and appreciating it as a work of art in a home environment, on a (relatively) modest home-entertainment system. nothing
essential is lost from 99% of films. perhaps avatar in 3d is an exception; perhaps 48fps the hobbit is another. these require a certain level of technology that the home-consumer market do not fully have yet. however, critical opinion and mass consensus would hasten to add, quite thornily w/r/t your argument, that the 2D, regular-fps versions are actually 'better', and more pleasing. ergo: you can still watch that shit on a television you can buy on the high-street.
Last edited by Uzique The Lesser (2013-03-01 08:22:43)
