Oops! Sorry! I forgot to scroll.
Aaron writes:
> I'm not clear what the argument is here. Is it that art cannot be
> profitable? Or that profit motives necessarily, not just sometimes,
> hurt art? I don't see why either of these would be the case. If so,
> then all commissioned paintings must be bad. David Bordwell addresses
> this in his Planet Hong Kong pp. 5-6. He makes a distinction between
> profit driven and market-oriented that may be useful if someone wants
> this continue this art must be autonomous line of thinking and beat the
> position to death.
I never said that art cannot be profitable, but in any case I don't consider
the remake of Texas Chainsaw M "art." It was made for profit ONLY. It is a
PRODUCT pitched to consumers. As is much horror shlock.
I wrote:
> Horror films strike me as a kind of
> > lowest-common-denominator: a lazy way to make a point,
> Aaron replied:
> I don't understand this. It sounds like the LCD argument against mass
> art. The argument that fails to see that the profit motive encourages
> mass art to be produced for multiple audiences, and if anything move
> towards a middle ground so as not to alienate the largest portion of the
> audience. Carroll examines the LCD argument in A Philosophy of Mass
> Art.
To counter, I don't know why you're stuck on the profit thing as somehow
congruent with the making of art. I presume that most art is made out of a
need to express something (a belief, an argument, love), while I admit that
some art has been made with an eye to profit (say, once someone has achieved a
reputation and coasts on it). Horror films are not mass art; they are mass
crap, and I can justify that position aesthetically. So, if you want to call
them art, do so, but don't then think that it is somehow something for those
poor "masses." And this gesture toward "masses" (as in, Look! We have
something for the masses!) is really condescending. I am sure the masses are
thanking Carroll.
> and in this they strike
> > me as deeply anti-intellectual (and yes, that is a comment on
> American-inspired consumerism).
>
> I don't understand this either. Is this the idea that not being
> intellectual is somehow anti-intellectual. This seems silly. I'm
> really not sure what's at issue here.
Well, then I might say you aren't reading what I have written closely. I never
said what you are saying (yet again). I am saying that much American-inspired
consumerism (including the creation and promotion of horror films), concerned
solely with profit, foments an anti-intellectual stance in that the kind of
consumerist attitude I am addressing here is mentally lazy: such consumers are
encouraged NOT to think about the product (creation, production, distribution,
aim) so that they won't have to admit to themselves that they are being sold
down the river for a couple of cheap thrills that are no better than empty
calories.
Andrew
|