Thanks for the helpful bibliographic comments by Lisa and of course
for the insightful comments by everyone else. Also, I of course don't
want anyone to think that I support the view mentioned in the title: I
just wanted to see what exactly the original article argued (it wasn't
wood).
Some questions:
(1) If film narrative presupposes that the individual emanates more
abstract themes, to what extent is this an aesthetic observation? Does
it need to be a psychological one? This is an issue only because film
is a popular medium in a way that, say, literary fiction isn't. So,
should we be satisfied with this abstraction theory as an a priori
observation, an intrinsice part of how we define the film medium? Or
would such a definition be disqualified if, in fact, the majority of
popular audience members saw characters as signifying only themselves--
and therefore as appropriate role models. If the consequence of this
observation (film characters are abstract and therefore not
conservatively individualistic) is political, then it seems like we
should evaluate its truth instrumentally.
(2) Can a medium have an inherent politics? This is assumed to be the
case in avant-garde poetics, which equates dislocation with left-wing
subversion. Does one need to use a content/form dichotomy to argue
against this? (For example, noting that MTV uses the same radical
dislocation but to reinforce traditional notions of women as gazed-
upon sex objects, etc. etc.,)
(3) It seems like the discussion distinguishes between how this
American individualism works in movies in general and how it works in
good movies. If the point is sociological, then shouldn't art house
films like Altman's be pushed aside in favor of, say, such harrowing
landmarks of the western aesthetic tradition as Arnold
Schwartzenegger's ERASER and Vin Diesel's XXX? It seems inaccurate to
argue that film noir critiques masculinity--the films that do this, as
Sarah writes, are notable because they are the anomalies.
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