"In brief, Cavell appears to use high-sounding philosophy to
> justify the commonplace."
At least one point where Bill is right.
This is exactly what Cavell does because he is interested in the ordinary as a philosophical concept. It still seems to be a provocation.
But it doesn't mean at all to stick with elite white people. And I am in no way a right wing, reactionary contributor to this thread just because I think that there are more than one approaches to Hollywood, 30 years after the peak of structuralist analysis and readings of film. And what about Bazin, is he also a reactionary because he was interested in classical Hollywood cinema?
And thought i don't like Gone with the wind at all, which I find unbearably racist, i don't think it was meant as a representation of the world, much more like a world of make believe - like everything in Technicolor.
I just don't understand why Bill, with his Deleuze in mind, has such a simple concept of subversive and unsubversive cinema? Hitchcock as a matyr, isn't that a reactionary 19th century glorifying of indiviuals as artists (like Cultural Studies never happened).
Herbert
--- bill harris <[log in to unmask]> schrieb am Fr, 13.2.2009:
> Von: bill harris <[log in to unmask]>
> Betreff: Re: convention cliche
> An: [log in to unmask]
> Datum: Freitag, 13. Februar 2009, 15:54
> Why? because for you as an intellectual classical cinema is
> a guilty pleasure. Sort of like ice cream. (These, in point
> of fact are my two!)
>
> What is pernicious is to confuse an educated person's
> fun with the seriousness of the semi- literate. Again, I
> repair to GWTW: southern white people want to believe this
> story and --newsflash!-- our amusement aside, the film was
> made for them. Most movies are.
>
> That Cavell seems to scotch over this divide by sounding
> out Heidegger (Being in the world is to throw oneself into
> the nearest multiplex?) belabors the point. How we think out
> and become responsible for our desires--a la Sartre's
> searing critique of Being/Time-- might help us from becoming
> the little fascist that lurks within.
>
> In brief, Cavell appears to use high-sounding philosophy to
> justify the commonplace. In Atlanta, this is...commonplace.
> "Ontology" for elite white people has always
> meant, "how I justify who I am". The best way to
> keep the oppressed and disadvantaged in their place is to
> inform them, seriously, that ice cream is a basic food
> group.
>
> BH
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Herbert
> Schwaab<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> To:
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>
> Sent: Friday, February 13, 2009 06:39
> Subject: Re: convention cliche
>
>
> Bill Harris wrote:
>
> "Again, this clearly indicates that Cavell believed
> Hollywood (films so selected!) gave us an adequate
> representation of the world. This is not only utter nonsense
> but propagandistic in a manner befitting Gobels or
> Zdanov."
>
> Why you keep misunderstanding me? It is not about
> adequate or inadequate representations of the world. I just
> want to understand, why - trained in European
> "time-image" cinema, knowing everything about how
> films contruct worlds and everything about self-reflexive
> modes of representation, not having a naive concpet of
> cinematic realism (as it was indicated here) - why then am I
> still fascinated by and interested in classical Hollywood
> cinema, or why do I prefer conventional cinema in the mode
> of Rohmer (who has a sense of the world in a Heideggeriarian
> way, as he speaks about cinema's capacitiy to return us
> to an admiration of the world as such) to films by
> Jodorowsky, which I find aesthetically naive, boring and
> uninteresting and everything but subversive?
> (By the way, who are Gobels und Zdanov?)
>
>
> Herbert
>
> --- bill harris
> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> schrieb am Fr, 13.2.2009:
>
> > Von: bill harris
> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
> > Betreff: Re: convention cliche
> > An:
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
> > Datum: Freitag, 13. Februar 2009, 4:56
> > Whatever Cavell is or isn't big-picture wise,
> this is
> > what you wrote:
> >
> > "Cavell says about post-classical cinema in
> Hollywood
> > and Europe in the
> > 60s that it is more focused in the presentation of a
> film
> > style, making
> > us aware of the modes of representation, than in the
> > representation of
> > the world."
> >
> > Again, this clearly indicates that Cavell believed
> > Hollywood (films so selected!) gave us an adequate
> > representation of the world. This is not only utter
> nonsense
> > but propagandistic in a manner befitting Gobels or
> Zdanov.
> >
> > Certain modernist techniques openly demonstrate the
> > artifice behind all art: think of Godard and
> Jadoworski.
> > This, ostensibly, emerged as a reaction to
> institutionalized
> > national-ist cinema(s) which sought to hide the
> imaginary
> > aspect behind a veil of postured seriousness passing
> off as
> > "naturalist".
> >
> > To quote Deleuze, "The history of film is
> > martyrology". What remains, then, is critical
> social
> > commentary on the potential employ of cinema as a
> mechanism
> > of control.
> >
> > BH
> >
> > ----- l Message -----
> > From: Herbert
> >
> Schwaab<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>
> > To:
> >
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>
> >
> > Sent: Thursday, February 12, 2009 14:14
> > Subject: AW: convention cliche
> >
> >
> > Thanks for making clear what I meant. Cavell is
> anything
> > but a naive realist. The status of reality on film
> is very
> > ambiguous. You accept a certain closure and totality
> of the
> > worlds enfolded by (classical or conventional) films
> but you
> > remain wholly conscious that these worlds were
> created. But
> > still your relation to the film differs from films
> which
> > foreground the fact that their worlds are
> represented (maybe
> > it could be called a deferred reflexiveness in
> conventional
> > cinema, which comes after the film, but I don't
> know
> > whether this is the proper term).
> > By the way, GWTH is not a film Cavell would much
> approve
> > of, because it is ond of the few films of the 30s
> that
> > predates blockbuster cinema's way of addressing
> its
> > audience head on.
> >
> > Herbert
> >
> >
> > --- Anja Ivekovic - Martinis
> >
> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>>
> > schrieb am Do, 12.2.2009:
> >
> > > Von: Anja Ivekovic - Martinis
> >
> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>>
> > > Betreff: convention cliche
> > > An:
> >
> [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]:[log in to unmask]>>
> > > Datum: Donnerstag, 12. Februar 2009, 19:24
> > > In response to Bill Harris's last post
> pointing
> > out the
> > > lack of realism in
> > > classical hollywood cinema: if I understood
> Herbert
> > > Schwaab's earlier post
> > > correctly, it's a matter of the
> self-conscious
> > > foregrounding of the process
> > > of presentation, or lack thereof, as
> exemplified by
> > > classical hollywood.
> > > Whether hollywood films had anything to do
> with the
> > > "real world" is
> > > irrelevant, it's the approach that
> matters, an
> > approach
> > > that says "Here is
> > > the world", and not "Here is a way
> of
> > presenting
> > > the world", as would be the
> > > case in post-classical cinema. Besides, the
> way
> > hollywood
> > > films presented
> > > the world was likely (or their makers
> supposed it
> > was) the
> > > way that their
> > > audience preferred to see the world. So, as
> far as
> > the
> > > audience was
> > > concerned, that was "the world".
> I'm
> > > simplifying here, of course.
> > >
> > >
> > > Anja
> > >
> > > *
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