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Even in the Homeric Era it was written, 'To Pathe methos echein'.
So if the violation/cruelty theory no longer holds, perhaps it's just a matter of will versus the financial rewards of conformity.
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 10:14:51 -0500“My point is that all art is about the violation of the implicit terms that exist between creator and viewer/reader/listener.. “
well . . . so much for homer . . . tant pis . . . it was nice while it lasted [three thousand years]
From: Film-Philosophy [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of bill harris
Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 10:07 AM
My point is that all art is about the violation of the implicit terms that exist between creator and
viewer/reader/listener. For example, Oates said as much about the novel, and, of course we have Artaud's 'cruelty' that states more or less the same thing regarding theatre.
Cinematic terms ostensibly involve viewer expectations that will make him/her happy, and were intentionally violated by Verhoven, Esterhaz, and Berkley. That this caused an uproar from the real cinematic bottom-feeders (those whose sexual expectations were not met) was to be expected.
What, however, did amaze me was the failure of 'the critics' to speak up. Would this not ostensibly include those in academia? Showgirls, then, is fussy to the extent that it demonstrated a total lack of a critical cinematic faculty from those charged with having one.
This is not to say that those who disliked the film are wrong; rather, only that their lockstep
behavior with those who they should be informing indicates a sociial pathology..an intellectual failure of leadership, as it were.
BH
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 2010 09:42:20 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Bill Harris's slander (re SHOWGIRLS)
To: [log in to unmask]it’s christmas eve, and maybe that means that only those of us for whom this is no big deal will be interested in pursuing this issue thoughtfully – if so, so be it
but i wanted to raise – without polemic or “poetry” – a question about the “showgirls” conversation: the most recent posts seem to suggest that the attention paid to this film by an “impressive list of film academics” is itself in some [mysterious?] way a vindication of the quality of the film . . .
sorry, but i just don’t get this . . . from the POV of academic/theoretical inquiry disasters may well be more interesting than successes [“Successful films are all alike; every unsuccessful film is unsuccessful in its own way”???] . . . so i’m not sure why the attention of burch, williams usw. tells us anything about the value of the film as anything but an object of academic scrutiny . . . remember that williams has for years now been doing a great deal of impressive work on porn, and i suspect that very few among us want to defend the aesthetic or intellectual [as opposed to cultural/sociological] interest of the texts she works on
in any case, it seems to me an inescapable [and, to me, lamentable] fact of most contemporary academic criticism that the inherent quality/value of a film [or book, or building, usw.] is of little significance [even if it’s allowed that the concept of inherent value has an meaning at all . . .
what’s all the fuss about??
mike
From: Film-Philosophy [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chuck Kleinhans
Abstract
Spring 2003, Vol. 56, No. 3, Pages 32–46
Posted online on December 2, 2003.
(doi:10.1525/fq.2003.56.3.32)
Round Table: Showgirls
Akira Mizuta Lippit, Noël Burch, Chon Noriega, Ara Osterweil, Linda Williams,Eric Shaefer, Jeffrey Sconce
As recently as December, 2002, the New York Times' Elvis Mitchell referred to the "wreckage" ofShowgirls (1995). Yet the Film Quarterly editorial board had just been galvanized by a discussion of the same film. Apparently there exists a number of secret and not-so-secret devotees of the film.Showgirls has, perhaps unexpectedly, served to stimulate scholarly thought around issues of camp, satire, class, gender, the fallen woman, showgirl musicals, trash cinema, sexploitation films, hedonistic criticism, and reading and teaching the film. Noël Burch, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Chon Noriega, Ara Osterweil, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, and Linda Williams have contributed to this discussion of the film. Perhaps Showgirls can still be rescued from the wreckage?
That's a pretty impressive list of film academics, by anyone's standard
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