Tolerance is not just an idea for a lousy museum
Ok. So right now I am on hold for a talk show on LA’s FM talk radio. I have been on hold for about 45 mins.
It’s a low point in my life.
One of the things I hated in film school, and one of the forces that drove me to take other classes and start hanging out with other people more than film students was the fanaticism.
As such:
I am not going to see X-men because they aren’t using the costumes from the comic books.
I am not going to see Lord of the Rings because they will mess up my opinion of the books.
I am not seeing X film because Director/actor/producer did this film or is affiliated with this group. (To be fair, I vowed to never see another film by PT Anderson after my second viewing of Magnolia.)
This drove me away from my passion and I am still suffering from it. I loved movies. I used to live and breath at the multiplex on the weekends. I have a bunch of cherished memories in the theater.
But around my Junior year, I stopped going to movies as much. I stopped feeling comfortable with the audience in the theater and the response of my fellow students when I mentioned I had seen a film. It became a lot easier to go to films by myself because I became wary of expressing my opinion on a film with my friends, because I had a wider reference point and basis for opinion, and I likely would judge the film from a different point of view.
How do you tell a girlfriend you don’t agree with her view on a movie (or anything for that matter), especially when you feel like you know better than they do.
I get chastised a lot for thinking that my opinion is better than other peoples, on film, on life, on music, on sex, on relationships.
The normal response is that our opinions are equal.
But if you barely push me, I am going to tell you what I believe, that I am better informed and I hold my self above you. Some of this stems from the fact that I have been training myself to be more experienced than you. That I am trying harder than most people to figure out what is good and what is bad.
In my opinion, there is a line between good art and bad art. If the artists intent is understood and matches the artistic output, and is cogent to the average man, then that’s art.
I think country, rap, and pop are almost always lesser than a singer songwriter, which is lesser than rock and roll bands, which is lesser than classical music like Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, and such. (and this is in the case in which something is seen by most as good)
I believe that black and white photography after the inception of color film is pretentious.
I believe that sculpture is lesser than canvas. (in close to all cases)
That novels are always better than short stories or most anything else of the written word.
There is always the question of mastery, skill, and performance. While the classical artists are on a different level of not actually being performers but planners, they work within the same boundaries, and maybe should suggest that the criteria of great music is that if other people perform it and it’s still good, then it adds to the quality of the music. While this is not a blanket statement, it is a testament to the material if you can effectively remove the original performer and it’s still as thrilling. (For instance, I don’t discount Psycho (a film I am not too keen on as a classic- it’s the dénouement for me), because of the remaking of Gus Van Sant is so much lesser-even if the said conclusion is actually more compelling)
But to the end of a side note, I still believe there is a universal truth in distinction, in which things are of quality or not. Enjoyable or a waste of time.
I believe this because I believe I have to believe it. If I want to be an artist, I have to show you something you don’t know about. I have to believe that I know better than you in the field of my passion.
I am planning on doing it better than you can do. I have to or I am not being a artist/entertainer who is worth your time.
Jim Carrey may simply be a guy who is good at getting laughs, and many discount his quality as an artist because of it (I am not one of them) , but I guarantee that his bottom motive is to be funnier than you are.
When it comes to art, I know I am more learned that 99% of the world (or at least I want to believe that).
There is a distinction between good and bad, between passable and compelling. Art for the masses and art for the learned.
Sadly, politics and the choices made seem a lot more like art discussion than it used to be.
There is almost never the clear answer in the lives of everyone, politics should always be second guessed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended a war, but it killed an unimaginable amount of people. It was, however, the right choice at the time, but it was not the best one. And by “right,” I mean the one that wound up causing the least damage. Yet I judge the right now, 60 years after, because it did saved more bad than it did wrong (for those who need a brushing up on history or at not as learned as they might need to be, the last throws of the US fight in the pacific theater was becoming almost comically terrible. We were taking towns not only by might, but by complete annihilation. To conquer a Japanese stronghold, the death toll was the town, not just the soldiers. The civilians were willingly going to fight and die.
For the 19 extremists who died, maybe 9/11 was the “best” option there was, but it was in no way the right decision. Too many of their cause have died for a lesson they wanted to teach the US did not take. And judging by the fact most American’s think that the war is about Freedom makes the death and the message of those who crashed the planes all the more worthless and misguided.
But I waited on the line of the talk show to put out an idea, that we are not noticing how many Iraqi’s we are killing in the name of the “best” plan. There are probably 100,000 people in Iraq who are dead in the name of the US response to 9/11. I didn’t say that we were in the wrong, but that maybe, we should think of that statistic when we think about the war. By the end of the war or our occupation there, my guess is that half a million will have died in the name of our cause.
Democracy may prevail. Everything Bush intended with his Neo-con agenda may wind up being the right decision. I doubt it more everyday, but I will not give up the hope that he was right (not in the hope that I support him, but that maybe all of this death was not in vain) and that the world is a better place.
Blame it on the immediacy of the media, 24 hour news, and the internet, but the patience in the world is gone, and it’s a terrible thing.
It takes a step back to realize that WWII was a period of 6 years (calling the 1939 Poland invasion the start). It took six years to beat an enemy, and it wasn’t until the last two years until the Allies stumbled upon the Holocaust. We can’t judge on the short term.
Yet we are.
And because of it, the division in this country becomes more marked and divided every time a major news story comes along. It’s not only that we hear Bush on the war, its that we have 100 talking heads talking about it immediately.
And the sad thing, is that it is not the terrorists that are winning, it’s their fanatical counterparts, the fundamental extremists.
The sane people are being marginalized to the louder points. We don’t hear that there may be a middle ground. It’s left vs. right. It’s blue states vs. the red states.
Politics are not art. There is no final product to judge upon. But we are arguing like there is, and that there is a distinction between pure good and evil.
We as a culture are becoming too divided and because people like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Alec Baldwin are preaching the extremes to prove a point and not the middle ground, the gap between grows forever wider.
You want to know what life will be like if this continues? Ask a first year film student what they think about “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” or tell them you think the prequels are better than the original trilogy of Star Wars.
It’s torture.
And that’s where we are headed.
There are always at least two sides to everything. The trick is, to paraphrase “Princess Mononoke” is “To see with eyes unclouded by hate.” To see the sides view for what it is, because most people are acting out of what they believe is best.
But to lay a deaf ear, and to continue to move to the extreme sides to prove a point only makes things worse.
The sad thing is that I don’t see a way this can happen.
There is no right answer now. Nor will there ever be at the time of action. The right answer will only be chosen through history. And the odds of it will be continually diminshed in a democracy if the sides are moving away to the extremes in hopes of winning an argument. Our country is failing becuase we are fighting for our sides, and fighting louder, instead of working with all people in mind.
Art imitates life only because it is removed from it. Life shouldn't imitate literary theory.
It’s a low point in my life.
One of the things I hated in film school, and one of the forces that drove me to take other classes and start hanging out with other people more than film students was the fanaticism.
As such:
I am not going to see X-men because they aren’t using the costumes from the comic books.
I am not going to see Lord of the Rings because they will mess up my opinion of the books.
I am not seeing X film because Director/actor/producer did this film or is affiliated with this group. (To be fair, I vowed to never see another film by PT Anderson after my second viewing of Magnolia.)
This drove me away from my passion and I am still suffering from it. I loved movies. I used to live and breath at the multiplex on the weekends. I have a bunch of cherished memories in the theater.
But around my Junior year, I stopped going to movies as much. I stopped feeling comfortable with the audience in the theater and the response of my fellow students when I mentioned I had seen a film. It became a lot easier to go to films by myself because I became wary of expressing my opinion on a film with my friends, because I had a wider reference point and basis for opinion, and I likely would judge the film from a different point of view.
How do you tell a girlfriend you don’t agree with her view on a movie (or anything for that matter), especially when you feel like you know better than they do.
I get chastised a lot for thinking that my opinion is better than other peoples, on film, on life, on music, on sex, on relationships.
The normal response is that our opinions are equal.
But if you barely push me, I am going to tell you what I believe, that I am better informed and I hold my self above you. Some of this stems from the fact that I have been training myself to be more experienced than you. That I am trying harder than most people to figure out what is good and what is bad.
In my opinion, there is a line between good art and bad art. If the artists intent is understood and matches the artistic output, and is cogent to the average man, then that’s art.
I think country, rap, and pop are almost always lesser than a singer songwriter, which is lesser than rock and roll bands, which is lesser than classical music like Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, and such. (and this is in the case in which something is seen by most as good)
I believe that black and white photography after the inception of color film is pretentious.
I believe that sculpture is lesser than canvas. (in close to all cases)
That novels are always better than short stories or most anything else of the written word.
There is always the question of mastery, skill, and performance. While the classical artists are on a different level of not actually being performers but planners, they work within the same boundaries, and maybe should suggest that the criteria of great music is that if other people perform it and it’s still good, then it adds to the quality of the music. While this is not a blanket statement, it is a testament to the material if you can effectively remove the original performer and it’s still as thrilling. (For instance, I don’t discount Psycho (a film I am not too keen on as a classic- it’s the dénouement for me), because of the remaking of Gus Van Sant is so much lesser-even if the said conclusion is actually more compelling)
But to the end of a side note, I still believe there is a universal truth in distinction, in which things are of quality or not. Enjoyable or a waste of time.
I believe this because I believe I have to believe it. If I want to be an artist, I have to show you something you don’t know about. I have to believe that I know better than you in the field of my passion.
I am planning on doing it better than you can do. I have to or I am not being a artist/entertainer who is worth your time.
Jim Carrey may simply be a guy who is good at getting laughs, and many discount his quality as an artist because of it (I am not one of them) , but I guarantee that his bottom motive is to be funnier than you are.
When it comes to art, I know I am more learned that 99% of the world (or at least I want to believe that).
There is a distinction between good and bad, between passable and compelling. Art for the masses and art for the learned.
Sadly, politics and the choices made seem a lot more like art discussion than it used to be.
There is almost never the clear answer in the lives of everyone, politics should always be second guessed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended a war, but it killed an unimaginable amount of people. It was, however, the right choice at the time, but it was not the best one. And by “right,” I mean the one that wound up causing the least damage. Yet I judge the right now, 60 years after, because it did saved more bad than it did wrong (for those who need a brushing up on history or at not as learned as they might need to be, the last throws of the US fight in the pacific theater was becoming almost comically terrible. We were taking towns not only by might, but by complete annihilation. To conquer a Japanese stronghold, the death toll was the town, not just the soldiers. The civilians were willingly going to fight and die.
For the 19 extremists who died, maybe 9/11 was the “best” option there was, but it was in no way the right decision. Too many of their cause have died for a lesson they wanted to teach the US did not take. And judging by the fact most American’s think that the war is about Freedom makes the death and the message of those who crashed the planes all the more worthless and misguided.
But I waited on the line of the talk show to put out an idea, that we are not noticing how many Iraqi’s we are killing in the name of the “best” plan. There are probably 100,000 people in Iraq who are dead in the name of the US response to 9/11. I didn’t say that we were in the wrong, but that maybe, we should think of that statistic when we think about the war. By the end of the war or our occupation there, my guess is that half a million will have died in the name of our cause.
Democracy may prevail. Everything Bush intended with his Neo-con agenda may wind up being the right decision. I doubt it more everyday, but I will not give up the hope that he was right (not in the hope that I support him, but that maybe all of this death was not in vain) and that the world is a better place.
Blame it on the immediacy of the media, 24 hour news, and the internet, but the patience in the world is gone, and it’s a terrible thing.
It takes a step back to realize that WWII was a period of 6 years (calling the 1939 Poland invasion the start). It took six years to beat an enemy, and it wasn’t until the last two years until the Allies stumbled upon the Holocaust. We can’t judge on the short term.
Yet we are.
And because of it, the division in this country becomes more marked and divided every time a major news story comes along. It’s not only that we hear Bush on the war, its that we have 100 talking heads talking about it immediately.
And the sad thing, is that it is not the terrorists that are winning, it’s their fanatical counterparts, the fundamental extremists.
The sane people are being marginalized to the louder points. We don’t hear that there may be a middle ground. It’s left vs. right. It’s blue states vs. the red states.
Politics are not art. There is no final product to judge upon. But we are arguing like there is, and that there is a distinction between pure good and evil.
We as a culture are becoming too divided and because people like Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Alec Baldwin are preaching the extremes to prove a point and not the middle ground, the gap between grows forever wider.
You want to know what life will be like if this continues? Ask a first year film student what they think about “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” or tell them you think the prequels are better than the original trilogy of Star Wars.
It’s torture.
And that’s where we are headed.
There are always at least two sides to everything. The trick is, to paraphrase “Princess Mononoke” is “To see with eyes unclouded by hate.” To see the sides view for what it is, because most people are acting out of what they believe is best.
But to lay a deaf ear, and to continue to move to the extreme sides to prove a point only makes things worse.
The sad thing is that I don’t see a way this can happen.
There is no right answer now. Nor will there ever be at the time of action. The right answer will only be chosen through history. And the odds of it will be continually diminshed in a democracy if the sides are moving away to the extremes in hopes of winning an argument. Our country is failing becuase we are fighting for our sides, and fighting louder, instead of working with all people in mind.
Art imitates life only because it is removed from it. Life shouldn't imitate literary theory.
posted by Indiana at
3:01 AM
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