As a result of this what might reasonably be called a cultural prejudice I have long thought about how art works and how it functions. I don't know precisely how this works, but there is, I think, some art that seems to transcend or appears to almost transcend its space and time at least for those of us who have acquired a degree of cultural capital over the course of our lives. Some works of art, such as, at least to me, the works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, many of the writings of Mikhail Bulgakov, the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven, Maurice Ravel's string quartet, Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, many of the operas of Giacomo Puccini, Gustav Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde, Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964), and Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), to note a few, seem to draw me out of the mundane and banal space and time that is my life and draw me into an almost magical realm of intellectual and emotional joy. I know, of course, that empirically speaking this sense of transcendence is, at least on the empirical surface, nonsensical. I have long been aware of the fact that art is inscribed within the economic, political, cultural, geographic, and demographic contexts of its space and time. Nevertheless, when I read, listen to, or see works of art, I have a sense that some art, what I regard as great art, takes me, thanks to their magic, out of the realm of the everyday and propels me into a transcendental realm of immense intellectual and emotional jouissance.
I don't mean to imply that this notion of art as transcendental means that we have no need of understanding how works of art work and function in their various economic, political, cultural, geographic, and biological-demographic contexts. Nor do I mean to imply that everyone needs to recognise and value as art that which I value as art or see as beautiful. It is clear, after all, that beauty and value are indeed in the socialised eyes of the beholder. I am not arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that I speak in cathedra when I, for instance, categorise Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as great transcendental art and something else, such as the television show Silver Spoons (1982-1986), as lowest common denominator bread and circuses entertainment, a far too common conceit that many people, particularly on social media sites like YouTube, unfortunately have and a common mistake far too many reactors on YouTube unfortunately make.
As someone who, as I noted, is moved intellectually and emotionally by specific works of art, works I regard as great art, I have been utilising the time that I now have thanks to my retirement reading and rereading books, watching and rewatching movies, and watching and rewatching television shows that I have long wanted to read , listen to, and watch, and watching reaction videos on YouTube, something that rarely results in the transcendental experience great art sometimes brings. Recently, as a consequence of this retirement programme, I rewatched a movie which I have very fond memories of, Vincente Minelli's Gigi (1958).
As I was watching Gigi several things came to mind beyond the nature of art and the nature of the experience of art. I, a baby boomer who came of age in a cinephilic age, a cinephilic age in which many of us cinephiles went to first run and second run cinemas so we could see what were regarded as classics of the cinema from the silent era to the 1960s, thought about the fact that many of the contemporary social media film reactors tended to ignore musicals in their reactions and, if they deigned to react to them, regarded them with disdain, a common prejudice among the broader film going public today which is why so few musicals are made these days. My sense is that much of this disdain for musicals, a disdain that turns musicals and other non-realist forms of cinema, such as screwball comedies and surrealistic films, into acts of profanation, is due to the fact that far too many gensolescents apply a very narrow notion of "realism", a very narrow time and space bound notion of "realism", to films that are not and were never meant to be "realistic". Now, I guess, I know what commentators mean when they talk about people who possess limited imaginations. No wonder many of those same people think that art, including film art and film entertainments, which have never been "realistic"---a descriptive fact--save perhaps in rhetoric must be "realistic"--a normative rather than empirical polemic--even when they can never be "realistic" given the nature of the cinematic apparatus.
There are, of course, problems with applying a very narrow notion of "realism" to films in an ex cathedraish way. A screwball comedy like Howard Hawks's Bringing Up Baby (1938) is not and never had any intention of being "realistic", something that should be obvious from the fact that commentators have been calling films like Bringing Up Baby screwball comedies since the 1930s. The term "screwball" hardly screams I am realistic. Nor are musicals, like Minnelli's Gigi, meant to be realistic. They, like opera, operetta, and musicals before it, merge genre, tone, acting, and music, including singing, into a potential art form that is, as are all books, films, including documentaries, and television shows, inherently unrealistic because they are manipulated in a variety of ways through things like music, editing, and selectivity, something the great German playwright, art polemicist, and social theorist Bertolt Brecht recognised long ago which is why he tried to use his art for political and ideological purposes in order to raise the political and ideological consciousness by pointing up for them the creative and manipulative processes at the heart of so-called "entertainments". Perhaps no film genre foregrounds its cinematic apparaturs and construction more than the musical.
As I was watching Gigi there were several things about film art that came to mind. I thought about how Minnelli was one of the few directors of which I am aware who knew how to use colour in a way similar to those who filmed in black and white and who used shadows and lighting for aesthetic and expressive purposes. Gigi, for instance, is full of Minnelli reds, colours that for me echo the vibrant colours of Van Gogh, and colour contrasts via sets, clothes, and natural settings. Minnelli's art is also expressed in his use of domestic and "natural" spaces, in his compositions, and in his utilisation of Belle Epoque art and architecture. Gigi, in other words, is manufactured art as are all books, musical works, films, and television shows. It is a pity that so many don't grasp this simple fact. And it is a pity that so many don't grasp the significance of mise-en-scene in some films and television, something that, in turn, can perhaps be used to distinguish art from entertainment.
These observations on Minnelli's mise-en-scene, by the way, have no bearing on whether one likes or dislikes Gigi. They are descriptive empirical facts that any educated close observer can deduce simply by watching Gigi attentively. Unfortunately, many of those who react to films and television shows on YouTube have neither sufficient observational skills or sufficient educational skills to deduce much of anything from the films or television shows they watch beyond simple plot points. And this is one of the reasons why social media sites have replaced television as a vast wasteland, as the purveyor of mostly narcissistic for profit lowest common denominator content. It is a pity that this state of affairs is likely to change anytime soon if at all. Humans, after all, are human
No comments:
Post a Comment