prinCZess
Warrior, Writer, Performer, Perv
Spurred-on by an opinion-piece by Martin Scorsese, some choice bits quoted herein below:
Speaking generally, I don't know if I could disagree with the guy more--I've long had an objection to the kind of ivory-towered 'these entertaining things aren't real art' snobbishness this perspective tends to come off as in my reading, and always been much more of the mind that 'plebeian' or 'genre' entertainment, be it in movies or other art/media forms, is fully capable of being 'artistic'--either thanks to the piece excelling in performance or messaging itself, or because of individual subjective responses making it do so for certain subsets of people.
The original trilogy of Star Wars is perhaps an easy example of a commonly-agreed on film fulfilling the first of those. It's a pretty typical sci-fi/fantasy story with full-on swords-and-sorcery cliches contained, but does a good job presenting those that it would seem to be commonly attributed an 'artistic merit' (at least by my amateur read). As to the latter...Well, tastes in 'art' themselves vary, and even films derided as hackneyed or bad can be enjoyed by some people because of their differing tastes (or because of it being less commonly-accepted as good or artistic, such as with 'cult classics').
At the same time...I can see the man's point--perhaps in particular with the influence large movie houses or companies (Disney as an easy hit) have in shaping broad swathes of the 'media landscape' that produces any of these films and how the very same propensity for 'audience-testing' and catering to the largest market can suck some degree of the...genuineness (and we could get into how catering to specific media release areas--China as the major example--can put some problems into that arena, which is one perhaps exemplified in the recent hooplah over Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', and attempts by Disney to appeal to audiences there).
So, boiling down I suppose...Does anyone else have thoughts on the particulars here? Are Marvel Movies and franchise-films formulaic and rote bores that are popular thanks to massive media campaigns and ability for SFX, are they all art of some kind/form, is there a personal standard you use for them that includes some and excludes others based on some kind of reasoning?
Or, if more generality is of interest to you...Where does 'entertainment' and 'art' sit in regards to one another?
I will now restrain myself here from going on an even longer-winded diatribe about how my particular favorite pieces of media are most-definitely the height of artistic expression while yours are shit, and instead open the floor for folks to point out their own standards.
Edit: Oopsie! I juggled Scorsese and Tarantino being the ones behind Once Upon A Time in Hollywood...Because while I enjoy watching films, I'm so-so on paying much attention to directors and the like.
While Scorsese referenced the Marvel movies directly, Star Wars and others also seem relevant in the realm of being franchises that have to follow some strict guidelines, and generally trend towards being very much audience-approval directed (though how much any of them succeed in that varies).When I was in England in early October, I gave an interview to Empire magazine. I was asked a question about Marvel movies. I answered it. I said that I’ve tried to watch a few of them and that they’re not for me, that they seem to me to be closer to theme parks than they are to movies as I’ve known and loved them throughout my life, and that in the end, I don’t think they’re cinema.
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They (Franchise/superhero films) are sequels in name but they are remakes in spirit, and everything in them is officially sanctioned because it can’t really be any other way. That’s the nature of modern film franchises: market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption.
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For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness.
Speaking generally, I don't know if I could disagree with the guy more--I've long had an objection to the kind of ivory-towered 'these entertaining things aren't real art' snobbishness this perspective tends to come off as in my reading, and always been much more of the mind that 'plebeian' or 'genre' entertainment, be it in movies or other art/media forms, is fully capable of being 'artistic'--either thanks to the piece excelling in performance or messaging itself, or because of individual subjective responses making it do so for certain subsets of people.
The original trilogy of Star Wars is perhaps an easy example of a commonly-agreed on film fulfilling the first of those. It's a pretty typical sci-fi/fantasy story with full-on swords-and-sorcery cliches contained, but does a good job presenting those that it would seem to be commonly attributed an 'artistic merit' (at least by my amateur read). As to the latter...Well, tastes in 'art' themselves vary, and even films derided as hackneyed or bad can be enjoyed by some people because of their differing tastes (or because of it being less commonly-accepted as good or artistic, such as with 'cult classics').
At the same time...I can see the man's point--perhaps in particular with the influence large movie houses or companies (Disney as an easy hit) have in shaping broad swathes of the 'media landscape' that produces any of these films and how the very same propensity for 'audience-testing' and catering to the largest market can suck some degree of the...genuineness (and we could get into how catering to specific media release areas--China as the major example--can put some problems into that arena, which is one perhaps exemplified in the recent hooplah over Tarantino's 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', and attempts by Disney to appeal to audiences there).
So, boiling down I suppose...Does anyone else have thoughts on the particulars here? Are Marvel Movies and franchise-films formulaic and rote bores that are popular thanks to massive media campaigns and ability for SFX, are they all art of some kind/form, is there a personal standard you use for them that includes some and excludes others based on some kind of reasoning?
Or, if more generality is of interest to you...Where does 'entertainment' and 'art' sit in regards to one another?
I will now restrain myself here from going on an even longer-winded diatribe about how my particular favorite pieces of media are most-definitely the height of artistic expression while yours are shit, and instead open the floor for folks to point out their own standards.
Edit: Oopsie! I juggled Scorsese and Tarantino being the ones behind Once Upon A Time in Hollywood...Because while I enjoy watching films, I'm so-so on paying much attention to directors and the like.
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