Greatest Culture...

[JuniperWoolf]

Walt Disney stands at the centre of film animation in a way no other figure can. Disney's early stuff is pretty much responsible for inspiring the careers of Osamu Tezuka in Japan and Fydor Khitruk in the Soviet Union. Tezuka is on record citing Disney for the large expressive eyes characteristic of much of the Japanese animation that followed him.

Yeah, just look at Donald Duck's moe eyes.

[The Atheist]

Since we all seem to love to engage in those inane discussions debating the greatest writer, greatest poet, greatest national body of literature, etc... let's take it to the logical extreme and discuss what you think is/was the greatest or most influential culture on the whole of culture?

Just to go right back to the start, surely we must make a case that the greatest culture ever is the current one.

We live in a time where we can look at da Vincis and Dalis by day, watch movies in 3d or cyberspace in the evening then fall asleep to Mozart. We have created a culture which is not just a blend of all cultures before us, but an amelioration of them as well.

[cafolini]

Just to go right back to the start, surely we must make a case that the greatest culture ever is the current one.

We live in a time where we can look at da Vincis and Dalis by day, watch movies in 3d or cyberspace in the evening then fall asleep to Mozart. We have created a culture which is not just a blend of all cultures before us, but an amelioration of them as well.

I have to agree with you again there. But let's keep atheism out of this.

[The Atheist]

If you check the post, I didn't mention it.

[MorpheusSandman]

I'm willing to concede that the film has good technical points since you concede that it's got bad writing.

I didn't concede it has bad writing; what I would say, though, is that I rarely care about writing in film unless it's unusually great (Wilder, Sturges, Coens, Allen) or unusually terrible. I don't consider Vertigo (or most Hitch) either. Plus, his writing is inextricably bound up with his visual imagination, ie, he didn't conceive of one without the other.

I've seen some very bright people write some very witty things that were entirely off the mark. That's one of the flaws of intelligent people, they are very good at constructing arguments full of sophistries and lying to themselves, convincing others even when they are wrong. Critics often see things were nothing exists and read into texts or films some grandiose meaning where nothing was intended. Sometimes they get a hold of some bad ideology or some fashionable idea in academia and apply it in their judgements. Personally, I've never seen the wonder in metafiction, or marxism, or any of the isms and philosophies that people frequently apply to these sorts of things and get so excited by. I like traditional aesthetics, the kind that Aristotle, Horace, or Longinus would talk about.

Well, there’s a lot of thoughts going in a lot of different directions here. In principle, there’s nothing here I disagree with and, in fact, I’ve been openly hostile to literary and film theory in the past. I greatly appreciate criticism and its ability to lend genuine insight to art (indeed, I would’ve been lost on many writers and filmmakers were it not for a handful of very perceptive critics), but I’m also very aware of its pitfalls, sophistries, inaccuracies, biases, etc. However, I think there’s more to it than “intelligent people constructing sophistic arguments, lying to themselves, and convincing others even when they’re wrong,” or “reading grandiose meanings in films/texts where nothing was intended,” or, at least, the issue is more complicated than that.

At least when it comes to the second, I’m of the mind that in any great art there is inevitably more in a work than the artist consciously intended. So much of art is an unconscious, creative act, and the aspects that are conscious usually pertain to craft as opposed to meaning. In a respect, it’s always been the job of critics to “find meaning” in texts and films because the artists usually don’t think about such things during creation (or, if they do, it’s usually in much simpler terms). I mean, I doubt Shakespeare thought about 1/1000 of everything that’s been written about his plays, and there’s even that anonymous poem written about the famous Shakespearean critic AC Bradley:

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.

Like it or not, though, these critics have a profound effect on what art lasts and gets passed onto the next generations, so whether what they see is there or not is rather irrelevant. The larger point is that Hitch has been one of those artist that every type of critic/theorist just loves to sink their teeth into, and that usually only happens to artists whose work is inviting in the first place. So, perhaps you wouldn’t have your mind changed by those essays, but they might at least illuminate some things you hadn’t thought about before.

I like MST3K.

I do too, but it’s no way to seriously critique films.

That seems a little far fetched to me. It feels like you're reaching in order to justify all the flaws of the film and turn them into positives.

Why does it seem far-fetched? The whole point of The Birds is that there is no explanation for why they’re attacking, so everyone is invited to offer their $0.02 and the opinions of a drunk are worth the same two pennies as that of the expert. It shouldn’t seem far-fetched that an artist as painfully aware of the perspectives, interpretations, and reputations amongst viewers and critics as Hitch (an awareness he cultivated into a brand more impressively than anyone in cinema’s history) would make a film that has such a gleeful time ripping apart both establishments. For what other reason would the ornithologist exist in the film for? It’s certainly not for the crucial explanatory exposition she offers. FWIW, I don’t even see it as a “fault” that needs “justifying,” I just see it as one of those insignificant illogicalities that you can find in almost every work of fiction that’s ever existed. What’s more, even if you found a work that didn’t contain one of them, it wouldn’t make that work a single bit better for not having them. It’s not a flaw, it’s just an excuse not to critically engage with the film.

I see a very simple work of art being championed by some very creative people.

So what makes you think what you see is any more truthful than what the creative people see? What’s more, if it was a simple matter of creative people championing simple works of art, why does Michael Bay have no such champions?

I loved Cloud Atlas and The Right Stuff. I'd be interested to hear what you disliked about them.

The Right Stuff I remember being so painfully boring I think I blocked it out, and I generally have a high threshold for what most consider boring (being a lover of Bela Tarr and Tsai Ming-liant). I actually realized I hadn’t seen Cloud Atlas but was thinking of a completely different movie, so never mind on that one. As for the rest of the list, we could go back and forth on each thread for ages, but I think the most telling thing you pointed out was that there have been 950 Shakespeare adaptations, and you can probably count on two hands (and maybe a foot) the number that are genuinely great. I love Branagh AND Olivier’s Shakespeare, an Kozintsev’s and Kurosawa’s and Welles, but even that doesn’t bring the number to 10; 10 out of almost 1000, or 1%. Do you really need any more proof that source doesn’t matter and the quality of the rendition matters completely?

You see, I tend to think that Shakespeare found these great plots which lesser writers just hadn't made the most of and used them to their fullest extent.

I really don’t think any of Shakespeare’s great plays (maybe Macbeth excepted) really have “great plots” nearly as much as they simply have Shakespeare’s genius for language, characterization, and drama. Really, if you think about Lear, Othello, Hamlet, Tempest, et al., if you told the stories with all of Shakespeare’s language removed, not much happens: old king divides his kingdom between daughters, gets ticked off when one won’t suck up to him, banishes her, travels from one daughter to another getting progressively ticked off because they won’t cater to him… then there’s a whole convoluted letter swapping thing and parallel storyline with Gloucester, his real son, and bastard son etc. I mean, there’s nothing there that screams MASTERPIECE PLOTTING! I rather think it’s not that Shakespeare took “great plots” and “made the most” of them so much as he took rather basic, even mediocre plots, and really worked to make them transcendentally great.

Starting with the father King Hamlet/Agamemnon is murdered by his brother/cousin Claudius/Aegisthus who's the lover of Queen Gertrude/Clytemnestra. Hamlet/Orestes returns from abroad and is told by the ghost of his father to kill the usurper. Hamlet/Orestes is accompanied by his trusty companion and foil Horatio/Pylades. The ghost of Hamlet's/Orestes' father comes and warns him not to kill his mother the queen when he takes his vengeance but to limit it to the usurper. Hamlet/Orestes both go mad from time to time. And Eletra's role as the sister has been transformed into the love interest Ophelia.

Fair enough; I guess it’s been too long since I read Aeschylus that I hadn’t even thought about all those connections. But if that’s all it takes to make a work great, then I guess Lion King is a masterpiece too.

Numerous masters have reworked old tales by their predecessors because they've seen how rich they were in possibilities. When a terrible writer gets a hold of an Atreus or Oedipus he fails to exploit all that he finds there.

All true, but I find it just as common that an artist finds a bad/mediocre source but is equally inspired by all of the missed opportunities and what s/he feels s/he can do with it. I remember Howard Hawks once said to Hemingway that source and writing mattered so little in film that he could take even his worst work and make a great film of it, and the result was To Have and Have Not, which is indeed a masterpiece IMO.

You said it yourself, with color there is more to work with.

There’s more to work with, which means there’s also more to bungle if you don’t utilize it well, and I see more bunglings than, err, well-handlings.

[lawpark]

Has anyone voted for Cuba yet?

[Shevek]

Just to go right back to the start, surely we must make a case that the greatest culture ever is the current one.

We live in a time where we can look at da Vincis and Dalis by day, watch movies in 3d or cyberspace in the evening then fall asleep to Mozart. We have created a culture which is not just a blend of all cultures before us, but an amelioration of them as well.

So there's only one culture today?

[hypatia_]

So there's only one culture today?

i get what both of you are saying.

we are certainly heading in the direction of one culture. if that will ever actually happen is a different story.

i think the language barrier between diff cultures is the biggest deterrent from all the cultures blending. even mass comm tech's like the internet/television can't really cross that, though google has begun to by offering free translation built in as a plugin in its browser.

[hannah_arendt]

i get what both of you are saying.

we are certainly heading in the direction of one culture. if that will ever actually happen is a different story.

i think the language barrier between diff cultures is the biggest deterrent from all the cultures blending. even mass comm tech's like the internet/television can't really cross that, though google has begun to by offering free translation built in as a plugin in its browser.

Language has always been a very big barrier bewteen cultures because it`s not only a superficial comunication but laso a way of thinking. Nowadays thanks to internet everything is becoming more and more easier however some problems still seem to be impossible to solve.Language is something inborn whyich determines our behaviour an way of thinking sometimes. You can speak very well foreign language but it`s very difficult to change your way of thinking.

[Shevek]

i get what both of you are saying.

we are certainly heading in the direction of one culture. if that will ever actually happen is a different story.

i think the language barrier between diff cultures is the biggest deterrent from all the cultures blending. even mass comm tech's like the internet/television can't really cross that, though google has begun to by offering free translation built in as a plugin in its browser.

There are also vast differences among people with respect to geographic location, economic status, religion, age, race, political values, gender norms, literacy rates, demographic contingencies (birth rates and death rates, population density, outmigration, immigration, urban/rural divides), etc, etc... to overcome before considering what a universal culture might look like. Even if everyone in the world spoke one language and spoke it in the same way -- which is absurd considering what we know about language historically -- these differences would still separate people culturally.

[Darcy88]

Just to go right back to the start, surely we must make a case that the greatest culture ever is the current one.

We live in a time where we can look at da Vincis and Dalis by day, watch movies in 3d or cyberspace in the evening then fall asleep to Mozart. We have created a culture which is not just a blend of all cultures before us, but an amelioration of them as well.

So there's only one culture today?

i get what both of you are saying.

we are certainly heading in the direction of one culture. if that will ever actually happen is a different story.

i think the language barrier between diff cultures is the biggest deterrent from all the cultures blending. even mass comm tech's like the internet/television can't really cross that, though google has begun to by offering free translation built in as a plugin in its browser.

Language has always been a very big barrier bewteen cultures because it`s not only a superficial comunication but laso a way of thinking. Nowadays thanks to internet everything is becoming more and more easier however some problems still seem to be impossible to solve.Language is something inborn whyich determines our behaviour an way of thinking sometimes. You can speak very well foreign language but it`s very difficult to change your way of thinking.

There are also vast differences among people with respect to geographic location, economic status, religion, age, race, political values, gender norms, literacy rates, demographic contingencies (birth rates and death rates, population density, outmigration, immigration, urban/rural divides), etc, etc... to overcome before considering what a universal culture might look like. Even if everyone in the world spoke one language and spoke it in the same way -- which is absurd considering what we know about language historically -- these differences would still separate people culturally.

Even centuries ago there was a kind of pan-european culture. If each nation had been autonomous and cut-off from others few of the classics we now have would've been written. Without the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman cultures I can't begin to imagine how radically altered the entirety of Western culture would be. In every art the artists react to the works of their predecessors and peers regardless of their nationality. There is also a solid line from India to Japan of shared philosophical/religious ideas.

Nowadays, on an individual level, we do in certain people see manifested a kind of global culture. Over half the books I read are translations. I watch a lot of foreign subtitled movies and listen to a lot of music from other languages. The visual artists whose works I consume the most are from Spain, France and Germany. Through childhood and adolescence my culture was almost entirely American, but for the last 10 years or so it has been truly global. Maybe it is different for people in countries that are not comprised mostly of immigrants, but I struggle to find in myself and my life anything uniquely Canadian. When I was obsessed with German philosophy and German composers I felt more German than anything. When I was deeply into Zen Buddhism my thoughts turned most to China and Japan. White British Columbians who do not partake of higher culture are not going to be this way. They are going to be predominantly American culturally. But the intellectuals and aesthetes I know are more globally than they are nationally minded.

[Shevek]

Of course culture is global, and no culture is 100% autonomous from outside influences. But as culture diffuses, even on a national level, it gets wrapped up in power struggles and ceases to become universal. The struggle to define what is Canadian is one example of this. There are some traces of cohesion, but when we unravel something that seems "Canadian" -- such as, the donut as a working-class snack food -- we find regional distinctions throughout Southern Ontario alone. The landscape art of the Group of Seven was initially asserted (more so by commercial interests such as railway and hospitality industries) as "Canadian" despite the obvious fact that it was created for a privileged group of Ontarians. And while Hockey Night in Canada transformed the spectator experience of hockey, there has never been a universal (at least, a meaningfully national) acceptance of why hockey is important, who can play it, who can watch, how to play it, etc. Your struggle to find anything uniquely Canadian might be the result of circumstances that have separated inhabitants of Canada for hundreds of years, and that has resulted in a fairly fragmented culture even with mass media. (This is a struggle I have almost given up on myself)

My objection with the idea of a single, "blended" culture is not the notion that people are able to share more ideas, values, forms of expression and material goods with each other. I accept this, but I reject the atheist's suggestion that we are all 100% free to ameliorate the cultures before us (as if cultures have a start and end date? As if there is a single authority on who does this cultural ameliorating? As if "ameliorating" even makes sense when you consider some of the cultural downsides of reliance on information technologies and mass media?). There are circumstances that draw people to accept particular cultural elements and reject/reshape others, and while we might be more free to do this now with certain technologies, circumstances (including language) still play a major role in how culture becomes diffused.

[hannah_arendt]

I have to admit that I don`t know much about Canada and I ma sorry for that However I do my best to change it in the future As a child I was forced to read polish literature but I remember having some problems with understanding it. Then I studied at polish department. Now, I read mostly english and spanish literature. However there are few polish books which I like. I write in spanish mostly, sometimes in english. I started writing something in polish but it takes me much effort to finish it, I must say.

I agree that nowadays our culture is global and probably this process cannot be stopped. Thanks to this fact I can talk with you now.