Dumbing Down American Readers [Archive] - Literature Network Forums

islandclimber

07-19-2009, 08:12 PM

At this point with regard to threads currently seeing activity here in the general literature section, I thought this little snippet from Harold Bloom in 2003 seemed appropriate.. so enjoy... :p

Dumbing down American readers
By Harold Bloom, 9/24/2003

THE DECISION to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. By awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat. If this is going to be the criterion in the future, then perhaps next year the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steel, and surely the Nobel Prize for literature should go to J.K. Rowling.

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What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

I began as a scholar of the romantic poets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was understood that the great English romantic poets were Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon, and others who just can't write. A fourth-rate playwright like Aphra Behn is being taught instead of Shakespeare in many curriculums across the country.

Recently I spoke at the funeral of my old friend Thomas M. Green of Yale, perhaps the most distinguished scholar of Renaissance literature of his generation. I said, "I fear that something of great value has ended forever."

Today there are four living American novelists I know of who are still at work and who deserve our praise. Thomas Pynchon is still writing. My friend Philip Roth, who will now share this "distinguished contribution" award with Stephen King, is a great comedian and would no doubt find something funny to say about it. There's Cormac McCarthy, whose novel "Blood Meridian" is worthy of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," and Don DeLillo, whose "Underworld" is a great book.

Instead, this year's award goes to King. It's a terrible mistake.

Harold Bloom is a professor at Yale University and author of "The Western Canon." He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/

Zee.

07-19-2009, 08:23 PM

Dumbledore is gonna come find you...

and whack you on the head with a broomstick :crash:

Despite the fact he is ... dead :)

islandclimber

07-19-2009, 08:30 PM

you know, you hit the nail on the head there. For that is just what I'm worried about right now :p

Zee.

07-19-2009, 08:35 PM

I wrote this in response to another post of yours in a different thread, but it seems appropriate to repost it here:

"The point i'm making is that they do serve different purposes, and whether someone likes the Harry Potter series or not, Rowling's ability to captivate people, to create this wonderful atmosphere in her work, and her ability to tell a story is undeniable. I think a lot of great writers fail where an author like her or King succeeds. "

Not a lot of great writers are great story tellers. I suppose the fact that she is a wonderful story teller is the answer to a lot of people's curiosity and questions in regards to why Harry Potter has been so successful.

*Classic*Charm*

07-19-2009, 08:38 PM

Maybe it's not that the public is being dumbed down. "Dumbing down" implies that someone/ some organization etc. is actively working to change what the public perceives and accepts to be good literature.

It seems to me that what is happening is maybe a change in values. Readers seem to put more value on books which offer more imagination than more insight. It's difficult to say how much the actual quality of the writing is being considered at all anymore.

islandclimber

07-19-2009, 08:51 PM

Harry Potter and the Death of Reading

By Ron Charles
Sunday, July 15, 2007; B01

It happened on a dark night, somewhere in the middle of Book IV. For three years, I had dutifully read the "Harry Potter" series to my daughter, my voice growing raspy with the effort, page after page. But lately, whole paragraphs of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" had started to slip by without my hearing a word. I'd snap back to attention and realize the action had moved from Harry's room to Hagrid's house, and I had no idea what was happening.

And that's when my daughter broke the spell: "Do we have to keep reading this?"

O, the shame of it: a 10-year-old girl and a book critic who had had enough of "Harry Potter." We were both a little sad, but also a little relieved. Although we'd had some good times at Hogwarts, deep down we weren't wild about Harry, and the freedom of finally confessing this secret to each other made us feel like co-conspirators.

Along with changing diapers and supervising geometry homework, reading "Harry Potter" was one of those chores of parenthood that I was happy to do -- and then happy to stop. But all around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling's books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over "Harry Potter" with nary a child in sight. Waterstone's, a British book chain, predicts that the seventh and (supposedly) final volume, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," may be read by more adults than children. Rowling's U.K. publisher has even been releasing "adult editions." That has an alarmingly illicit sound to it, but don't worry. They're the same books dressed up with more sophisticated dust jackets -- Cap'n Crunch in a Gucci bag.

I'd like to think that this is a romantic return to youth, but it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism. And when we're not horning in on our kids' favorite books, most of us aren't reading anything at all. More than half the adults in this country won't pick up a novel this year, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. Not one. And the rate of decline has almost tripled in the past decade.

That statistic startles me, even though I hear it again and again. Whenever I confess to people who work for a living that I'm a book critic, I inevitably get the same response: "Imagine being able to sit around all day just reading novels!" Then they turn to each other and shake their heads, amazed that anything so effete should pass for a profession. (I can see it in their eyes: the little tufted pillow, the box of bonbons nearby.) "I don't read fiction," they say, suddenly serious. "I have so little time nowadays that when I read, I like to learn something." But before I can suggest what one might learn from reading a good novel, they pop the question about The Boy Who Lived: "How do you like 'Harry Potter'?"

Of course, it's not really a question anymore, is it? In the current state of Potter mania, it's an invitation to recite the loyalty oath. And you'd better answer correctly. Start carrying on like Moaning Myrtle about the repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative themes, and you'll wish you had your invisibility cloak handy. Besides, from anyone who hasn't sold the 325 million copies that Rowling has, such complaints smack of Bertie Bott's beans, sour-grapes flavor.

Shouldn't we just enjoy the $4 billion party? Millions of adults and children are reading! We keep hearing that "Harry Potter" is the gateway drug that's luring a reluctant populace back into bookstores and libraries. Even teenage boys -- Wii-addicted, MySpace-enslaved boys! -- are reading again, and if that's not magic, what is?

Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't encourage much optimism. Data from the NEA point to a dramatic and accelerating decline in the number of young people reading fiction. Despite their enthusiasm for books in grade school, by high school, most kids are not reading for pleasure at all. My friends who teach English tell me that summaries and critical commentary are now so readily available on the Internet that more and more students are coming to class having read about the books they're studying without having read the books.

And when their parents do pick up a novel, it's often one that leaves a lot to be desired. True, Oprah Winfrey can turn serious works of fiction such as Jeffrey Eugenides's "Middlesex" or Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" into megasellers. But among the top 20 best-selling books on Amazon.com this week, only six are novels -- and that includes the upcoming seventh volume of He Who Must Not Be Outsold, James Patterson's "The Quickie," the 13th volume of Janet Evanovich's comic mystery series and a vampire love saga.

How could the ever-expanding popularity of Harry Potter take place during such an unprecedented decline in the number of Americans reading fiction?

Perhaps submerging the world in an orgy of marketing hysteria doesn't encourage the kind of contemplation, independence and solitude that real engagement with books demands -- and rewards. Consider that, with the release of each new volume, Rowling's readers have been driven not only into greater fits of enthusiasm but into more precise synchronization with one another. Through a marvel of modern publishing, advertising and distribution, millions of people will receive or buy "The Deathly Hallows" on a single day. There's something thrilling about that sort of unity, except that it has almost nothing to do with the unique pleasures of reading a novel: that increasingly rare opportunity to step out of sync with the world, to experience something intimate and private, the sense that you and an author are conspiring for a few hours to experience a place by yourselves -- without a movie version or a set of action figures. Through no fault of Rowling's, Potter mania nonetheless trains children and adults to expect the roar of the coliseum, a mass-media experience that no other novel can possibly provide.

The schools often don't help, either. As I look back on my dozen years of teaching English, I wish I'd spent less time dragging my students through the classics and more time showing them how to strike out on their own and track down new books they might enjoy. Without some sense of where to look and how to look, is it any wonder that most people who want to read fiction glom onto a few bestsellers that everybody's talking about?

In "The Long Tail," Wired editor Chris Anderson suggested that new methods of distribution would shatter the grip of blockbusters. Niche markets would evolve and thrive as never before, creating a long, vital line of products from small producers who never could have profited in the past. It's a cheering notion, but alas, the big head still pretty much overrules the long tail. Like the basilisk that terrorized students at Hogwarts in Book II, "Harry Potter" and a few other much-hyped books devour everyone's attention, leaving most readers paralyzed in praise, apparently incapable of reading much else.

According to a study by Alan Sorensen at Stanford University, "In 1994, over 70 percent of total fiction sales were accounted for by a mere five authors." There's not much reason to think that things have changed. As Albert Greco of the Institute for Publishing Research puts it: "People who read fiction want to read hits written by known authors who are there year after year."

So we're experiencing the literary equivalent of a loss of biodiversity. All those people carrying around an 800-page novel looks like a great thing for American literacy, but it's as ominous as a Forbidden Forest with only one species of tree. Since Harry Potter first Apparated into our lives a decade ago, the number of stand-alone book sections in major metropolitan newspapers has decreased by half -- silencing critical voices that once helped a wide variety of authors around the country get noticed.

The vast majority of adults who tell me they love "Harry Potter" never move on to Susanna Clarke's enchanting "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell," with its haunting exploration of history and sexual longing, or Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials," a dazzling fantasy series that explores philosophical themes (including a scathing assault on organized religion) that make Rowling's little world of good vs. evil look, well, childish. And what about the dozens of other brilliant fantasy authors who could take them places that little Harry never dreamed of? Or the wider world of Muggle literary fiction beyond?

According to Amazon, the best-selling book of 2006 was "Cesar's Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems," by Cesar Millan. My favorite was "The Law of Dreams," a first novel by a 56-year-old writer named Peter Behrens. It's the story of an orphaned boy who doesn't know why he survived the evil force that killed his parents -- and left him scarred. Set during the Irish potato famine of 1847, it's not a fantasy, and it's not for children, but there are plenty of monsters here, and Behrens writes in a style that's pure magic. As of this writing, it has sold 8,367 copies in the United States. It's enough to make a book critic snap his broom in two.

[email protected]

Ron Charles is a senior editor of The Post's Book World section.

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301730_pf.html

but how exactly does Harry Potter offer more imagination than Carrol's "Through the Looking Glass" or "Alice in Wonderland"?? or then Ursula Le Guin's fantasy? or "Wind in the Willows"?? or Kipling's works? for it most definitely does not... the imagination in fact is not all that stimulated in my opinion by Harry Potter compared other much more insightful works which likewise stimulate the imagination, just maybe not in such a fantastic way...

Virgil

07-19-2009, 08:53 PM

Climber, as this applies to college level curriculum, which is what I think Bloom is criticizing, I would whole heartedly agree. Three factors have in my opinion, as well as Bloom in several other places he's written, caused the "dumbing down." First what this article pertains to, and that is the merging of popular literature with serious literature as equals. Blame that on New Historicism that considers all texts of equal value. Second, also the multi cultural obssesion that western culture is no better than other cultures. That may be true, but other cultures I'm afraid have not produced great literature to the same extent. Sorry. As a corrollary to that, the obssesion that we find minority and feminine literature and equate them to the great cannon of western literature. There may be ligitamate grevances as to why minorities and women were not given the opportunity to create great works, but that doesn't mean we have to we must force ourselves to accept lower works as equal. Give women and minorities the opportuniy from here on and I'm sure they will rise to the occaision. Third and not covered in that article is the obssesion to deconstruct and under mine western values, movememnts, and ideas. It's underlying assumption is that western culture was evil from its inception and has done nothing else but prove it. It's actually self hating, if ask me.

*Classic*Charm*

07-19-2009, 08:56 PM

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301730_pf.html

but how exactly does Harry Potter offer more imagination than Carrol's "Through the Looking Glass" or "Alice in Wonderland"?? or then Ursula Le Guin's fantasy? or "Wind in the Willows"?? or Kipling's works? for it most definitely does not... the imagination in fact is not all that stimulated in my opinion by Harry Potter compared other much more insightful works which likewise stimulate the imagination, just maybe not in such a fantastic way...

I'm talking about modern fiction and the fact that authors like Steven King and J.K. Rowling are getting more attention and recognition than better authors, whereas in the past, as your article mentions, better authors were the ones receiving the prizes. I'm saying that what is valued in current fiction is different than what used to be.

islandclimber

07-19-2009, 09:19 PM

I'm talking about modern fiction and the fact that authors like Steven King and J.K. Rowling are getting more attention and recognition than better authors, whereas in the past, as your article mentions, better authors were the ones receiving the prizes. I'm saying that what is valued in current fiction is different than what used to be.

but what I'm getting at is this is misplaced, the imagination in Harry Potter and Stephen King, and Meyer, and that sort is of the fantastic sort, but it certainly does not even come close to stimulating the imagination in the way that more subtle contemporary works do.. read Borges, or Cortazar, or Marquez's short stories, or Saramago.. all fairly contemporary writers... there are many more as well... the imagination is stimulated far more... what readers want is escape from thinking, they want simple, they want easy... they want dumbed down literature... the cultural Infantilism of the second article there...

Virgil I agree with you for the most part there, although I think it is dangerous to overlook the still vast contribution of literature from outside the "Western Canon"... Of course the West quite likely has produced far more great literature, but that is not to say that vast quantities of great literature don't exist outside the west... although I do think that is a tendency to place far too much emphasis on dethroning the supremacy of the west in literature recently, regardless of what it is being replaced with...

in regards to women and minorities, I don't know quite so much about this, so I won't comment there.. although I do think the feminist movement along with doing some good things has done some damage as well, in literature as well... An example would be the 2007 awarding of the Nobel Prize in literature to Doris Lessing, a far from great writer...

but the main problem I think and you mentioned it, is the merging of popular literature with serious literature.. and you find this in every art form to some extent as of late...

Lynne50

07-19-2009, 09:56 PM

I think that part of the problem today is due to the fact of our "fast paced society". People want to grab a book from the library shelf quickly, read it quickly and move on to another without even giving the stories much thought.
They are more interested in reading an author's entire collection, even if they aren't actually thrilled with some of them, then to read them critically.

In our library, we have 'New Fiction' that is on display as soon as you walk into the library. We have many patrons who only go to that one section and never go back into the stacks for older selections. It seems the only people who venture there are students who are made to read the "classics" for school. It's ashame. We try at times, to recycle our books and bring older titles to the front if we have a certain theme going on, but for the most part the front shelf is the most actively used.

One of my pet peeves, and I would love someone to explain it to me, is why on a weekly basis does the New York Review of Books only review a handful of fiction, but twice as many non-fiction. I can't figure that one out.

Now let me say something that makes me nostalgic. When I was growing up, I would see on many late night shows, authors, actually discussing their books and the currents topics of the day. I remember a round table discussion led by Irv Kupicnet that was very interesting. I wasn't very old, probably didn't understand half of what was said, but it sure was entertaining. Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, who hated each other, were regulars. Maybe that's part of the problem. We no longer get to see and hear what the actual "person" is like. Where do their views come from? Maybe we need some more personal contact with them. Even some prime time talk shows had authors on, like Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas and Dick Cavett instead of every lame movie star that have nothing really to say except to plug their own movies. Those talk shows that I mentioned actually let the authors talk and there was real dialogue taking place.

Oh, the good ole days.

islandclimber

07-19-2009, 10:05 PM

Good points Lynne... although I think even the New Fiction section in many libraries is fairly threadbare of quality contemporary literature, partly due to the fact people don't want to read it...

I can't explain the New York Review thing, maybe someone like JBI or StLukes could provide insight into that, but I would assume it must have something to do with reader demand, as more and more people are only reading non-fiction works now...

You know there is a late night show in Canada here on CBC, called The Hour and though I don't particularly like the host, he does get some interesting authors on there... though it is not a round table discussion of course...

JBI

07-19-2009, 10:35 PM

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-19-2009, 10:55 PM

While I don't think Stephen King probably deserves any big rewards for his work, I think Bloom is being a bit overly harsh. He sounds almost bitter. King isn't that bad.

"I began as a scholar of the romantic poets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was understood that the great English romantic poets were Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon, and others who just can't write. A fourth-rate playwright like Aphra Behn is being taught instead of Shakespeare in many curriculums across the country."

I don't know what schools/colleges these two guys are talking about (this excerpt from Bloom's article) but this has not been my experience. In my literature classes, I have studied extensively Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I admit my school (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) has an excellent English program, I don't think the academic community is in the gloom and doom situation these guys portray.

As for HP, I tried reading the first book and didn't finish. It is down right horrible. And I was at one time a proponent of the HP franchise, even if it wasn't something I liked, because I thought that it would get kids reading more, lead them to better things. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be the case. I know many people who read the HP books fervently and then never went on in their reading. Pretty sad, really.

Drkshadow03

07-19-2009, 10:57 PM

Well, as for this article, keyword America - I'm Canadian - Canadian institutions function differently, and Can-Lit functions differently - most of Blooms' criticism doesn't really apply to me, and that which does has gotten old - the whole dumbing down bit is, as I have said, an American phenomenon, and not a Canadian one - we have our fair share and whatnot, especially in certain parts, but on the whole, I think the academic climates are very different - I can't, for instance, see Harry Potter or Steven King as Dumbing down Quebec, for instance, but perhaps they could damage the New York scene, who knows - I wouldn't worry too much, at any rate - it's not as if Bloom hasn't helped by dumbing down criticism.

Eh, literary criticism has always been an esoteric field. Most scholars are fifth-tier nobodies who write in their little hermetic bubbles in which the only people who read their obscure article about the symbolism of food in Jane Austen are the ten other fifth-tier scholars interested in the same topic. In other words, scholars generally write for other scholars, and often write for a small group of scholars with similar intellectual interests. I don't see Bloom dumbing down criticism so much as catering to a larger mainstream audience. In fact, I think it would be a good idea if more scholars tried to reach out to the public, not less, considering many of these topics have revolved around getting the average reader to be excited about literature.

While I don't think Stephen King probably deserves any big rewards for his work, I think Bloom is being a bit overly harsh. He sounds almost bitter. King isn't that bad.

Yeah, that was exactly my thought when I read it many years ago when he first published the article and my thought now reading it again. Look at these lines:

"I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. "

Basically reads: I once thought Stephen King was good at writing penny dreadfuls, but since he was won an award that I don't think he should have won and I am Harold Bloom, I am now reevaluating what I originally said about his fiction because I feel like throwing a temper tantrum like a three year old. Yes, I know I said I loved daddy yesterday when he gave me cake, but now I don't love daddy because he didn't do what I wanted and take me to the video game store! So there!

So if authors win awards you don't think they deserve that is grounds to reevaluate what you originally said about them? It's hard to take seriously a critic who would do that.

JuniperWoolf

07-19-2009, 11:15 PM

Oh god, more literature elitist nonsense. Reading is supposed to be fun. It is a source of entertainment, and as long as people are reading what they want then what's the problem? The world is full of many kinds of people, among whom standards, values and intellectual capabilities differ. I've noticed that people on this forum are very critical, and that’s a bit of a problem for me. I love books, wholly and with everything that I have, and just because I have the brain to appreciate Russell Hoban I'm not going to rip on someone because they're into Nora Roberts because its what THEY love. That's a cheap shot, in my opinion.

Don't say that your worried that good books are evaporating and that classics aren't getting the exposure that they deserve, because that's just not true. If it were, then this forum wouldn't exist. English wouldn't be a requirement for almost every university faculty. Those who are LUCKY enough to have a good brain and a strong interest in literature will never go away. Also, what you might call "trashy" books have been around for a looooong time. People enjoy them. That's what reading is about, finding personal value in a book and having fun.

I don't think that I want to talk about this anymore because when it comes to books I really don't like to dwell on the negative (unfortunately, it seems like many people here only have negative opinions). I just felt that I had to get that off of my chest after reading dozens of snobby, negative posts on almost every book and writer imaginable (apparently Catcher in the Rye was crap, and I think that someone here actually called Shakespeare talentless and overrated). Most people here are really cool though, and I usually love reading what they have to say. This is a good place, all in all. There's just a dash too much of stuck-up for my taste.

JBI

07-19-2009, 11:16 PM

Eh, literary criticism has always been an esoteric field. Most scholars are fifth-tier nobodies who write in their little hermetic bubbles in which the only people who read their obscure article about the symbolism of food in Jane Austen are the ten other fifth-tier scholars interested in the same topic. In other words, scholars generally write for other scholars, and often write for a small group of scholars with similar intellectual interests. I don't see Bloom dumbing down criticism so much as catering to a larger mainstream audience. In fact, I think it would be a good idea if more scholars tried to reach out to the public, not less, considering many of these topics have revolved around getting the average reader to be excited about literature.

No, Bloom's whole theory of Us vs. Them - Aesthete vs. Resenter is detrimental - of course, it's all rooted in the supposed failure of the English departments in American universities, and ultimately the problems with those institutions as a whole (the result of a not so pretty past, mixed with a reluctance to let go of it). For instance, Roland Barthes was very well read, and his debates on theory and Racine made the popular presses - he was translated extensively in his life time, yet he was far from an easy critic to read.

Why then, can the French culture absorb a supercritic like that, whereas the English cannot really? Well, the truth is they can - Northrop Frye, for instance, was a very popular writer, in both the public and in the academy, and, quite simply, his little volume of Shakespeare has far, far more in it than Bloom's thick tomb.

What Bloom does is merely rehash the same ranting against the school of Resentment, and lamentable rubbish about how the world is failing, and how people are becoming stupid because they aren't reading Shakespeare, and how academics are going to be the death of the world, which perhaps is the case for the US - I don't live there and haven't gone to school there - but isn't real criticism at all, is it - where is the real stuff.

In his book on poetry, for instance, he spends more space detracting from contemporary scholarship of W. C. Williams, and calling him overrated, than he does for his actual poems - Ezra pound gets the same treatment - half a dozen pages of bashing, and a 20 line poem for all that effort.

I think what Bloom inspires really, is this sort of new class of reader, that is obsessed with the failure and detriment of new books on the contemporary reader, and is afraid of scholarship because it supposedly "polutes" literature. People know Bloom dislikes certain schools of theory, but how many have actually read Julia Kristeva, or Judith Butler - how many have read these so called "resenters" - He's quite hard to really take seriously - the man is the Don Quixote of criticism.

Either way though, I find his whole scope offensive - sure, it is safe enough to rant against new mediocre American writers - I do the same thing, as they tend to get quite a bit of exposure, as do mediocre American movies, and mediocre American food, and mediocre American music - the American brand seems to be quite the exposed one - but even so, he is still championing a sort of Western Canon - OK, perhaps you cannot change Shakespeare, or whatever, but seriously, I'm Canadian, and I don't consider myself part of the West. Why should I read Western classics so fervently then? Why should I read so many American books - why should there even be a Western Canon, where's the Eastern one? And beyond that, why is the idea of a Western canon still relevant today, when, quite simply, the people around me don't subscribe to it - is Li Bai dismissible because he wrote in Chinese, whereas Bryant a canonical writer because he was American? - but yet, Bloom argues I am somehow a "resenter" for saying this - though love, I guess.

Drkshadow03

07-19-2009, 11:24 PM

No, Bloom's whole theory of Us vs. Them - Aesthete vs. Resenter is detrimental - of course, it's all rooted in the supposed failure of the English departments in American universities, and ultimately the problems with those institutions as a whole (the result of a not so pretty past, mixed with a reluctance to let go of it). For instance, Roland Barthes was very well read, and his debates on theory and Racine made the popular presses - he was translated extensively in his life time, yet he was far from an easy critic to read.

Why then, can the French culture absorb a supercritic like that, whereas the English cannot really? Well, the truth is they can - Northrop Frye, for instance, was a very popular writer, in both the public and in the academy, and, quite simply, his little volume of Shakespeare has far, far more in it than Bloom's thick tomb.

What Bloom does is merely rehash the same ranting against the school of Resentment, and lamentable rubbish about how the world is failing, and how people are becoming stupid because they aren't reading Shakespeare, and how academics are going to be the death of the world, which perhaps is the case for the US - I don't live there and haven't gone to school there - but isn't real criticism at all, is it - where is the real stuff.

In his book on poetry, for instance, he spends more space detracting from contemporary scholarship of W. C. Williams, and calling him overrated, than he does for his actual poems - Ezra pound gets the same treatment - half a dozen pages of bashing, and a 20 line poem for all that effort.

I think what Bloom inspires really, is this sort of new class of reader, that is obsessed with the failure and detriment of new books on the contemporary reader, and is afraid of scholarship because it supposedly "polutes" literature. People know Bloom dislikes certain schools of theory, but how many have actually read Julia Kristeva, or Judith Butler - how many have read these so called "resenters" - He's quite hard to really take seriously - the man is the Don Quixote of criticism.

Either way though, I find his whole scope offensive - sure, it is safe enough to rant against new mediocre American writers - I do the same thing, as they tend to get quite a bit of exposure, as do mediocre American movies, and mediocre American food, and mediocre American music - the American brand seems to be quite the exposed one - but even so, he is still championing a sort of Western Canon - OK, perhaps you cannot change Shakespeare, or whatever, but seriously, I'm Canadian, and I don't consider myself part of the West. Why should I read Western classics so fervently then? Why should I read so many American books - why should there even be a Western Canon, where's the Eastern one? And beyond that, why is the idea of a Western canon still relevant today, when, quite simply, the people around me don't subscribe to it - is Li Bai dismissible because he wrote in Chinese, whereas Bryant a canonical writer because he was American? - but yet, Bloom argues I am somehow a "resenter" for saying this - though love, I guess.

Ah, now I see what you're getting at. Mediocre American food? You mean like McDonalds and such? Because there is some really great food to be found in America otherwise?

islandclimber

07-19-2009, 11:31 PM

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-19-2009, 11:32 PM

Awesome post, JBI. Totally agree with everything you said, even if I'm not familiar with authors you listed, lol.

Oh god, more literature elitist nonsense. Reading is supposed to be fun. It is a source of entertainment, and as long as people are reading what they want then what's the problem? The world is full of many kinds of people, among whom standards, values and intellectual capabilities differ. I've noticed that people on this forum are very critical, and that’s a bit of a problem for me. I love books, wholly and with everything that I have, and just because I have the brain to appreciate Russell Hoban I'm not going to rip on someone because they're into Nora Roberts because its what THEY love. That's a cheap shot, in my opinion.

Don't say that your worried that good books are evaporating and that classics aren't getting the exposure that they deserve, because that's just not true. If it were, then this forum wouldn't exist. English wouldn't be a requirement for almost every university faculty. Those who are LUCKY enough to have a good brain and a strong interest in literature will never go away. Also, what you might call "trashy" books have been around for a looooong time. People enjoy them. That's what reading is about, finding personal value in a book and having fun.

I don't think that I want to talk about this anymore because when it comes to books I really don't like to dwell on the negative (unfortunately, it seems like many people here only have negative opinions). I just felt that I had to get that off of my chest after reading dozens of snobby, negative posts on almost every book and writer imaginable (apparently Catcher in the Rye was crap, and I think that someone here actually called Shakespeare talentless and overrated). Most people here are really cool though, and I usually love reading what they have to say. This is a good place, all in all. There's just a dash too much of stuck-up for my taste.

If you don't want to read critical, abrasive, and often over-the-top opinions, the last place you want to be is an internet forum of any shape or form, lol. These places attract only people with strong opinions who want to shout them in a manner that conveys them stronger than what they actually believe, and in a manner more brusque than would ever be conveyed if it weren't for the anonymity a computer screen provides.

As a frequenter of many, MANY, forums, this one is no different. Though, when it comes to "flaming" and what-not, this is the best. And, as one would suspect, this forums contains way more intelligent people than any other. At least we all use proper English (for the most part). Though, I must say, these forums can be a bit more pretentious than say a music or video game forum, but that isn't too surprising.

JBI

07-19-2009, 11:50 PM

Ah, now I see what you're getting at. Mediocre American food? You mean like McDonalds and such? Because there is some really great food to be found in America otherwise?

Yes, I meant MacDonalds, and Burger King, and whatnot.

I mean, it makes sense to rip on people for calling MacDonalds Gourmet food, so it should make sense to rip on people giving music awards to Britney Spears, and whatnot (a very, very American style phenomenon I feel), so in book terms, it kind of makes sense to rip on awarded mediocre authors, except that the manner in which he does it is so ridiculous - why cannot we, for instance, just decide, like most people, to forget about the thing - why couldn't he have written some scholarship on the mediocre prose style, instead of just ranting about how the books are so destructive and crappy - I want him to write about what makes these authors mediocre - he supposedly has the supermemory, so he shouldn't have much trouble, but alas, he does not - he doesn't write criticism anymore, he writes rants, which, like American food, sell far better.

As for good American food - all countries have good food, but the US has a knack for making mediocre American food (music, literature, etc.) turn up on every corner of the earth.

I mean, how many best-selling French children's books make it to American Bookstores and are put on display?

I am yet to find one Chinese Children's book translated and on the shelves in my local bookstore, for instance.

I think his real resentment has to do with the fact that American, and perhaps to a lesser extent, English culture is obsessed with self-promotion, and with putting itself on every corner of the world, meanwhile praising its superiority - Dan Brown, John Grisham, Stephen King - all are promoted endlessly, and, from all the places I have been (and I made sure to check) there seem to be copies of those texts on the bookshelves in the bookstores - there are few copies of Calvino available, for instance, in a store the size of a Barnes and Noble than there are copies of Stephen King in an Italian bookstore.

And, in order for this to happen, there needs to be a sort of self-promotion, culturally, on all levels, promoting this sort of stuff - that's where Bloom comes in - he acts against the current, because he realizes, the books are rubbish, yet at the same time, is obsessed himself with American expansion - he loves to see, for instance, every child everywhere reading his loved Western writers, yet hates when his hated ones get the spot-light - he can go on praising Pynchon all day, but when Stephen King is deemed the better product, he loses it - why then, does he not start championing, for instance, works by authors who could benefit by the exposure such a great critic can offer? Or is he so washed up - Shakespeare isn't going to change despite what Bloom says about him - he certainly wasn't the first to write on him, and I would argue isn't even a good critic of him - so why then does he not do what he originally did, and write real criticism?

But the resenters keep ranting, and he's gotten to old for it.

Zee.

07-20-2009, 12:10 AM

JWHooper

07-20-2009, 12:14 AM

Harry Potter is the theoretical novel that is important to science-fiction, which tells us that magical world of literature can also relate to imagination, which also tells us that flowers can't kiss the flying broomstick. This part can be found on page 328 on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-20-2009, 12:28 AM

Alright, well i've read through a few of these posts and to be honest, they're kind of disappointing. For people who pride themselves on the vast amount of literature they read, you really do seem to have little understanding of people. People have different tastes, values, beliefs etc, learn to understand that. How boring the world would be if we all loved the same things, and saw things the same way.

Who are you reffering to?

And, JBI, I'm glad to hear that the promotion and awarding of mediocrity and down right crap is an American phenomenon. Hopefully most countries do not give awards to their Britney Spears equivalents. As an American, I don't really get how we managed to invade the whole world with our culture. I think it's a shame.

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 12:35 AM

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 12:55 AM

and really, saying that critical literature is a esoteric field is mistaking that all literature is somehow esoteric. Several authors who are considered popular are critical writers - Chekhov, Tolstoy, Robert Louis Stevenson, G.K.Chesterton, Edgar Allan Poe, Machado de Assis and some not so popular Jorge Luis Borges, Baudelaire, Coleridge, Cortazar, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Dante, Milton, Oscar Wilde, Paul Valery, Henry James, etc. And they do not shift any style, do not get more obscure or less, simpel because the most important critics they do is pratrice.
It is akin to say that physics, biology or any specialized field is exoteric. That is not because of the text, but because of the amount of study needed for the text.

JBI

07-20-2009, 01:05 AM

JBI, there is a very real difference between a nation's culture and its economic system, and an even more integral difference between a nation's people and its institutions (political or economic). Our economic system compels us to make institutional decisions that affect the world market. These decisions are not idiosyncratically American, signifying some cultural defect in the people, but symptoms of systematic trends.

You can take a stance of metaphysical libertarianism wherein every American makes the conscious choice to perpetuate a flawed or hegemonic system and thereby argue that American culture and the system are one and the same, being both products of some essentially American behavior. By taking this stance, however, you sacrifice your intellectual credibility to boost your own cultural egomania.

Put simply: our culture is the sum of our humanity insofar as we influence each other in how to approach that humanity. I don't believe this explains the methodologies behind political or economic institutions, and therefore I don't see justification in judging a culture by the actions of said institutions.

Well, it's funny you mention that, when the perfect case of exactly what I am arguing fits as the perfect rebuttal.

For years, the American magazine industry tried to penetrate the Canadian market - with the birth of NAFTA, it was deemed that only cultural industries, such as art and music are allowed to be protected by the government - from that, we get the CBC, the Juno Awards, etc. in the event that the government protects another industry, according to the fine print of NAFTA, the other country is allowed to retaliate by influencing another industry to an equal extent - which means, for instance, if the Canadian government pumps up Canadian lumber over American, the Americans can retaliate by taxing Canadian fish industries.

For years, the debate over what was art, and what was a commodity went back and forth - Canadians, after realizing that it was impossible to get Canadian magazines onto news stands in Canada, because of the Synergies dominating the industry, and the power of the American brand at getting American magazines on shelves, because they own both the magazines, and the shelves that sell them, decided to give a tax cut to Canadian magazine publishers, as the industry had essentially been taken over, and destroyed by American powers, in the same way Eaton's fell to Wallmart.

The case went to The World Trade Organization, where it was ruled that magazines are not cultural items, and are merely a commodity like any other, to be unpropped up by the government - in other words, if Canadians continued helping out their industry, it would be fair game for the Americans to impose taxes on Canadian fish, or Canadian steel, or whatever - the politicians were terrified - how can you prop up a culture that is being dominated by essentially an empire, if you know that as soon as you do, the empire is going to take a shot at something else.

What it eventually lead to, was the reworking of the whole purchasing and selling of magazines - in Canada, unlike most places, magazines are, for the most part, distributed by the mail, by subscription, rather than on news stands - the reason, quite simply, is because it was deemed magazines are not culturally related, but are simply commodities.

What is the meaning of the story? well, why don't we look at, for instance, other industries. Are the book industries much better? Well, somehow it has come to the point where To Kill A Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby are somehow more relevant to the Canadian schoolchild than, for comparative themes, Joy Kogawa's Obasan, or Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute - the bookshelves essentially stock American texts, and Amazon.ca, is a mere extension of Amazon.com, but happens to sell in Canadian dollars.

Food industries have been bought out, with Canadian beer, and the I Am Canadian merely acting as a front for an American corporation trying to cash in (I believe Moosehead is still Canadian, and Kieth's is still Canadian as well) - The Television, where a large part of advertisement is done, is dominated by American shows, and American networks, and even the billboards that one sees driving down the street (at least some of the cars are made here) happen to be promoted by Viacom, an American company - Where is the room to breath, the strength of the American brand has been what has kept the country together for so long - the country itself has no problem selling itself to others, but, when it comes down to things not looking so good, you even get them going back on the deal - as soon as the Canadian economy looks in better shape than the American one, and the Canadian products of better quality, the action is the to reverse the so called free trade.

Even Harlequin publishes more American titles per capita than Canadian ones, despite being owned by Canadians, because, quite simply, the bulk of the books go that way, and Americans don't like brands that aren't their own.

There is a constant stereotype in this world of the American as someone who knows nothing of the world, yet is the first person to tell you how America is the greatest place on the planet for x number of reasons - it's the same on all levels of culture pretty much, and it is by no means a new phenomenon - I don't feel like busting out the quote machine, so I will just tell you guys to read the beginning of James' Daisy Miller with the "I'm an American Boy" and "American men are the best men in the world" bit.

I'm sorry, but I cannot help but think it is fundamentally ingrained in the culture - it certainly is in the literature, and in the politics, and has been from almost the beginning. You are looking at one of the few cultures in the world, that cannot look at its history in an ironic light, or as anything other than a source of national identity and pride - a country that essentially is obsessed with itself, as a dominant force. Look at, for instance, the movie Transformers' promotion of American military heroism as the saviors of humanity, or whatever - is that simply because American costumes were cheaper, or because the directors happened to think the American bit a culturally significant attribute.

It's no surprise really - the American mythology, and culture, is dominated, and has been dominated by such figures - from G I Joe (who is getting a movie now) to Superman. It's one the only countries that cannot look at itself with some degree of irony, but instead insists on, as Emerson put it, being started by "The shot that was heard around the world."

It makes no difference though, there are still resistors - poetry books, for instance, in Canada are sold more or less like magazines now than on book shelves - the chapbook, for instance, and the anthology have become dominant forms, because it is too difficult to get a Canadian shelf in a bookstore, much less a Canadian poetry shelf. The anthology now, because of this, in Canadian poetry doesn't function the same way as in American poetry - the form has mutated as to better combat the mass number of American texts on the shelves.

Lets be honest, for all Bloom's talk about "Poe dreamed all of our nightmares" or whatever, I can't remember the real phrase, the reason why Poe is so popular in the US is, quite simply, because he was an American creation in the early days of American poetry - the same reason why Longfellow in his day was perhaps the most financially successful poet, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which is millions in today's money. America the empire is behind all the cultural workings, and all the resistance to them in American letters - Walt Whitman is certainly dominated by it, whereas Frost on occasion goes against it, and Stevens celebrates it, while Eliot ran away in disgust from it - despite Gatsby's failure, Fitzgerald seemed obsessed with it too, as did Faulkner to an extent, especially in the early days of his career.

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 01:51 AM

Poe is rather more popular outside USA. He is a key name of Hyspanic short stories development and French "children of Baudelaire poetry". In America he is more just a horror - police writer, not ever reggarded as anywhere close to Nathaniel Hawthorne or Walt Whitman. If anything, his status in America is lower to his status outside where he is arguably the most influential american writer ever.

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 02:07 AM

I'm sorry, but I cannot help but think it is fundamentally ingrained in the culture - it certainly is in the literature, and in the politics, and has been from almost the beginning. You are looking at one of the few cultures in the world, that cannot look at its history in an ironic light, or as anything other than a source of national identity and pride - a country that essentially is obsessed with itself, as a dominant force. Look at, for instance, the movie Transformers' promotion of American military heroism as the saviors of humanity, or whatever - is that simply because American costumes were cheaper, or because the directors happened to think the American bit a culturally significant attribute.

It's no surprise really - the American mythology, and culture, is dominated, and has been dominated by such figures - from G I Joe (who is getting a movie now) to Superman. It's one the only countries that cannot look at itself with some degree of irony, but instead insists on, as Emerson put it, being started by "The shot that was heard around the world."

First of all, attempting to create a division between cultural product and commodity is arbitrary and ridiculous. A cultural product is some tangible manifestation of the trends in how a group of people approaches their humanity, stemming from the de facto human desire to communicate. Capitalism has responded to this demand by creating effective conduits through which communication can take place. The cultural product then becomes a commodity and is distributed in accordance with market forces throughout the world. American culture did not decide that it was more important to other people than their own culture. Fitzgerald did not consciously choose to populate the world with his work so as to more expediently crush other cultures. Kubrick did not attempt to quiet other peoples' ability to express themselves when making his movies. There is a system that exists throughout the developed world wherein cultural, political, and economic hegemony is valuable (globalized capitalism). This system is not a symptom of cultural stupidity or invalidity. It is not a choice perpetually being made by Americans because they are an evil and inferior substratum of human. It is, in fact, merely a complex simulacrum of the biological narrative: competition, dominance, reproduction.

Yes, works like Transformers, G. I. Joe and Superman are disseminated through the same conduits as cultural product. They are created with the purpose of making money, not communicating human transcendence. The way in which they make money is not only in using impressive special effects that attract audiences, but also in constructing mythologies of American military heroism, the necessity of Capitalism, etc. Somehow, to you, these constructed mythologies hold more cultural precedence than, say, Faulkner (perhaps because they generate more demand than he and similar figures do). One could debate the extent to which all of this institutional programming contributes to American behavior or culture; in my experience, it works for some people and not for others - just like a piece of literature.

Regardless of their effect, however, they are not cultural products. They don't extend from American culture but rather systematic greed. But every culture has more than simply responsible, critical, and intelligent individuals, but also gullible and unintelligent folk as well. Your thesis that I and others are part of this group of basically stupid people merely because we are American is false.

JBI

07-20-2009, 02:26 AM

The exact function of publishing in capitalist economies is to transform a work of art into a commodity - some works function beyond that, and many works aren't profitable, so aren't good commodities, I argue that the emphasis has been put too heavily, especially in American culture, on the artwork as product, as apposed to the artwork as a work of art. John Adams has sold less copies than Britney Spears, therefore, according to the product-art logic, Ms. Spears is the more successful artist, despite Mr. Adams having achieved more with music.

Stephen King then, is made to be the "best" author, as his texts sell the best, because, quite simply, he is a much better commodity, and, as a result, is mass produced and sold everywhere he can be.

The artist may have more integrity than that - I don't personally think many of them do, but there are some - but they aren't what matter - it is the powers behind them that work to make them into products, which, are dominated by marketing, not by ideologies. In the end though, the myth of the rags-to-riches paperback writer is the real calling, it seems, for these works.

Elsewhere, things are different - governments, for instance, are willing to fund the arts quite significantly, and societies are able to put on nonprofitable shows for the sake of allowing a public to see them - the money that keeps most symphony orchestras a float generally comes from donations and paid advertisement - the symphony isn't there to make the most money possible, yet people still deem it a worthy thing - certain cultures are better at this promotion than others, but how much cash is not what is relevant, and I think we hijacked this thread a bit.

But who knows - Americans being stereotyped as ethnocentric, bigoted fat morons is not a new phenomenon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhTZ_tgMUdo

perhaps it isn't dumbing down that is the issue, but standing still.

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 02:47 AM

I agree with the first part of your post.

But who knows - Americans being stereotyped as ethnocentric, bigoted fat morons is not a new phenomenon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhTZ_tgMUdo

perhaps it isn't dumbing down that is the issue, but standing still.

I've presented what I think are pretty well thought-out considerations of the distinction between capitalism and culture. You've retorted with a youtube video that apparently proves Americans are an inferior race of animal because other people have created stereotypes that say so. Why complain in one thread about the deplorable level of discourse that's done on these forums and then avoid a serious opportunity for critical thought in this one?

I think that our discussion is central to the idea of dumbing down readers, and we're not just hijacking the thread.

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 02:56 AM

...fifth-tier scholars interested in the same topic.

So which scholars are occupying the four tiers above the literary scholars? Is there any such thing as a first-tier literary scholar, or is fifth-tierness inherent to being a scholar of the literary?

I think Bloom's view is worth debating, but I think he picked the wrong prompt for it. King really isn't as awful as he says. In fact, he's often a pretty good prose stylist. Very patchy though, admittedly.

JBI

07-20-2009, 03:06 AM

I agree with the first part of your post.

I've presented what I think are pretty well thought-out considerations of the distinction between capitalism and culture. You've retorted with a youtube video that apparently proves Americans are an inferior race of animal because other people have created stereotypes that say so. Why complain in one thread about the deplorable level of discourse that's done on these forums and then avoid a serious opportunity for critical thought in this one?

I think that our discussion is central to the idea of dumbing down readers, and we're not just hijacking the thread.

I was commenting on the fact that the stereotype isn't new, by digging up a culture reference which is just shy of a decade old. Relax, you must admit, it is kind of funny, well, that's assuming you get all the jokes.

Lets be honest, there is no more imposing culture in the world currently than that of the United States - of course, certain trends, like people playing football around the world can be attributed to European colonial influences, but on the whole, the American brand seems to be winning the colonial game, even in European markets.

What I am trying to suggest is that it is this importance put into the marketability and emphasis on the branding that has led to American "dumbing down", or perhaps "dumbness".

Of course, there are plenty of internal problems that also relate to it, but in terms of literacy, short of the fact that the education system is in tatters, the promotion of mediocre art forms surely helped quite a bit - Britney Spears is only famous because she is an American - Dan Brown is only rich because he is an American. Stephen King is only successful because he is an American, writing about America, for Americans.

But what happens when the other bodies that make up the arts start rejecting the American brand? Well, the profitability of the text goes down - better to just give Kanye West some awards, and toss Stephen King a lifetime achievment award, than to actually approach anything worth talking about.

After all, King's marketability is far greater than Pynchon's, as his works translate well, and he churns them out rather quickly, so as to generate a vast income from the loyal patrons.

The form of publishing too is reflective of this - the cheap paperbacks of everything litering the bookstores before being discarded attest to this. The books aren't made to last, but to sell as many as they possibly can as quickly as they can - that is literature purely as commodity, not as art, and when it comes to doing that, no one does it better than the US in my opinion (well, from what I have seen of the world).

In order to keep the American brand afloat, one needs to promote it at home, and abroad, by praising it nonstop, and by giving it exposure. What better way than to give it awards, and turn it into movies.

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 03:22 AM

Lets be honest, there is no more imposing culture in the world currently than that of the United States - of course, certain trends, like people playing football around the world can be attributed to European colonial influences, but on the whole, the American brand seems to be winning the colonial game, even in European markets.

What I am trying to suggest is that it is this importance put into the marketability and emphasis on the branding that has led to American "dumbing down", or perhaps "dumbness".

I agree that America has an economic system whose best interest is the dumbing down of cultural media and a political apparatus unwilling to interfere, moreso than certain other countries including Canada. I don't think the methodology and goals of capitalism constitute a nation's culture, however. Is Pynchon a fat bigoted idiot? No, but he's certainly part of our cultural makeup.

We're not an imposing culture. We have imposing market forces that gullible Americans support because of what is essentially indoctrination.

You have said many times that you don't consider yourself a part of western culture. I think that's a valid statement. But that Bumbling Adventures video is clearly western, and falls into your definition of culture just as much as G. I. Joe. How do you reconcile that if not by differentiating popular media programs intended to make money from actual cultural products?

JBI

07-20-2009, 03:43 AM

Bumbling Adventures movie?

Virgil

07-20-2009, 06:53 AM

but regardless of whether Bloom is a failure as a critic, the point he makes here about the american reading public is entirely correct in my opinion... Canada is a different story, especially Quebec...

They don't read Harry Potter and Stephan King in Canada? What makes Canada different?

JBI

07-20-2009, 07:15 AM

They don't read Harry Potter and Stephan King in Canada? What makes Canada different?

The more obvious niched cultures that mess around with things, for one. Keep in mind, it's a bilingual country with a third of the population speaking French as a first language, and another nice chunk of the population speaking other languages from all over the place - that's one major difference, and, I would argue, a very, very big one.

Also, Can-Lit functions very differently than American lit, because of the government presence in it, amongst other reasons.

Popular fiction is still read, but a) Canadians read more on average than Americans (I posted the statistics on another thread, and cannot be bothered searching for it), and the Canadian education system is very different - we are similar countries, with perhaps connected cultures (it seems more of a one directional exchange to me though), yet the way education and literature function are completely different - Canadian literature, in general, doesn't work the same way as American literature - it has different forms, means of production, and distribution, as well as covers different themes in different styles. The Bulk Canadians read is world and American stuff, but there are still significant differences with the way academic institutions on all levels are run, as well as with reading in general.

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 08:00 AM

They don't read Harry Potter and Stephan King in Canada? What makes Canada different?

It's not so much that Canada's different to the States. It's more that the States are different to everywhere else.

For instance, I don't think any other country burned piles of Harry Potter books on the basis that they were the work of Beelzebub. I think that suggest a pretty remarkable attitude to popular literature.

(Incidentally, this is an observational thing, rather than a judgemental one. Many of the ways in which the US is culturally different to anywhere else are very dear to me. They gave rise to my wife, for a start.)

Virgil

07-20-2009, 08:16 AM

The more obvious niched cultures that mess around with things, for one. Keep in mind, it's a bilingual country with a third of the population speaking French as a first language, and another nice chunk of the population speaking other languages from all over the place - that's one major difference, and, I would argue, a very, very big one.

Also, Can-Lit functions very differently than American lit, because of the government presence in it, amongst other reasons.

Popular fiction is still read, but a) Canadians read more on average than Americans (I posted the statistics on another thread, and cannot be bothered searching for it), and the Canadian education system is very different - we are similar countries, with perhaps connected cultures (it seems more of a one directional exchange to me though), yet the way education and literature function are completely different - Canadian literature, in general, doesn't work the same way as American literature - it has different forms, means of production, and distribution, as well as covers different themes in different styles. The Bulk Canadians read is world and American stuff, but there are still significant differences with the way academic institutions on all levels are run, as well as with reading in general.

Any web sites that describes the Canadian system? I'm curious.

Virgil

07-20-2009, 08:19 AM

It's not so much that Canada's different to the States. It's more that the States are different to everywhere else.

For instance, I don't think any other country burned piles of Harry Potter books on the basis that they were the work of Beelzebub. I think that suggest a pretty remarkable attitude to popular literature.

(Incidentally, this is an observational thing, rather than a judgemental one. Many of the ways in which the US is culturally different to anywhere else are very dear to me. They gave rise to my wife, for a start.)

First of all whatever book burning was done on a personal level to make some sort of point. It was not an institutional directive. So I don't know what the hell you're talking about. People are free to do what they want. And how common was that really? We have over 300 million people in this country. you're going to find that someone did something that you either like or dislike. It's the odds of a large population.

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 08:57 AM

First of all whatever book burning was done on a personal level to make some sort of point. It was not an institutional directive.

No, I agree. It wasn't a directive - it was a cultural reaction. The point is that it didn't happen anywhere else in the Western world, which has a pretty large sum population, and some pretty diverse cultures. So I think it's valid to ask why it happened in the States.

Virgil

07-20-2009, 09:15 AM

No, I agree. It wasn't a directive - it was a cultural reaction. The point is that it didn't happen anywhere else in the Western world, which has a pretty large sum population, and some pretty diverse cultures. So I think it's valid to ask why it happened in the States.

People are free to do what they want here with their personal money. If you scour the newspapers of all countries, including your own, and you'll find some shocking things.

Lynne50

07-20-2009, 09:15 AM

JBI
Enjoyed your video. Pretty funny, but we also see the same thing when Jay Leno does his 'jaywalking bit on TV' That's even more bizarre because Leno is talking to Americans about American symbols and such. Of course, you don't think it's edited at all, right. What would be the fun if Leno got the right answers from people.
In the case of your video , what I see here, is Americans trying to be nice and not be confrontational. The interviewer was feeding the people information and because they were on camera, they didn't want to appear as impolite. They probably walked away thinking, how dumb they sounded.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-20-2009, 09:27 AM

Well, to JBI and Bluebeard, your discussion is way out of my league and I admit I stopped reading after page two as it has gone over my head, but I just want to say one thing to JBI: not all Americans are like what you describe. I think you know this, but be careful with those generlizations. I agree with pretty much everything you've said about American culture and it's globalization (and I've agreed with most all of what Bluebeard has said also--you have both presented your arguments so well) but when you lump all Americans into this group, it mildly angers me, because I'm not that way (thinking America is unequivocally the best nation in the world, etc.) and I know many people who aren't also.

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 09:38 AM

People are free to do what they want here with their personal money. If you scour the newspapers of all countries, including your own, and you'll find some shocking things.

Also agreed. But it's this particular shocking thing that I was suggesting we consider, because it pertained to different countries' attitudes towards books in general and Harry Potter in particular.

But don't sweat it - I'm not looking to you specifically for an answer. It's simply a train of thought to which others might like to contribute.

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 10:51 AM

Paulclem

07-20-2009, 10:58 AM

If you want to cite bland food - try British. That's why we eat Italian, Chinese, Thai, American and Indian.

Are you protesting too much Mortal Terror?

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 11:07 AM

The movies - though I think there are a couple of duds in your list - are pretty much an American invention, agreed. And I'd also agree that the US dominated fiction and poetry in the twentieth century - which might be because a generation of European novelists and poets was effectively eradicated in the Great War. (Not that that in any way lessens the achievement of American writers thereafter.)

But, as I often tell my Yankee wife, whatever else the US might have achieved over the last hundred years or so, I absolutely cannot find it in my heart to forgive you (and I hold every single one of you responsible) for the aesthetic and culinary abomination that is the Philly cheese steak.

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 11:10 AM

If you want to cite bland food - try British. That's why we eat Italian, Chinese, Thai, American and Indian.

Are you protesting too much Mortal Terror?

No, I just think that people's knowledge of what Canada is actually like is JBI kryptonite. I live in Seattle. I've been there. I hang out with Canadians. He can't pull that stuff on me.

Paulclem

07-20-2009, 11:21 AM

You shouldn't worry. Who could dispute the influence of the USA upon western culture? Of course there are detractors, and not everything a culture produces is liked, appreciated or positive.

Lynne50

07-20-2009, 11:33 AM

billl

07-20-2009, 11:36 AM

Yeah, of all the U.S. foods to attack, that's a surprising choice.

Drkshadow03

07-20-2009, 11:48 AM

@JCamillo and MarkBastable: I am not saying there aren't any first-tier literary scholars or certain authors who have written important or at least interesting scholarship, hence why I used the term "MOST." The same phenomenon can be seen in other fields. Take biology: How many people care about the mating habit of fruit flies versus another scholar making an important revolutionary discovery about DNA?

Still, literary criticism tends to be more esoteric because to be honest you don't need a Ph. D. or MA to make an educated evaluation of literature or interpret a work. In fact, if you read certain peer-reviewed journals, every once in awhile you'll find a published scholarly article that was written by someone without any formal degree or training that managed to meet scholarly standards. You generally need some sort of specialized training to participate in a science.

Let's look at what I wrote again:

"Eh, literary criticism has always been an esoteric field. Most scholars are fifth-tier nobodies who write in their little hermetic bubbles in which the only people who read their obscure article about the symbolism of food in Jane Austen are the ten other fifth-tier scholars interested in the same topic. In other words, scholars generally write for other scholars, and often write for a small group of scholars with similar intellectual interests."

I was talking about literary critics who do this as a career, not authors who dabble in literary criticism. Almost all those authors you'll notice wrote criticism before English (and thus criticism) developed into an actual academic career and department. For all the so-called first-tier literary scholars like Frye, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Bloom, Chekhov (by this I mean people you might have actually heard of as I am sure people will quibble over the names I include, especially since some of them are more theorist than literary critic), there are a thousand other scholars you most likely have never heard of and never will. If I went down the list of my professors in grad school I strongly doubt you will have heard of any of them, yet each one has a long body of critical works that they have published and other scholars have cited. There are hundreds of thousands of scholarly articles written about Shakespeare, even the most diligent of scholars could never read them all. This is NOT a judgement of the quality of their interpretations and research, which I'm sure are top-notch. This has a lot to do with specialization, narrowness of focus, and applicability of any given piece of criticism.

There is also an objective way to discern the centrality of a given work of literary Criticism. It's called Web of Knowledge, a database that allows you to see how often a single work is Cited by other sources. For example in 1973 400+ articles Cited Bloom's Anxiety of Influence. Compare this to Robert Brinkley, a professor of Romanticism at the University of Maine (who I selected at random). His book Romantic Revisions was Cited 17 times in 1992.

Scholars write for other scholars. My point is if you write about "the symbolism of food in Jane Austen" or some other minor topic only a few scholars doing the same thing are really going to be interested. These days they train scholars to specialize narrowly rather than broadly. People studying 19th century American literature will probably never study 20th century British literature once they are outside of undergrad because you need to spend your time specializing, so you read all the most important books by the best authors (Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman, Poe), then read their secondary works and miscellany, then read all the most important theories and criticism that pertain to 19th century American lit, then read all the esoteric critical works that fall into this sub-area of 19th century American lit that are published each year (with titles like: "a survey of antebellum literature," "The Transformation of Literature After the Civil War," "Tomboys: a Literary and Cultural History," "Melville's Bibles," "Melville and Hawthorne") so you can keep current on developments and new research important to your field. Remember, while you are doing this as a grad student and later as a full-time professor, you're also spending your summers researching minor articles to write your own scholarly article and book, and during school you have papers to grade. It's not hard to see why you don't bother reading criticism about 20th century American literature or German Medieval literature. You probably won't even have time to read the actual novels. There is no time to catchup on Ancient Greek Literature or 20th Century British literature or Chinese Literature that you never got to read in grad school or undergrad. Maybe when you're close to retiring and you don't have to pump out your own criticism to achieve tenure.

Then of course they tell you, actually you should specialize even further, 19th century American literature is a broad area. How about focusing on specifically antebellum literature? But perhaps you should focus even more. So now your specialization is 19th century antebellum literature of New England. But wait, there is more! Your new specialization is women writers of 19th century antebellum literature of New England. But you should also have a perspective too! So now your specialization is women writers of 19th century antebellum literature of New England from a Marxist perspective.

You can see pretty quickly how specialization leads to both ghettoization, academic cliques, tons of fifth-tier scholars (this says nothing about the quality of their work, but rather the applicability of their work as how exactly is an article and book about 19th century New England female writers from before the Civil War useful to a 20th century American scholar writing and teaching about Hemingway?), and the various hermetic bubbles of specialized interests that will only be useful to other people with the same interests.

This is to say nothing of the average reader. It is the rare reader that will take interest in a specific topic like Jews in Melville or Post-colonial narratives in Wide Sargasso Sea, hence why most criticism is esoteric and written for other scholars with the same interests.

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 12:05 PM

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 12:21 PM

Yeah, of all the U.S. foods to attack, that's a surprising choice.

It's the only one I've been forced to eat out of sheer courtesy to my in-laws.

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 12:23 PM

@JCamillo and MarkBastable: I am not saying there aren't any first-tier literary scholars or certain authors who have written important or at least interesting scholarship, hence why I used the term "MOST." The same phenomenon can be seen in other fields....

I wasn't taking issue with the thesis. I was just interested to be told more about the Dante-esque ranking system for categorising nobodies.

billl

07-20-2009, 12:27 PM

It's the only one I've been forced to eat out of sheer courtesy to my in-laws.

I was sure there had to be something going on, some exterior factor.

MarkBastable

07-20-2009, 12:39 PM

I was sure there had to be something going on, some exterior factor.

It began as an interior factor and became an exterior factor about halfway along I-95.

Drkshadow03

07-20-2009, 12:59 PM

@MarkBastable: This is getting a little off-topic, but you don't like Philly Cheesesteaks? It's cheese on red meat. You can never go wrong with that combination!

As far the tiers. I was being a bit loose with language and categories. Basically those who get Ivy League positions are 1st tier, the major academic universities that aren't Ivy Leagues, but still considered top-notch would be 2nd-tier, and then average Universities and Private Schools, all the way down to Community Colleges. Remember every college in the U.S. has an English department. So that's a lot of people writing criticism!

@Mortalterror: I forgot about Tim Hurtons. They're all over the place here in RI. And it's the worst coffee/breakfast/whatever it is place ever! Canada loses by default for giving the world Tim Hurtons! :lol:

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 12:59 PM

First what this article pertains to, and that is the merging of popular literature with serious literature as equals. Blame that on New Historicism that considers all texts of equal value. Second, also the multi- cultural obsession that western culture is no better than other cultures. That may be true, but other cultures I'm afraid have not produced great literature to the same extent. Sorry. As a corollary to that, the obsession that we find minority and feminine literature and equate them to the great cannon of western literature. There may be legitimate grievances as to why minorities and women were not given the opportunity to create great works, but that doesn't mean we have to we must force ourselves to accept lower works as equal. Give women and minorities the opportunity from here on and I'm sure they will rise to the occasion.

Of course I have no use for the relativist concept that all ideas and all works of art are inherently equal. I doubt that any single artist believes this to be true even of his or her own work. Some works are better, some worse. As for multi-culturalism... I have no problem with this if it means adding the Shanameh, the Arabian Nights, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Li Po, Bizhad, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, etc... to the curriculum. If however, as I suspect, it means eliminating the study of figures truly central to the culture... then I have absolutely no use for it. I do not believe that Western Culture is inherently better or worse than other cultures but it has produced the civilization that we live and work in and it has provided us with many of the ideas and concepts that even allow for us to be critical of its short-comings. As for the continual search for the missing great women artists. I largely feel that the effort is misguided. Women were long denied entry into and training/education in the arts/culture and this has been a major loss. There are, however, exceptions of true brilliance: Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Hildegard of Bingen, Virginia Woolf, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, etc... who can stand their own against the greatest writers regardless of gender, race, etc... Now that the playing ground is a bit closer to equal we have any number of women in the arts that are every bit equal to anyone: Anne Carson, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Wislawa Symborska, Flannery O'Connor, etc... I had a friend in art school who was both black and a woman. She repeatedly refused to exhibit in any art show that was limited to women or black artists because she felt that this lessened her as an artist... that it suggested that her work was "good... for a black artist" or "for a woman" rather than that it was good period. I share the same feeling that a work of art needs to be valued solely upon its merits as art... not through some misguided attempts at social/political restructuring.

Emil Miller

07-20-2009, 01:13 PM

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 01:16 PM

I mean, it makes sense to rip on people for calling MacDonalds Gourmet food, so it should make sense to rip on people giving music awards to Britney Spears, and whatnot (a very, very American style phenomenon I feel), so in book terms, it kind of makes sense to rip on awarded mediocre authors, except that the manner in which he does it is so ridiculous - why cannot we, for instance, just decide, like most people, to forget about the thing - why couldn't he have written some scholarship on the mediocre prose style, instead of just ranting about how the books are so destructive and crappy - I want him to write about what makes these authors mediocre - he supposedly has the supermemory, so he shouldn't have much trouble, but alas, he does not - he doesn't write criticism anymore, he writes rants, which, like American food, sell far better.

As for good American food - all countries have good food, but the US has a knack for making mediocre American food (music, literature, etc.) turn up on every corner of the earth.

I mean, how many best-selling French children's books make it to American Bookstores and are put on display?

I am yet to find one Chinese Children's book translated and on the shelves in my local bookstore, for instance.

I think his real resentment has to do with the fact that American, and perhaps to a lesser extent, English culture is obsessed with self-promotion, and with putting itself on every corner of the world, meanwhile praising its superiority - Dan Brown, John Grisham, Stephen King - all are promoted endlessly, and, from all the places I have been (and I made sure to check) there seem to be copies of those texts on the bookshelves in the bookstores - there are few copies of Calvino available, for instance, in a store the size of a Barnes and Noble than there are copies of Stephen King in an Italian bookstore.

Ah... JBI is on one of his Anti-American binges again.:rolleyes: JBI did you ever think that it might not be simply that America is good at self-promotion but rather it might have something to do with the fact that like it or not the United States is THE economic and military superpower of the moment. As such it is more than likely that those in other nations actually watch what is happening in the US and follow it more closely than they do events occuring is some third-world hinterland (see... I can be just as nationalistic as the next). 2000 years ago the same complaints were probably directed at Rome. 150 years ago it would have been France and Britain. Even within the US we certainly watch what is happening in China, Japan, Germany, Britain, India and other economic/military powers more than we watch what occurs in Ecuador or Albania. When Canada becomes the dominant world power undoubtedly we'll find copies of Canadian children's books in evey airport in the known world and we'll all be munching on the latest massed produced version of Canadian cuisine while watching hockey. Until then...:p

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 01:18 PM

Bumbling Adventures movie?

The youtube video you posted.

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 01:22 PM

Food industries have been bought out, with Canadian beer...

C'mon JBI! Canadian beer ain't much better than American beer (or at least such is true of the big massed produced crap in either nation). And our biggest brewer, Budweiser is now owned by the Belgians. If only they'd start churning out some Belgian-style ale now.:lol:

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 01:27 PM

But I know you won't be happy until the whole world is eating Tim Hortons, listening to Celine Dion, watching The Red Green Show, playing hockey, reading Margaret Atwood, and flocking to theaters to see revivals of that great Canadian classic Meatballs.

:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Hey! By the way... the Red Green Show was damn funny, Mortal.

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 01:32 PM

Hey! By the way... the Red Green Show was damn funny, Mortal.
It's about as funny as a dead child's toy.

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 01:45 PM

JBI

07-20-2009, 02:25 PM

The belgian company is owned by a Brazilian company, so Brazilians own american beer. :D

It's not even beer anyway - there are some quality breweries and Canadian brands - La Fin Du Monde and Maudite for example, as well as rather idiosyncratic beers, like Alexander Keith's - whereas I am strained to come up with one good American brand.

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 02:29 PM

Well, I do not like the American beer I have proved, but Brahma (the brazilian company that owns the belgian company) is not the best brazilian brand either. In fact, It sucks. So, they deserve each other :D

JBI

07-20-2009, 02:41 PM

JBI, you want to moan about the superficiality of the West? Take a good hard look at the East. Japan is a first world country with astonishing academics and a publishing industry based around children's comic books. You think if they rose to prominence they'd flood the market with The Tale of Genji, Rashomon, Yukio Mishima, and Haruki Murakami? Your television dial would be wall to wall Japanese game shows, and your favorite movies would look less like Seven Samurai and more like RoboGeisha (http://www.rottentomatoes.com/news/1830110/robogeisha_2009s_most_insane_trailer). That's Japanese cinema: the #1 exporter of WTF? experiences in the world. You think they're all gentleman scholars who wear three piece suits and carry around briefcases discussing Zen Buddhism all day? The typical Japanese teenager is a panty obsessed delinquent, who dies his hair blond, wears a t-shirt that reads Violence Jackoff, and spends twenty hours a week in the arcade.

Starcraft is a spectator sport in Korea, and we're the ones with the cultural problem? I'm telling you, the world is a messed up place, and the only people who think that everywhere is better than the West are the people who don't know much about it.

Who said I was supporting Japanese culture - where are you getting this - who even wants this colonial nonsense anyway - that wasn't my point, besides which, if you look at Japanese education statistics, they more than out preform their American equivalents, so the question isn't even to be raised.

You completely dismissed my points to go on your own rant about the inadequacies of Japanese and Korean cultures, as perhaps a way of defending the inadequacies of your own culture - if they also are like us, than we aren't the worst are we, right? It's kind of pathetic, since you completely missed all my points, and instead decided to rant because I dared cross the line and say something you perhaps felt was a little too true - a little too bellow the belt. There are more Americans commenting on the dumbing down of their nation that there are Canadians - Canadians just know Americans are stupid, and leave it at that. But, as I said, The US brand even amongst the most educated and the most "liberal of people" is still the dominant brand - you can't, from the outside, dare say anything that perhaps rings a little bit of truth without getting the whole country to descend on you - that's perhaps the strongest thing about the US - the people take themselves way to seriously, and think way to highly of themselves - I trust you have been to Japan and Korea, and seen this all first hand, right?

That's the real problem, I think - whenever I happen to travel, too many people think that I am one of you guys - you'd be surprised how the service improves as soon as they find out you are Canadian.

It seems that people here are so absorbed into the American system, that criticizing the system is pointless, as, ultimately, the discussion will just be overthrown by enraged nationalists pushing forward their "your just a silly Canadian" or whatever B. S. - in truth, it fits perfectly with the stereotype, which has been there for a long time. just read the beginning of Daisy Miller guys, it's all there, said by an American, and it hasn't changed - still the same 100 years later, and I think the quality of response on this thread attests to it.

JBI

07-20-2009, 02:46 PM

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 02:49 PM

Who said I was supporting Japanese culture - where are you getting this - who even wants this colonial nonsense anyway - that wasn't my point, besides which, if you look at Japanese education statistics, they more than out preform their American equivalents, so the question isn't even to be raised.

You completely dismissed my points to go on your own rant about the inadequacies of Japanese and Korean cultures, as perhaps a way of defending the inadequacies of your own culture - if they also are like us, than we aren't the worst are we, right? It's kind of pathetic, since you completely missed all my points, and instead decided to rant because I dared cross the line and say something you perhaps felt was a little too true - a little too bellow the belt. There are more Americans commenting on the dumbing down of their nation that there are Canadians - Canadians just know Americans are stupid, and leave it at that. But, as I said, The US brand even amongst the most educated and the most "liberal of people" is still the dominant brand - you can't, from the outside, dare say anything that perhaps rings a little bit of truth without getting the whole country to descend on you - that's perhaps the strongest thing about the US - the people take themselves way to seriously, and think way to highly of themselves - I trust you have been to Japan and Korea, and seen this all first hand, right?

That's the real problem, I think - whenever I happen to travel, too many people think that I am one of you guys - you'd be surprised how the service improves as soon as they find out you are Canadian.

It seems that people here are so absorbed into the American system, that criticizing the system is pointless, as, ultimately, the discussion will just be overthrown by enraged nationalists pushing forward their "your just a silly Canadian" or whatever B. S. - in truth, it fits perfectly with the stereotype, which has been there for a long time. just read the beginning of Daisy Miller guys, it's all there, said by an American, and it hasn't changed - still the same 100 years later, and I think the quality of response on this thread attests to it.

I'm capable of criticizing the American system without coming to the conclusion that I am stupid.

JBI

07-20-2009, 02:55 PM

I like our food. I like our music. I like our movies. I even like our books. Chicken mcnuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, tater tots, American pizza, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all taste delicious to me. I like Little Richard, Jerry Louis, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Credence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Metallica, Nirvana, and Smashing Pumpkins. I think our movies are pretty good.

Pulp Fiction, Gone With the Wind, Goodfellas, Schindler's List, The Lion in Winter, Network, Julius Caesar, The Matrix, Casablanca, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Blazing Saddles, The Thing, All Quiet on the Western Front, Shawshank Redemption, High Noon, Raging Bull, The Searchers, Terminator, Patton, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs, Anatomy of a Murder, A Streetcar Named Desire, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Idiocracy, Back to the Future, The Silence of the Lambs, Aliens, Rocky, Star Wars, Jaws, The Wild Bunch, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, All the King's Men, The Big Lebowski, Scarface, Master and Commander, Die Hard, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, City Lights, Saving Private Ryan, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Seven, Amadeus, The Princess Bride, L.A. Confidential, Inherit the Wind, 12 Angry Men, Airplane!, Heathers, Paths of Glory, Big Trouble in Little China, American Beauty, American Psycho, Dawn of the Dead, The Wrath of Kahn, Ferris Bueller's Day off, The Right Stuff, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Glengarry Glen Ross, Sunset Boulevard, Memento, The Professional, Alien, Forest Gump, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Requiem for a Dream, The Kid, Dirty Harry, On the Waterfront, The Empire Strikes Back, His Girl Friday, Platoon, Mallrats, Bowling For Columbine, The Fugitive, Kelley's Heroes, First Blood, Spartacus, Total Recall, Cool Hand Luke, The Untouchables, Miller's Crossing, The Aviator, The Sound of Music, Mutiny on the Bounty, Some Like it Hot, Do the Right Thing, Lethal Weapon, etc.

Find me another country with a list half so impressive.

As for books: Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Twain, Eliot, Pound, Frost, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Longfellow, Robinson, Bellow, Pynchon, Roth, Vonnegut, Kerouac, McCarthy, De Lillo, Wolfe, Barth, Morrison, Salinger, Heller, Mailer, Jones, O'Connor, Wright, Burroughs, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Miller, O'Neill, Williams, Lewis, Woolf, Lowell, Stevens, Dreiser, Cather, Crane, London, Norris, Wharton, James, Howells, Alcott, and Cooper. What countries have done better in the last two centuries? I don't think there is any shortage of people reading the Russians, French, or English for all that though.

But I know you won't be happy until the whole world is eating Tim Hortons, listening to Celine Dion, watching The Red Green Show, playing hockey, reading Margaret Atwood, and flocking to theaters to see revivals of that great Canadian classic Meatballs.

Again just dug this one out, more reinforcing to my point - you need to come and profess the dominance of American culture, its incredible scope in all art forms, as to somehow promote it, and, in the process, need to take some cheap shots at Canada, whereas, you would note, a large chunk of your American films are filmed right here in Toronto, and Niel Young, Gasp, happens to be Canadian. - I'm not even going to bother picking out the mediocre works from your list, because that isn't the point - the fact that you felt so damn proud pushing that list forward is -

That is the mentality - we are better, and we have the list, the sales, and the army to prove it, and I'm afraid, from your posts, you merely prove me right, and don't really offer any constructive rebuttal besides "But we are the best, you guys all suck, the American brand is the best in the entire world, I'm an American Boy, American Boys are the best Boys in the world."

JBI

07-20-2009, 02:59 PM

I'm capable of criticizing the American system without coming to the conclusion that I am stupid.
Who said anything about you - these are all generalizations, and JBI is an honorable man, he wouldn't dare break the forum rules, yet he says all Americans are stupid, and he must be right, for JBI is an honorable man, etc.

Nah, I'm talking about the whole - I don't want to nitpick, but I think the responses on this thread seem to reinforce my points somewhat. There are ex-centrics everywhere, as I have said, but certainly you must admit a certain chunk of what I said has been just a little bit true, ma?

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 03:03 PM

That is the mentality - we are better, and we have the list, the sales, and the army to prove it, and I'm afraid, from your posts, you merely prove me right, and don't really offer any constructive rebuttal besides "But we are the best, you guys all suck, the American brand is the best in the entire world, I'm an American Boy, American Boys are the best Boys in the world."

You have accepted a schematic wherein all Americans, being members of the American culture (which you define as being the American economy, for whatever reason), have a uniform perspective of cultural superiority. If Americans feel culturally superior, then Americans will feel pride for their culture. If Americans feel culturally superior, then Americans will respond to your belligerent posts. These are logical statements. However, you're affirming the consequent: If Americans feel pride for their culture, then Americans feel culturally superior; if Americans respond to your posts, then Americans feel culturally superior. You're ignoring logic because it interferes with your dogma.

JuniperWoolf

07-20-2009, 03:04 PM

Woolf.
Do you mean Virginia Woolf? 'Cuz she was pretty British, dude. Also, most people think that French Fries came from Belgium, and I don't know what "American pizza" is, but pizza is pretty Itallian. And, I think that a lot of your films were directed and/or written and/or based on books by foreigners.

C'mon JBI! Canadian beer ain't much better than American beer:
Psh, that's bull. Canadian beer rocks, we have Keiths and Allycat. Amarican beer's weak, you've got nothing!

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 03:08 PM

@Mortalterror: I forgot about Tim Hurtons. They're all over the place here in RI. And it's the worst coffee/breakfast/whatever it is place ever! Canada loses by default for giving the world Tim Hurtons! :lol:

Whether or not Tim Hortons is mediocre, as it surely is, it is not even close to the awful that Mcdonalds is... not even within orders of magnitude of the awful and disgusting that mcdonalds is...

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 03:10 PM

Who said anything about you - these are all generalizations, and JBI is an honorable man, he wouldn't dare break the forum rules, yet he says all Americans are stupid, and he must be right, for JBI is an honorable man, etc.

Nah, I'm talking about the whole - I don't want to nitpick, but I think the responses on this thread seem to reinforce my points somewhat. There are ex-centrics everywhere, as I have said, but certainly you must admit a certain chunk of what I said has been just a little bit true, ma?

It is very convenient that anyone who contradicts your system of self-superior analysis is just another "ex-centric."

King Mob

07-20-2009, 03:14 PM

As regards American movies. MortalTerror: of course almost all the movies you mention are awesome (i have my reservations with some, like Saving Private Ryan). But that is because America is the most developed film industry in the world (India being the world's biggest movie producer, the majority being crap).
That implies that America has most of the worst films ever also.

And one of the main reasons those movies you mentioned are widely regarded as good is because people have seen them. I know it sounds obvious. The point im trying to make is that the United States has the almost TOTAL MONOPOLY of the films viewed in the world.
I'm Argentinian. All of the films in the local cinemas are American, and most of them rubbish. One per month, with luck, is worth seeing. And of all the Argentinian movies being made, only the most idiotic and mass-appealing arrive at the big screens, because the bigger studios in Argentina have copied the themes, style, and resources of the American industry. The others are watched in film festivals, luckily, and, needless to say, are far better.

And let's not even talk about european and asian movies. Many of them get to artistic heights no American movie ever acheived. And do they get the same distribution or publicity? Nope. But all this is not an artistic question, it is an economical, political and industrial one.

We've been bombarded by American products (I fear to use the word culture) for decades. Few people have the strength to not pay attention to idiotic American products and instead look for the more important and complex sides of the United States.
I've heard more than one respected Argentinian writer say that American literature is the best in the world.
But go to the streets and question people if they know who Thomas Pynchon is, or John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Hunter Thompson, J.D. Salinger, or even Mark Twain. Most people here don't have a clue. But they do know Stephen King and Britney Spears and Adam Sandler, and the Twilight saga.
It's a matter of WHAT the United States market decides to impose to the rest of the world, and especially to us of the Third World, and of WHAT the masses are craving for.

There's a Skyclad song where it says "Nothing's as dumb as the Vox Populi". They may be damn right.

JBI

07-20-2009, 03:16 PM

You have accepted a schematic wherein all Americans, being members of the American culture (which you define as being the American economy, for whatever reason), have a uniform perspective of cultural superiority. If Americans feel culturally superior, then Americans will feel pride for their culture. If Americans feel culturally superior, then Americans will respond to your belligerent posts. These are logical statements. However, you're affirming the consequent: If Americans feel pride for their culture, then Americans feel culturally superior; if Americans respond to your posts, then Americans feel culturally superior. You're ignoring logic because it interferes with your dogma.

It's the manner - look at how they pounced on the fact I was Canadian for instance, and decided to play the we have and you have not game, instead of saying, like most countries - yeah, we have problems but we also have some good stuff, and there are many great things about American arts and culture, that aren't purely fueled by a desire for world dominance - such a response perhaps could have worked, but alas, it did not come, now did it, and I wonder why.

Look at how the argument really got started in general - I merely maintained that this dumbing down phenomenon is particularly relevant, in these cases, based on Bloom's observations, to American culture, whereas Canadian culture functions differently - the second I pen that, instead of saying, yeah we have some problems, but we have some great things here too, and culturally, we do like to dominate the world a little too much, which is a problem, though it has some benefits, such as getting some decent books some exposure, though perhaps it does not justify itself, because of all the exposure of mediocre works that is the trade of, I get pounced on, with things like "You aren't much better", or "your culture sucks", or whatever, or Canadian culture is rubbish, or you guys are worst than us, the reason why we are so dominant is because our culture happens to be the best, or because yours happens to be the worst, or because we are the most powerful people in the world (despite China owning half the country) and you guys are just jealous, etc.

Perhaps we can get to some real problems then - perhaps the problem is that Americans spend to much on prison upkeep and incarceration, and not enough on public schooling - perhaps there is a problem with the fact that it costs often 10x as much to go to an American institution for university as it does for a Canadian one, or perhaps that the commercial based industry has lead to a sort of debt serfdom? Those perhaps are real issues, but ultimately, like I said before, they are masked by the American brand - the American brand's dominance becomes the only thing to really consider - we have greatness, we are untouchable, the best country in the world, the most free, the most democratic, the most accepting, the best place to live, etc, which perhaps has some truth - it is a great country to live in, but is it the best? Is such a conversation even worth having? or is it merely the American brand surfacing again and again, feeding the fire with its self promotion instead of cutting its losses and mending its wounds.

JBI

07-20-2009, 03:18 PM

It is very convenient that anyone who contradicts your system of self-superior analysis is just another "ex-centric."

It's not my term, it's Linda Hutcheon's.

JBI

07-20-2009, 03:22 PM

Whether or not Tim Hortons is mediocre, as it surely is, it is not even close to the awful that Mcdonalds is... not even within orders of magnitude of the awful and disgusting that mcdonalds is...

Don't even bother going there - why not compare it to the American industry equivalent - Dunkin Donuts, or Krispy Kreme.

Drkshadow03

07-20-2009, 03:26 PM

Again just dug this one out, more reinforcing to my point - you need to come and profess the dominance of American culture, its incredible scope in all art forms, as to somehow promote it, and, in the process, need to take some cheap shots at Canada, whereas, you would note, a large chunk of your American films are filmed right here in Toronto, and Niel Young, Gasp, happens to be Canadian. - I'm not even going to bother picking out the mediocre works from your list, because that isn't the point - the fact that you felt so damn proud pushing that list forward is -

That is the mentality - we are better, and we have the list, the sales, and the army to prove it, and I'm afraid, from your posts, you merely prove me right, and don't really offer any constructive rebuttal besides "But we are the best, you guys all suck, the American brand is the best in the entire world, I'm an American Boy, American Boys are the best Boys in the world."

Speaking about a School of Resentment . . .

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 03:30 PM

It's the manner - look at how they pounced on the fact I was Canadian for instance, and decided to play the we have and you have not game, instead of saying, like most countries - yeah, we have problems but we also have some good stuff, and there are many great things about American arts and culture, that aren't purely fueled by a desire for world dominance - such a response perhaps could have worked, but alas, it did not come, now did it, and I wonder why.

First of all, no one is insulting your culture or making generalizations that would include you (but we don't want to break the forum rules!). If I began a thread entitled "Canada is full of dumb people," you wouldn't respond saying "yeah, we've got some stupid people, but we have some good stuff here, man, it's all cool." You would say "you're just saying that because you're a fat bigoted idiot American" (in so many words). I've said repeatedly that our economic strength or political defects are not extensions of American culture but systematic flaws. Your only proof to the contrary, that in fact these are symptoms of a behavioral flaw or cultural defect, is that we actually attempt to refute your statements (which are personal).

Look at how the argument really got started in general - I merely maintained that this dumbing down phenomenon is particularly relevant, in these cases, based on Bloom's observations, to American culture, whereas Canadian culture functions differently - the second I pen that, instead of saying, yeah we have some problems, but we have some great things here too, and culturally, we do like to dominate the world a little too much, which is a problem, though it has some benefits, such as getting some decent books some exposure, though perhaps it does not justify itself, because of all the exposure of mediocre works that is the trade of, I get pounced on, with things like "You aren't much better", or "your culture sucks", or whatever, or Canadian culture is rubbish, or you guys are worst than us, the reason why we are so dominant is because our culture happens to be the best, or because yours happens to be the worst, or because we are the most powerful people in the world (despite China owning half the country) and you guys are just jealous, etc.

Of course you're going to get pounced on when you say "Americans are stupid." Try saying that to any other culture. Once again, you're just ignoring everyone who isn't Mortalterror because everyone else doesn't easily fit within your schematic.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 03:32 PM

I like our food. I like our music. I like our movies. I even like our books. Chicken mcnuggets, hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, tater tots, American pizza, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all taste delicious to me. I like Little Richard, Jerry Louis, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Credence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Metallica, Nirvana, and Smashing Pumpkins. I think our movies are pretty good.

Pulp Fiction, Gone With the Wind, Goodfellas, Schindler's List, The Lion in Winter, Network, Julius Caesar, The Matrix, Casablanca, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Blazing Saddles, The Thing, All Quiet on the Western Front, Shawshank Redemption, High Noon, Raging Bull, The Searchers, Terminator, Patton, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs, Anatomy of a Murder, A Streetcar Named Desire, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Idiocracy, Back to the Future, The Silence of the Lambs, Aliens, Rocky, Star Wars, Jaws, The Wild Bunch, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, All the King's Men, The Big Lebowski, Scarface, Master and Commander, Die Hard, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, City Lights, Saving Private Ryan, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Seven, Amadeus, The Princess Bride, L.A. Confidential, Inherit the Wind, 12 Angry Men, Airplane!, Heathers, Paths of Glory, Big Trouble in Little China, American Beauty, American Psycho, Dawn of the Dead, The Wrath of Kahn, Ferris Bueller's Day off, The Right Stuff, Raiders of the Lost Arc, Glengarry Glen Ross, Sunset Boulevard, Memento, The Professional, Alien, Forest Gump, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Requiem for a Dream, The Kid, Dirty Harry, On the Waterfront, The Empire Strikes Back, His Girl Friday, Platoon, Mallrats, Bowling For Columbine, The Fugitive, Kelley's Heroes, First Blood, Spartacus, Total Recall, Cool Hand Luke, The Untouchables, Miller's Crossing, The Aviator, The Sound of Music, Mutiny on the Bounty, Some Like it Hot, Do the Right Thing, Lethal Weapon, etc.

Find me another country with a list half so impressive.

As for books: Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Twain, Eliot, Pound, Frost, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, Whitman, Longfellow, Robinson, Bellow, Pynchon, Roth, Vonnegut, Kerouac, McCarthy, De Lillo, Wolfe, Barth, Morrison, Salinger, Heller, Mailer, Jones, O'Connor, Wright, Burroughs, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, Miller, O'Neill, Williams, Lewis, Woolf, Lowell, Stevens, Dreiser, Cather, Crane, London, Norris, Wharton, James, Howells, Alcott, and Cooper. What countries have done better in the last two centuries? I don't think there is any shortage of people reading the Russians, French, or English for all that though.

But I know you won't be happy until the whole world is eating Tim Hortons, listening to Celine Dion, watching The Red Green Show, playing hockey, reading Margaret Atwood, and flocking to theaters to see revivals of that great Canadian classic Meatballs.

Well American love of American food explains why America is the most overweight nation in the world, and not by a slim margin, by a wide country mile, literally... and out of the that comes the most unhealthy nation in the developed world, with the worst healthcare system in the developed world...

but sticking to just art, I have no problem admitting that an immense amount of great film, literature, music has come out of the US in the last 2 centuries.. but how many Americans actually read these great authors? how many Americans read anything but mediocre mass market fiction? how many americans watch anything but the awful blockbusters?

also you do know Neil Young is Canadian, a few of the films you mentioned were filmed in Canada, and several of them had foreign directors... also quite a few of those films are mediocre if not just plain bad... Mallrats? Star Wars? Indiana Jones? Terminator? Blade Runner? etc. etc... these are beyond bad...
I would make the claim that if you look at Italian and Czech directors you would find equally as many great movies... but then one would have to actually watch foreign films and is that not taboo in America?

Your list of authors I can't disagree with, for there are few countries that have produced what America has in the last two centuries.. but you have a population of 300 million, and are the cultural, political, and economic centre of the world for the last 90 years, I would hope that list would be vast... and that it is, is not at all surprising, but again who reads these great american writers? very few? and the point is the average american is quite dumb as JBI says, and quite ignorant of anything worthwhile exisitng outside of America.. I mean only 13% of Americans even have passports... the last american president did not even know the name of our prime minister while he was running for election.. which just seems silly...

and if we want to get into Canada, we have one of the best contemporary poetry scenes.. Celine Dion is much more popular in the US than in Canada.. we have the world's best indie rock scene.. we have a great film industry.. and cbc television has some superb programming such as "fifth estate", "Nature of things", "this hour has 22 minutes" and "the rick mercer report"... cbc radio is far better than any radio station in america as well...

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 03:33 PM

Don't even bother going there - why not compare it to the American industry equivalent - Dunkin Donuts, or Krispy Kreme.

haha yes.. amazing!

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 03:41 PM

if you look at Japanese education statistics, they more than out preform their American equivalents, so the question isn't even to be raised.
Yes, Japanese academics far outperform their American counterparts, and yet their culture is not superior to their American counterparts. I'm suggesting that there is no 1 to 1 correlation between formal education and artistic culture. Therefore your premise could be considered erroneous or at least misleading. Hemingway, Dickens, Twain, and Shakespeare never went to college.

You raised a number of points about Western society and America in particular. I thought it worthwhile to show that America is not the only source of trashy popular culture and you might be coming at the problem from the wrong angle. The worlds problems are not all caused by America's preeminence in film, publishing dominance, and economic hegemony.

For all their supposed intellectual superiority what great masterpieces has Canada ever bequeathed to the world? Where does this pride come from? Some people on this thread suggest that America owes it's place in history to the diminished European talent pool after the world wars. But what's their rationale for America maintaining it's place in the world for the past 60 years?

"You know what the fellow said—in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."- Orson Welles

That's the real problem, I think - whenever I happen to travel, too many people think that I am one of you guys - you'd be surprised how the service improves as soon as they find out you are Canadian.
Regional bias. The surest sign of advanced manners and culture.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 03:46 PM

First of all, no one is insulting your culture or making generalizations that would include you (but we don't want to break the forum rules!). If I began a thread entitled "Canada is full of dumb people," you wouldn't respond saying "yeah, we've got some stupid people, but we have some good stuff here, man, it's all cool." You would say "you're just saying that because you're a fat bigoted idiot American" (in so many words). I've said repeatedly that our economic strength or political defects are not extensions of American culture but systematic flaws. Your only proof to the contrary, that in fact these are symptoms of a behavioral flaw or cultural defect, is that we actually attempt to refute your statements (which are personal).

Of course you're going to get pounced on when you say "Americans are stupid." Try saying that to any other culture. Once again, you're just ignoring everyone who isn't Mortalterror because everyone else doesn't easily fit within your schematic.

but this is silly, the article is by a very well-known American critic, talking about the "dumbing down of american readers" not that all americans are dumb.. and the article and JBI are correct in the sense that the average american is much more ignorant than the average person in other developed countries... that follows necessarily from having a much poorer education system until one gets to the university level which, let's be honest, due to the immense cost is for the minority... the average high school educated american is fairly ignorant... NOT all, of course... and there are many ignorant Canadians as well, but for the most part we are quite a bit better educated and have easier access to higher education...

to say that this has nothing to do with the american culture and is due to systematic flaws is glossing over the fact that american culture in every aspect is based on "bigger, better, stronger"... quantity over quality in many aspects.. this is of course a sweeping generalization and is not true in all cases but for general american culture it is true.. there is a complex that says we are better.. even the american education system runs this way, just looking at the average american high school graduate who knows a bit about America, but nothing about the rest of the world, including their northern neighbours in Canada... all that exists is America, and everyone else might as well not be there...

Drkshadow03

07-20-2009, 03:54 PM

There is a constant stereotype in this world of the American as someone who knows nothing of the world, yet is the first person to tell you how America is the greatest place on the planet for x number of reasons - it's the same on all levels of culture pretty much, and it is by no means a new phenomenon - I don't feel like busting out the quote machine, so I will just tell you guys to read the beginning of James' Daisy Miller with the "I'm an American Boy" and "American men are the best men in the world" bit.

I'm sorry, but I cannot help but think it is fundamentally ingrained in the culture - it certainly is in the literature, and in the politics, and has been from almost the beginning. You are looking at one of the few cultures in the world, that cannot look at its history in an ironic light, or as anything other than a source of national identity and pride - a country that essentially is obsessed with itself, as a dominant force. Look at, for instance, the movie Transformers' promotion of American military heroism as the saviors of humanity, or whatever - is that simply because American costumes were cheaper, or because the directors happened to think the American bit a culturally significant attribute.

It's no surprise really - the American mythology, and culture, is dominated, and has been dominated by such figures - from G I Joe (who is getting a movie now) to Superman. It's one the only countries that cannot look at itself with some degree of irony, but instead insists on, as Emerson put it, being started by "The shot that was heard around the world."

It never ceases to amaze me when people talk about stereotypes of Jews, African Americans, Chinese, Canadians, homosexuals, Islam, whomever, and they will declare the stereotypes are wrong and offensive. But suddenly when people talk about the "West" or "White Heterosexual Males" or "Americans" all stereotypes magically become accurate, even when you are dealing with complex cultures with lots of different elements to them.

Americans are hyper-critical of their culture all the time. Just visit Berkely or any academic institution.

It's almost ironic that you brought up Superman of all things as representative of American military might. Superman is a character written by both an American writer and a Canadian illustrator, but more importantly created by JEWISH Americans who were the children of immigrants. Superman embodies all the possibilities, all the opposite stereotypes, that America offered Jews. You also cannot remove Superman from the context that it was an American Jewish writer who created him.

Besides, JBI isn't entirely wrong. Everyone knows this is what Americans really think of Canada (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYSYipouABI).

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 04:01 PM

but this is silly, the article is by a very well-known American critic, talking about the "dumbing down of american readers" not that all americans are dumb.. and the article and JBI are correct in the sense that the average american is much more ignorant than the average person in other developed countries... that follows necessarily from having a much poorer education system until one gets to the university level which, let's be honest, due to the immense cost is for the minority... the average high school educated american is fairly ignorant... NOT all, of course... and there are many ignorant Canadians as well, but for the most part we are quite a bit better educated and have easier access to higher education...

Absolutely. The American pedagogical, economic, and political systems are beyond absurd (though these systems are pretty much the same as in other developed countries - our state just has greater hold on them).

to say that this has nothing to do with the american culture and is due to systematic flaws is glossing over the fact that american culture in every aspect is based on "bigger, better, stronger"... quantity over quality in many aspects.. this is of course a sweeping generalization and is not true in all cases but for general american culture it is true.. there is a complex that says we are better.. even the american education system runs this way, just looking at the average american high school graduate who knows a bit about America, but nothing about the rest of the world, including their northern neighbours in Canada... all that exists is America, and everyone else might as well not be there...

One could make the argument that certain media enforce an image of "bigger, better, stronger" upon the ignorant public and thereby create a culture of stupidity. But JBI and you are making the argument that this is some integral aspect of American culture, and that any intelligent people who betray this schema are simply "ex-centrics." You're wrong. Stupid people are stupid people everywhere, and that America has more stupid people than other places is systematic, not a product of inferior genes or dumb culture.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 04:40 PM

=
One could make the argument that certain media enforce an image of "bigger, better, stronger" upon the ignorant public and thereby create a culture of stupidity. But JBI and you are making the argument that this is some integral aspect of American culture, and that any intelligent people who betray this schema are simply "ex-centrics." You're wrong. Stupid people are stupid people everywhere, and that America has more stupid people than other places is systematic, not a product of inferior genes or dumb culture.

I agree with you completely though.. I think it is the case of Media and Politicians enforcing an image of "bigger, better, stronger" on a generally ignorant public that is the biggest problem, well that and the lack of decent education for the poor and lower middle class which make up the majority of the population... I would never suggest anything about inferior genes, or a dumb culture, and that was not my intention in the slightest... so yes for the most part I guess it is systematic, although I would say part of this is that the media is changing what american culture is, dumbing it down for the average american and making it into this overly-simplistic "bigger, better, stronger"... if this continues I fear that calling american culture ignorant, or even dumb, will be appropriate... as there are already arguments to me made for this... though of course there are many bright spots, especially from the past, but even currently...

grotto

07-20-2009, 05:06 PM

It matters not what country of culture you come from, self-righteousness smells the same in all of them. This thread has gone to the base level of intelligent stupidity, yes, dumbed down.

Quark

07-20-2009, 06:02 PM

At this point with regard to threads currently seeing activity here in the general literature section, I thought this little snippet from Harold Bloom in 2003 seemed appropriate.. so enjoy... :p

from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...301730_pf.html

Hey islandclimber. It's been a while since I've seen you on the forum. How's it going?

It looks like you asked the question of the day: just about everyone has an opinion on this one apparently. We're approaching this in a rather odd way, though. I think we're painting this as somehow a uniquely early 21st century, American problem--which it isn't. There have been many times when the literary establishment has felt threatened by low-grade, coarse fiction and it's responded in almost the same way every time. In Britain, for example, the sensation novel met with similar antagonism when it first hit the stands in the 1860's. I can take each claim made by Bloom and Ron Charles and find its twin in the book reviews of sensation novels. Both talk about how schematic and clichéd the books are. Both believe that these books condition readers into accepting low-grade fiction. Bloom complains that "When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King." H.L. Mansel claimed something similar over a century earlier when he wrote that sensation novels play "no inconsiderable part in molding the minds and forming the habits and tastes of its generation" and that they "stimulate the want which they supply." Charles takes a slightly different tack against Harry Potter, but one no less anticipated by earlier criticism. He's concerned about the blurring of the boundaries between children's entertainment and adult literature: "it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism." One hundred and forty years earlier, the literary establishment had said of M.E. Braddon (sensation author) that "She may boast, without fear of contradiction, in having temporarily succeeded in making the literature of the Kitchen the favourite reading of the Drawing room." Just as Harry Potter is portrayed as an invader from children's literature, sensation fiction is exposed as a lower-class, feminine enjoyment. Both blur the lines between mainstream, "serious" literature, and unworthy sub genre. Charles goes on to attack Potter's commercialism. He asks sarcastically "Shouldn't we just enjoy the $4 billion party?" Again, no different from critics who claimed that sensation fiction: "a commercial atmosphere floats around works of this class."

While I'm sure there's something unique about Bloom and Charles' complaint, I think we have to acknowledge that this shtick has been done before. I gave one other example, but there are plenty more. This isn't a recent "phenomenon" as Bloom claims, but a constantly reoccurring process. A set of books encroach upon the sacred ground reserved by literary critics for artistic, and salubrious, works. The critics then claim the new texts are poorly written, inappropriate, addictive, and commercial. I don't say this to justify Harry Potter, but to point out that this isn't something terribly new. I think it also shows that recent ideological shifts or cultural attitudes are not to blame for these books. They've been around for a while--just like this debate. What's different between these various outbreaks is the tone of the criticism. The content of it remains the same, but the tone betrays the position of the writer. When the critics have the advantage the tone is usually one of condescension, but when the critics feel threatened you get something like Bloom's self-pity: "I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased." Yeah, Harold, we get it. You're too old to rock and roll. Clearly Bloom sees himself as defeated, and his only option is elegize about a great past.

This is the difference between one elitism/populism argument and another: sometimes one side has the upper hand and sometimes the shoe is on the other foot. What determines which sides wins has rarely ever been cultural or ideological. Usually, it has to do with publishing, literacy, and sales. Those in the eighteenth century who thought the novel was unworthy of serious consideration lost that battle not because of ideology or culture, but because the readership changed. Literacy expanded and the male, educated reader lost his complete control over the market. Female, lower class, less educated readers, and the novels they wanted became more the norm as the century progressed. Today, similar problems plague "high" literature, as literacy is almost full, education is widely dispersed, and leisure has decreased. The well read, well educated reader with lots of time on his or her hands is dying out as a breed, and that person's share of the market is approaching zero. Also, that class of reader is losing its identity as the sharp lines that cut off one genre from another are getting blurred. We all go to the same stores now to buy books. National and transnational media are replacing local media dedicated to specific groups. It's becoming increasingly difficult to call yourself a "serious" reader when there's fast becoming only one kind of reader. These are all social and institutional problems that don't really have anything to do with whether Americans are fat, insular, bigots or whether we're all marxist-feminists (a favorite pairing of Bloom's). Whether this is good or bad is up for debate, I guess, but it seems pretty unstoppable at this point. No wonder Bloom feels so defeated.

Paulclem

07-20-2009, 06:11 PM

Yet the problem of dumbing down is not just the USA's problem. We are all experiencing a revolution in the way the younger generation read. The use of the internet is training users to skim very well, but not necessarily to read to anything like the depth that is required to read a Harry Potter, (seeing as this is such a controversial touchstone for some). We may end up hearking back to a time when 6 year olds would queue to buy a novel and read it the next day, and see this as a reading pinnacle.

Niamh

07-20-2009, 06:33 PM

General mod note to all.
please refrain from bashing, flaming and verballing offending and attacking other forum members as this is against the forum rules. Any more offensive posts will be removed and may result in PIPs being issued, the closure of the thread or both.
Can we return to discussing the topic and not each other.
Thank You
Niamh

Emil Miller

07-20-2009, 06:34 PM

I have read these posts with some amusement and some irritation, but they can all be boiled down to the fact that the basic flaw in democracy is that the village idiot has the same right to vote as the wisest village elder.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 07:07 PM

Hey islandclimber. It's been a while since I've seen you on the forum. How's it going?

It looks like you asked the question of the day: just about everyone has an opinion on this one apparently. We're approaching this in a rather odd way, though. I think we're painting this as somehow a uniquely early 21st century, American problem--which it isn't. There have been many times when the literary establishment has felt threatened by low-grade, coarse fiction and it's responded in almost the same way every time. In Britain, for example, the sensation novel met with similar antagonism when it first hit the stands in the 1860's. I can take each claim made by Bloom and Ron Charles and find its twin in the book reviews of sensation novels. Both talk about how schematic and clichéd the books are. Both believe that these books condition readers into accepting low-grade fiction. Bloom complains that "When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King." H.L. Mansel claimed something similar over a century earlier when he wrote that sensation novels play "no inconsiderable part in molding the minds and forming the habits and tastes of its generation" and that they "stimulate the want which they supply." Charles takes a slightly different tack against Harry Potter, but one no less anticipated by earlier criticism. He's concerned about the blurring of the boundaries between children's entertainment and adult literature: "it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism." One hundred and forty years earlier, the literary establishment had said of M.E. Braddon (sensation author) that "She may boast, without fear of contradiction, in having temporarily succeeded in making the literature of the Kitchen the favourite reading of the Drawing room." Just as Harry Potter is portrayed as an invader from children's literature, sensation fiction is exposed as a lower-class, feminine enjoyment. Both blur the lines between mainstream, "serious" literature, and unworthy sub genre. Charles goes on to attack Potter's commercialism. He asks sarcastically "Shouldn't we just enjoy the $4 billion party?" Again, no different from critics who claimed that sensation fiction: "a commercial atmosphere floats around works of this class."

While I'm sure there's something unique about Bloom and Charles' complaint, I think we have to acknowledge that this shtick has been done before. I gave one other example, but there are plenty more. This isn't a recent "phenomenon" as Bloom claims, but a constantly reoccurring process. A set of books encroach upon the sacred ground reserved by literary critics for artistic, and salubrious, works. The critics then claim the new texts are poorly written, inappropriate, addictive, and commercial. I don't say this to justify Harry Potter, but to point out that this isn't something terribly new. I think it also shows that recent ideological shifts or cultural attitudes are not to blame for these books. They've been around for a while--just like this debate. What's different between these various outbreaks is the tone of the criticism. The content of it remains the same, but the tone betrays the position of the writer. When the critics have the advantage the tone is usually one of condescension, but when the critics feel threatened you get something like Bloom's self-pity: "I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased." Yeah, Harold, we get it. You're too old to rock and roll. Clearly Bloom sees himself as defeated, and his only option is elegize about a great past.

This is the difference between one elitism/populism argument and another: sometimes one side has the upper hand and sometimes the shoe is on the other foot. What determines which sides wins has rarely ever been cultural or ideological. Usually, it has to do with publishing, literacy, and sales. Those in the eighteenth century who thought the novel was unworthy of serious consideration lost that battle not because of ideology or culture, but because the readership changed. Literacy expanded and the male, educated reader lost his complete control over the market. Female, lower class, less educated readers, and the novels they wanted became more the norm as the century progressed. Today, similar problems plague "high" literature, as literacy is almost full, education is widely dispersed, and leisure has decreased. The well read, well educated reader with lots of time on his or her hands is dying out as a breed, and that person's share of the market is approaching zero. Also, that class of reader is losing its identity as the sharp lines that cut off one genre from another are getting blurred. We all go to the same stores now to buy books. National and transnational media are replacing local media dedicated to specific groups. It's becoming increasingly difficult to call yourself a "serious" reader when there's fast becoming only one kind of reader. These are all social and institutional problems that don't really have anything to do with whether Americans are fat, insular, bigots or whether we're all marxist-feminists (a favorite pairing of Bloom's). Whether this is good or bad is up for debate, I guess, but it seems pretty unstoppable at this point. No wonder Bloom feels so defeated.

things are going pretty good.. how about you?

by the way, great post. I do agree with much of what you say, but I do think this new phenomenon is slightly different from past ones in a couple ways...

first off, this is obviously not a uniquely American problem, or the first time critics and the so-called "elite" have taken up arms against the degradation of literature... however, it is the first time this has really happened to this extent in America, that populism has entirely overwhelmed any modicum of quality control in my opinion.. that absolutely mediocre authors and works are winning prestigious literary awards usually reserved for "high" literature, and that these authors are facing very little in the way of criticism, except from the fringes and when these come to popular attention the authors of such criticism are usually castrated... it's almost as if ignorance and mediocrity are being taught to be good things, reading as entertainment purely for entertainments sake with no other purpose... and I won't even go into what's going on in the film business, and music industry...

second, and though the encroachment is nothing new, what is new is that it is not so much an entirely new form, such as the sensation novel, as it is a well established and common form that has been around for quite some time, that has somehow lifted off to such astounding heights of popularity.. now there is something to be said for having a number of options in what to read, and this has not been the case for the past ten years, with the rare exception (and I easily admit there are exceptions), Harry Potter has been the only option for 10 years now for children and then young adults... and somehow this has progressed to a lesser degree into the adult reading market.. adults are reading (for themselves entirely) and praising as a great work, a mediocre children's/young adult's series of books... I won't get into the Harry Potter argument specifically right now, and I'll even concede that the first couple books could be considered as good for younger children, but once you get into the young adult and adult group, these books are ridiculously mediocre and praise of them is just popularizing stupidity...

the other thing is that although functional literacy is sky-high in the developed world right now, what I believe has decreased and decreased a lot, is actual reading ability beyond functional.. the ability to read literature and understand it, to read critically... these things have been decreasing for quite some time now, and we were ripe for having a mediocre work be praised as the next great addition to the literature canon, whether by Rowling, or Meyer, or King, or Brown... the lack of "high" literacy is a problem that has roots in how children are raised now, how the education system works, and I would say this is especially a problem in america. for sure it is a problem elsewhere to, but america is the centre of the world right now and has been for quite some time, and with the worst education system in the developed world it is no wonder it has the biggest problem in this sense... and eating habits, film, education, health, reading, etc etc. all these things tie into this culture of stupidity that is being developed where ignorance and mediocrity are praised as admirable traits... one just has to spend some time in a high school class, it isn't cool to be smart, it's cool to be dumb, to get mediocre grades, to not really care about education... now is this the fault of the media, of parents, of politicians and the priorities they have such as defense over education? I don't know, but it has produced an increasingly decadent culture that celebrates mediocrity in many ways, except for an elite few...

Drkshadow03

07-20-2009, 07:21 PM

. . . with the worst education system in the developed world

The U.S. is NOT the WORST education system in the developed world. It's one of the worst, but there are those ranked lower. ;)

WORLD EDUCATION RANKINGS
UNICEF rankings of educational systems in the world's richest countries, indicating the percentage of 14 and 15 year olds scoring below a minimum level in literacy, math and science.
1. South Korea 1.4 percent
2. Japan 2.2
3. Finland 4.4
4. Canada 5
5. Australia 6.2
6. Austria 8.2
7. Britain 9.4
8. Ireland 10.2
9. Sweden 10.8
10. Czech Republic 12.2
- (tie) New Zealand 12.2
12. France 12.6
13. Switzerland 13
14. Belgium 14
- (tie) Iceland 14
16. Hungary 14.2
- (tie) Norway 14.2
18. United States 16.2
19. Germany 17
- (tie) Denmark 17
21. Spain 18.6
22. Italy 20.2
23. Greece 23.2
24. Portugal 23.6

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 07:53 PM

The U.S. is NOT the WORST education system in the developed world. It's one of the worst, but there are those ranked lower. ;)

I heard that the inequalities in our education systems even out by the time our kids reach college. I couldn't find the stats to support this. Any ideas? While searching, I did find a few articles ranking a number of American universities in the top tier worldwide: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Colombia, U of Chicago, Cornell... Generally, the University of Washington in Seattle is ranked much higher for academic standards than the University of Toronto; so I smiled to myself and stopped looking after that.

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 08:44 PM

JBI, you want to moan about the superficiality of the West? Take a good hard look at the East...

Oh Jesus! Don't get me started Mortal. Are these examples of the high-minded culture of the East as opposed to our media-drenched culture:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2452/3740420689_48040467b7_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2430/3740420739_dcd523792d_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2562/3741212890_c906238ab0_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3491/3740421223_fa8d74b3f4_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2464/3740421375_cb5427c262_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2641/3740421417_fc391d6f72_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2652/3740421529_a3b5f32b42_o.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2632/3741213516_2869942b97_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3516/3741213836_99d8d9d420_o.jpg

These are just a few of the leading artists working today in Japan, China, and the Middle-East... every bit as decadent, over-marketed, and sleazy as anything produced in the West... and these are just the examples I could show without censoring.

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 08:48 PM

Hey! By the way... the Red Green Show was damn funny, Mortal.

It's about as funny as a dead child's toy.

Hey... I can always appreciate 1001 uses for duct tape.:p

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 08:49 PM

The belgian company is owned by a Brazilian company, so Brazilians own american beer.

Does that mean Budweiser is going to start tasting like Xingu? :confused:

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 08:57 PM

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 09:03 PM

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 09:10 PM

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 09:21 PM

Well American love of American food explains why America is the most overweight nation in the world, and not by a slim margin, by a wide country mile, literally...

No... Americans are overweight because they live in the wealthiest nation in the world... not by a slim margin... but by a wide country mile... I believe the estimate is the GNP or the US is equal to the next 7 nations combined. That reality means that even the poor and uneducated (who are often one and the same) have access to gross volumes of food and do not always make the most informed choices. A great many of the poor children that I teach... and their parents... are grossly overweight. Often this is because the fattening foods are far less expensive than the healthy choices. It is also a consequence of convenience. One can grab a burger, fries, and Coke in a few minutes and be back at work where again the healthier choices have not historically been so available... but that is changing with the greater demand for salads and other healthier foods.

mayneverhave

07-20-2009, 09:25 PM

Every society has a mixture of high and low culture. For every Seven Samurai are a hundred wuxia copies that go directly to dvd.

By the way Stlukes, those devil-horned chinaman pictures are pretty funny.

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 09:29 PM

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 09:40 PM

Do you mean Virginia Woolf? 'Cuz she was pretty British, dude.

I'm fairly certain he meant Thomas Wolfe (note the spelling) who wrote Look Homeward Angel and You Can't Go Home Again, among other marvelous novels.

No, I'm just an idiot who got sloppy and didn't check what I wrote before I posted it. I also didn't realize that Neil Young was Canadian either. My bad. Although, apparently I'm not to blame. It's this damn American education system. I'm the victim here!

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 09:47 PM

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 09:53 PM

It's not even beer anyway - there are some quality breweries and Canadian brands - La Fin Du Monde and Maudite for example, as well as rather idiosyncratic beers, like Alexander Keith's - whereas I am strained to come up with one good American brand.

Nonsense. The are hundreds of great microbrews to be found in the US and a few decent brews churned out on a larger scale... but lets face it, the mass public wants *iss-water infused CO2 and not real beer. Personally, most of what I drink comes from Germany, Belgium, or the UK. I will admit, however, that I recently came across this marvelous Canadian brew made in the manner of a great Belgian Ale (I wish I remembered the name... I'll check on it next time I'm there) at a local bar that serves micro-brews.:thumbs_up

sticking with great Canadian microbreweries, there's a brewery up in Creemore, Ontario about an hour and a half from toronto called Creemore Springs that makes just an amazing lager... but it's non-pasteurized so you can't get it anywhere but in south-central Ontario.. but sooooooo good! :D

I ran into some pretty decent microbreweries on the Oregon and California coasts.. what I would be interested to see is the percentage of populations that drink mass market piss-water as opposed to microbrews in Canada vs the US?

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 09:56 PM

So, we are all come to agree that:
1 - The Elite here is dammed because of Democracy because eventually, the elite is the woolf of the elite?
2 - Harry potter caused it all. Of course, we should create secret society to deal with those threads. Some obscure literary reference will help out.
3 - American beer is apparently worst than canadian, but quite frankly, that is like saying that American Soccer is worst than canadian. Means little.

those pesky yanks have done pretty well in Soccer/football recently... and us Canadians for some reason are one of the worst soccer playing nations in the world.. if it's not on ice, we're seemingly incompetent :lol:

well besides lacross.. maybe sports just need to be somewhat violent for usCanadians to be good at them? a frontier mentality hahaha..

JBI

07-20-2009, 10:01 PM

let's not even talk about european and asian movies. Many of them get to artistic heights no American movie ever acheived.

Oh... is that so? So Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather... these all pale in comparison to a vast majority of what is coming out of Europe or Asian? Get real.:lol:

We'll just stick to one trend - Roma Citta Operta, I Lardi di Biciclette, La Strade, Obsessione, Il Gatopardo, Il Deserto Rosso, etc.

I'm sure, for instance, someone with greater knowledge wouldn't have much trouble coming up with major films that dominate from all sorts of traditions - be they Korean, Japanese, Hong Kongenese, Singaporean, Mainland Chinese, French, German, Italian, Swedish, or whatever.

As great as Dr. Strangelove was, it happens to a) be typically American, and therefore somewhat limited in subject (as all political satire is subject to the decay of time, no matter how great), and b) isn't untouchable and way better than any of the films I mentioned.

As pointed out earlier, how many contemporary art films, or high-brow films actually make it into American theatres with subtitles? I doubt, for instance, anyone down south, or even in English Canada for that matter, has seen any Quebec films, despite us being just a few KM. above you guys, yet I am still certain that the American brand brings all these movies, these Hollywood giants all around the world, showcasing the Oscar Winning American movies on every corner of the globe. Lets be honest, if you took, for instance, the best picture movies, and replaced them with the Best foreign film movies, you'd probably have a better selection 9 times out of 10, and these are films that won't make it to cinemas outside of large population centres.

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 10:07 PM

what I would be interested to see is the percentage of populations that drink mass market piss-water as opposed to microbrews in Canada vs the US?

Well, this is anecdotal evidence, but I'm no *****. I drink a man's drink: Jack Daniel's. If there's no Jack to be had, I drink Wild Turkey, or Jameson.

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 10:15 PM

As pointed out earlier, how many contemporary art films, or high-brow films actually make it into American theatres with subtitles? I doubt, for instance, anyone down south, or even in English Canada for that matter, has seen any Quebec films, despite us being just a few KM. above you guys, yet I am still certain that the American brand brings all these movies, these Hollywood giants all around the world, showcasing the Oscar Winning American movies on every corner of the globe. Lets be honest, if you took, for instance, the best picture movies, and replaced them with the Best foreign film movies, you'd probably have a better selection 9 times out of 10, and these are films that won't make it to cinemas outside of large population centres.

And this is because America decided one day that it was important for its films to be shown everywhere - Quebec could do the same of course, they just choose not to (Must be because of cultural superiority).

Also, there are a number of art house cinemas around American cities, even ones owned by huge theater companies, that show plenty of foreign cinema.

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 10:23 PM

JBI

07-20-2009, 10:24 PM

And this is because America decided one day that it was important for its films to be shown everywhere - Quebec could do the same of course, they just choose not to (Must be because of cultural superiority).

Actually, it has become a standard bit in Quebec for many artists to turn down nationalist titles, and reject awards given by the country as a whole - for instance, the playwright Michel Tremblay turned down The Order of Canada, and got highly criticized in Quebec for not turning down The Governor General's Award and prize money as well, as is the standard form for French-language Quebec writers.

They cannot do the same though - how many people go out to see French Language films with no intense graphics, and which aren't cheap romantic comedies - how many people even go out to see those movies in English?

It's all nice and fine, for instance, for me to talk about Italian Neo-Realism, but what about the contemporary scene - well, the theatres here don't show them, so I'll just wait and see which ones become classics, and get them in 20 years, whereas I have the ability to see several dozen mediocre American films at any given time.

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 10:25 PM

American beer is apparently worst than canadian, but quite frankly, that is like saying that American Soccer is worst than canadian. Means little.

But now let's talk Canadian wine...:lol::lol::lol:

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 10:28 PM

As great as Dr. Strangelove was, it happens to a) be typically American, and therefore somewhat limited in subject...

Unlike, say a Canadian film that would be typically Canadian... and thus universal in its themes, no doubt.:rolleyes:

stlukesguild

07-20-2009, 10:30 PM

Well, this is anecdotal evidence, but I'm no *****. I drink a man's drink: Jack Daniel's. If there's no Jack to be had, I drink Wild Turkey, or Jameson.

I stopped drinking that s*** after my second black out.:lol::lol::lol:

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 10:35 PM

Actually, it has become a standard bit in Quebec for many artists to turn down nationalist titles, and reject awards given by the country as a whole - for instance, the playwright Michel Tremblay turned down The Order of Canada, and got highly criticized in Quebec for not turning down The Governor General's Award and prize money as well, as is the standard form for French-language Quebec writers.

They cannot do the same though - how many people go out to see French Language films with no intense graphics, and which aren't cheap romantic comedies - how many people even go out to see those movies in English?

It's all nice and fine, for instance, for me to talk about Italian Neo-Realism, but what about the contemporary scene - well, the theatres here don't show them, so I'll just wait and see which ones become classics, and get them in 20 years, whereas I have the ability to see several dozen mediocre American films at any given time.

I suppose it is frustrating that the Italian Neo-Realist scene isn't too active these days, but I'm not sure why you're blaming America. America doesn't force Canadian theaters to play American movies - that's just what's profitable. Canada, affected by capitalism? Canadian people, interested in money? No! Impossible! It must be a conspiracy.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 10:36 PM

Well, this is anecdotal evidence, but I'm no *****. I drink a man's drink: Jack Daniel's. If there's no Jack to be had, I drink Wild Turkey, or Jameson.

oh no!!!! if one is to drink whiskey one must turn to the Irish and Black Bush, now that is real whiskey...

StLukes are you making fun of canadian wines!!! the big Canadian wines from the Okanagan, and Niagara are terrible, but there are some great small Canadian wineries that you can't find in liquor stores in both those regions, as well as Vancouver Island and PEI..

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 10:38 PM

American beer is apparently worst than canadian, but quite frankly, that is like saying that American Soccer is worst than canadian. Means little.

But now let's talk Canadian wine...:lol::lol::lol:

There is wine in Canada?? If so, it is better than Chillean wine ? Which I like.

King Mob

07-20-2009, 10:43 PM

let's not even talk about european and asian movies. Many of them get to artistic heights no American movie ever acheived.

Oh... is that so? So Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather... these all pale in comparison to a vast majority of what is coming out of Europe or Asian? Get real.:lol:

I am being totally real. Those movies you mentioned are masterpieces. But you can't deny that the people that are pushing boundaries in cinema are not from America nowadays (or in the past 30 years for that matter, with a couple of exceptions). And yes, no american movie has the artistic ambition that directors like Wong Kar Wai, Roy Andersson, Lars von Trier or Peter Greenaway have. Hell, even David Cronenberg. These people are stretching the limits of cinema. Few American directors did that.

The really good American directors living can be counted with one hand. And most of them are not being watched, and are attacked by the big studios. The American masters are all dead and gone (except David Lynch).

And don't you Americans proud over Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. Both of them had to go outside the United States to really express themselves, because the American industry was so stupid they cut those directors' legs everytime they could. Same is happening now with Francis Ford Coppola.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 10:43 PM

JBI, have you seen the movie This Beautiful City that won a bunch of Actra awards last year.. A family friend plays the main character in it.. it's quite good, but also quite gritty... very interesting though...

I've seen a few Quebec films, but mostly because I have quite an interest in film.. but still not too many.. I've seen the one that was the best foreign film winner at the oscars the other year Les Invasion Barbare, I've seen Seraphin: Un homme et son peche, Les Ages de t'enebres, Maelstrom and Congorama.. I can't think of any others though...

Bluebeard

07-20-2009, 10:57 PM

I am being totally real. Those movies you mentioned are masterpieces. But you can't deny that the people that are pushing boundaries in cinema are not from America nowadays. And yes, no modern american movie has the artistic ambition that directors like Wong Kar Wai, Roy Andersson, Lars von Trier or Peter Greenaway have. Hell, even David Cronenberg.

The really good American directors living can be counted with one hand. And most of them are not being watched, and are attacked by the big studios. The American masters are all dead and gone.

And don't you Americans proud over Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. Both of them had to go outside the United States to really express themselves, because the American industry was so stupid they cut those directors' legs everytime they could. Same is happening now with Francis Ford Coppola.

Americans aren't allowed to be proud of their own film? Who cares about the industry. Plenty of great directors in America are still at work, new and old. Same as in other countries. Just because Hollywood is here doesn't automatically void all cultural products.

islandclimber

07-20-2009, 11:10 PM

I am being totally real. Those movies you mentioned are masterpieces. But you can't deny that the people that are pushing boundaries in cinema are not from America nowadays (or in the past 30 years for that matter, with a couple of exceptions). And yes, no american movie has the artistic ambition that directors like Wong Kar Wai, Roy Andersson, Lars von Trier or Peter Greenaway have. Hell, even David Cronenberg. These people are stretching the limits of cinema. Few American directors did that.

The really good American directors living can be counted with one hand. And most of them are not being watched, and are attacked by the big studios. The American masters are all dead and gone (except David Lynch).

And don't you Americans proud over Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. Both of them had to go outside the United States to really express themselves, because the American industry was so stupid they cut those directors' legs everytime they could. Same is happening now with Francis Ford Coppola.

but this is silly! what about American directors and filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, Greg Pak, Eva Brzeski, Tom Dicillo, etc etc??

JCamilo

07-20-2009, 11:16 PM

Well they are americans, therefore they are not legitimate representatives of good american directors , of course.

mortalterror

07-20-2009, 11:29 PM

We'll just stick to one trend - Roma Citta Operta, I Lardi di Biciclette, La Strade, Obsessione, Il Gatopardo, Il Deserto Rosso, etc.
I know you're hot for Red Desert at the moment but someday, and I'm not saying today, or even this year, you might have to face up to the possibility that Antonioni sucks eggs. I wouldn't put him in the same league as Fellini, De Sica, Rosellini, or Visconti.

Go back and look at that film. It's all eye candy. It's a textbook example of how to use color and not much else. His narratives are boring. His characters are weird. His movies all have this dry, sterilized coldness to them that makes Kubrick look warm and Polanski look well adjusted. No matter what your intellectual pretensions, if you make films about people not speaking to each other and wandering around in dust storms, you're an idiot. I'd throw his *** into artist's hell with David Lynch. Although there was that funny scene were the chick makes this really awkward movement just to hit her mark for the camera. That was amusing and you can't fault him for the visuals.

I'm sure, for instance, someone with greater knowledge wouldn't have much trouble coming up with major films that dominate from all sorts of traditions - be they Korean, Japanese, Hong Kongenese, Singaporean, Mainland Chinese, French, German, Italian, Swedish, or whatever.
You've done a good job covering Italy. However, I'd include The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly in there with a few other Fellini's. For Japan there's Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Yojimbo, Ran, Kagemusha, Throne of Blood, Ikiru, High and Low. Pretty much Kurosawa films in the first rank. Sonatine was nice. Tokyo Story has some cred. Probably Sword of Doom. Ugetsu, Kwaidan, maybe Ballad of Narayana. However, Kurosawa's films are the only one's I'd put in the first rank with Casablanca et all.

In China I'd put Yimou Zhang in the forefront with To Live, Raise the Red Lantern, and Shanghai Triad. Infernal Affairs was pretty great. Crouching Tiger was good too for an action movie. Chinese Ghost Story gets a lot of good press, and I loved Hero. Also, Wong Kar Wai is doing some good stuff.

I have a real problem with Korean cinema. Brotherhood was the most interesting film I've seen come out of there: a Korean War movie without a single American. It's got the gritty realism of films like Saving Private Ryan and or Downfall and works pretty well. Otherwise the films seem to be stuck in themes of incest, mutilation, and horror typified by Oldboy or Sympathy for Mr Vengeance which I can't entirely get behind.

France has more innovation than sense. I'm of the opinion that Truffaut made better movies than Godard. 400 Blows, Amelie, Rules of the Game, Jean de Florette, Forbidden Games= good movies. Robert Bresson also deserves mention.

Germany has M, Metropolis, Das Boot, Downfall, Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu, The Beggar's Opera. Not a big fan of Herzog and Fassbinder.

JBI's point is valid. 8 1/2, Seven Samurai, Wild Strawberries, The Bicycle Thief, and M are as good as anything the states have made including the work of Kubrick and Scorsese. I think if you put all the work of all the foreign countries together they'd add up to the sum of quality films America has produced. If you added the UK to that group you'd have even more. But I think pound for pound America is still king.

I tend to omit Hitchcock, Welles, Allen, and DeMille; because they're not really my thing. Your mileage may vary.

As pointed out earlier, how many contemporary art films, or high-brow films actually make it into American theatres with subtitles? I doubt, for instance, anyone down south, or even in English Canada for that matter, has seen any Quebec films, despite us being just a few KM. above you guys, yet I am still certain that the American brand brings all these movies, these Hollywood giants all around the world, showcasing the Oscar Winning American movies on every corner of the globe. Lets be honest, if you took, for instance, the best picture movies, and replaced them with the Best foreign film movies, you'd probably have a better selection 9 times out of 10, and these are films that won't make it to cinemas outside of large population centres.
Actuallly, I've done that experiment. There are some real stinkers on both lists but the Best Pictures one is better. Shoeshine is alright. Monsieur Vincent's alright. Samurai 1 is just okay. Black Orpheus is terrible. War and Peace was abominable. Mephisto was alright. Dangerous moves just alright. The Official Story= lousy. No Man's Land= decent. Nowhere in Africa, what an obnoxious lady. The Sea Inside, where's the beef? Tsotsi, The Lives of Others, The Counterfeiters, come on.

In comparison, how many really bad best pictures are there? Cimarron, Grand Hotel, Cavalcade, The Life of Emile Zola, You Can't Take it With You, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, Gigi, Braveheart, Titanic, Gladiator, and Million Dollar Baby. That's out of like 80 and there are about twenty more Best Pictures than Foreign Films anyway. I figure the Academy gets it right more often than the Nobel committee and that ain't bad. Let's cut them some slack.

JBI

07-20-2009, 11:41 PM

Yes, Titanic, Lord of the Rings, The Departed, Slum Dog Millionaire, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, Chicago, a Beautiful Mind, Gladiator - lets be honest - there's nothing really there - where's the real powerful cinema? Das Leben der Anderen alone outshines all of those, in terms of quality, though my initial point was not directed at the winners, but at the nominees too - the wide range of selection based on the academy, vs. selection based by the countries that made the films.

And if we do this pound for pound bit, I would disagree completely, though, perhaps at certain time periods that was true - keep in mind, your exposure to "classic" films from other countries is limited to your geographic scope - I am sure there are countless good films you haven't heard of, and probably won't hear about, unless you dig.

But that makes no difference at the current time - the state of affairs needs to be judged, as the topic dictates, on current trends, and although Welles et al were great film makers, their legacies are all but dead outside of niched circles - who knows though, most Italian people I know seem to have a decent understanding and liking to Italian classic films (everyone it seems, for instance, has seen or owns La Dolce Vita, or a few films with Anna Magnani), but that perhaps is just limited scope on my part.

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 12:03 AM

but Mortal you can't honestly think the sum total of World Cinema's great films is only just equal to the sum total of great American Films... As a single nation I agree, America has produced far more great films than any other single nation but that is to be expected with the highest population in the first world but quite a lot... but as a whole the world has produced far more great films they just never show up in North America...

your list of countries you mention there neglects the film contributions of many great film countries...

Czech cinema has directors Jiri Menzel (closely watched trains, my sweet little village, lark on a string), Jan Kadar (the shop on main street), Jan Sverak (Kolya), Vera Chytilova (Daisies, Fruit of Paradise),

and then the famous Czech director in America Milos Forman (Amadeus, One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest, Goya's Ghost, The People Vs. Larry Flynt)

Austria has Michael Haneke (White Ribbon, The Piano Teacher,Benny's Video), Ruzowitzky (the Counterfeiters), Kubelka (Our Trip to Africa)

and Austrians in America Franz Planer, Billy Wilder (sunset boulevard, some like it hot, the apartment, the lost weekend), Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder, Laura, the Cardinal)

Sweden has Ingmar Bergman, Lasse Hallstrom, Victor Sjostrom..

Spain has Luis Bunuel who is just amazing (Viridiana, Los Olvidados, the discreet charm of the bourgeoise), Pedro Almodovar (Volver, All About my Mother, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) and many more

and I won't go any further...

but take just Fellini from italy and Bergman from Sweden and you have two of the greatest directors in all film....

stlukesguild

07-21-2009, 12:40 AM

The really good American directors living can be counted with one hand. And most of them are not being watched, and are attacked by the big studios. The American masters are all dead and gone.

Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg (and yes when one looks at Jaws and Indiana Jones as brilliant within their genre... to say nothing of Schindler's List, I do count him as a master), David Lynch, Joel Coen, even Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima) are all still alive... although perhaps their best films are behind them... perhaps not. Add to this any number of independent film makers... unless we are to assume that only those with a limited budget from outside the US will achieve anything of merit.

And don't you Americans proud over Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick. Both of them had to go outside the United States to really express themselves, because the American industry was so stupid they cut those directors' legs everytime they could. Same is happening now with Francis Ford Coppola.

Of course one might point out that a great majority of Hitchcock's greatest films were shot in the US... but then Stravinsky's greatest work was largely undertaken in France, Switzerland, and the US, Picasso spent most of his career in France... as did Chagall, Soutine, and Modigliani. Max Beckmann (German) produced most of his mature work in Holland and later the US. Samuel Beckett spent much of his career in France. Handel achieved his greatest success in England. None of this leads us to suspect that Picasso was any less Spanish or Stravinsky was any less Russian.

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 12:45 AM

and Milos Forman spent most his career in America but is still Czech... and Billy Wilder from Austria as well...

I think the negativity about current and past American Cinema displayed above is silly, but so is saying that American film by itself outdoes all of the rest of the world...

stlukesguild

07-21-2009, 12:48 AM

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-21-2009, 01:00 AM

JBI

07-21-2009, 01:01 AM

I thought we were discussing the climate, not who are better composers - you need to look at a) what is watched, b) what is promoted, c) how films are distributed, and d) how so called "elite" opinions fit into the scheme.

As such, certainly American films, without question, are the best products - the sales figures clearly illustrate as much - the so called great films being seen, though perhaps are enjoyed by some, ultimately aren't even considered in the scheme of the industry - one Transformer's movie has a budget 10times as large as what those movies plan on grossing, if they get super lucky. As for distribution, well, it's safe to say American films are everywhere, and the better the film, the less likely, unless it is a domestic film outside of the US, it is to be shown. I can't see small towns, for instance, getting the latest Swedish film, or whatever.

But beyond that, I think the US market likes to prop up mediocre films as great cinema - the extra emphasis put on special effects today would seem to correspond to that - the bigger, louder, and more graphically enhanced, it would seem, the better the film will do, and the better people will think it. This, of course, is promoted by the academies, as well as by film critics on many levels, and I would argue is the exact same phenomenon I mentioned earlier with the American brand in other art forms.

The result - well, non-American countries certainly seem to put more emphasis on domestic "art" films - that's one, though Chinese cinema is starting to move in the American direction, from what I understand. Another thing, is that we get distribution with emphasis on the domestic content, with awards and promotions to help boost it.

As for the elite opinions, well, who can say really? I think though, that American cinema takes itself far too seriously.

mortalterror

07-21-2009, 01:01 AM

how many people go out to see French Language films with no intense graphics, and which aren't cheap romantic comedies - how many people even go out to see those movies in English?
I saw The Exterminating Angel, Cleo from 5 to 7, La Belle et la Bete, The Return, The Counterfeiters, and 8 1/2 this week. Obviously, there is a demand for foreign film in the States.

-Lars von Trier or Peter Greenaway have. Hell, even David Cronenberg.
I started watching Prospero's Books once. It opens with a cherub swinging on a swing set urinating. I thought to myself, "This isn't The Tempest I remember."

You know, I think I'll pass on any future projects of David Cronenberg's where people have sex after gruesome car crashes, men are raped by giant typewriters, foreign diplomats carry on decades long affairs with men they think are really women but are actually spies, people's heads explode, or there is any possibility that they may be attacked by horny zombies.

The American masters are all dead and gone (except David Lynch).
Indeed, who else would we go to when we need to film cigarette ads without any cigarettes, filmed backwords, with sparklers and fish falling from the sky? Scorsese would never have thought of that.

Yes, Titanic, Lord of the Rings, The Departed, Slum Dog Millionaire, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, Chicago, a Beautiful Mind, Gladiator - lets be honest - there's nothing really there - where's the real powerful cinema? Das Leben der Anderen alone outshines all of those, in terms of quality, though my initial point was not directed at the winners, but at the nominees too - the wide range of selection based on the academy, vs. selection based by the countries that made the films.
Lord of the Rings, A Beautiful Mind, and Chicago are good movies. Crash wasn't the stuff of greatness but it was hardly bad, which also goes for Slumdog Millionaire. The others are pretty terrible. Still, you shouldn't overlook All Quiet on the Western Front, Mutiny on the Bounty, Gone With the Wind, How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, The Lost Weekend, The Best Years of Our Lives, Gentlemen's Agreement, All the King's Men, All About Eve, An American in Paris, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music, Patton, The Godfather, Rocky, Kramer vs Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Ghandi, Amadeus, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, The Silence of the Lambs, Schindler's List, American Beauty. Those are good films.

And if we do this pound for pound bit, I would disagree completely, though, perhaps at certain time periods that was true - keep in mind, your exposure to "classic" films from other countries is limited to your geographic scope - I am sure there are countless good films you haven't heard of, and probably won't hear about, unless you dig.
Don't worry 'bout me. I'm a digger. I find things like Red or The Hate in France one week Kanal or Ashes and Diamonds in Poland the next. I've seen Iran's Taste of Cherry, India's Pather Panchali, and Brazil's City of God. That's how I roll, playa!

Czech cinema has directors Jiri Menzel (closely watched trains, Jan Kadar (the shop on main street)
Good films both.

and then the famous Czech director in America Milos Forman (Amadeus, One Flew Over a Cuckoo's Nest, Goya's Ghost, The People Vs. Larry Flynt)
Those are definitely all Hollywood movies, and Goya's Ghost sucked. If you want to include him as a great Czech director then pick the films he made there: Fireman's Ball and Loves of a Blonde.

Ruzowitzky (the Counterfeiters)
Short list of Holocaust films which were better: Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful, The Ogre, Triumph of the Spirit. Not a great film.

and Austrians in America Franz Planer, Billy Wilder (sunset boulevard, some like it hot, the apartment, the lost weekend), Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder, Laura, the Cardinal)
Oh, come on! If it's made in America, with American money, american actors, set designers, key grips, gaffers, camermen, and extras it's an American film. One guy does not a foreign film make. Those guys were the backbone of the American system and while they worked here, I'm counting them. I figured I was being nice not counting British films or Kubrick while he was over there. I wasn't even counting The Lord of the Rings Movies since they were made in New Zealand. You're just taking a mile.

Sweden has Ingmar Bergman,
And Denmark has Dryer.

Spain has Luis Bunuel
And Mexico has Del Toro

and I won't go any further...
Well, if you're going to count every director who ever made a good movie, what about Chaplin,Keaton, Hawks, Ford, Curtiz, Capra, Lumet, Spielberg, Tarantino, The Wachowski Brothers, Coppola, Scott, Aronofsky, Brooks, Allen, Stone, Fleming, De Palma, Cameron, Kazan, etc? Be honest. Not every name you listed is first rate.

but take just Fellini from italy and Bergman from Sweden and you have two of the greatest directors in all film....
And I think Kubrick is a match for Fellini and Scorsese for Bergman.

JBI

07-21-2009, 01:03 AM

This is just an opinion, though, that you state as fact.

Which film? it is an opinion, but really, which film would you say I inaccurately portrayed? Certainly not Crash, that seems the worst of the lot, though Gladiator perhaps comes in a close second, or perhaps Chicago?.

And Mortal, you actually liked La Vita é Bella? God, such an overrated movie, that and Nuovo Cinema Paradiso have to be the most overrated Italian films ever.

Lord of the Rings, A Beautiful Mind, and Chicago are good movies. Crash wasn't the stuff of greatness but it was hardly bad, which also goes for Slumdog Millionaire. The others are pretty terrible. Still, you shouldn't overlook All Quiet on the Western Front, Mutiny on the Bounty, Gone With the Wind, How Green Was My Valley, Casablanca, The Lost Weekend, The Best Years of Our Lives, Gentlemen's Agreement, All the King's Men, All About Eve, An American in Paris, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, The Sound of Music, Patton, The Godfather, Rocky, Kramer vs Kramer, Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Ghandi, Amadeus, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Rain Man, Driving Miss Daisy, The Silence of the Lambs, Schindler's List, American Beauty. Those are good films.

That isn't the discussion at any rate - we are talking about contemporary trends here, and this sort of self promotion - it's like saying contemporary English literature is the dominant in the world right now, because 400 years ago Shakespeare happened to be English - it's a ridiculous argument.

We are discussing contemporary trends - dumbing down, as a relatively new phenomenon, that's why I limited it to the last 9 years of prizes - Gone with the Wind may have been a great movie, but the people who made it, and the people who enjoyed it are slowly disappearing - the question is what the American brand is formulating today, and how its public is reacting to the tastes of contemporary times, and its academics and institutions supporting and criticizing it.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-21-2009, 01:14 AM

Again, just your opinion, that you once again arrogantly state as fact.

I think Lord of the Rings, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, A Beautiful Mind, and especially Gladiator are excellent movies.

mortalterror

07-21-2009, 01:33 AM

And Mortal, you actually liked La Vita é Bella? God, such an overrated movie, that and Nuovo Cinema Paradiso have to be the most overrated Italian films ever.
I thought it was funny and heart warming. "What are they gonna' do. Paint on me Achtung! Jewish Waiter?" or "I won the tank! I won. I won." or that part where the guy doesn't want to frighten his kid so he marches to his death comically? It reminded me of Jakob the Liar, the original good one.

That isn't the discussion at any rate - we are talking about contemporary trends here, and this sort of self promotion - it's like saying contemporary English literature is the dominant in the world right now, because 400 years ago Shakespeare happened to be English - it's a ridiculous argument.

We are discussing contemporary trends - dumbing down, as a relatively new phenomenon, that's why I limited it to the last 9 years of prizes - Gone with the Wind may have been a great movie, but the people who made it, and the people who enjoyed it are slowly disappearing - the question is what the American brand is formulating today, and how its public is reacting to the tastes of contemporary times, and its academics and institutions supporting and criticizing it.
Well, I liked The Aviator, The Fountain, The Man From Earth, No Country For Old Men, Master and Commander, Lord of the Rings, Memento, Requiem For a Dream, Bowling For Columbine, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Fog of War. I'm not a fan of There Will Be Blood but others were, and Scorsese is coming out with Shutter Island this year which should be good. Besides, I thought you liked Woody Allen movies? If you just get 1 good film a year, you're doing alright. Years were you get a ton of great stuff all at once like 1994 or 1957 are pretty rare.

As for good foreign films not doing well in America, didn't Crouching Tiger make 130 million? Imdb says La Dolce Vita made almost 20 million here and with inflation that would be more like 140 million today. It was a hit. I can remember Rodney Dangerfield talking about it on one of his old records from the time, and it made such huge waves that other movies referenced it. Divorce Italian Style includes a brief mention of the film. I think that the public does have some taste, not a lot, but some.

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 01:44 AM

Well, if you're going to count every director who ever made a good movie, what about Chaplin,Keaton, Hawks, Ford, Curtiz, Capra, Lumet, Spielberg, Tarantino, The Wachowski Brothers, Coppola, Scott, Aronofsky, Brooks, Allen, Stone, Fleming, De Palma, Cameron, Kazan, etc? Be honest. Not every name you listed is first rate.

And I think Kubrick is a match for Fellini and Scorsese for Bergman.

all I was saying is we haven't seen the majority of the cinema these countries produce and it is ludicrous to say that American cinema has as many great films as the rest of the world combined...

also, we can say foreign directors filming in America are shooting American films I suppose.. I don't mind that... the director is still from that other nation though...

second I will admit no such thing that any of these directors are second rate, especially considering you say A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, and Lord of the Rings (especially) are good movies.. the directors I listed have all made much better films than any of these 3... and that is without dropping into the rest of your list there...

anyways we are as JBI says falling away from the discussion of the recent phenomenon of dumbing down...

in contemporary film, america is slipping, and although there are quite a few good directors still producing films in America, I will readily admit this, what is promoted and what the public wants is garbage... such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Transformers, Gladiator, Terminator, the Matirx, etc etc... you don't find so much of this in European cinema, I don't know so much about Asian Cinema, but in contemporary European cinema you do not find this fixation with rubbish... well not to the same extent anyways...

and the media promotes and supports this, and there really isn't all that much criticism in America of this, there is some, but it is the exception as it is "unamerican" to speak out against American values and culture...

mortalterror

07-21-2009, 02:25 AM

in contemporary film, america is slipping, and although there are quite a few good directors still producing films in America, I will readily admit this, what is promoted and what the public wants is garbage... such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Transformers, Gladiator, Terminator, the Matirx, etc etc... you don't find so much of this in European cinema, I don't know so much about Asian Cinema, but in contemporary European cinema you do not find this fixation with rubbish... well not to the same extent anyways...
Here is a list of the All Time French Box Office from 2005: http://www.moviemarshal.com.au/boxfran.html #2 ASTERIX AND OBELIX: MISSION CLEOPATRE #4 ASTERIX AND OBELIX VS. CEASER. These people think that Jerry Lewis is a comedic god. See how many classics you can spot on this list. Even with their artistic sensibilities, and government sponsorship, they don't make or watch nearly as many good movies as their reputation suggests. Some of their classics could be American movies. Beauty and the Beast is just The Wizard of Oz without the singing. Did you see their crummy kung fu action flick Brotherhood of the Wolf?

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 02:32 AM

mortalterror

07-21-2009, 02:56 AM

oh yes, Brotherhood of the Wolf was absolutely terrible, although I don't recall kung fu being a major part of it? it reminded me of a rip off of another film, that I can't think of at the moment.. hmm... maybe I exaggerate the pros of European cinema being from somewhere else...

I do however prefer the winner of the Palme D'Or to the winner of the Oscar most years... especially recently...
It was years ago. Maybe it wasn't kung fu. I just remember a lot of kicking and punching and boring.

I can totally get behind the Palme D'Or, but not for the last ten years or so. The Wind That Shakes The Barley? Fahrenheit 9/11? Really? There is actually a lot of crossover between the Academy and Cannes. The winners in this case are often the winners at the Academy, the runners up, or the winner of Best Foreign film. Either way, I think they are both more reliable than Venice, Berlin, Toronto, or Sundance. The rules for admission to those festivals can be downright byzantine and exclude all kinds of good stuff.

One problem I have with the European film festivals is that they never pick a big action flick everybody likes. But they will vote for quirky off-beat movies, meditations about politics and abortion that aren't even very good. It seems like they are so concerned with not being American that they bias themselves the other way. How many good comedies or westerns or musicals win those awards? I know that Europe likes it's action flicks or else they wouldn't make movies like Night Watch.

MarkBastable

07-21-2009, 05:43 AM

An American director touches on this subject....

“The studios' mentality is that Americans are stupid. They try to lower the standard as much as they can to reach what they think is this great dumb audience. And I have always resisted that and wanted to believe in the audience’s intelligence. But if you keep feeding people baby food for long enough they begin to like it.”

Terry Gilliam, in an interview for The Times (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article6281714.ece).

My footnote...

To be fair to the studios, they aren't parochial. They don't think only that Americans are stupid. They think that everyone is stupid.

JCamilo

07-21-2009, 06:25 AM

The really good American directors living can be counted with one hand. And most of them are not being watched, and are attacked by the big studios. The American masters are all dead and gone.

Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg (and yes when one looks at Jaws and Indiana Jones as brilliant within their genre... to say nothing of Schindler's List, I do count him as a master), David Lynch, Joel Coen, even Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima) are all still alive... although perhaps their best films are behind them... perhaps not. Add to this any number of independent film makers... unless we are to assume that only those with a limited budget from outside the US will achieve anything of merit.

Anyone who does not consider Spielberg is just missing the point. If anything "the dumbing down" can be translated to : We wanna be spielberg but just him is actually able to tell a story with lots of special effects without making videogames ala Caribiean Pirates and actually, spend less money than the rest. Cameron, Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson and even the last two decades Scorcese are trying to do what Spielberg do in his best momments. He knows every trick to manipulate the audience. I bit beyond to just enterteiment.
I would certainly include what Pixar is doing as well. There is a lot of quality in movies Nemo, Incridibles, Wall-E.
And American cinema is build by lots of outsiders,it is a trait of Hollywood, one of their strengths, so it is bit pointless to list the birthplace of some directors and not the style and how it was produced. In other hand, denying that a mass media industry is not going for the average law (since always) because their best movies (as for example, the oscar list is supposed to represent) is just silly.

rozreads

07-21-2009, 10:31 AM

I haven't read this whole thread, so don't know if something along this line has been mentioned before, but with this topic, I'm reminded of the Mark Twain quote:

"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read."

MarkBastable

07-21-2009, 10:56 AM

L. Vampa

07-21-2009, 11:21 AM

I agree that American cinema has been, and still is, the best in the world, although countries like Spain, Italy, Sweden and Japan have produced some great films. The fact that some of the great directors in Hollywood have been foreigners doesn't take away from the achievements of American filmmaking. If the money, producers, crew, studio and advertising were from the U.S., then it's an American creation.

King Mob

07-21-2009, 02:20 PM

Americans aren't allowed to be proud of their own film? Who cares about the industry. Plenty of great directors in America are still at work, new and old. Same as in other countries. Just because Hollywood is here doesn't automatically void all cultural products.

Yes, of course, i didn't mean to say that. The industry is what sometimes goes against culture.

but this is silly! what about American directors and filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Paul Thomas Anderson, Richard Linklater, Greg Pak, Eva Brzeski, Tom Dicillo, etc etc??

Those were the ones I had in mind, but i don't think the etc etc goes for much long. Terry Gilliam i would add to such list.

Maybe i expressed myself wrongly. Many american films are of course excellent. What I tried to say is that the artists that try to experiment and push forward the boundaries are generally not american.

Of course Scorsese is a good director but he has always stayed in a certain frame of cinema. Dont get me wrong, Taxi Driver is one of my favorite films. But few american films were part of avant-garde movements.

You could say that Von Trier or Cronenberg bore you or are bad directors. But still, the search is in them to find new forms, new ways to express with images and sounds, and new themes to explore.

What America did in literature, America didn't do in cinema. The Burroughs, Pynchons, Barths, Vonneguts, Thompsons of cinema are not (again, generally) American.

You know, I think I'll pass on any future projects of David Cronenberg's where people have sex after gruesome car crashes, men are raped by giant typewriters, foreign diplomats carry on decades long affairs with men they think are really women but are actually spies, people's heads explode, or there is any possibility that they may be attacked by horny zombies.

I don't find anything bad in all that. On the contrary, it sounds incredibly interesting. The cinema paradise of Burroughs and Ballard.

And again, most of Kubrick's films can hardly be said to be american. And Scorsese is no match for Bergman. Scorsese, in the last decade and a half, has changed his mind and art to an Academy-pleasing cinema. Let's forget about art, let's win Oscars!!!

But still, i don't want to sound as if im attacking what American films acheived. I love the Coens, I love Scorsese's older films, and Citizen Kane, and Blade Runner, and Jarmusch and Gilliam, and so on. That wasn't the point i was trying to make.

It is as if American cinema had decided to just stay put with what they acheived, staying in their classic structures and forms. They may have reached vertically wonderful artistic heights, but only a couple of directors had the courage to run to all sides and expand the horizons, sacrificing public and Academy awards. And David Lynch is one of them, may you like it or not.

Oh i forgot, mortalterror, I agree with you that Goya's Ghost sucked. I couldn't believe my eyes.

"What we've got here is failure to communicate". I happen to give more value to the art that tries new things and fails than the one that stays in safe ground and succeeds. It's just an opinion.
And that's the reason my films will surely suck :). (im studiyng filmmaking, by the way)

JBI

07-21-2009, 02:34 PM

mortalterror

07-21-2009, 03:29 PM

What if it is filmed in Toronto, as many, many American films are?
JBI brings up a good point. Most of the bad American films are filmed in Toronto. Thank you, JBI.

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 03:59 PM

It was years ago. Maybe it wasn't kung fu. I just remember a lot of kicking and punching and boring.

I can totally get behind the Palme D'Or, but not for the last ten years or so. The Wind That Shakes The Barley? Fahrenheit 9/11? Really? There is actually a lot of crossover between the Academy and Cannes. The winners in this case are often the winners at the Academy, the runners up, or the winner of Best Foreign film. Either way, I think they are both more reliable than Venice, Berlin, Toronto, or Sundance. The rules for admission to those festivals can be downright byzantine and exclude all kinds of good stuff.

One problem I have with the European film festivals is that they never pick a big action flick everybody likes. But they will vote for quirky off-beat movies, meditations about politics and abortion that aren't even very good. It seems like they are so concerned with not being American that they bias themselves the other way. How many good comedies or westerns or musicals win those awards? I know that Europe likes it's action flicks or else they wouldn't make movies like Night Watch.

yes but big action flicks everyone likes are almost always mediocre... The Lord of the Rings being the case in point... Gladiator being another...

the past 10 years? you list two films.. I am totally against the fact Farenheit 9:11 won, as that is ridiculous, and The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a good film but not one that should have even been a nomination there...

1999 Rosetta --- Oscar = Shakespeare in Love
2000 Dancer in the Dark ---- Oscar = American Beauty
2001 The Son's Room ---- Oscar = Gladiator
2002 The Pianist ---- Oscar = A Beautiful Mind
2003 Elephant --- Oscar = Chicago
2004 Farenheit 9:11 --- Oscar = Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
2005 The Child ---- Oscar = Million Dollar Baby
2006 The Wind that Shakes the Barley --- Oscar = Crash
2007 4 months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days --- Oscar = The Departed
2008 The Class ---- Oscar = No Country for Old Men
2009 The White Ribbon --- Oscar = Slumdog Millionaire

so the only years I could even see the Oscar winner being better than the Palme D'Or are maybe:

1999 I found both films to be great, so I'm not sure which one I would pick...

2000, though this is very debateable as both are great films...

2004 although it's funny that the year the Palme D'Or was given out to the most ridiculous film in the award's history, the Oscars chose a film that wasn't much better.. sure Lord of the Rings 3 was entertaining but even calling it one of the better films of that year is a stretch...

2006 although I would say Wind That Shakes the Barley and Crash are about of the same level... good, but not worthy of the critical acclaim they received..

now the other 7 years...

2001 The Son's Room far outshines the piece of trash that was Gladiator... there is no debate here...

2002 The Pianist, it still astounds me that A Beautiful Mind won best picture over this movie..

2003 Elephant was interesting but far from great, but Chicago was much much worse..

2005 The child, well I don't think one can put Million Dollar Baby in that category... Hillary Swank and Clint Eastwood.. not happening..

2007 The Departed wins best picture? give me a break.. it is nowhere near the quality of a film like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days

2008 The Class is better than No Country For Old Men, although I can say this was one of the better Oscar Choices in recent years...

2009 The White Ribbon... is it even a comparison between this film and Slumdog Millionaire.. I think not.. :p

mortalterror

07-21-2009, 04:55 PM

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-21-2009, 05:59 PM

wessexgirl

07-21-2009, 06:17 PM

I don't get what you guys are talking about. Please explain to me how Gladiator and Lord of the Rings are "mediocre" films. What, does a movie having action automatically disqualify it from being good?

No, most certainly not. I am not a fan of TLOTR, but that's because I didn't like the books, not because they aren't good films. From what I can see, they're great films. As for Gladiator, I loved it. And while I'm here, have I missed something? Surely Slumdog Millionaire is a British film, and a very good one at that. Can all the detractors inform me as to when they qualified as film-makers? Watching a film, like reading a book, is subjective. Why do people think they are the dogs b****** as reviewers, and only their opinion counts?

MarkBastable

07-21-2009, 06:17 PM

I don't get what you guys are talking about. Please explain to me how Gladiator and Lord of the Rings are "mediocre" films. What, does a movie having action automatically disqualify it from being good?

In the case of Gladiator, it's not the action that makes it so grim. It's the hackneyed plot, the witless dialogue, the pantomime villain (why didn't they just give him a cape and a waxed moustache?) and the general feeling that it wouldn't have made any difference at all if they'd set in in Dodge City, occupied France or on the prison planet Xerxes-3.

Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is a terrific movie franchise because it lets you off having to read the godawful book.

Emil Miller

07-21-2009, 06:29 PM

In the case of Gladiator, it's not the action that makes it so grim. It's the hackneyed plot, the witless dialogue, the pantomime villain (why didn't they just give him a cape and a waxed moustache?) and the general feeling that it wouldn't have made any difference at all if they'd set in in Dodge City, occupied France or on the prison planet Xerxes-3.

Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is a terrific movie franchise because it lets you off having to read the godawful book.

I haven't seen Gladiator or Lord of the Rings because I know they are not worth seeing. How do I know ? Because I have a rule of thumb that never fails me, the bigger the hype, the worse the product. I apply it to all types of entertainment and it has saved me a lot of time and money.

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 07:12 PM

Here's how I called those years.
2008 Slumdog Millionaire *Just a weak year. It happens.
2007 The Man From Earth
2006 Labyrinth of the Faun
2005 Serenity *I know there are better films I haven't seen from that year.
2004 The Aviator
2003 Master and Commander
2002 Infernal Affairs
2001 Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
2000 Battle Royale
1999 The Matrix

I haven't seen The White Ribbon yet; so I can't make that call. The Departed was pretty awful, especially considering it's source material. But when I stopped resenting it and took it for what it was, ignored the plot holes and silly dialogue choices, it was actually a watchable popcorn cop flick. It's no Fugitive, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, or The Professional, but I can see why fans of action enjoy it. As for Chicago, I'm a big fan of musicals. I believe it was an accurate homage in the style of Bob Fosse who made Cabaret and All That Jazz. The Pianist wasn't as profound as a lot of people think. It's a good movie with a lot of added interest and gravitas because it's about the Holocaust, but it's no Schindler's List. I thought Crouching Tiger, and Traffic were better than Gladiator but that's how it goes sometimes. Lastly, I didn't enjoy 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days. It was just a message movie with gritty realism, stark photography, and some added gravitas drawn from the subject matter. What were it's great characters, lines, visuals? Who still talks about this movie?

oh, I do like some the choices you make there.. I loved The Man From Earth though I don't know all that many who have seen it... Another movie around that time I found interesting although I don't know just how great it was, was The Interview.. I thought Steve Buscemi was just fantastic in that role...

I like musicals too, just Chicago wasn't all that great in my opinion.. just my opinion here, and I do admit, I may prefer musicals on the live stage and therefore may be a little jaded against movie adaptations as many of them butcher the work...

I think The Pianist was fantastic, and very moving and somewhat profound, although I agree, it is still no Schindler's List.. but not many movies are :D Adrien Brody was amazing in that role though...

no one talks about 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days anymore, and it may not have been great, in fact I don't think it was either... but it was still a far better movie than the oscar winner that year The Departed.. which was essentially a popcorn flick and many of the acting performances were quite disappointing in it.. such as Jack Nicholson, who I love in many roles...

The first Lord of the Rings movie was the only decent one of the 3 and is the only one of them that could possibly have any claim to a best picture award, although I still don't believe it was that worthy.. the acting was decent in it, the book was followed to some extent, much better than in 2 and 3, the action wasn't quite as absurd and comical, the dialogue didn't border on banality and idiocy as in the last 2... The third movie was just terrible though...

Mutatis action has nothing to do with whether a film is good or not... many good films have action in them... Crouching Tiger, Hero, the first Matrix, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Fugitive, Lock stock and two smoking barrels, saving private ryan (although the less action oriented Thin Red Line was much better), the first Terminator, and many others.. and some are even worthy of best picture in extreme cases, but blockbuster action flicks such as Terminator 4, transformers 1 & 2, The Return of the King, they are just pretty awful... the dialogue is bad, the action scenes are silly and drag far too much... the characters are hollow... the special effects absurd..

anyways I thought it was awfully clear to all that everything anyone says with regard to art is opinion and subjective.. I don't think anyone thinks otherwise, no matter how strong our opinions.. and if you disagree about a particular book, or movie for that matter, well you have the right to say so, and I have the right to argue against your viewpoint... or do I? is criticism so terrifying?

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-21-2009, 07:21 PM

I haven't seen Gladiator or Lord of the Rings because I know they are not worth seeing. How do I know ? Because I have a rule of thumb that never fails me, the bigger the hype, the worse the product. I apply it to all types of entertainment and it has saved me a lot of time and money.

How would you know if you've never seen said movies?

Emil Miller

07-21-2009, 08:29 PM

How would you know if you've never seen said movies?

Read what I have said. The greater the hype, and God knows both those films had masses of it, the worse the film. Obviously, if they have to be hyped to the heavens, it's because they have no intrinsic value; otherwise, why do it?

MSDGreen

07-21-2009, 08:38 PM

Read what I have said. The greater the hype, and God knows both those films had masses of it, the worse the film. Obviously, if they have to be hyped to the heavens, it's because they have no intrinsic value; otherwise, why do it?

Movies are made to make money. The bigger the hype is the higher the profit margins. If something is hyped up does not necessarily mean that it is a bad product. Labeling like that can save you from loads of poor movies, but it can also shield you from something that is pretty darn good too. I should also be noted that I really enjoyed the Lord of the Ring movies.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-21-2009, 09:23 PM

Read what I have said. The greater the hype, and God knows both those films had masses of it, the worse the film. Obviously, if they have to be hyped to the heavens, it's because they have no intrinsic value; otherwise, why do it?

Why? Like the above poster said, money. How could you not know this?

How would you know that theory is even correct if you never even see the hyped movies?

The Beatles were really hyped, too, and we all know they were crap.

stlukesguild

07-21-2009, 09:43 PM

The Beatles were really hyped, too, and we all know they were crap.

That's not much of an argument with Brian who is almost exclusively a classical music aficionado.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-21-2009, 11:50 PM

Hmmmmm . . . . well, in that case, Beethoven and Mozart were hyped (I assume), and we all know they were crap.

JCamilo

07-21-2009, 11:55 PM

that is not how it works : american hyped things are bad, like Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps and Carl Lewis.

islandclimber

07-21-2009, 11:57 PM

that is not how it works : american hyped things are bad, like Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps and Carl Lewis.

we could make a pretty good list here then.. but you forgot to add the famous Texan Lance Armstrong to the list! :D

Movies are made to make money. The bigger the hype is the higher the profit margins. If something is hyped up does not necessarily mean that it is a bad product. Labeling like that can save you from loads of poor movies, but it can also shield you from something that is pretty darn good too. I should also be noted that I really enjoyed the Lord of the Ring movies.

Great movies seem to escape this phenomenon to a degree.. you didn't see all kinds of hype leading up to the release of The Pianist, Schindler's List, The Man From Earth, As Good as it Gets, The Interview, Philadelphia, No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Shakespeare in Love, Coffee and Cigarettes and many many more.. I don't what the foreign markets are like in terms of hype and promotion for movies but I assume alot of great movies don't receive a lot of it also...

whereas the blockbusters, that often are somewhat mediocre, are hyped to high heaven.. Just look at the franchises Spiderman, Harry Potter, Transformers, Lord of the RIngs, The Matrix films, The Terminator series, the Upcoming GI Joe film that will most likely turn into a series of films... these films are massively hyped and rarely end up being great films.. The first Lord of the Rings was decent if not good, for reasons I described above, the first Matrix film was pretty good partly because of it's uniqueness and newness, the first Terminator was a decent movie... but the rest are quite mediocre.. and this is only touching the tip of the iceberg in film.. mind you my guilty pleasure is dumb comedy films, but I hold no pretense of them being great film, just something to laugh at for pleasure..

stlukesguild

07-22-2009, 12:16 AM

we could make a pretty good list here then.. but you forgot to add the famous Texan Lance Armstrong to the list!:D

And Scarlett Johansson... did I actually say that?!:eek::goof:

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-22-2009, 12:49 AM

Well, I don't know how you can argue over athletes. They accomplish something tangible. It isn't like arguing over something subjectively like movie quality.

And, for the record, Terminator 2 is the best movie in the franchise.

And what was this thread about again? I need to go back to page 1 and check. . .

Nick Capozzoli

07-22-2009, 02:07 AM

I don't get what you guys are talking about. Please explain to me how Gladiator and Lord of the Rings are "mediocre" films. What, does a movie having action automatically disqualify it from being good?

Good point. We have strayed a bit from the original subject of this thread, which is Bloom's critique of popular literature, I liked Gladiator, and I say that as someone who studied Latin literature and Roman culture in college. I'd be interested in Bloom's opinion of Gladiator, but I suspect he would have a higher opinion of that than of Harry Potter films.

Shakespeare was quite as popular in his time as Stephen King or J.K. Rowland.
Popularity is not necessarily a mark of bad literature or any other art. What is important is not to assume that popularity is a mark of good art. :)

Emil Miller

07-22-2009, 07:31 AM

Hmmmmm . . . . well, in that case, Beethoven and Mozart were hyped (I assume), and we all know they were crap.

Wrong on both counts.

that is not how it works : american hyped things are bad, like Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps and Carl Lewis.

They were only hyped after they had proven their worth.

Why? Like the above poster said, money. How could you not know this?.

I reproduce below part of an item that I posted a few months ago:

I am also quite interested in finance and a couple of years ago someone asked an investment magazine I was reading that, considering the vast box office take on so-called Blockbuster films, wouldn't films be a good investment option? The answer a definite NO, because practically all of the money made on films these days goes on the the world-wide hyping of the film. The return to investors was about 5% and they could have made more simply by leaving their money on deposit. In this environment it is difficult to give much credence to the film industry today.

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-22-2009, 09:28 AM

Just to be clear, I don't think Beethoven or Mozart were crap (of The Beatles for that matter). I was being facetious.

stlukesguild

07-22-2009, 11:09 AM

You don't expect us fans of literature to actually get sarcasm or irony now, do you? At least not without this guy::rolleyes:

:rolleyes:

stlukesguild

07-22-2009, 11:14 AM

Considering the supposed development of the audience (and its "dumbing down") for literature, I recently came across this interesting article upon the evolution or development of the audience in music which raises some interesting questions.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2008/09/08/080908crmu_music_ross?currentPage=all

curlyqlink

07-22-2009, 04:24 PM

I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic

Was Stephen King implying that his novels are solely fit for adults? Does he really think his formulaic, stiffly written novels are somehow more complex or nuanced than J.K. Rowling's formulaic, stiffly written ones?

Mutatis-Mutandis

07-22-2009, 04:37 PM

I think it's pretty obvious most of King's work far exceeds anything Rowling has done.

JBI

07-22-2009, 05:03 PM

I think it's pretty obvious most of King's work far exceeds anything Rowling has done.

Yes, 100 books to 7.

MSDGreen

07-22-2009, 05:08 PM

Quote:
Originally Posted by islandclimber

Great movies seem to escape this phenomenon to a degree.. you didn't see all kinds of hype leading up to the release of The Pianist, Schindler's List, The Man From Earth, As Good as it Gets, The Interview, Philadelphia, No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Shakespeare in Love, Coffee and Cigarettes and many many more.. I don't what the foreign markets are like in terms of hype and promotion for movies but I assume alot of great movies don't receive a lot of it also...

whereas the blockbusters, that often are somewhat mediocre, are hyped to high heaven.. Just look at the franchises Spiderman, Harry Potter, Transformers, Lord of the RIngs, The Matrix films, The Terminator series, the Upcoming GI Joe film that will most likely turn into a series of films... these films are massively hyped and rarely end up being great films.. The first Lord of the Rings was decent if not good, for reasons I described above, the first Matrix film was pretty good partly because of it's uniqueness and newness, the first Terminator was a decent movie... but the rest are quite mediocre.. and this is only touching the tip of the iceberg in film.. mind you my guilty pleasure is dumb comedy films, but I hold no pretense of them being great film, just something to laugh at for pleasure..
__________________________________________________ __

I think that some of the movies on your list did get hyped a little, just a different type of hype (they also deserved to get hyped). Still they are nowhere near the hype received by many of the "look at the explosion" flicks. While sadly I have not seen the whole list that you provided, but I have seen almost all of them. IMO they are very good films, and are worthy of praise as such. While I still enjoy watching things get blown up, every now and again, I would not consider movies such as Transformers as good. I will restate that I did, and still do, enjoy The Lord of the Ring series. I do think this is interesting:

Domestic Box office gross

The Pianist 32,572,577
Schindler’s List 96,065,768
As Good As it gets 148,478,011
The interview 416,951
Philadelphia 77,446,440
No country for old men 74,283,625
There will be Blood 40,222,514
Shakespeare in love 100,317,794
Coffee and cigarettes 2,198,924

Transformers 319,246,193
Transformers: Revenge of the fallen 367,614,540
Fellowship of the Ring 313,364,114

I am not saying that these numbers make the movies better, they don't. I do believe that they speak very loudly though. Granted that Transformers and TLOTR did have large budgets (200 Million for Transformers 2). I have not seen Transformers 2, so I can not attest to its shoddiness. I am also unsure if the budget includes advertisement or "cost-of-hype". Also I did not include foreign box office because I am lazy and did not want to do simple math. But, just as a quick example:

Transformers: Revenge of the fallen
Worldwide: $766,361,084

As Good As It Gets
Worldwide: $314,178,011

Schindler's List
Worldwide: $321,306,305

Remember that I would never say that Transformers> Schindler's List as far as great films go. This is because Transformers is not good and Schindler's List is. I am saying that hype can pay off. Everything that I have heard about Transformers 2 is that it was even worse than the first, and it still does well worldwide.

These numbers were taken from www.boxofficemojo.com

Rogers_68

09-20-2009, 04:13 PM

I appreciate "literature", as in stuff that gets me thinking and that really requires thought to decipher. Don DeLillo has been my favorite writer for a long time and the only writer of whom I've read everything he's done. I've also worked my way through about half of Pynchon's work, which as lead me to a tattoo on my right arm of the muted post horn in The Crying of Lot 49 (I got it as a tribute to fiction and to good literature).

I also like the three or four Stephen King novels I've read, and I'm going to read Twilight at some point just to see what's really going on with Stephenie Meyer.

I read different fiction for different reasons. I believe that we should be studying the classics in schools and in our own lives. I also think that many people who wouldn't otherwise touch a book are drawn in to Harry Potter; is that not a good thing? I think if a kid will read a lame-o easy fiction book instead of playing Guitar Hero, that's better than nothing at all. And hopefully reading such books will lead him to better and better writing until he's reading more classic/literature stuff.

mal4mac

09-21-2009, 06:34 AM

I also think that many people who wouldn't otherwise touch a book are drawn in to Harry Potter; is that not a good thing? I think if a kid will read a lame-o easy fiction book instead of playing Guitar Hero, that's better than nothing at all. And hopefully reading such books will lead him to better and better writing until he's reading more classic/literature stuff.

It might be a good thing in the sense that eating mouldy bread is a good thing if you are starving to death. But there are hundreds of great children's books. Why not give them to children instead of the Potter series? I can't see how reading drivel will automatically lead to reading good books. Adults need to help children find better books, and stop thinking that "everything is fine" if they are reading anything.

Drkshadow03

09-21-2009, 08:22 AM

It might be a good thing in the sense that eating mouldy bread is a good thing if you are starving to death. But there are hundreds of great children's books. Why not give them to children instead of the Potter series? I can't see how reading drivel will automatically lead to reading good books. Adults need to help children find better books, and stop thinking that "everything is fine" if they are reading anything.

::raises hand:: Ew, ew, ew, I know the answer to this one! I think the answer here is that the Harry Potter books aren't drivel! But as for the other great children's lit. Why not give them both? Or better yet, why not let them choose based off their own tastes, so you know, they can develop that even more important quality: individuality.

I don't want to rehash the old argument. There was already a long thread on this topic. See here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45699) and read the entire thread.

Nietzsche

09-21-2009, 08:45 AM

JCamilo

09-21-2009, 09:56 AM

The ridiculous thing is if you do not happen to enjoy or like a certain author or book, you can find faults in their writing style and make them out to be a bad writer. Give me a book, and I can give you a critical review.

As far as all these want-to-be intellectuals who try and make themselves sound smart by doing such things, would the time spent analyzing another writer not be better spent creating something yourself? If you are not able, what right have you at all to judge another author's work? Their work is obviously better than anything you can create. Think otherwise? Then do it.

Has anyone ever seen a wonderful little movie called the Dead Poets Society? In the film, the teacher makes the students tear out the pages on judging poetry's goodness because he feels such methods of judging a work will just make you look at everything with the "hmm, what is wrong with this and why should I not like it" point of view. My second point is, when the movie came out it was given bad reviews yet now Dead Poets Society is regarded a classic and shown in schools. What is considered good writing (or film making) to one person is not the same as the other and public opinion on a work of entertainment changes.

Really, you do sound like Paulo Coelho. He was the one who, unable to stand up against the negative critics he receive, he attacked the need of critics. Obviously he forgot that a Critical Essay is also a very relevant part of literature, that demmands from the writer a lot of talent (not just knowledge) and not just some drivel you can dismiss with childish claims that "If you are saying something is wrong, it is because you can not do it yourself." It is just like claiming that only someone that can drive can say that someone using a blindfold to drive in a highway is doing something very dangerous, even if the person did not hit any other car yet.
The more fun is that you seemed to find yourself the right (Right???) to write a critic but apparently others can not. Public opinion changes, but it is irrelevant. What is good writing is not what is popular. And yeah, to define what is good writing (even if it is to discover that we can not define) you will need those damn critics you asked to be silenced. Simple because: they are those studying for years, decades, etc. Those wanna-be intelectuals, apparently have not the right, just the knowledge.
As Dead Societies, I have no idea how old are you, but however told this nice tale to you is just lying. The movie was successful when released, receiving good criticals reviews and even several Oscar Nominations. It was reckonized as a good movie and showed in schools (either they are telling something useful or not) since then, not now.

Pollopicu

09-21-2009, 10:35 AM

wow.

Dumbing down American readers
By Harold Bloom, 9/24/2003

THE DECISION to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. By awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat. If this is going to be the criterion in the future, then perhaps next year the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steel, and surely the Nobel Prize for literature should go to J.K. Rowling.

ADVERTISEMENT

What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

I began as a scholar of the romantic poets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was understood that the great English romantic poets were Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon, and others who just can't write. A fourth-rate playwright like Aphra Behn is being taught instead of Shakespeare in many curriculums across the country.

Recently I spoke at the funeral of my old friend Thomas M. Green of Yale, perhaps the most distinguished scholar of Renaissance literature of his generation. I said, "I fear that something of great value has ended forever."

Today there are four living American novelists I know of who are still at work and who deserve our praise. Thomas Pynchon is still writing. My friend Philip Roth, who will now share this "distinguished contribution" award with Stephen King, is a great comedian and would no doubt find something funny to say about it. There's Cormac McCarthy, whose novel "Blood Meridian" is worthy of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," and Don DeLillo, whose "Underworld" is a great book.

Instead, this year's award goes to King. It's a terrible mistake.

Harold Bloom is a professor at Yale University and author of "The Western Canon." He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.

One of the best articles on the subject of "dumbing down America" I've read thus far.
There is definitely a conspiracy to dumb down America in all different aspects of life, and it targets our younger generations, so why not also our young American readers?

Honestly, Bloom hasn't won me over and I'm not his biggest fan, but you gotta give a guy credit when credit is due.

Pollopicu

09-21-2009, 11:11 AM

Along with changing diapers and supervising geometry homework, reading "Harry Potter" was one of those chores of parenthood that I was happy to do -- and then happy to stop. But all around me, I see adults reading J.K. Rowling's books to themselves: perfectly intelligent, mature people, poring over "Harry Potter" with nary a child in sight.

I'd like to think that this is a romantic return to youth, but it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism. brilliant.

Shouldn't we just enjoy the $4 billion party? Millions of adults and children are reading! We keep hearing that "Harry Potter" is the gateway drug that's luring a reluctant populace back into bookstores and libraries. Even teenage boys -- Wii-addicted, MySpace-enslaved boys! -- are reading again, and if that's not magic, what is?

I've always wondered about this as well. And God forbid you go around asking people why.

Jozanny

09-21-2009, 11:21 AM

Poll: It is indeed passionate commentary, at least in terms of the award. When King's franchise was in its zenith, post-Carrie, when I was young, I read somewhat too much of this man's work, and I hate it, but part of that hate is based on the fact that King is rich, whereas I cannot produce enough to hire a literary agency, let alone really make a living.

However, my views have softened somewhat on formulaic driven work. The problem with King and Rice is not so much that they write badly; it is that their writing that is bad gets published anyway because they are treated like brands. As hostile as I am to its underlying misogyny, Carrie is a pretty good horror story, and in Rice's case, so is Interview, but that doesn't mean everything a franchise author produces is palatable. Rice often reads like she needs anti-hysteria medication, and nine times out of ten King is unbearable. If they wrote less they'd have better critical standing, but Bloom is right about the award.

promtbr

09-21-2009, 11:32 AM

Has anyone ever seen a wonderful little movie called the Dead Poets Society? In the film, the teacher makes the students tear out the pages on judging poetry's goodness because he feels such methods of judging a work will just make you look at everything with the "hmm, what is wrong with this and why should I not like it" point of view. My second point is, when the movie came out it was given bad reviews yet now Dead Poets Society is regarded a classic and shown in schools. What is considered good writing (or film making) to one person is not the same as the other and public opinion on a work of entertainment changes.

IMHO, Dead Poets Society should be shown in every HS english class room in America. I showed my 16 yr old daughter this movie after discovering her honors english teacher is assassinating her interest in literature. After his spiel on 'curriculum night' bragging to the parents how demanding he was going to make his class with dated, formulaic interpretations (for him there seems to be only one correct interpretation across the board on every work he has them read). I realized that there goes 30 kids desire to ever pick up a book that is remotely literary..

It is perfectly OK to be demanding, but please please please inspire the kids use THEIR brain, not exclusively the frickin' tenyeared teachers..

JBI

09-21-2009, 12:42 PM

IMHO, Dead Poets Society should be shown in every HS english class room in America. I showed my 16 yr old daughter this movie after discovering her honors english teacher is assassinating her interest in literature. After his spiel on 'curriculum night' bragging to the parents how demanding he was going to make his class with dated, formulaic interpretations (for him there seems to be only one correct interpretation across the board on every work he has them read). I realized that there goes 30 kids desire to ever pick up a book that is remotely literary..

It is perfectly OK to be demanding, but please please please inspire the kids use THEIR brain, not exclusively the frickin' tenyeared teachers..

I think the film disservices poetry. Plus the attending is so damn cheesy. Typical highschool rubbish, in my opinion, hardly an insightful movie on the so called "teenage condition" or on poetry, or education.

Lets be honest, poetry is not, and really cannot be taught at a high school level in that manner - generally, education in poetry either works best one-on-one, or as a personal adventure (I following the latter path, before formal education). What the movie does is try to hypersexualize poetry by reinterpreting and limiting it to a "romantic conception" of verse. The more one looks at cross-cultural approaches to the education of poetry though, I think, the more one finds that there are people who love poetry, undergoing educational settings completely different than either of the two portrayed in the film - the Chinese method of, essentially forcing the memorization of classical poetry, for instance, has instilled in many students a love and understanding of literary culture - are we to say, for instance, that that is somehow a worse method than the transcendentalist method advocated in the movie?

As far as I am concerned, if the verse is good, and there is a moderate understanding, after enough exposure, those destined to love verse will love verse for the verse itself, rather than the way it is exposed - the words of Shakespeare haven't lasted because teachers teach Shakespeare well, but quite simply, because some readers of Shakespeare see something profound - my introduction in high school to the sonnets was hardly illuminating, but something in 130, something I did not understand, and my teacher didn't really either, probably the hyperbole, managed to entice my interest - it has nothing to do with standing on one's desk and chanting one of Whitman's absolute worst poems (a poem that he was even ashamed of).

And yes, I saw this movie in a high school class, and even had to write a boring paper on it.

kelby_lake

09-21-2009, 12:53 PM

I don't believe people are encouraged to read the classics as much. It's a sort of inverse snobbery.

Nietzsche

09-21-2009, 01:30 PM

Really, you do sound like Paulo Coelho. He was the one who, unable to stand up against the negative critics he receive, he attacked the need of critics. Obviously he forgot that a Critical Essay is also a very relevant part of literature, that demmands from the writer a lot of talent (not just knowledge) and not just some drivel you can dismiss with childish claims that "If you are saying something is wrong, it is because you can not do it yourself." It is just like claiming that only someone that can drive can say that someone using a blindfold to drive in a highway is doing something very dangerous, even if the person did not hit any other car yet.
The more fun is that you seemed to find yourself the right (Right???) to write a critic but apparently others can not. Public opinion changes, but it is irrelevant. What is good writing is not what is popular. And yeah, to define what is good writing (even if it is to discover that we can not define) you will need those damn critics you asked to be silenced. Simple because: they are those studying for years, decades, etc. Those wanna-be intelectuals, apparently have not the right, just the knowledge.
As Dead Societies, I have no idea how old are you, but however told this nice tale to you is just lying. The movie was successful when released, receiving good criticals reviews and even several Oscar Nominations. It was reckonized as a good movie and showed in schools (either they are telling something useful or not) since then, not now.

I don't know who that is, I was thinking more alone the lines of a stoic when I made that statement though, that is that value judgments are inherently pointless [though I wouldn't go as far as to say that all judgments are unnecessary, obviously they are needed]. You are correct, criticism is indeed important. I don't know if you read a lot of philosophy, but criticism of other philosophical schools of thought is extremely common and useful for getting another view on someone; take Nietzsche's criticism of Kant for instance, or Kant's criticism of Hobbes. My point was, that all things are flawed and a critic's job is to find the faults in something. Take Shakespeare for instance. He is widely regarded as one of the best playwrights and poets in history, but he was not without his criticism. Just because I and others do not care for him, or there are criticisms of his work do not make Shakespeare any less of a writer, does it? Regardless of the flaws in most things, it can still be enjoyable. It's all relative to what aspects of a given work you find enjoyable or not. More so, if you are a writer/musician/whatever criticism is useful for self improvement. So, I believe I am well aware of the value and purpose of criticism. I just don't think because there are flaws in something that it completely takes away all value from it.

[on a side note, my reply was in a criticism of a criticism, and your reply was a criticism of my criticism, and my reply back is a criticism of your criticism of my criticism. Funny how it snowballs, huh? ]

Anyway, no I wasn't alive when that film came out and it was something an English professor had said. Thank you though for informing me though, i've always loved that movie. She particularly dwelt on a few reviews criticism Robin Williams performance and she dwelt on how "people thought it was boring because they expected a funny movie when they saw he was in it".

IMHO, Dead Poets Society should be shown in every HS english class room in America. I showed my 16 yr old daughter this movie after discovering her honors english teacher is assassinating her interest in literature. After his spiel on 'curriculum night' bragging to the parents how demanding he was going to make his class with dated, formulaic interpretations (for him there seems to be only one correct interpretation across the board on every work he has them read). I realized that there goes 30 kids desire to ever pick up a book that is remotely literary..

It is perfectly OK to be demanding, but please please please inspire the kids use THEIR brain, not exclusively the frickin' tenyeared teachers..

I agree. As I said above, it is one of my favorite films. It shows the value of a good education and a good teacher, as well as the value of individualism. It probably has something to do with my decision to become a college professor.

JCamilo

09-21-2009, 01:42 PM

Yes, that is why it is not a stoic view, but a sophist view trying to undermine critical analyses (a critic job is also to point the merits of a work, not just the flaws) just because they are critical. Anyone giving an opinion without trust in the merits of such opinion is just after controversy.
Fact is, the greatness of Shakespeare is his capacity to sustain power even when his flaws are in the spotlight. Writers like King (who I agree, have produced one or another acceptable work, but not as much as he tries to write) just shrink. Does not matter which school of criticism or age, they end living in different heavens.

Pollopicu

09-21-2009, 03:33 PM

It seems to me that what is happening is maybe a change in values.

Yes. This is what I think Bloom, as well as other critics/readers are trying to address. It's very disturbing to see the willingness in which a people accept this change..for the worse, because of course no one ever complains about positive changes in values.
I know there's a fair share of people out there who look down on adults who are obsessed with these series, but for the most part I don't think enough people are alarmed enough to think what is causing so many seemingly intellectual people to easily allow themselves to be drawn into this kind of unrealistic fantasy world, and to go as far as leading a life in these beliefs. It's not that they are being criticized for just reading the books. they're being criticized because of the way they act outside of reading the book. Let's face it and admit that we all know what I mean by this.
I know people critisize people who love Dan Brown, and I don't love Dan brown. In fact I'm disgusted with the marketing aspect of his notoriety, but I did read one of his books and happened to enjoy and I moved on and am in no rush to ever read his work again. However, I didn't obsess over his writing as if it was a new religion. It's the obsession among adults who love the witchy/vampire/warcraft people are grasping to understand.

Nietzsche

09-21-2009, 04:54 PM

Yes. This is what I think Bloom, as well as other critics/readers are trying to address. It's very disturbing to see the willingness in which a people accept this change..for the worse, because of course no one ever complains about positive changes in values.
I know there's a fair share of people out there who look down on adults who are obsessed with these series, but for the most part I don't think enough people are alarmed enough to think what is causing so many seemingly intellectual people to easily allow themselves to be drawn into this kind of unrealistic fantasy world, and to go as far as leading a life in these beliefs. It's not that they are being criticized for just reading the books. they're being criticized because of the way they act outside of reading the book. Let's face it and admit that we all know what I mean by this.
I know people critisize people who love Dan Brown, and I don't love Dan brown. In fact I'm disgusted with the marketing aspect of his notoriety, but I did read one of his books and happened to enjoy and I moved on and am in no rush to ever read his work again. However, I didn't obsess over his writing as if it was a new religion. It's the obsession among adults who love the witchy/vampire/warcraft people are grasping to understand.

I know what you mean. All these Twilight obsessed junkies are annoying, as are the people who think life is like Hogwarts School for witchcraft and wizardry. The truth is, most of the people obsessed with these books just like and are obsessing over [repeat name here] and don't give a crap about the literary value of it. A lot of these fans are just horny teenagers. Now, I don't mean [I]all of the fans, so don't get all worked up over something I didn't say. There is a difference between a stereotype and a sociological generalization based on observation.

As far as Dan Brown, I do enjoy all of his books but it's silly to become disillusioned with some sort of idea there is a holy grail, or the lost gospels prove Jesus was married. Likewise, getting worked up over the idea that maybe your orthodox belief isn't entirely true is just as silly. I like his books, nothing more.

I think the person I am quoting's statement is pretty much true and best summed up as, Fiction is a temporary escape from reality, not an excuse to ignore it.

Scheherazade

09-21-2009, 05:49 PM

I know what you mean. All these Twilight obsessed junkies are annoying, as are the people who think life is like Hogwarts School for witchcraft and wizardry. The truth is, most of the people obsessed with these books just like and are obsessing over [repeat name here] and don't give a crap about the literary value of it. A lot of these fans are just horny teenagers. Now, I don't mean [I]all of the fans, so don't get all worked up over something I didn't say. There is a difference between a stereotype and a sociological generalization based on observation. This is simply too harsh and very unnecessarily so.

One does not need to read for "literary value" at all times... Nor do people need to do so at all.

Do every painting to be another "Mona Lisa" to be enjoyed? Every scenery a sun set on a summer day? Every meal a gourmet delicacy?

I understand why some wouldn't like to read certain authors or books but I cannot fathom the need to be so scornful and dismissive towards people who do so.

Moriarty

09-21-2009, 06:04 PM

It should be noted that Oprah Winfrey has also received the award in question, which is perhaps a sign that said award has a wider scope than critically acclaimed (i.e. Harold-Bloom-approved) authors. As to his larger argument, I cannot help but come to the conclusion that it represents the same kind of reactionary cultural alarmism that seems to crop up with every new generation.

Firstly, his assertion that "'Harry Potter' will not lead our children on to Kipling's 'Just So Stories'" is demonstrably untrue. I read pretty bad children's literature when I was younger, and I have read the Harry Potter books as well as some of Stephen King. Incidentally, I also loved reading Kipling's 'Just So Stories' and 'Alice in Wonderland.' Several of my friends who love literature had similar experiences, and I would be very much surprised if the same were not true of many of the posters on this forum. For a child, very few of the classics are accessible, and even if a child is capable of reading Moby Dick while in elementary or middle school, I certainly don't see any reason to encourage it. They simply aren’t capable of understanding such works at that age. The novel would be unappealing and incomprehensible (as I found out in an ill-conceived early attempt to read Melville). The list of children's literature that Bloom would approve of is, I imagine, very small, and after one reads the Just So Stories, what is a ten-year-old supposed to move on to? I don't see the harm in reading Harry Potter or Twilight if it replaces hours in front of the television. Frankly, it is absolutely better that people are reading Harry Potter rather than nothing at all. And isn’t it okay for even an adult to read something for fun once in a while?

Of course, I absolutely do NOT condone giving a place to books such as Harry Potter or Eragon as part of school curriculum (as I learned, to my horror, was the case at a HIGH SCHOOL attended by a friend). But I think that it is ridiculous to say that these books in and of themselves are exerting some pernicious influence upon our children by their mere existence and popularity. It is fair for him to lament the declining place of literature in society (which I do believe is a legitimate concern), but for him to assert that Harry Potter is ‘dumbing down’ America as a whole is the reflection of a deeply narcissistic worldview in which he imagines himself to be the last bastion of a crumbling society (a position, I might add, which has been a great favorite among literary/art/music critics throughout history).

For those who seek it, there is still a vast wealth of amazing contemporary literature to be studied. There are tons of people reading Roth and McCarthy. In fact, the same forces which have made books like Harry Potter an international success have also given previously neglected works of literary merit a wider audience. In particular, a recent awareness of international literature has greatly enriched the American literary scene. Furthermore, many of these foreign authors (Murakami and Marquez come to mind) have even been able to achieve widespread popularity and commercial success outside of academia.

IN CONCLUSION, Harold Bloom is a fusty old academic who can’t get with the times.

Pollopicu

09-21-2009, 06:58 PM

I think that part of the problem today is due to the fact of our "fast paced society". People want to grab a book from the library shelf quickly, read it quickly and move on to another without even giving the stories much thought.
They are more interested in reading an author's entire collection, even if they aren't actually thrilled with some of them, then to read them critically.

But they are giving the stories much thought.. they're giving it too much thought.

This statement is contradicting because you say people want to grab a quick read, yet they want to read an entire series.

Yes it's true we live in a rather fast pace society, but it's also pure laziness. There is so much technology to make our lives easier nowadays than back in the days when classics were popular, and people still found the time to read and treasure them.
How is reading the "series" less thought consuming than "Jane Eyre", or "Don Quixote"?
What is it exactly people don't want to think about when they're reading classics that they can ignore by reading "the series"?
series..that's what I'm going to call them from now on because I'm frustrated trying to figure out what to call them.

but to use a good example.. imagine people going around acting like Don Quixote simply because they loved cervantes' novel. It's insane, and loving the novel doesn't justify one abandoning reality.
I'm not against the series and I'm not against the readers, I'm having issues about how it's affecting our literary society and how easily people can be hypnotized by something so infantile.

That's what I think bloom is trying to point out in an indirect way. There, i said it.

but regardless of whether Bloom is a failure as a critic, the point he makes here about the American reading public is entirely correct in my opinion... I have to agree.

But I think that it is ridiculous to say that these books in and of themselves are exerting some pernicious influence upon our children by their mere existence and popularity.

It's not our children it's dumbing-down, it's the adults!

Nietzsche

09-21-2009, 07:13 PM

This is simply too harsh and very unnecessarily so.

One does not need to read for "literary value" at all times... Nor do people need to do so at all.

Do every painting to be another "Mona Lisa" to be enjoyed? Every scenery a sun set on a summer day? Every meal a gourmet delicacy?

I understand why some wouldn't like to read certain authors or books but I cannot fathom the need to be so scornful and dismissive towards people who do so.

I think I came across harsher than I meant to, though it is true. That is why I said not all of them are like that, but there are a significant number of people who seem to just read or watch something based on attraction to the character's actor. Guys aren't any better really, over many things.

If you read my earlier posts you will see my position is the same as yours. I never stated everything had to be a masterpiece to have any value.

Drkshadow03

09-21-2009, 09:08 PM

but to use a good example.. imagine people going around acting like Don Quixote simply because they loved cervantes' novel. It's insane, and loving the novel doesn't justify one abandoning reality.
I'm not against the series and I'm not against the readers, I'm having issues about how it's affecting our literary society and how easily people can be hypnotized by something so infantile.

That's what I think bloom is trying to point out in an indirect way. There, i said it.

I have to agree.

It's not our children it's dumbing-down, it's the adults!

Yes, because there are all these adults walking around in British school gowns with fake plastic wands wearing faux-Potter glasses. I see all those Potter-obsessed adults who have lost a sense of reality everyday just like Don Quixote. Seriously, what are you talking about?

Outside some Cosplay events at Sci-fi/anime Nerd Conventions, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Yes. This is what I think Bloom, as well as other critics/readers are trying to address. It's very disturbing to see the willingness in which a people accept this change..for the worse, because of course no one ever complains about positive changes in values.
I know there's a fair share of people out there who look down on adults who are obsessed with these series, but for the most part I don't think enough people are alarmed enough to think what is causing so many seemingly intellectual people to easily allow themselves to be drawn into this kind of unrealistic fantasy world, and to go as far as leading a life in these beliefs. It's not that they are being criticized for just reading the books. they're being criticized because of the way they act outside of reading the book. Let's face it and admit that we all know what I mean by this.
I know people critisize people who love Dan Brown, and I don't love Dan brown. In fact I'm disgusted with the marketing aspect of his notoriety, but I did read one of his books and happened to enjoy and I moved on and am in no rush to ever read his work again. However, I didn't obsess over his writing as if it was a new religion. It's the obsession among adults who love the witchy/vampire/warcraft people are grasping to understand.

Again, sure there are adult fans. But adult fans who are leading a life in these beliefs, what does that even mean?!

Pollopicu

09-21-2009, 10:04 PM

Yes, because there are all these adults walking around in British school gowns with fake plastic wands wearing faux-Potter glasses. I see all those Potter-obsessed adults who have lost a sense of reality everyday just like Don Quixote. Seriously, what are you talking about?

Outside some Cosplay events at Sci-fi/anime Nerd Conventions, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Again, sure there are adult fans. But adult fans who are leading a life in these beliefs, what does that even mean?!

I think you know exactly what I'm talking about which is the reason why you're so offended. I'm not going to step into a flaming trap.
I was cautiously prepared for a counterblow and that's fine. I don't even care so much for the subject, but your attitude only proves how touchy fans are about anyone who questions the unhealthy fascination for "the series".

Ron Charles said it perfectly:

I'd like to think that this is a romantic return to youth, but it looks like a bad case of cultural infantilism. I guess what I mean is that people need to grow up.

Drkshadow03

09-21-2009, 10:56 PM

I think you know exactly what I'm talking about which is the reason why you're so offended. I'm not going to step into a flaming trap.
I was cautiously prepared for a counterblow and that's fine. I don't even care so much for the subject, but your attitude only proves how touchy fans are about anyone who questions the unhealthy fascination for "the series".

Ron Charles said it perfectly:
I guess what I mean is that people need to grow up.

Actually unless someone spouts something blatantly anti-Semitic there is very little that offends me on the internet. I'm not offended at all. Bemused, yes. Offended? Not so much. All I wanted was for you to clarify your point. I am still wondering where all these Harry Potter worshiping adults are to be found who have taken their obsession and enjoyment of the books too far.

I certainly like Harry Potter and think it is better literature than people give credit, but I would hardly say I am obsessed with it. I can think of plenty of other speculative fiction novels and literary works in general that I like a lot more.

As far as the fans who start HP-inspired rock bands, dress up in costume, convene on internet HP discussion sites, and write fan fiction and slash, I don't see this as any different than any other fandom. It's a sci-fi/fantasy/anime thing. Certainly you could call it as fascination, but I hardly see it as "unhealthy." People aren't slitting their wrists because they discovered that they will never be able to go to Hogwarts, nobody that I know of worships a statue of Voldemort, and even most hardcore fans usually have other interests. So I'm trying to figure out the unhealthy part.

JCamilo

09-21-2009, 11:44 PM

err, literature, art, fiction are not a escape from reality. They never were and never will be. They are as part of reality as the civil code or the phone list. They are language, a form of expression and it makes as much sense as you getting married and having kids.
Don Quixote is not about someone who does not see reality, but someone who does see quite so well. He have a hyper-sense of reality, hence his actions against it, using the only form he could to communicate: fantasy. They boys of HP are living reality, their groups are real and they are no more dumb than people who hear medals from a war or soccer team shirt or ties and work in wall street.

promtbr

09-23-2009, 10:56 AM

I think the film disservices poetry. Plus the attending is so damn cheesy. Typical highschool rubbish, in my opinion, hardly an insightful movie on the so called "teenage condition" or on poetry, or education.

I acknowledge then we have differing opinions on the value of the movie DPS... Then IMO,Your opinion of it is narrowed to a sensitivity and defensive reaction as to regards to your realm study (which is I assume poetry). My opinion is based not so much as how poetry is (or is not) taught at the HS level, but in regards to the dumbing down of education, and my point of the narrow minded in the box teaching approaches used that KILL kids inspiration to study Literature (of ANY genre), DPS depicts this. That its ok to think outside the box, to have passion for Literature. I really don't care what you label it (Romantic or other...) That's pretty elitist.

Its hardly rubbish (again) in my not over priveleged opinion.

A forum aquaintance from Australia who IS a HS English teacher was aware of the problem of the old approach reaching current kids sensibilities, and has just published an amazing book in the UK and it shows some real promise in its approach to teaching poetry at the HS level.

kelby_lake

09-23-2009, 12:53 PM

I think the film disservices poetry. Plus the attending is so damn cheesy. Typical highschool rubbish, in my opinion, hardly an insightful movie on the so called "teenage condition" or on poetry, or education.

I really liked the film. The point is that their education system was too restrictive. If they hadn't stood up for what they wanted, they might know how to technically study poetry but they wouldn't understand the point of it. I would've thought quite a lot of readers might like it as literature is inspirational.

JBI

09-23-2009, 01:33 PM

I really liked the film. The point is that their education system was too restrictive. If they hadn't stood up for what they wanted, they might know how to technically study poetry but they wouldn't understand the point of it. I would've thought quite a lot of readers might like it as literature is inspirational.

Come on - it's the same as all those crappy sports movies where the new coach comes to town and inspires the team to go on and win the championship match - the only difference is that these are bourgeois kids, and it's poetry instead of Football, or Basketball, or Baseball, or whatever.

The movie tries to blend Emersonian Transcendentalism with I guess near-contemporary education. The result, is that, whereas in Emerson's time the students already had the classical understanding ingrained in their heads, these students know nothing about poetry, and therefore aren't abandoning predetermined constructs, but rather are abandoning poetry all together.

The reason poetry is seen as elitist is quite simply due to the fact that a large amount of the population lack the ability to read, or better yet, properly read what the tradition so far has deemed the "Best poetry" - that is, generally the names found in the Norton anthology.

The whole Whitmanian surge against form, breaking free with the sort of manifest destiny carved into the American mythology works if there is a backdrop of British institutional thought to carve one's path away from - but once that is removed, the whole concept seems to fall apart - Whitman wasn't destroying form, he was recreating form - to abandon the categorical and theoretical - the educational frames that created these works - ultimately the works themselves lose meaning - if we don't understand metaphor or irony, we cannot understand poetry written from traditions, or out of a climate where these ideas were central - in that sense, Shelley, Byron, Keats, Shakespeare, all those guys, Shakespeare in particular, come out of a sort of second-hand Erasmus-defiled scholasticism, which put heavy emphasis on the classic and the Greek. If one simply doesn't just "feel" the poem - one uses one's knowledge to understand how the poem is put together, and how all the elements work as a sort of symphonic composition - how in Shakespeare's Sonnet 130, the hyperbole works to cut at the Petrarchan conceits, or how in Keats' St. Agnes Eve the religious and sportive dichotomy is frozen and then broken, with the bath of moonlight creating a space where the two lovers can be apart from the rest of the world. It's no wonder then, that the movie pushes out poems like "She Walks in Beauty Like the Night", or "O Captain, my Captain", very popular, yet rather meh poems without much depth or real acclaim - try putting "Ode to the West Wind", or "Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Rocking" though, and you run into trouble.

The whole notion of individuality and whatnot is as constructed as the whole notion of collectivity. The irony of the whole situation is that in the end, that ugly red-headed kid acts as an individual, saves his skin and, marching to his own drummer, ends up coming out on top at the expense of his teacher. And the mopey actor (for all of ten minutes?) ends up dead on the floor of his parents' house, chasing his dream - where is the real message - the whole feel good nature of the movie, as a shouting against constructs of society doesn't deconstruct itself - it merely floats them.

If it wanted to be profound, Robin Williams would have walked out at the end of the movie abandoned by his students, realizing that poetry, and the structures that define it, like society, needs a sort of collective, needs a sort of authority, in order to work to counterbalance indulgence and hendonism with morality and honorableness - instead, we get an artificial display of sincerity. Cheesy, yes, popular, yes, good cinema? Hardly.

You question that they wouldn't understand the point of poetry, what is the point of poetry? Is the Whitmanian "Barbaric Yawp" and less constricting than the "quality of the poem is determined by the area of the poem, graphed with meaning on one axis and style on another, thereby asserting that the greatest poem is one that achieves the highest area"? Quite simply, it seems like the second understanding of poetry is better - I would tend to agree, though I wouldn't say it is that simple.

Or better yet, why don't we look to other traditions, and ask what poetry is? Take Shi Jing, Confucius' Book of Odes. That was understood originally to be political commentary, usable in situations as a means of understanding the political and philosophical grounding of things. So, for instance, we could drop a reference to an ode as a way of commenting on the benevolence of a ruler, or the nature of policy - such wasn't uncommon - is that definition less "real" than the concept of "raw human emotion", or "barbaric yawp", or even "style graphed against meaning to determine the area"?

If we look at counter examples in cinema alone, we can run into interesting things; take for instance, the slightly more contemporary film "The History Boys" written by Allan Bennett. That one seems to make a far better case for the understanding of poetry - it does not abandon the technical, or destroy the textbook by ripping it apart - it merely stresses the enjoyment to be gained from it, if one is willing to make the effort.

mortalterror

09-23-2009, 01:56 PM

JBI, I agree completely and that was an incredibly insightful analysis of the film. Way to go.

Drkshadow03

09-23-2009, 03:18 PM

JBI, I agree completely and that was an incredibly insightful analysis of the film. Way to go.

Eh, half of JBI's comments are irrelevant to the film. His objections seem to be:

1) it doesn't agree with my views of how poetry should be studied.

2) it doesn't conform with my views on individuality and collective.

His complaint that poems rely on other poems so it would be impossible to study poetry without studying it in its literary historical context ignores the fact that in high school you rarely study poetry or literature in general in some sort of coherent order anyway. The type of stuff he is speaking about you generally don't learn until college. It is perfectly reasonable to read Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" and deal with its philosophical view of human interconnectedness with other people and nature and sexuality and such, and not delve into larger aesthetic goals of breaking free from form and British poetic modes.

Even when he deals with the film itself.

If it wanted to be profound, Robin Williams would have walked out at the end of the movie abandoned by his students, realizing that poetry, and the structures that define it, like society, needs a sort of collective, needs a sort of authority, in order to work to counterbalance indulgence and hendonism with morality and honorableness - instead, we get an artificial display of sincerity. Cheesy, yes, popular, yes, good cinema? Hardly.

He is basically whining because the film did X instead of Y, and he prefers Y. It's romantic instead of tragic, but he prefers tragic as a literary mode. I enjoyed the ending. I saw the display of sentimentality at the end as a display of morality and honorableness that he complains is missing. It was also an example of the collective being shifted by the bravery of the individual. So I don't even think his complaints about the film being about individuality versus society are accurate either. It's much murkier in the film. There are many points in the film when idealism is confronted with reality, but also points when reality topples before idealism.

Basically his arguments boil down to the fact that the film wasn't the film he wanted to see.