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| For the Online Supplements to the Film Chapter"Are Movies Art?" Jonah Goldberg, Chris Weinkopf, Brandon Bosworth, Josh Larsen, Cristopher Rapp, Jonathan Last, and Terry Teachout.This article, a symposium of writers in American Enterprise magazine, Jan./Fe. 2002, is available through your library using EBSCOHost.Pre-reading Questions
1) How do you define "art"? Do any movies qualify as art in your opinion?
2) Does the popularity of film as a medium mean that movies can't be art? Can a work be widely popular and art at the same time?Journal Topic
1) What are your criteria for calling a work "art"? Choose one or more movies that you think could fit the definition, and explain what makes them art.Questions for Critical Thought
1) Jonah Goldberg refers to "those damned elites" and "the pointy heads." Who is he talking about? How would you characterize the tone of his article? How well does it work? What sort of audience was he imaging as he wrote?
2) Chris Weinkopf asserts that "movies are ultimately TV writ large, and no serious person would argue that the idiot box is any place for high culture. Real art is, by its nature, abstract—the painter's conception of a moment in time; the composer's gift for translating images and emotions into symphonies; the writer's struggle to put a three-dimensional, full-color world onto a two-dimensional, black-and-white page." Are there no differences between TV and film other than size? Is there something about the medium of film that excludes the "abstract"?
3) What is the major theme of Brandon Bosworth's piece? Is it whether movies can be art, or something else?
4) Cristopher Rapp talks about Damien Hirst, an "ultra-hip British artist." What purpose does the anecdote he tells serve? How does it help him make his argument? Is there a sense of "us" versus "them" in his piece? If so, who comprises 'us"? Who comprises "them"?
5) Jonathan Last claims that "Most films are either stupid, incompetently made, or both." Think about the films that you have seen. Does his label fit most of them? Why or why not?
6) Terry Teachout provided a list of films he had seen in the last five years that he thought of as exceptional, saying that "they yielded up more riches on second and third viewings. For me, that's a pretty good definition of a work of art: The more you see of it, the more you see in it." What movies have you seen that you felt drawn to watch more than once? And do you agree with his definition of a work of art? Would you add to that definition?Suggestions for Personal Research
1) Josh Larsen claims that the technology that created movies was born in America. Is he correct? Research the history of film technology and its earliest and most significant pioneers. What people in other countries were involved, and what were their contributions?
2) Research a specific film genre and its development over the years. What examples qualify as "art"? How have they been treated by culture critics? Did the reputations of certain works tend to improve or erode over the years? Why?
3) In film criticism, an "auteur" (the French word for "author") refers to a filmmaker, usually a director, whose unique influence over all aspects of his or her films makes that person the true creator, or author, of a film or body of work. The term is typically reserved for filmmakers who are considered artistically exceptional. Research the works and criticism associated with one auteur, such as Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, Pedro Almodovar, Spike Lee, or Robert Altman.Multicultural Issues
1) Westerns are a quintessentially American film genre, but until recent decades they tended to ignore the prevalence and complexity of the roles of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans in the country's past. How do the Westerns of the last twenty years compare to the classic westerns made in previous decades in their depictions of different races and ethnicities?Vocabulary
linguistic exacerbated pretentious connoisseurs brash discerning curatorTerms for ClarificationJean Renoir An influential and esteemed French director and actor whose career in films spanned 1924 to 1969. His father was the French painter Pierre-August Renoir.Manifest Destiny The19th-century doctrine that the United States was destined to expand over the entire North American continent. The term was coined by John O'Sullivan, a newspaper editor. This idea combined with other ideas of the period, including the notion of "American exceptionalism" (the belief that America was somehow exceptional compared to all other nations) and a belief in the natural superiority of what was then called the "Anglo-Saxon race": whites of English heritage. It was used to justify the displacement of the native inhabitants from their lands.Leo Tolstoy A Russian novelist, essayist, dramatist, and philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists. He is most well known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina. |