Also, the Persian dude totally needed to get all cheese-grater on his enemy.
The disappearing old posts are totally stepping on my ability to riff off old comments. It was a Persian cabbie that was taking a cheese grater to his poo to add flavor crystals to the pastry case, right? Or was that what you were referencing?
I know, it's lousy, isn't it? I don't know if the Persian was a cabbie or not, but he did sun-dry his feces for the sake of sprinkling some on the goods in the pastry case. Some will say that this is not the authentic face of Iran. Sadly, it is its very essence.
My mom complained that it was the white cop's behavior that strained credulity in that scene. I don't think I agree with either of you. Maybe black hitchhiker, not knowing his ride was a cop, didn't consider that he might be carrying a gun and didn't think freaking the guy out a little would have any serious consequences.
I loved Crash. I don't think its commentary on race was perfect, I guess (actually I don't have an opinion), but the movie transcended that single issue. Some of those scenes were like arias on film. I felt that in a larger sense, the movie was about how fate can either give you a remarkable second chance or destroy you, and on those terms, the movie succeeded brilliantly.
That said, it was not as good as Brokeback Mountain, and I'll certainly be rooting for BM.
I watched Crash with my parents in Kansas, and I was glad to see it was right at their level. They were like, "Wow. Racism goes so deep." My response was, "L.A. is hell. Any place where I feel like congratulating some asshole for not selling a bunch of Chinese immigrants into sex slavery is no good." Plus, I don't like it when brutal molestation figures as a minor plot point merely so it can set up an awkward situation later. See, the only cop who can save her is the one who violated her in front of her husband! I call bullshit.
You know, improbable coincidences are a pretty standard dramatic convention. Crash doesn't aspire to perfect naturalism, and there's no reason it should have to.
It's the artificiality of jerking the audience around emotionally that bugs me.
What does this mean? This is like calling a movie "sentimental." All movies attempt to artificially jerk the audience around emotionally (okay, maybe some Brecht thing tries actively not to jerk the audience around emotionally, but I think I'm using the phrase correctly when I say "that's the exception that proves the rule"). When you're outside you call it "sentimental," when inside, maybe "wrenching." I understand that the movie's appeal didn't succeed with you, but that doesn't say why. There was a point to giving the same two people two entirely different interactions: to show that, children of circumstance that we are, we can totally dehumanize someone in one situation and empathize with them at risk to our own life in other.
I don't know from Crash and am no film critic, but there are definitely (far too many) movies which explicitly try to jerk the audience around emotionally -- presenting scenes with cues for how you're supposed to respond -- and movies which do not, which allow your response to develop organically. I prefer the latter sort.
I have to admit, I don't understand #13 either. I assume that "sentimental" means, if all movies are sentimental, "overly sentimental." It might not be a criticism you find apt, but it seems like a pretty straightforward criticism.
presenting scenes with cues for how you're supposed to respond
All movies do this. No emotional response to art develops organically, it just feels that way. In Brokeback Mountain, when you see the shirts, you're supposed to cry. The movie is successful because you do. If you don't, the question is why you didn't, not whether or not the movie told you you were supposed to.
I guess I should say that "sentimental" is an elucidating criticism only when there's no other reason for an artistic choice than a sort of provocation, and/or that provocation is inconsistent with prior plot or characterization. So My Girl can meaningfully be called "sentimental" because there's no reason for Macaulay Culkin to die and because it doesn't make sense that a ten year old who knows he's allergic to bee stings would throw rocks at a wasp's nest unless you'd previously established a seriously self-destructive aspect to his character.
I realize my complaint about "sentimental" is idiosyncratic, but I still think it's right.
I think that's the key. The movie is successful, or isn't, with a specific individual. If you find the movie unsuccessful, and say that it's cloying and that you can see the puppet strings throughout the film, your criticism is unlikely to make sense to someone who found the movie successful.
I'm with Tia. All movies, books and plays try to jerk the audience around emotionally. When it doesn't work, you don't like it. Maybe it's less likely to work when you think the jerking is canned, that it is acheived (or attempted) through generic formulas rather than, I don't know, new formulas.
I liked Crash, I think for the reasons Tia gives. That it is improbable is perhaps besides the point. I could see an audience really disliking the idea that a racist cop, who actually goes so far as to molest a woman, could also be capable of heroism, and for that reason, turning against the movie. I don't like the idea either, but suspect that is in fact true, and for that reason, I liked the movie a little extra.
I don't think it was the best picture. But it was a hell of a lot better than Titanic. And Don Cheadle is awesome.
I didn't hate Crash. I liked it fine. But I guess I didn't feel that the heroic cop saving the woman made things "even" re: the molestation. Things being "even" is probably not the point, but the yucko fingering-cop factor stayed with me, rather unpleasantly, far longer than anything else about the movie, and I felt it was trying to almost say something kind of uplifting.
In any other year, compared to any other set of Oscar contenders, I'd say Crash could be best picture. There were just too many great movies.
I certainly don't think it made things even. I don't know what it did, exactly, except showed that a single person is capable of both monstrous and heroic things.
Some critic said that in Crashland, everyone is forced to move beyond their singular point of view -- in order to understand a total of two points of view. I thought that was funny.
When I first read your comment, Joe, I thought, "Ha. Crash == pwned" and then, shockingly, it started to make me like the movie more, in retrospect. It shows all these people who can only escape their own solipsism just far enough to see one other perspective, and then they, I guess, spend the rest of their lives pathetically pinging that alternate perpective as a way of escaping their own. With the downer ending, maybe it's suggesting that's the best most people are capable of.
Re 16: Sentimentality is a bete noir for me. I view sentiment as emotions filtered and structured thru received ideas and social norms. It is nearly the opposite of compassion and empathy, it is a intellectual defense mechanism that is designed to prevent compassion and empathy.
If the idea of the street urchin makes you cry, then you will be able to pass actual street urchins without even seeing them. I don't see movies til they reach cable, but it sounds like BM and Capote are about moving past sentimentality into compassion;and Crash is sentimental to the core.
What about something like Pride & Prejudice (the movie)? It's obviously sentimental, and self-consciously so. But I was really deeply moved by how sharply rendered the class/marriage problem was, and both my date and I teared up horribly when Bingley finally proposed to Jane. Was that merely a sentimental reaction or compassion for women who otherwise face a life of destitute dependency? Can it be both?
I assume we're now talking about sentimentality in the "bad" sense of Schiller -- put-on, false. It used to be thought a good thing -- stimulating, expansive.
See I don't really think that's true. Take Bareback Mountain: it's true what you say about the shirts, that moment did not (for me) work nearly as well in the movie as it did in the story, and that's because of the way it was presented -- Lee was serving it up on a platter saying "Here's your big chance to cry." (Also the scene at the end with Heath and his daughter didn't work very well IMO and for similar but not identical reasons.) Bareback was generally a pretty sentimental movie, and it was great (or close to great) despite this, not because of this.
Contrast Capote. If you watch this movie closely, looking for emotional cues from the director, I am betting you will not find very many. And Capote is by far the better movie IMO. There are a lot of valid and plausible emotional reactions I could see having to the movie and its various scenes, whereas with Bareback there's only really one, with maybe a couple different shades of nuance working into it.
Again: I am not talking about Crash because I have not seen it or even read about it besides on this thread. But it seems ludicrous to me, to say "It's all very well to complain about sentimentality in the movies, the ones you like are sentimental too you're just not noticing it." Really -- that seems like a pretty juvenile reaction to hearing somebody call a movie you liked "sentimental" -- which granted A White Bear did not even do.
And AWB -- sure I guess there are contexts where sentimentality could be a good quality. I never saw P'n'P but it seems to me like it could very well be such a context.
I admit I had a similar reaction to Irreversible, too. I didn't think it aesthetically made up for forcing me to watch a woman get anally raped and tortured for 15 minutes. I guess it's a cheap kind of response to say, "I don't like movies where rape/molestation is a step toward epiphany." It's just a more extreme version of my dad saying, "I can't like movies where the heroes cuss a bunch." The difference is I'm already scared shitless about violence against women, and everytime I go through an underpass I get that image from Irreversible in my head. A movie has to do some serious, deep-level soul-searching for me to get over the trauma of watching a woman's body get jacked up. Otherwise, it feels like getting viscerally twisted up for nothing. Again, I insist: for me, not that it makes it a universally bad flick.
AWB, I think that makes perfect sense. It's really easy to get people to react viscerally by showing them a violent rape or whatever. But in itself it doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already. If the scene has been set up somehow -- like the big scene in Caché (not a rape, no more hints) -- then you may get some earned emotional reaction.
I don't know about the meaning of sentimentality (or t-sentimentality) here, but if the complaint is that the movie is artificial, a counter claim could be that all movies are artificial and that when you get down to it they're just a bunch of scenes containing actors reading lines dramatically, recorded by a camera, and projected on a screen.
Well of course all movies are artificial, but for movies set in what could be considered the world we live in my tastes run towards a lack of forced coincidences. (People running into each other in a small town? No problem.) My problem with Crash is that I never could forget that I was watching something tightly scripted.
(This is not unlike my problem with Ulysses, which, like all fiction, consists of a collection of words but which for me never succeeded in making me believe it could be something more. I probably have a sentimental and escapist concept of movie watching and book reading.)
Contrast Capote. If you watch this movie closely, looking for emotional cues from the director, I am betting you will not find very many.
Capote is chock full of both emotional and intellectual cues. It's intellectual cues were more prominent because it was a movie that cared more about making you think the thing it wanted you to than feeling the thing it wanted you to.
But it seems ludicrous to me, to say "It's all very well to complain about sentimentality in the movies, the ones you like are sentimental too you're just not noticing it." Really -- that seems like a pretty juvenile reaction to hearing somebody call a movie you liked "sentimental" -- which granted A White Bear did not even do.
Jeremy, my point is that the criticism is unilluminating, because it's a poor substitute for the real reason a movie didn't work. It's supposed to be a synonym of "It tried to jerk me around," but that's true of so much of what the speaker would accept as great art it doesn't say why the speaker didn't respond to the artwork in question. It doesn't say much more than "it sucked." What would be more helpful than the word "sentimental" would be an observation that, say, they sacrificed consistent characterization for another effect, or something else that actually describes what goes wrong with the movie. McManus above has a different definition of the word that I'll try to figure out and see if I think is useful. You may disagree, and I acknowledged above than I am in a minority, but this point is not at all juvenile, and I'm kind of perplexed by your reaction. A comment thread about a movie is more interesting when commenters engage each other about the legitimacy about their aesthetic judgments than just giving their opinions in isolation; this is a blog; I'm trying to generate discussion. I think what's ensued is pretty interesting, so I guess I did a good job with it.
37 reminds me of my reaction to the Kite Runner. I got to the early rape scene and decided that I just wasn't willing to keep reading a book that was willing to use violence so casually for dramatic purposese.
For me the key word their is casually -- which is, I admit, a judgement on my part. I get impatient with works that treat the characters as pawns for dramatic purposes whereas if I get the sense that the author cares about the characters in some sense I'm much more willing to put up with contrievance.
Of course I'm generally okay with contrievance in mystery novels.
I think my basic feeling is that I don't like books/movies that want me to be more emotionally invested in the characters than the author is. If the book treats the characters like pawns but I, as a reader, can do the same (mysteries) that's okay. If the author/auteur cares about the characters I'm willing to emotionally invest myself.
I think my basic feeling is that I don't like books/movies that want me to be more emotionally invested in the characters than the author is. If the book treats the characters like pawns but I, as a reader, can do the same (mysteries) that's okay. If the author/auteur cares about the characters I'm willing to emotionally invest myself.
Nicely put, and I agree particularly with you about The Kite Runner. Come on, don't rape a kid just to show us that the hero is immature and weak and needs to grow as a character -- I don't care if the kid's fictional, it still bothers me.
The loss of poor bouncy Yuki's panties awakened a sentimental yet s-expansive reaction in the viewer. He thought of averting his eyes as something else was demanding his attention.
And yet again Mark 4.22 is relevant. The Living Bible! yes!
Hm. Sorry I ought not to have called your post a juvenile reaction. (Psychotic reaction? Yeah.) I was getting off on my own little internal feedback loop and got harsh, sorry.
I'm going to stop talking about sentimentality in movies now because it's not contributing to the discussion much. If the discussion starts being all about sentimentality I'll join up again.
It's supposed to be a synonym of "It tried to jerk me around," but that's true of so much of what the speaker would accept as great art it doesn't say why the speaker didn't respond to the artwork in question.
It means, "it tried to jerk me around, and I could see all its attempts coming, and (what's potentially more) those attempts were kind of unmotivated within the work." Grant that all movies involve artifice: in some, the artifice is better concealed. (By means of ... artifice!) "Sentimental" is like "heavy-handed".
but that's true of so much of what the speaker would accept as great art it doesn't say why the speaker didn't respond to the artwork
I'm still not getting your point. You might say the same thing about bad scripting - that is, I'm sure we could think of great movies where the scripting seems poor, but we still consider it a great movie. But usually we say something like, "Despite the poor script...." I'd think the same thing is true for sentimental movies, where we think that there is a broad agreement of what is sentimental. You'd expect the defenders to say something like, "Despite the obvious sentimentality, the movie works because...." If someone doesn't say that, and didn't like the movie, I presume it's because they didn't see any saving graces.
Ack, I have to go do real stuff, but preliminarily, I think Ben's 50 answers my objection to the word--and is what I was trying to get at when I named My Girl--the problem is lack of motivation. The problem is when you ask people what they mean by sentimental, they usually don't say that; they just say "It was manipulative" rather than "It was unmotivatedly manipulative" or something else. And happy birthday, Ben. One step closer to being a big bitch!
as for FL's original post and comment 6: wasn't the reason that the scene between the white kid cop and the black hitchhiker shocking because he's not really a hitchhiker -- the two grew up in the same neighborhood, knew each other, were friends? And the shift between what you "know" as someone's friend and you "know" when you are responding according to your police academy training are two different things? It's been a long time since I saw Crash, but that's my memory.
52: Tim, bad scripting is a bad thing that a movie can overcome. Manipulation and artificiality are the essence of art. I maybe put that badly, and should have said "that's true of all of what the speaker would consider great art"
Manipulation and artificiality are the essence of art.
Artificiality yes, manipulation no. Manipulation I am reading as "producing in the viewer the emotional reaction intended by the artist". But I don't see this as an intrinsic element of art at all. It is something you can do with art. And there is a lot of art which is created without an overt intended reaction. Manipulation is the essence of Hallmark cards.
A work of art which allows you your own, unscripted response is better all other things being equal than one which reliably produces a particular response.
(And futher to that: given two works of art which both reliably produce a particular scripted response, the one is better which better hides its mechanism.)
"that's true of all of what the speaker would consider great art"
I think part of the distinction here is between works that find an original way to embody their dramatic structure and works that express familiar concepts in familiar ways.
For me this is most obvious in music since so many songs explore the same emotional territory but bad ones, to mix metaphors, mistake the map for the territory and use the exact same musical gestures that everyone else has used.
It is said of some directors that they are only commenting on other films, not on life but I think it's easier to observe in music.
Contrast, for example, Treetop Flyer by Stephen Stills and Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevon.
A work of art which allows you your own, unscripted response... is basically the definition of a Modernist work of art, right?
A word like "sentimentality" has moved around QUITE a bit over the centuries. Bob's definition above is basically the 19th-c getting cranky on the 18th-c's ass.
I comment infrequently because (1) I've been busy at work and (2) generally I have to mull things over for a while to clarify my thinking.
The combination means that by the time I have something to say on a topic it's usually the next day and the conversation has moved on.
It just happens that this is a topic I've thought about enough that I already have some clarity.
But the encouragement matters. I still have the instincts of a lurker -- I post infrequently in part because I feel like an observer rather than part of the conversation. So thank you
Not that I should encourage anyone to comment more, considering what it does to my productivity, but even at your low frequency of posting, you're a memorable part of the conversation around here.
"Bob's definition above is basically the 19th-c getting cranky on the 18th-c's ass. "
Heh. I don't know where the cryptic ones above were directing their snark, but I not only admit to my romantic nihilism, but wallow arrogantly in it like all rebellious sophomores. It was a very good year, my sophomore year.
Relatedly, I collect Fine-Art jpgs partly in an attempt to understand the difference between a Bouguereau angel and a pre-Renaissance angel. Seriously.
If I weren't feeling very sleepy, and if I somehow dared consider bringing violence into my happy place, I would wave my claws forbiddingly thus—pince, pince!—and then scuttle.
And Bob, quoting Meredith on emotional responsibility isn't quite what I'd describe as "romantic nihilism," unless you were stating his position as an antithesis.
is basically the definition of a Modernist work of art, right?
Having recently read (for the first time, yes) "The Waste Land", I'm going to say that it sure didn't feel that I was allowed my own, unscripted response.
Contrast, for example, Treetop Flyer by Stephen Stills and Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevon.
Would I have to listen to "Treetop Flyer" in order to do this? Can you summarize the relationship? (Is it like "Space Oddity" and "Major Tom" or more like "Southern Man" and "Sweet Home Alabama" or what?)
81 -- Treetop flyer was simply one of the least imaginative songs I could think of. Jeremy captured the idea equally well in 67.
My point was that both Treetop Flyer and Roland explore, broadly, the territoy of macho outlaw behavior but that one is an interesting song and the other is not.
78: None of this is from personal knowledge, it's just what the guy in question told me. You restrain the lobster, holding it firmly in place on a tabletop, and stare deeply into its eyes. Keep staring, until the lobster stops struggling and becomes quiescent.
You ask, how do you know that the lobster is hypnotized, rather than simply bored? Good question: the answer is that a truly hypnotized lobster can be balanced on the tripod formed by its claws and its face (face?). A lobster that is merely temporarily quiet will be outraged by this, and will thrash around and fall over, but a hypnotized lobster will remain still enough to stay upright.
Why? I never found out. The guy was from Maine, though -- I suppose at some point there's only so much fun you can have making paper, and playing with lobsters is the next thing to do.
"And Bob, quoting Meredith on emotional responsibility"
I was quoting Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses quoting Meredith, and admitting I didn't quite understand the quote. I understand what Stephen was saying to Mulligan, a little, but the epigram confuses me. "...immense debtorship for a thing done." ?? Does that mean we acquire obligations thru our actions or our thru enjoyment? And who do we owe them to? "would enjoy (what?)"
And I veer like a drunken driver between the Schyller of Classicism and the Charybdis of Romanticism. If it's Thursday, it must be German Pessimism. What I don't understand at all is the 20th century.
89: Did you note the "very briefly" in the initial reference? This was not what I would have described as a successful relationship from my point of view.
I'm no expert on Meredith, but I would understand that quote as blurring the line between enjoyment and actions. If we understand that we incur moral responsibility for our actions, how do we cleanly separate physical actions from "sentimental" or "aesthetic" actions? Meredith is implying, I think, that the sentimentalist has made an artificial distinction between those actions (physical) that incur responsibility and those (aesthetic) that do not. This Victorian "correction" of sentimentalism is based on Romantic political and I suspect deliberate misreadings of 18th-century theories.
Oh man, LB, that guy doesn't really sound like a winner. It seems likely that the only reason to hypnotize a lobster is to fuck with it a little before you kill it. Once again, I'm so glad I didn't grow up in a rural area.
You're quite right, Lobster Rocky Balboa. Yours is the immortal catchphrase; yours is the more ensequelled franchise; yours is the Academy Award. I hate you, Lobster Rocky Balboa.
It seems likely that the only reason to hypnotize a lobster is to fuck with it a little before you kill it.
Pretty much, although I have to say that while cruelty to animals generally bothers me, crustacean harassment doesn't. I suppose it's humilating for the lobster, but as described doesn't seem to involve actual pain.
(On roughly the same topic, am I the only person to whom 'catch and release' sport fishing seems much worse than catching fish to kill and eat them?)
I wish I could help, LB, but 've never understood why people seem to be so madly against animal cruelty. I remember when I was seven, when I'd wet my bet, the only thing that would make me feel better about myself was setting a family pet on fire.
99. Tearing a big hole in a fish's cheek and then putting it back in the water for fun? Yeah, pretty bad. Somewhat better than killing fish and not eating them, I guess. Given the way most people fish these days (rarely, on excursion trips, with fish sounders), I suspect one of those two options is more realistic than the more ideal "alright, boys, we caught dinner, let's go home!"
am I the only person to whom 'catch and release' sport fishing seems much worse than catching fish to kill and eat them?
Well, at least it doesn't end in death for the fish. But it does seem grotesque. Hunters should have a place where they can go and hunt each other. It's not rreally a sport if only one side is playin.
Ok, the answer(s) will probably just be a different thread today that I haven't read yet, but a) where is the first reference to a hypnotized lobster (the one before 73) and b)how did Tia know it was b-wo's birthday (assuming it is)?
It's alleged that if you hypnotize a lobster it will hurt less when you boil it alive. Measured scientifically by the number of times it spasms.
Yes, ick, I know.
I worked in a seafood restaurant (actually, two different seafood restaurants, depending on how you count these things. One was by a river, which was technically fresh water. But it served salt water catches (and served them fresh, if that's not too confusing), because it was close to the mouth of the river. Are you still reading this parenthesis?). I can tell you they spasm least if you keep 'em cool for a while first.
It's doubtful whether putting an animal into an apparent trance state can legitimately be regarded as hypnosis, in the sense that humans are hypnotized. Some regard it simply as a sort of freeze reaction, while others claim it's an attempt to feign death in hopes that the hypnotizer will lose interest and scoot.
I used to hypnotize people when I was in high school, for a science project and then for demonstrations in Psych classes and stuff. It was neat. I only got to the point where I could make people touch their noses with their hands without knowing they were doing it, but it made for good fun. Then I dropped them in vats of boiling water, and they screamed far less than usual.
I think that hypnotizing lobsters is manipulative. What you should do is treat them especially lovingly and affectionately the day before and right up to the moment of truth, when you should somberly explain to them that this world is governed by iron laws from which no one is exempt, so that there can be no blame and no regret. And then toss 'em in.
Wow, but the anchoress is annoying. I can't quite wrap my mind around the idea that there are eternal divine agents *and* they care a lot about our pants.
Went to the top link of the Anchoress and it linked to Instapundit trying to make Bush look good over Katrina.
Now my brain hurts and I will have to have it removed.
(Oh, and I'm an expert on this: Saying "We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee. I think we have not breached the levee at this time" is not assuring someone that the levees have not breached.)
A machine that one enters--glass doors in front of one--in which a swift gust of explosive-detecting air goes *whoosh!*, gradually disappating during analysis as your goosebumps go down---you know, I'll take it compared to the bra-pat-down I took four years ago.
Do you know that if I were to show you an (out-of-date) judicial opinion saying that it is not a crime to kill Peggy Noonan because reading the two articles of her's linked in this thread caused you emotional distress, and you reasonably rely on that opinion (not knowing it's been overruled by later law), you would have a complete defense to her murder under the law of New York State? True story (15.20(2)(c)).
I went through the *woosh* machine at National! Very weird. They make everyone go through one if you're visiting the Statue of Liberty these days, too.
I agree with JM - it is at least better than a patdown. The last time I had one of those, it was far more...intimate...than they used to be. Oh, you're using the back of your hand? That makes it OK that you are spending 5 minutes rubbing my chest.
They're short puffs and they come from all directions so it's not exactly this but if you were wearing something flouncy, you'd probably want to hold it down. I doubt that a skirt that's part of a business suit would pose a problem.
ai, jackmormon, so sorry to hear you had the bra pat-down.
i avoided flying the whole period they were doing that, because i knew i would get too angry. but i still get angry thinking about it happening to other people.
(am a chronic extra-security person. last minute plane tickets and no bags checked does that for you. or tickets that have you change planes in different cities coming and going. it would be nice if you could carry around a chart showing how many times you have been searched so it's clear you are an Extra Specially Vouched-For, Proofed, and Double-Proofed Passenger).
To avoid getting patted down and to otherwise speed the security check-through, I have bought special airport shoes, airport belt, airport toiletries, and an airport briefcase. It's still not 100 percent effective at getting me through security smoothly, but it has helped.
Being stopped and searched does make me unusually angry, precisely at a moment when one would do best to show calm. I'm not quite sure why it makes me so mad.
The missus and I were flying back to NC from Portland a couple of years ago. She had bought a small mobile at a street fair that had some sort of fancy glass beads hung from metal wires, and the whole thing was wrapped up in paper to protect it.
Because it was going to be a long flight, she had taken a couple of Xanax, thinking she'd sleep on the flight. Then the plane got delayed, so we sat in the airport bar and had a couple of drinks. By the time the plane started boarding, as you might expect, she was feeling no pain.
So, predictably, they pulled her aside to go through her carry-on, and asked her to unwrap the mobile so they could see what it was. Mistake. She was perfectly willing to do so, but was now sufficiently tipsy that she proceeded to explain everything the artist had told her about it, all in slurred, exacting detail ("They use this kind of glass on the space shuttle! I like this one the best; see how it swirls inside?").
Ha ha, now they were trapped (and visibly annoyed) while this pie-eyed, oblivious hippie rambled on and on and on. It was hilarious.
Anyway, although the parade's moved on, I want to try to define my problem with t-sentimentality better than I have thus far. Like I said, Ben's 50 is fine with me; I guess I'm not sure that that's what people mean when they say "sentimental." I hear a lot of things called "sentimental" when, in context or with further questioning, all I can see that the speaker meant by it is that it attempted to engage your emotions at all, and that the emotions it was trying to engage were either uplift or a relatively uncomplicated kind of grief. I don't think this is an interesting criticism. Another way people use it is to complain that the movie was trying to produce an emotional response in them, which is also not that interesting--I'd want to hear why the movie failed. But it's totally fair to say that the artistic choices were unmotivated, that its emotional cues were insufficiently hidden, that all of the steps it took were too familiar, like NickS said--and if that's what's meant by "sentimental," that's okay, I'm just not sure that is what's often meant.
59: Artificiality yes, manipulation no. Manipulation I am reading as "producing in the viewer the emotional reaction intended by the artist". But I don't see this as an intrinsic element of art at all. It is something you can do with art. And there is a lot of art which is created without an overt intended reaction. Manipulation is the essence of Hallmark cards.
A work of art which allows you your own, unscripted response is better all other things being equal than one which reliably produces a particular response.
I'll grant that there probably is some art which tries not to engage your emotions (I mentioned Brecht above). Even then I actually don't think that's an exception since the attempt not to engage emotion is just another way to guide the audience's emotional response. But we were talking about conventional narratives when we started this conversation, and they always do. I can't think of an exception, nor conceive of one, really. Also, I think you are conflating two things--what a work of art aims for, and what it does in the audience. Just because a variety of reactions are possible in the audience doesn't mean that the artist didn't have anything in mind for them. I'm not trying to say there's no gap between intention and perception (heck, there is in Hallmark cards, too), but nothing's happening in art if it's just an artist saying, eh, they can take from it what they will. If that's the case, why even bother making art? What would motivate it?
I'd like to hear some more nominations for works of art that are not trying to guide the emotional response of the viewer. I think this requirement would probably eliminate any movie that has a score. You mentioned Capote; I don't think this is true of Capote at all. I'd argue that the emotional response intended by the work is a mixture of pity and disgust for Capote and whatever the killer's name was; I'm not saying everyone felt that, but that's what it was going for. All of the efforts of the director to create mood--to control lighting and sound--what is that but an attempt to guide the emotional response of the audience? Audio cuts out when it finally flashes back to the murder of the father (right? that's how I remember it)--why does it do that? I think there are both emotional and, ach, what's the word I want--intellectual (?) reasons. Maybe intellectual, to convey a strange intimacy about the act, but emotional--to make us feel its bleakness and emptiness. You can say you felt something different in that moment, but it doesn't mean the director had nothing in mind, or that that choice to cut the sound wasn't purposeful and designed to control the emotional response.
I didn't think Capote was that great, personally. PSH was great, but the movie had one interesting relationship at its core that it meandered away from too often.
63: Eh, correcting myself on the fly only leads to the need for more correction. But since all communication is an attempt to produce an intended effect in the audience, maybe it is the same diff.
I view sentiment as emotions filtered and structured thru received ideas and social norms. It is nearly the opposite of compassion and empathy, it is a intellectual defense mechanism that is designed to prevent compassion and empathy.
I think I understand what Bob McManus means by this--like, you see a child picking a flower and the movie is relying so completely on a child-picking-a-flower is sweet and innocent trope, with no ascription of its own meaning to the image, that's sentimental, right? I can get behind that.
I don't think that's a true observation w/r/t Crash though. It's uncomfortable that the cop rescues Thandie Newton, especially since it doesn't nearly all the way redeem him, so the audience has to live with the coexistence of his fuckedness and his goodness. (Does anyone remember if the scene in the health insurance agent's office takes place after or before the rescuing scene? I can't remember.)
See I say a work of art should not try to manipulate the viewer into having a particular intended response, and you read that as "not engage your emotions". But that's not what I'm saying. I don't watch a lot of movies and am not very well versed in moviedom -- you may be right that movies are pretty manipulative by and large.
An artist portraying two characters and communicating to the viewer that the two are having a fight, that one is angry, that the other is scared and resentful, is different and (if properly done) way more complex than the artist saying "be angry! be scared! be resentful!" and using lighting and soundtrack (or whatever the equivalent in his/her medium) to ensure that it happens. Portraying one of the parties as sympathetic is again, different from saying "sympathize with x!" though the effect is similar.
And the artist that portrays the characters and their emotions successfully and allows the viewer to empathize with them in his/her own way, is doing something different than the artist who determines what the proper response to a scene will be and uses props to make it happen. (And I think all of this can also be applied to types of art that don't have characters -- music, painting -- but my critical vocabulary is not up to the task.)
I like your thing about the child picking the flower -- that is essentially what I have in mind when I talk about artistic manipulation.
Doesn't Brecht jerk emotions around? In Threepenny, at least, you keep identifying sympathetically with Mackie Messer despite all the repeated warnings that he's an asshole and that it's a play.
I'm only repeating what other people say about Brecht. It could be totally wrong. But when I complained about the alienating, emotionless staging of the new Sweeney Todd everyone told me it sounded Brechtian, and my lack of emotional engagement was intended. But what do I know?
New Sweeney Todd = Awesomeness! Staging didn't interfere with my caring about what happened to characters at all, but just noting my different reaction probably isn't very helpful.
See I say a work of art should not try to manipulate the viewer into having a particular intended response, and you read that as "not engage your emotions".
I didn't misread you this way, though maybe I inartfully phrased something so it seemed I did. I only used the phrase "try not to engage your emotions" w/r/t Brecht, and this was to say that was another form of having a particular intended response.
Portraying one of the parties as sympathetic is again, different from saying "sympathize with x!" though the effect is similar.
JO, I really think the only difference here is what you notice, and this goes not just for movies, but just about any kind of story. Portraying one of the parties as sympathetic is just the same as saying "sympathize with x". The artist makes a kazillion choices to make X a sympathetic character, because (s)he wants you to sympathize. The difference you perceive is varying levels of subtlety and skilled artifice. It's totally legitimate to complain that emotional cues are insignificantly hidden, though I think movies and books can earn, in their course, big obvious ones, like the BM shirts.
The girl-with-a-flower thing is different. It's a complaint that the cues are cliched, not that they're present at all.
Not only haven't I seen that, but until I saw ST last weekend I had never seen anything Sondheim was involved with (I think, I could have seen such a thing without being aware of it).
Well, I could see having a different reaction to the new Sweeney if you'd never seen the George Hearn, and especially if you were a Sondheim virgin (Oh. My God. w/d, have I got an oeuvre for you. Wait till you hear it.) than if you'd seen the video, knew all the words to Sweeney by heart, and had prior strong feelings about how it should be done right.
Also, where were you sitting. I was in the back row, and I'm not unwilling to consider that really affects your experience sometimes. I couldn't really see Michael Cerveris's face. But that was also a function of the lighting.
I hated the new Sweeney. It wasn't so much the lack of emotion that bothered me, as much as the lack of coherence and sense, and the presence of The Tiny White Coffin Of Momentousness. I thought it was spectacularly unimaginative.
(Especially if you're going to use that conceit favored by high school sophomore auteur directors everywhere -- call it the "I'm going to stage the whole thing...in an insane asylum!!1!" card.)
I maybe didn't hate it as much as you; I was entertained, at least, but holy moly did it not do what it needed to. If you stage the whole thing...in an insane asylum!!1!, it takes away everything important about the show. Sweeney is insane, but how could he not be, because the world is insane too. The play is about the real, cruel world, not one person's paranoid conception of it.
158: Part of the problem is here - It's a complaint that the cues are cliched, not that they're present at all. The line between cues that are sufficiently well understood that we consciously recognize them as such and cliches is a blurry one; I'm not saying that in many cases they aren't distinct, but I'm not sure what explicit distinction one would give. In a sense, it sounds like Osner is arguing that if you can see the manipulation coming, it's a cliche. (Sorry if I misstated your views, Osner.)
Tia, I'm guessing we'd agree on much concerning Mr. Sondheim.
But yeah, my girlfriend had never seen Sweeney and didn't know the story, and she spent the whole time wondering what the fuck was going on. Directors who bring their own special concept are fine, but they still need to tell the damn story, especially when it's as plot-heavy as Sweeney is. Also, John Doyle somehow made the canon's great musical thriller really really boring. And the instruments thing is totally unjustified. Especially since that's not a choice Doyle made for this particular text, but rather something he does with every single show he stages, because that's his thing. He's currently working on a production of Company with the same setup, I'm not even kidding.
I've seen West Side Story, you'll have to excuse me while I read up on Sondheim's career.
Also, I tentatively dispute that the entire show takes place in an insane asylum. I read it as most of the show being in flashback from a guy who is in an insane asylum, but perhaps this just makes me unobservant.
164 -- no, that seems like a statement I would tentatively agree with. And Tia, I guess you are right about my "portray a character as sympathetic" statement. That really is an instruction to sympathize with the character. But I stand by my other stuff about "portraying the character as angry" vs saying "be angry".
w/d, you had the right read, but you should know that this is Doyle's conceit, and not Sondheim/Prince/Wheeler's original intent (though I understand Sondheim loves the current staging).
And I'm guessing that part of what you liked was just the pure awesomeness of the text itself, if you'd never been exposed to it before, because it is indeed awesome.
I noted, while walking around during intermission, that a lot of people were confused by the story, but found this baffling and started mocking those people behind their backs. Not only was the entire plot communicated to me (except that I claim it wasn't in an insane asylum, and might be terribly terribly wrong about this) (and literally all I knew in advance was, "It's about a barber who kills people"), but I claimed at the time, and pretty much stand by the claim, that you could figure out the entire plot if you were deaf and just saw everything happening on the stage.
On preview, thanks Joe, I guess I didn't need that first parenthetical.
I had never seen anything Sondheim was involved with (I think, I could have seen such a thing without being aware of it)
Now having looked and fixed a grammatical error, let me reivse that to saying I'd never seen a professional theatrical production of any Sondheim work, nor any version at all of any of the productions for which he wrote both the music and lyrics listed under "Major Works" at the wikipeida link.
Tia, have you ever read Everything Was Possible, about the creation of Follies? It's pretty great, if you know the show well. That's probably my favorite of his, though it's almost impossible to stage.
148 -- the girl with a flower example is great and I think you state the dynamic well with "the movie is relying so completely on a [snip] trope, with no ascription of its own meaning to the image."
I also agree with you that this is not a good description of what we call "sentimental." I think this is a good definition of what would, in common parlance, be called, "emotionally manipulative."
Thinking about your comment, "if that's what's meant by "sentimental," that's okay, I'm just not sure that is what's often meant."
I can think of a couple of meanings of "sentimental" off the top of my head. I think the first is the one that you are objecting to, "sentimental means something that wants me to feel emotions that I am not interested in."
I can think of other meanings in which it would be a more legitimate criticism. The first would be a variation on the above, "sentimental means something that wants me to feel emotions I am not interested in AND which believes that it is superior to me because it is interested in those emotions and I am not." This is, essentially, o-earnestness.
The other usage that I think of is, "sentimental means something that focuses on the emotions of a specific moment or set of people while apearing to lack cognizance of the larger social backdrop to the story."
In other words this is something that is emotionally pitched at the wrong level. In this sense it may be the opposite of something that suffers because it's gestures aren't given any new significance. It is the fault of a work that is too wrapped up in it's own characters.
Wait, so "horrible guy does something heroic" and "guy who wants to do the right thing at all times ends up doing something horrible" are not cliches? Those were subtle plot turns?
I need to stop thinking about that movie because I thought it was sort of whatever when it was over and now I'm turning towards my friend's view near the end which was "If this thing goes on another five minutes, I'm leaving."
Anyway, it is possible to make a work of art intended to bring out emotions in the audience but so complex that the audience can't figure out, or agree upon, what those emotions should be. The counter criticism of "all art does that" with "that" being "attempt to evoke emotions" actually isn't very interesting either.
166: Okay. Honestly, I barely remembered the beginning till I read about it in a review, and then was reminded of it here by Joe, and I was weaving it into my larger problem with the new production; through failure (by my lights) to create real investment in Sweeney and his plight, it didn't say what Sweeney needed to say. Sweeney's reaction to the world is supposed to be comprehensible and sympathetic. Also, true what Joe said about the music. I have, like, an emotional orgasm every time I listen to the OCR "Kiss Me", though I have to fastforward through "Ladies in Their Sensitivities"--this production, not so much.
171: I haven't read it. Hey, do you want to get into a rank Sondheim's works flamewar? It could be fun, but then it will reveal that I'm actually not too familiar with Pacific Overtures, and I will be ashamed.
I also agree with you that this is not a good description of what we call "sentimental." I think this is a good definition of what would, in common parlance, be called, "emotionally manipulative."
Wait, no, I'm sticking to my guns. I don't like "emotionally manipulative" as a critique, any more than "sentimental," unless what is meant is "transparently emotionally manipulative" or "unmotivatedly emotionally manipulative," and see, you need other words there to really say what you mean. I think the girl with a flower thing is more like cliche, really, than sentimental, but until he comes back to contradict me I think that's what McManus was talking about in 27. He's further talking about being moved by the cliche, and I think that is properly called kitsch.
I can think of a couple of meanings of "sentimental" off the top of my head. I think the first is the one that you are objecting to, "sentimental means something that wants me to feel emotions that I am not interested in."
This is so, so helpful. E.g., I have heard people object to It's a Wonderful Life as sentimental, when as near as I can tell their sole articulable objection was that it was uplifting, when that is no objection at all.
The other usage that I think of is, "sentimental means something that focuses on the emotions of a specific moment or set of people while apearing to lack cognizance of the larger social backdrop to the story."
In other words this is something that is emotionally pitched at the wrong level. In this sense it may be the opposite of something that suffers because its gestures aren't given any new significance. It is the fault of a work that is too wrapped up in it's own characters.
I don't think I understand this yet. Can you say more?
emotions in the audience but so complex that the audience can't figure out, or agree upon, what those emotions should be
This helps me respond to Tia's "the emotional response intended by [Capote] is a mixture of pity and disgust" -- what mixture? You are saying the work intends to bring out a particular nuanced response which includes pity and disgust in some specific proportion? I don't buy that. I don't think that type of nuanced response can be scripted, and I think if you talk to a couple of people who saw Capote and liked it, you are going to get different reactions.
Wait, no, I'm sticking to my guns. I don't like "emotionally manipulative" as a critique, any more than "sentimental,"
I'm doing two things here, I'm trying to explore common usage, and trying to tease out some analytical structure that can help us talk with more precision than the common usage. I thought that part of your objection to the conversation was that it had moved beyond what is commonly included in the common usage of "sentimental." Of course a comment like "sentimental" or "emotionally manipulative" or "cliched" or "kitchy" will need modifiers to be more precise. That doesn't mean that there isn't something going on that we can talk about with precision, just that people usually don't.
[end picking nits]
I don't think I understand this yet. Can you say more?
I was trying to think of examples that weren't too provocative. I have a friend who constantly objects to "whiny white people that don't recognize their privilege." Contrast, for example, something like Dead Poets Society (sentimental) with A Separate Peace. Part of what is offputting about Dead Poets Society is that it constructs a drama that takes place entirely within the confines of a situation of relative privilege. It wants you to only look at the situation from within the emotional perspective of the characters. A separate peace is equally sincere in wanting you, the reader, to identify with the emotions of these boarding school students but, in my recollection at least, it's smarter about how that world fits into the larger world.
As Mann points out, 12 years of Nazi rule in Europe resulted in the death of 70 per cent of the Jewish population; in the first 12 years of California's statehood, the Native American population fell by 80 per cent. Anyone who imagines that a post-genocidal literature must be unreadable should try Little House on the Prairie, or perhaps Joan Didion's Where I Was From.
Bull isn't, precisely, accusing Joan Didion of sentimentality but it's a similar criticism (more precisely, the criticism falls less heavily on Joan Didion than it might because, unspoken, is the knowledge that she is completely aware of these facts).
173: I never said Crash was subtle. In my first comment about it, I used the word "arias," which are famously unsubtle. I don't think subtlety is a particularly necessary virtue. But no, I don't think Crash was cliched, because the cliche you're talking about with the horrible guy is that the guy is redeemed and transformed, when I don't think that's what was supposed to have happened in Crash. If anyone remembers the sequence of the rescue and the insurance agent scene, that would be helpful. It's not that he's good now, it's that he got a chance to see another way. Maybe only one other way as per A White Bear's 22.
Anyway, it is possible to make a work of art intended to bring out emotions in the audience but so complex that the audience can't figure out, or agree upon, what those emotions should be.
Yeah, well, I don't think you're going to necessarily get lots of interrater reliability in responses, necessarily, like I said, you don't actually get them on Hallmark cards either, but I maintain that if you don't have something specific and meaningful you're trying to communicate, and that includes emotion, what's spat out will not cohere. On preview, JO, I don't mean that an artist actually can guide every aspect of the audience's experience, far from it. I mean that the goal is to communicate something specific and meaningful. I don't think there's a such thing as a conventionally structured narrative that doesn't have an emotion and an idea that it wants to communicate to its audience--there would be no motivation otherwise.
The counter criticism of "all art does that" with "that" being "attempt to evoke emotions" actually isn't very interesting either.
I don't know what to do with this. My point about complaining about emotional manipulation isn't that it's boring; it's just that it doesn't say what needs to be said. I don't know how to point that out more interestingly than I have.
176 -- This does a good job of conveying what you're responding to on an emotional level but I'm not sure how much analytical work it does. I imagine that if you talked to a variety of people who liked Crash they would also place different emphasis on what they liked.
I believe that it should be possible to draw a distinction between works that are (unpleasently) controlling of one's emotional reaction and one's that are not but I think Tia is correct that the distinction has to be based on something other than the (unpleasentness).
To go back to a musical example it might be generally agreed that Nina Simone is more emotionally present in here singing than Johnny Mathis is, but is there anything you can point to as evidence for that belief. I believe that there is, but that it's subtle and tricky to describe.
I'm doing two things here, I'm trying to explore common usage, and trying to tease out some analytical structure that can help us talk with more precision than the common usage.
Okay, sorry, I was confused.
Hmm, I didn't know people used "sentimental" for that lack of context thing.
Regarding the update, I had a different reaction--I thought it was implausible that the Iranian family would never have been called Arab before--are racist vandals really that hip to the fact that there's a difference?
"It wants you to only look at the situation from within the emotional perspective of the characters."
this is just wrong, as a critique of any film, book, or play. A good author always wants his audience to view the situation through the emotional perspective of the characters. Aside from the fact that A Separate Peace takes place during a war, I don't think it strays from that goal, assuming for the moment that A Separate Peace isn't sentimental.
But no, I don't think Crash was cliched, because the cliche you're talking about with the horrible guy is that the guy is redeemed and transformed, when I don't think that's what was supposed to have happened in Crash.
You have a higher threshhold for cliche than I do. I took this, and the other situational reversals to be "people are complex, and now you're going to see how in the most extreme ways possible." The cliche I see isn't about redemption - and not just because I didn't give a damn about whether or not he was redeemed so I wouldn't have been emotionally involved anyway - it's about LIFE and DEATH and HORRIBLE ABUSE situations being used to signify a point that could be demonstrated with a lighter touch.
but I maintain that if you don't have something specific and meaningful you're trying to communicate, and that includes emotion, what's spat out will not cohere.
Art doesn't have to be coherent. And artists can be confused by their own works. But what I think we'd need here are artists' accounts of their own motivations and intentions. I doubt that every single work of art had a specifc meaning behind it. Most? Yes. A requirement of art? No.
178 -- clearly "subtle" and "cliched" are neither opposites, not sufficient to describe what we're talking about.
[I note, in passing, that Tu Mama Tambien could be described as subtle but cliched in broad elements of it's plot, filling in another quadrant on the chart]
"original" is clearly too overused to do much good. Is there another word to describe whether something handles the material in a lively way? I tend to use the phrase "emotionally present" but that may just have personal meaning and fail to communicate usefully.
180 -- I didn't say that I was completely successful in distinguishing between them :)
182 -- A separate peace could easily be described as sentimental. I was struggling to think of a good example and freely admit that may not have been the best choice of contrasts. Perhaps the idea is bound to fail anyway. Contrast, for examepl, Breaker Morant and Apocalypse Now. I think both are good movies and that Apocalypse Now is the better of the two, yet Apocalypse now has been critcised for trying to make the war into just a setting for a personal jouney (matching the definition of "sentimental" that I was proposing).
I still think there's a meaningful analytical catagory there, but I am lacking in precision. Perhaps someone can offer assistance.
NickS: I think what people mean by "sentimental" is actually the opposite of your definition in 177: that the emotional impact of the scene is driven by cues in the work that are outside of or irrelevant to the actual characters. The work is sentimental because it seeks to create emotion through means other than the characters. The characters themselves are thin, but they are put into obviously emotional situations, and the audience is given cues such as cliched musical selections or lighting that they ought to cry now.
you seem to have a valid complaint agains works that accept a certain social class' worldview as the entire universe of human consideration, but I don't think that's "sentiment;" I think it's something else.
I in fact have a relatively high threshold for cliche because nearly everything is cliched; it's all a matter of degree, so for me to use it as a critique I have to see that someone's treading pretty hard on familiar tropes, not adding anything particular, not drawing .
Honestly, I don't think a light touch is particularly necessary either. I'm a fan of Italian opera. The movie was called "Crash," and its entire conceit was that it was going to focus on the most violent collisions. I think Drum was right about the knife edge thing. I'm pretty sympathetic to efforts to focus on moments of greatest intensity.
I doubt that every single work of art had a specifc meaning behind it. Most? Yes. A requirement of art? No.
Well, I think I've been trying to retreat into "conventionally structured narrative," but aside from any overly universalizing statements I may or may not have made, what I'm really trying to talk about is what criticims are elucidating for the things that we're discussing--Hollywood movies--which I think all do meet this criterion.
Eliot called Hamlet an artistic failure for something like a lack of emotional focus. But I don't have a quote and I've crossed over into unmitigated pretentiousness by bringing it up.
186 -- I certainly don't offer it as a primary definition.
I still think it's a meaningfull category. What if I were to call it "fuzzyheadedness"?
At the risk of moving the goalposts consider the anacdote here (noting that, like anything in HST, the character of the hitchiker may be real or invented as a foil). I believe that HST is not just criticising the decision making of the hitchiker he is also criticising the narrative that she tells. How would you describe his criticism of her narrative?
This may be a bad example, I don't want to get into HST's gender politics.
Lest my 177 derail the conversation too much I'm curious if anyone has a response to my 184.
[Is it a sign that I am trying too hard to be an "unfogged commenter" that I am writing a comment that's sole purpose is to reference my own previous comment?]
191: Jeremy, what are you talking about? If I have to, I can prove that you can take nearly anything and frame it in mocking "Look at the cliche" terms. It's easy, because there are only a few stories to tell. If people are really, really experimental with method of storytelling, then it's harder, that's why I said "nearly everything" and not "everything." But unless we're going to say there's no value in repeating the old forms even if we do it well, then that's not really a problem.
I mean my friend Dale Rinehart published a one-issue zine in high school dedicated to the notion that everything is cliched. I dug it then, thought it was a pretty cool way of looking at the world. But I was 14.
I think I am trying to tie too many things together in my attempted alternate definition. Text is correct that a large part of what I'm thinking of is a work that is so far within the context of a social class that it can't recognize that fact. That is clearly a poor definition of sentimentality. It may represent a different way in which a work can fail, but probably doesn't apply here.
I am vaguely thinking of another category that gives subjective emotions a primary position while, simultaneously, lacking in insight into those emotions. "Lacking insight" seems like a difficult phrase to define.
"Oh look. It's an artist being ruthless in pursuit of his art and not caring about real people. Where have we seen THAT before? Ooh, and look, there's like this parallel between him and the thing he's describing. You almost might think artists are drawn to subjects because of their own psychological needs. And hey, in the end, it doesn't bring him satisfaction or resolution of his own demons! Unlike every other movie about a tortured artist!"
I could do this all night. Send me another one.
Since all stories are variations on each other, I was arguing for being less liberal with the application of the label "cliche." See 188, where I forgot to finish a sentence.
I in fact have a relatively high threshold for cliche because nearly everything is cliched; it's all a matter of degree, so for me to use it as a critique I have to see that someone's treading pretty hard on familiar tropes, not adding anything particular, not drawing.
Honestly, I don't think a light touch is particularly necessary either. I'm a fan of Italian opera. The movie was called "Crash," and its entire conceit was that it was going to focus on the most violent collisions. I think Drum was right about the knife edge thing. I'm pretty sympathetic to efforts to focus on moments of greatest intensity.
This is fine with me; it's a matter of our personal tastes and articulating how they differ with some precision. Which is what you've been going for, right? I happen to think that the treading in Crash was pretty hard and the tropes familiar and the title a sign that it was supposed to be done that way. The fact that it achieved what it intended makes it a more coherent movie but doesn't make the thing it achieved any more or less likable from a personal taste point of view. I doubt I'd like any movie that wanted to do and succeeded in doing what Crash does.
Well, I think I've been trying to retreat into "conventionally structured narrative," but aside from any overly universalizing statements I may or may not have made, what I'm really trying to talk about is what criticims are elucidating for the things that we're discussing--Hollywood movies--which I think all do meet this criterion.
A lot more than Hollywood has come up, but if we're now restricting ourselves to that, I'd still want accounts of how actual Hollywood movies were conceived of and what they were intended to mean by their producers/creators/writers, etc. You're probably right though, because movies that don't fit your criteria probably wouldn't make it into production.
Slol -- I was actually thinking of mentioning Ecclesiastes in 196. But I think "everything is cliched" is not a useful simplification of Ecclesiastes. It was Dale's jumping-off point.
195 -- I think you and Tia are still talking past each other. There's an important difference between saying "everything is cliched" and saying that everything can be described in "mocking 'Look at the cliche' terms."
The difference between the two lies in whether we can agree on a shared definition of "cliched." If cliched is a purely subjective judgement than there is always some perspective from which any work will appear "cliched." If we can agree on a shared standard (which will not be "objective" but will, at least be shared) than we can share judgements about whether a particular work is or is not "cliched."
as far as that passage, I think the criticism is that the girl doesn't see the options that she has. She has a limited view of the world, and a warped one, and it has led her to think that she can only be herself while living in chicken coop with a smack head, or whatever Thompson called him. She isn't aware of her own lack of insight, but Thompson is, so I guess that's dramatic or situational irony, or something. If she were to sit down and write her own story, it would be missing something, because she is missing something. I don't know what the word for that is, besides unfortuante.
Essential truths of the human condition, understandable by all, through a work of unsurpassable transcendent beauty, a gift from the artist to us, which we can only behold but never quite comprehend in all its magnificent glory. It makes us laugh, it makes us cry, it makes us see what is at the heart of being human. It is a work that brings us all together.
it will reveal that I'm actually not too familiar with Pacific Overtures, and I will be ashamed
(Me either, Tia. Don't tell.)
I wouldn't dream of doing a best-to-worst list or anything like that, but I can do a list of favorites. I'm going to include WSS and Gypsy for these purposes, because his contribution to both was very important.
Favorites:
1. West Side Story
2. Follies
3. Merrily We Roll Along (we'll discuss this in a moment, if you like)
4. Gypsy
5. Sweeney Todd
6. Sunday ITPWG
7. Into The Woods
The following are shows I have no special love for:
8. Company
9. A Little Night Music
10. Assassins
11. Passion
The following I'm not familiar enough with to discuss:
203: What are you responding to eb? Tortured artist doesn't care about real people isn't genre any more than horrible man does something heroic is.
A lot more than Hollywood has come up, but if we're now restricting ourselves to that, I'd still want accounts of how actual Hollywood movies were conceived of and what they were intended to mean by their producers/creators/writers, etc. You're probably right though, because movies that don't fit your criteria probably wouldn't make it into production.
Okay, never mind. I do want to talk about more than Hollywood; I should have said that this critique often gets leveled in the place where it must have the least applicability. I don't think that there is much art that gets made without serious intent to do some desired kind of emotional work on the viewer, at least if we're talking about narrative, which is where I feel most competent. I'd like to find a way of talking about this that is located not within the author, but within the work, though. I haven't been successful with that so far. But anyway, if you take any art with a political goal, like The Grapes of Wrath, say, it can't function without attempting a broad control of emotional responses. If you don't feel anger at The Man, if you're not uplifted by Tom Joad's defiance and moved with pity and admiration when the sister (name?) breastfeeds the old starving man, it doesn't work.
And sure, eb, if subtlety and a light touch are important characteristics of art for you, I could certainly see hating Crash. that's perfectly sensical criticism that shows how our basic value differences made us respond differently.
(ooh, on preview I see JD is providing ample flame war tinder. It's gonna be a hot one tonight!)
Tia -- I'm curious if, after this discussion, you want to attempt describing the catagories that you think are important?
I think you're right to suggest that we don't have a shared definitions for our terms or for whether they are purely descriptive or explicitly critical, but can you propose a working definition?
I guess my question is are you just objecting to the fact that people are stating as universal aesthetic judgements that you don't share, or do you think that our weights are underweight? Are you asserting subjectivity, or proposing a effort towards greater critical precision?
(After checking IMDB to make sure you are not making a joke about a movie called Ecclesiastes:) Me either -- I'm not talking about Crash.
exactly the opposite.
Then it's hard for me to understand what your 188 means. When you say "exactly the opposite" -- what is "the opposite" of the "cynical 14 year old stance"? The cynical stance is roughly, "everything I see is a cliche, i.e. is unoriginal and not worth responding to on its own terms but only as a parody of meaningful reality" -- I guess the opposite of this might be "everything I see is a cliche and yet worthy of my vital response" but I can't really make sense of this. It seemed in your 193 like you are saying every plot element could be described by a lousy critic as cliched, I guess that's true but I don't think that reading of "everything is cliched" works in your 188. And, I don't see how that's the opposite of the 14yo stance.
In other musical news, I just read that John Travolta is going to play Edna Turnblad in the movie version of the musical Hairspray. File that under Just Plain Wrong.
(proposing an effort toward greater critical precision. Then you can get to the task of trying to engage with the other people's values. I think eb is wrong to value subtlety as a necessary condition for good art, but I don't think he was asserting a universal, and only because his terms were actually useful could I understand what he was saying. But I'm in the middle of a flame war here. I promise I'll get back to the question.)
Jeremy, I take it that Tia's view is not, "everything I see is a cliche and yet worthy of my vital response", but rather "clichedness (as conventionally used) is not relevant at all to my judgment of a work," though as always I should let people speak for themselves.
Neither quoted phrase was said by Tia in this thread (or anywhere else I'm aware of), of course.
217 - I mean, at least they got somebody with experience in musicals. Not sure why the casting choice irks me but there's something about it that does. Perhaps because I expect someone more transgressive for something from John Waters and perhaps because it feels like they're trying to disassociate themselves from teh gay. Or maybe just because I associate Harvey Fierstein with the role so much. Dunno.
(I just got timed out for quite a while (I think it was my problem as I couldn't check e-mail or load other pages); apologies if this double posts.)
From 193: It's easy, because there are only a few stories to tell.
203 was responding to this, but your elaboration about Capote (which I've not seen) makes it clear that you mean something more than: this story is a story of type X and therefore cliche because there are many stories of type X.
I'm actually with you on the most things are cliched point; I just can't seem to get past that with a lot of movies and I suspect that I like fewer movies than you do even though I really do like movies and, while I was on Netflix, watched a lot of them.
Different 188: Every story is an iteration of a past one in a meaningful sense; they are all cliche in the sense of having a formal similarity to other stories; it is easy to identify this element and apply the critical label "cliche" unjustly. Good ones include an element of the particular that stimulate us in a way that allows us to reconnect with a truth we've probably been told before. It's not that we're saying new things; we're saying them in new ways. Or, as NickS would put it, the territory doesn't change, only the map.
216 -- that's actually good news, since I need to stop reading this thread and get work done. But I will check back later to see Tia's grand unified theory :)
I'm not quite sure how I can be "wrong" to value subtlety, but I can see how I can be in the minority, or, even at an extreme, the only person who does so.
It is only by zooming in that we prepare ourselves to zoom out. Anyway, I'm off to read microfilm, where the screens do not display Unfogged. If I don't go blind, I'll check back in.
I am disappointed by Tia's lack of contribution to the alleged flamewar. C'mon, bring it!
(My list of "familiar with" isn't as long as Joe's, but he strikes me as pretty much right. Pacific Overtures has some great numbers. Don't know most of Merrily, but "Not a Day Goes By" is amazing.)
Matt, you should check out Merrily. The score is very traditional -- so catchy, so jazzy/brassy, it sounds like really great Jule Styne. The book is troublesome, because the main character is weak and underdeveloped. But it's Sondheim's best theme, which he explores in Follies and Into The Woods as well -- the pain of losing your youth and innocence. It's also set with a baby boomer backdrop -- the time of innocence is the late 50s/early 60s, when literally anything seemed possible (the show ends with them watching the launch of Sputnik on the roof of their NY apartment building, and singing a heartbreaking song called "Our Time"), and the bitterness and disappointment are all rampant by the late 70s/early 80s, when the show begins.
But anyway, if you take any art with a political goal, like The Grapes of Wrath, say, it can't function without attempting a broad control of emotional responses. If you don't feel anger at The Man, if you're not uplifted by Tom Joad's defiance and moved with pity and admiration when the sister (name?) breastfeeds the old starving man, it doesn't work.
But this (wish to manipulate) is the weakness of political art, qua art. When I read something and I can imagine the writer saying to himself "yeah, that'll knock 'em out, that'll make my point", that's when I feel boredom (not to say, loathing) coming on. Those scenes in Grapes of Wrath have power, to the extent they do have power, because Steinbeck cares enough to imagine a scene and describe it with precision and immediacy.
Charles Simic said "It is the dream of every cliche to enter a poem." Art is interesting to the extent it struggles against cliche, which desires to substitute itself for actual thought and feeling.
This may be repetitive, as I've only skimmed the 240 odd comments above.
It seems that many are focusing on the charge of sentimentality as the accusation that a work fails to evoke sympathy with the characters, either because the work seems too formulaic for us to suspend belief, or because the characters are simply too unbelievable to stir us, and so forth.
That may be right. But sentimentality can also occur when a story fails to RESOLVE the conflicts it has created in a way that we find meaningful or satisfying, and instead relies on a resolution that is at bottom an oversimplified appeal to a particular emotion. The resolution is generated not by the internal logic of the story or characters, but by the artist's desire to make a particular point. Unfortunately, the story doesn't make the point, and with the disjunction between the conflict and the resolution we are left feeling manipulated, with a sense that the story is artificial, a morality tale that never persuades. When the story attempts to distract us from this disjunction by banging especially loudly on a particular emotional key, sentimentality occurs.
I was just reading through movie reviews, deciding on my evening activities, and this made me think of you guys:
You could complain that "Glory Road," an inspirational coach-centered sports movie, follows a familiar formula, but that would be like complaining that a basketball is round. This is not a genre that demands or rewards novelty. The idea is to take a bit of sports history and prune and embellish it into a three-act screenplay that culminates in the Big Game.
Not that there's a chance in hell I'm going to see that tonight.
Oh, I'll see a sports movie now and then--mostly for the homoerotic content. I was thinking more of my companion, who has delicate and refined sensibilities, and would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to such a thing.
To flog a dead horse while most have moved on to the next corpse, I still think there is something to the "sentimentality" criticism. All movies attempt to engage the emotions, but a "sentimental" movie in the manipulative sense attempts to determine the viewer's emotions. In a "sentimental" film, if you don't feel the emotion (or feel one different than the filmmaker intended), the filmmaker has failed. In an unsentimental film, if you don't feel the emotion, you have failed (or no one has). It's the difference between Schindler's List, an unabashedly sentimental film, and a good one, and Shoah (which I haven't seen; maybe it is sentimental in which case substitute something appropriate.) A dry accounting of inherently moving events can be emotional without being sentimental.
Film involves choices, and a film without any sentimentality is almost certainly a bad or useless film. It's not a dichotomy, but a continuum. There are good sentimental films and bad unsentimental ones. Still, it's a useful criticism.
I don't think this horse is dead. I'm going to get back to teh sentimental at some point. But first, flame war!
I'm judging these shows by score, not as coherent works, because I haven't seen all of them staged:
West Side Story (I wouldn't include this, but if we're going to, it goes first, because it's the best musical EVAR)
Sweeney Todd (I don't understand not listing this first after WSS. Every song from this, with maybe two or three exceptions and a couple of interludes, is classic.)
Passion (Have you actually seen Passion? What version? Because I listened to the OCR when it first came out and was meh, and then I saw the West Coast premiere, and ever after I adored the score. I think you need the experience of seeing it to prime you for the music. I also saw the PBS Michael Cerveris/Patti LuPone/Audra MacDonald concert version, which was also great.)
Follies (After attempting this somewhat analytically by listing top flight songs, I have to agree that it deserves a higher placement than I would have given it just on instinct. I'm not sure how to count cut songs. "All Things Bright and Beautiful" and "Uptown/Downtown" are both classics that were cut, but even without them Follies is doing well in the tally. Fuck, I'm listening to it now. "In Buddy's Eyes" --hot damn.)
Sunday in the Park
Company (What's the basis for your meh? Also, if I can consider cut songs, two other fabulous songs, and one decent one, were written for the "Being Alive" spot.)
Merrily (Yeah, I think you placed it too high. I love it, but I love all these shows. I can't come up with enough truly great songs from it to justify the high placement you gave it. I sure do love "Our Time" though. I had a show tunes-themed radio show in college, and I sang that song on air when we graduated. I was really off key, but I'm told it was endearing.)
A Little Night Music (considering cut songs, the axed version of "The Glamorous Life," sung by Desiree's daughter, is one of his best. Also "Now, Later, Soon," "Send in the Clowns," "Every Day a Little Death" (in a little gem way) and "The Miller's Son" are all great in my book.)
Gypsy (Yes, really this low. If I were trying to rank the shows as coherent artworks, Gypsy would shoot up near the top. But based solely on the score? "Rose's Turn" "You Gotta Get a Gimmick," "Everything's Coming Up Roses," maybe, and then what?)
Into the Woods
Assassins
Anyone Can Whistle (though the title song is my favorite song)
The Frogs
I can't judge: AFTHOTWTTF, Pacific Overtures, Evening Primrose (I love three of the songs I know, but wasn't this a one-hour TV special? It can't really compete.)
I haven't been paying close attention for 150+ comments, but I think that eb, MK, and I all agree that "there is something to the 'sentimentality' criticism." Based on his review, yesterday, of some documentary or another, so does David Edelstein. AFAIAA, so does every other film critic.
236: "The idea is to take a bit of sports history and prune and embellish it into a three-act screenplay that culminates in the Big Game. "
Which is why it is indisputable that "Shaolin Soccer" was robbed of its Oscar. By remaining faithful to genre conventions while simutaneously mocking the audience for their genre expectations it shone a funhouse mirror on contemporary culture and the filmic experience that Godard never managed to achieve.
"Last Midnight," "Stay with Me," "Children Will Listen" (OK that's a double count), "I Know Some Things" and any version of the title song just off the top of my head.
As for EDALD, I'm listening to something else ("Things to Come" by Dizzy Gillespie) right now, so I can't count off in my head, but I was vaguely under the impression that it broke the "Every song is a waltz" thing. More important, what's to like? The title image is great, but the lyrics don't develop it hardly (do "buttons" and "bread" contribute anything beside scansion and rhyme?), there aren't any particularly clever rhymes, Anne's entrance on "so do I" is highly annoying (this may be an artifact of the original singer), and in general, eh. Maybe you could say some of these things about "Not a Day Goes By" but that's got a great melody and the lyrics are heartbreakingly direct instead of using a not particularly interesting list to pad them out. In other words, YMMV.
Let me also say that this is one weak-ass flame war between Tia and JD. You guys both start talking trash, then I have to do the work for both of you. And I don't even know that much Sondheim. Step it up!
Ack, I'm an idiot. I totally forgot "Stay With Me."
I like "Children Will Listen" but weak-ass pseudo fan that you are, you totally fail to recognize that a thousand people could have written that song. It's just not that special. "I Know Things Now" not "I Know Some Things" [turns eyes heavenward in disgust] is a conceivable nominee, but, though admittedly this is part of the fairy tale pitter patter conceit of the show, it's still too neat and homily-y, in lyric and melody. The title song? Not even.
You happy, Weiner? I'm trying to go gentle on your shit.
I don't think this horse is dead. I'm going to get back to teh sentimental at some point. But first, flame war!
I think the horse probably is dead, but I'm not willing to give up either.
I've been trying to think of ways to get at what we're talking about without using the words "cliched" or "sentimental" which we're trying to define.
I think Ben's "unmotivated" is a good start but clearly insufficient because one could imagine an avante-garde film in which everything was random images which would unmotivated but not cliched or sentimental.
First let me offer an example to think about. I thought of Psycho in which the action is clearly undermotivated, but the film doesn't feel either cliched or sentimental in conventional terms. To the extent that it works I think it's success is based on being unfamiliar and inventive. If you look at hitchcock parodies, I think that once the elements are made familiar it's easy to make them into cliches. So how would we catagorize Psycho? (Note, contrast with Vertigo which, for me, contains more emotional moments that are recognizable?)
I find myself thinking of using a variety of attributes to categorize a work, this list is far from complete, but here's a start (attempting, as much as possible to use terms that are not positively or negatively weighted.)
[Note: this will only get us so far, since at some point we do need to start talking about "good and bad" or "successful and unsuccessful" but, for the moment . . .]
Some of these will require definition, others should be obvious, for the moment I'm just brainstorming to see whether these seem like legitimate pairs that can be placed on a continuum or not.
Familiar ---> Unfamiliar
Naturalistic --> Stylized
Unmotivated --> Internally Motivated
Subtle --> Unsubtle.
Individualized --> Archetypal
Small Emotional Range –> Large Emotional Range
Small Emotional Dynamic Range –> Large Dynamic Range
Perhaps another for describing the extent to which the emotional content of a work is contained in cues that lie outside of lived experience (like theme music) vs a work that frames it's cues in the vocabulary of lived experience.
I would be tempted to add another category for highly structured vs. unstructured but I don't think that's meaningful. Almost any film, for example, is going to be highly structured just because of the requirement of having only 2 hours in which to tell a story.
The goal of this, of course, is not to endlessly divide for it's own sake but to attempt to build a vocabulary that we can share.
So, for example, could we all agree that Psycho is strongly Unfamiliar (or, at least, was at the time), highly stylized, undermotivated, individualized (though with good use of archetypal images), with a small emotional range, a mediocre but very well used dynamic range of emotions (dynamic range is used here, with analogy to the term in music that describes the contrast between loud and soft). I don't know whether I would describe Psycho as subtle or not, so that may not be a useful category. Obviously Psycho is completely unsubtle on one level but, at the same time, part of what I had in mind with that term was the use of detail, and Psycho is elegant in it's detail.
To throw a couple of other examples out for consideration:
In The Maltese Falcon when Bogart says, "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it." It feels, like JFK's, "It has often been said that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." that this feels like the statement of a preexisting trope, but is the first explicit statement of it. Does this count as something both Archetypal and unfamiliar?
Is Casablanca a sentimental movie? Yes! But it's also fabulous. Can we agree that sentimental doesn't have to be a negative judgment.
In film, like any artform, the style can cut against the story. Consider Jules and Jim -- the story is, on the face of it, depressing, but movie leaves me feeling awake, excited, and happy. I'm not happy because bad things happened to characters that I liked, but I'm happy because of what the film conveys about storytelling and cinema. I'm happy because of the magnificent opening shot flying across the landscape. Does this matter in our analysis, or am I trying to drag far too much in to have a productive discussion? In the essay by Bruce Sterling I linked to recently he says of A Perfect Vacuum, "These are charming pieces, witty, ingenious, highly thought-provoking, utterly devoid of human interest. People will be reading these for decades to come. Not because they work as fiction, but because their form follows function with the sinister elegance of an automatic rifle." In that case it is praise but can the same comment ("form completely follows function") also be a criticism?
I suspect it is probably better if you completely ignore that last paragraph but I leave it in because I think it's interesting.
(I swear I'm going to get back to this, but I might not have energy for a while. I just wanted to say that mealworm, I think you actually agree with me, in that "sentimental," meaning "tries to control your emotions" is a descriptor, not a criticism in and of itself, though we may disagree as to the frequency with which its apt (I'm not sure).)
Or in other words: Can we agree that sentimental doesn't have to be a negative judgment.
Also, the Persian dude totally needed to get all cheese-grater on his enemy.
The disappearing old posts are totally stepping on my ability to riff off old comments. It was a Persian cabbie that was taking a cheese grater to his poo to add flavor crystals to the pastry case, right? Or was that what you were referencing?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:01 AM
I know, it's lousy, isn't it? I don't know if the Persian was a cabbie or not, but he did sun-dry his feces for the sake of sprinkling some on the goods in the pastry case. Some will say that this is not the authentic face of Iran. Sadly, it is its very essence.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:09 AM
Apo, I think so, that's why I thought maybe Khomeini style was a reference to the same cheese grater.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:09 AM
Yeah, Crash sucked. That was my reaction also. Denby was off that day.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:11 AM
Sadly, it is its very essence.
They don't call 'em Shi'ites for nothing.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:11 AM
My mom complained that it was the white cop's behavior that strained credulity in that scene. I don't think I agree with either of you. Maybe black hitchhiker, not knowing his ride was a cop, didn't consider that he might be carrying a gun and didn't think freaking the guy out a little would have any serious consequences.
I loved Crash. I don't think its commentary on race was perfect, I guess (actually I don't have an opinion), but the movie transcended that single issue. Some of those scenes were like arias on film. I felt that in a larger sense, the movie was about how fate can either give you a remarkable second chance or destroy you, and on those terms, the movie succeeded brilliantly.
That said, it was not as good as Brokeback Mountain, and I'll certainly be rooting for BM.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:17 AM
I'll certainly be rooting for BM.
At the Mineshaft.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:21 AM
I watched Crash with my parents in Kansas, and I was glad to see it was right at their level. They were like, "Wow. Racism goes so deep." My response was, "L.A. is hell. Any place where I feel like congratulating some asshole for not selling a bunch of Chinese immigrants into sex slavery is no good." Plus, I don't like it when brutal molestation figures as a minor plot point merely so it can set up an awkward situation later. See, the only cop who can save her is the one who violated her in front of her husband! I call bullshit.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:55 AM
The italics around that "not" are deeply unfortunate.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:58 AM
You know, improbable coincidences are a pretty standard dramatic convention. Crash doesn't aspire to perfect naturalism, and there's no reason it should have to.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:02 AM
And it's not so that her molestation was a minor plot point. It got as much airing as many other elements in a multi-character drama.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:05 AM
I'm fine with improbable coincidences. Tom Jones is my favorite book. It's the artificiality of jerking the audience around emotionally that bugs me.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:07 AM
It's the artificiality of jerking the audience around emotionally that bugs me.
What does this mean? This is like calling a movie "sentimental." All movies attempt to artificially jerk the audience around emotionally (okay, maybe some Brecht thing tries actively not to jerk the audience around emotionally, but I think I'm using the phrase correctly when I say "that's the exception that proves the rule"). When you're outside you call it "sentimental," when inside, maybe "wrenching." I understand that the movie's appeal didn't succeed with you, but that doesn't say why. There was a point to giving the same two people two entirely different interactions: to show that, children of circumstance that we are, we can totally dehumanize someone in one situation and empathize with them at risk to our own life in other.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:15 AM
I don't know from Crash and am no film critic, but there are definitely (far too many) movies which explicitly try to jerk the audience around emotionally -- presenting scenes with cues for how you're supposed to respond -- and movies which do not, which allow your response to develop organically. I prefer the latter sort.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:20 AM
I have to admit, I don't understand #13 either. I assume that "sentimental" means, if all movies are sentimental, "overly sentimental." It might not be a criticism you find apt, but it seems like a pretty straightforward criticism.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:27 AM
presenting scenes with cues for how you're supposed to respond
All movies do this. No emotional response to art develops organically, it just feels that way. In Brokeback Mountain, when you see the shirts, you're supposed to cry. The movie is successful because you do. If you don't, the question is why you didn't, not whether or not the movie told you you were supposed to.
I guess I should say that "sentimental" is an elucidating criticism only when there's no other reason for an artistic choice than a sort of provocation, and/or that provocation is inconsistent with prior plot or characterization. So My Girl can meaningfully be called "sentimental" because there's no reason for Macaulay Culkin to die and because it doesn't make sense that a ten year old who knows he's allergic to bee stings would throw rocks at a wasp's nest unless you'd previously established a seriously self-destructive aspect to his character.
I realize my complaint about "sentimental" is idiosyncratic, but I still think it's right.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:36 AM
The movie is successful because you do.
I think that's the key. The movie is successful, or isn't, with a specific individual. If you find the movie unsuccessful, and say that it's cloying and that you can see the puppet strings throughout the film, your criticism is unlikely to make sense to someone who found the movie successful.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:41 AM
I'm with Tia. All movies, books and plays try to jerk the audience around emotionally. When it doesn't work, you don't like it. Maybe it's less likely to work when you think the jerking is canned, that it is acheived (or attempted) through generic formulas rather than, I don't know, new formulas.
I liked Crash, I think for the reasons Tia gives. That it is improbable is perhaps besides the point. I could see an audience really disliking the idea that a racist cop, who actually goes so far as to molest a woman, could also be capable of heroism, and for that reason, turning against the movie. I don't like the idea either, but suspect that is in fact true, and for that reason, I liked the movie a little extra.
I don't think it was the best picture. But it was a hell of a lot better than Titanic. And Don Cheadle is awesome.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:46 AM
I do heart Don Cheadle big-time. He's delightful.
I didn't hate Crash. I liked it fine. But I guess I didn't feel that the heroic cop saving the woman made things "even" re: the molestation. Things being "even" is probably not the point, but the yucko fingering-cop factor stayed with me, rather unpleasantly, far longer than anything else about the movie, and I felt it was trying to almost say something kind of uplifting.
In any other year, compared to any other set of Oscar contenders, I'd say Crash could be best picture. There were just too many great movies.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:57 AM
I certainly don't think it made things even. I don't know what it did, exactly, except showed that a single person is capable of both monstrous and heroic things.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:02 AM
Some critic said that in Crashland, everyone is forced to move beyond their singular point of view -- in order to understand a total of two points of view. I thought that was funny.
Then again, I think the word "pants" is funny.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:14 AM
When I first read your comment, Joe, I thought, "Ha. Crash == pwned" and then, shockingly, it started to make me like the movie more, in retrospect. It shows all these people who can only escape their own solipsism just far enough to see one other perspective, and then they, I guess, spend the rest of their lives pathetically pinging that alternate perpective as a way of escaping their own. With the downer ending, maybe it's suggesting that's the best most people are capable of.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:22 AM
Crash is one of those movies I like less each time I think about it.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:27 AM
On second thought, I'm wrong. What's good about "Crash" is that the girls are nicely bouncy, and Yuki loses her panties in the first episode.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:35 AM
I can't begin to express how much I will enjoy reading those words again and aganin in new and exciting contexts. Even better than the Mexican thing.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:42 AM
'Postropher, you are embarrassing the angels.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:48 AM
Re 16: Sentimentality is a bete noir for me. I view sentiment as emotions filtered and structured thru received ideas and social norms. It is nearly the opposite of compassion and empathy, it is a intellectual defense mechanism that is designed to prevent compassion and empathy.
If the idea of the street urchin makes you cry, then you will be able to pass actual street urchins without even seeing them. I don't see movies til they reach cable, but it sounds like BM and Capote are about moving past sentimentality into compassion;and Crash is sentimental to the core.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:52 AM
What about something like Pride & Prejudice (the movie)? It's obviously sentimental, and self-consciously so. But I was really deeply moved by how sharply rendered the class/marriage problem was, and both my date and I teared up horribly when Bingley finally proposed to Jane. Was that merely a sentimental reaction or compassion for women who otherwise face a life of destitute dependency? Can it be both?
I assume we're now talking about sentimentality in the "bad" sense of Schiller -- put-on, false. It used to be thought a good thing -- stimulating, expansive.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:59 AM
I feel a coinage coming on. A simple one; yes, an adjective prefixed by a single letter and a hyphen.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:06 PM
26: Peggy Noonan need never worry about me trying to feel her up.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:07 PM
Peggy Noonan, now starring in "Caged Heat IV."
Apostropher, I share your sense that Yuki is going to provide a lot of laughter.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:11 PM
all movies do this
See I don't really think that's true. Take Bareback Mountain: it's true what you say about the shirts, that moment did not (for me) work nearly as well in the movie as it did in the story, and that's because of the way it was presented -- Lee was serving it up on a platter saying "Here's your big chance to cry." (Also the scene at the end with Heath and his daughter didn't work very well IMO and for similar but not identical reasons.) Bareback was generally a pretty sentimental movie, and it was great (or close to great) despite this, not because of this.
Contrast Capote. If you watch this movie closely, looking for emotional cues from the director, I am betting you will not find very many. And Capote is by far the better movie IMO. There are a lot of valid and plausible emotional reactions I could see having to the movie and its various scenes, whereas with Bareback there's only really one, with maybe a couple different shades of nuance working into it.
Again: I am not talking about Crash because I have not seen it or even read about it besides on this thread. But it seems ludicrous to me, to say "It's all very well to complain about sentimentality in the movies, the ones you like are sentimental too you're just not noticing it." Really -- that seems like a pretty juvenile reaction to hearing somebody call a movie you liked "sentimental" -- which granted A White Bear did not even do.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:12 PM
And AWB -- sure I guess there are contexts where sentimentality could be a good quality. I never saw P'n'P but it seems to me like it could very well be such a context.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:16 PM
I feel a coinage coming on. A simple one; yes, an adjective prefixed by a single letter and a hyphen.
"Sentimential"?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:18 PM
Wow. I can't read a whole Noonan column, but the beginning and end, that's some top-drawer crazy.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:23 PM
"Sophomoric"?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:23 PM
I admit I had a similar reaction to Irreversible, too. I didn't think it aesthetically made up for forcing me to watch a woman get anally raped and tortured for 15 minutes. I guess it's a cheap kind of response to say, "I don't like movies where rape/molestation is a step toward epiphany." It's just a more extreme version of my dad saying, "I can't like movies where the heroes cuss a bunch." The difference is I'm already scared shitless about violence against women, and everytime I go through an underpass I get that image from Irreversible in my head. A movie has to do some serious, deep-level soul-searching for me to get over the trauma of watching a woman's body get jacked up. Otherwise, it feels like getting viscerally twisted up for nothing. Again, I insist: for me, not that it makes it a universally bad flick.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:24 PM
That's totally it, Ben. Felicitations.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:24 PM
AWB, I think that makes perfect sense. It's really easy to get people to react viscerally by showing them a violent rape or whatever. But in itself it doesn't tell us anything we didn't know already. If the scene has been set up somehow -- like the big scene in Caché (not a rape, no more hints) -- then you may get some earned emotional reaction.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:29 PM
I don't know about the meaning of sentimentality (or t-sentimentality) here, but if the complaint is that the movie is artificial, a counter claim could be that all movies are artificial and that when you get down to it they're just a bunch of scenes containing actors reading lines dramatically, recorded by a camera, and projected on a screen.
Well of course all movies are artificial, but for movies set in what could be considered the world we live in my tastes run towards a lack of forced coincidences. (People running into each other in a small town? No problem.) My problem with Crash is that I never could forget that I was watching something tightly scripted.
(This is not unlike my problem with Ulysses, which, like all fiction, consists of a collection of words but which for me never succeeded in making me believe it could be something more. I probably have a sentimental and escapist concept of movie watching and book reading.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:30 PM
Contrast Capote. If you watch this movie closely, looking for emotional cues from the director, I am betting you will not find very many.
Capote is chock full of both emotional and intellectual cues. It's intellectual cues were more prominent because it was a movie that cared more about making you think the thing it wanted you to than feeling the thing it wanted you to.
But it seems ludicrous to me, to say "It's all very well to complain about sentimentality in the movies, the ones you like are sentimental too you're just not noticing it." Really -- that seems like a pretty juvenile reaction to hearing somebody call a movie you liked "sentimental" -- which granted A White Bear did not even do.
Jeremy, my point is that the criticism is unilluminating, because it's a poor substitute for the real reason a movie didn't work. It's supposed to be a synonym of "It tried to jerk me around," but that's true of so much of what the speaker would accept as great art it doesn't say why the speaker didn't respond to the artwork in question. It doesn't say much more than "it sucked." What would be more helpful than the word "sentimental" would be an observation that, say, they sacrificed consistent characterization for another effect, or something else that actually describes what goes wrong with the movie. McManus above has a different definition of the word that I'll try to figure out and see if I think is useful. You may disagree, and I acknowledged above than I am in a minority, but this point is not at all juvenile, and I'm kind of perplexed by your reaction. A comment thread about a movie is more interesting when commenters engage each other about the legitimacy about their aesthetic judgments than just giving their opinions in isolation; this is a blog; I'm trying to generate discussion. I think what's ensued is pretty interesting, so I guess I did a good job with it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:34 PM
The thing about Crash that put me off was that scene right at the end, when Darth Vader shouts "Nooooooooo!"
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:35 PM
37 reminds me of my reaction to the Kite Runner. I got to the early rape scene and decided that I just wasn't willing to keep reading a book that was willing to use violence so casually for dramatic purposese.
For me the key word their is casually -- which is, I admit, a judgement on my part. I get impatient with works that treat the characters as pawns for dramatic purposes whereas if I get the sense that the author cares about the characters in some sense I'm much more willing to put up with contrievance.
Of course I'm generally okay with contrievance in mystery novels.
I think my basic feeling is that I don't like books/movies that want me to be more emotionally invested in the characters than the author is. If the book treats the characters like pawns but I, as a reader, can do the same (mysteries) that's okay. If the author/auteur cares about the characters I'm willing to emotionally invest myself.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:36 PM
I want to amend the last sentence of 41 to "the legitimacy of their aesthetic judgments and terms".
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:37 PM
I think my basic feeling is that I don't like books/movies that want me to be more emotionally invested in the characters than the author is. If the book treats the characters like pawns but I, as a reader, can do the same (mysteries) that's okay. If the author/auteur cares about the characters I'm willing to emotionally invest myself.
Nicely put, and I agree particularly with you about The Kite Runner. Come on, don't rape a kid just to show us that the hero is immature and weak and needs to grow as a character -- I don't care if the kid's fictional, it still bothers me.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:38 PM
contrivance not contrievance.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:39 PM
NickS, well put.
(Previews)
Hi, LB!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:39 PM
38 - but where is the hyphen?
My thought for SB's coinage builds off of 28:
s-expansive
seems off topic unless--
The loss of poor bouncy Yuki's panties awakened a sentimental yet s-expansive reaction in the viewer. He thought of averting his eyes as something else was demanding his attention.
And yet again Mark 4.22 is relevant. The Living Bible! yes!
Posted by Mark | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:40 PM
Hm. Sorry I ought not to have called your post a juvenile reaction. (Psychotic reaction? Yeah.) I was getting off on my own little internal feedback loop and got harsh, sorry.
I'm going to stop talking about sentimentality in movies now because it's not contributing to the discussion much. If the discussion starts being all about sentimentality I'll join up again.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:40 PM
It's supposed to be a synonym of "It tried to jerk me around," but that's true of so much of what the speaker would accept as great art it doesn't say why the speaker didn't respond to the artwork in question.
It means, "it tried to jerk me around, and I could see all its attempts coming, and (what's potentially more) those attempts were kind of unmotivated within the work." Grant that all movies involve artifice: in some, the artifice is better concealed. (By means of ... artifice!) "Sentimental" is like "heavy-handed".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:41 PM
(Or all about t-sentimentality.)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:43 PM
but that's true of so much of what the speaker would accept as great art it doesn't say why the speaker didn't respond to the artwork
I'm still not getting your point. You might say the same thing about bad scripting - that is, I'm sure we could think of great movies where the scripting seems poor, but we still consider it a great movie. But usually we say something like, "Despite the poor script...." I'd think the same thing is true for sentimental movies, where we think that there is a broad agreement of what is sentimental. You'd expect the defenders to say something like, "Despite the obvious sentimentality, the movie works because...." If someone doesn't say that, and didn't like the movie, I presume it's because they didn't see any saving graces.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:46 PM
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession...
Posted by Andy Vance | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:46 PM
My criticism of crash was that I thought it was poorly written and poorly directed, but that's just as vague as everything else that's been said.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 12:52 PM
Ack, I have to go do real stuff, but preliminarily, I think Ben's 50 answers my objection to the word--and is what I was trying to get at when I named My Girl--the problem is lack of motivation. The problem is when you ask people what they mean by sentimental, they usually don't say that; they just say "It was manipulative" rather than "It was unmotivatedly manipulative" or something else. And happy birthday, Ben. One step closer to being a big bitch!
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:00 PM
i agree with bob mcmanus about sentimentality.
as for FL's original post and comment 6: wasn't the reason that the scene between the white kid cop and the black hitchhiker shocking because he's not really a hitchhiker -- the two grew up in the same neighborhood, knew each other, were friends? And the shift between what you "know" as someone's friend and you "know" when you are responding according to your police academy training are two different things? It's been a long time since I saw Crash, but that's my memory.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:07 PM
52: Tim, bad scripting is a bad thing that a movie can overcome. Manipulation and artificiality are the essence of art. I maybe put that badly, and should have said "that's true of all of what the speaker would consider great art"
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:10 PM
Someone mentioned Ulysses:
Stephen sends a insulting telegram to Mulligan:
"The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done."
(quoting George Meredith)
Although I believe it is a critical theme introduced early, after 30 years I can barely parse it, let alone understand it. I think I have a block.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:10 PM
Manipulation and artificiality are the essence of art.
Artificiality yes, manipulation no. Manipulation I am reading as "producing in the viewer the emotional reaction intended by the artist". But I don't see this as an intrinsic element of art at all. It is something you can do with art. And there is a lot of art which is created without an overt intended reaction. Manipulation is the essence of Hallmark cards.
A work of art which allows you your own, unscripted response is better all other things being equal than one which reliably produces a particular response.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:19 PM
(And futher to that: given two works of art which both reliably produce a particular scripted response, the one is better which better hides its mechanism.)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:21 PM
Pompidou center. The judgment as to whether better hiding makes better art is also an aesthetic judgment.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:25 PM
And one over which many people seem to disagree.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:26 PM
I thought that the essence of art was communication, but maybe people think that's the same diff.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:26 PM
"that's true of all of what the speaker would consider great art"
I think part of the distinction here is between works that find an original way to embody their dramatic structure and works that express familiar concepts in familiar ways.
For me this is most obvious in music since so many songs explore the same emotional territory but bad ones, to mix metaphors, mistake the map for the territory and use the exact same musical gestures that everyone else has used.
It is said of some directors that they are only commenting on other films, not on life but I think it's easier to observe in music.
Contrast, for example, Treetop Flyer by Stephen Stills and Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevon.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:27 PM
NickS, your comments are awesome, and I wish they were more frequent.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:29 PM
A work of art which allows you your own, unscripted response... is basically the definition of a Modernist work of art, right?
A word like "sentimentality" has moved around QUITE a bit over the centuries. Bob's definition above is basically the 19th-c getting cranky on the 18th-c's ass.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:29 PM
There'll be sad songs to make you cry -
Lave songs often do.
They can touch the heart of someone new -
Saying I love you.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:30 PM
65 -- Thank you very much.
I comment infrequently because (1) I've been busy at work and (2) generally I have to mull things over for a while to clarify my thinking.
The combination means that by the time I have something to say on a topic it's usually the next day and the conversation has moved on.
It just happens that this is a topic I've thought about enough that I already have some clarity.
But the encouragement matters. I still have the instincts of a lurker -- I post infrequently in part because I feel like an observer rather than part of the conversation. So thank you
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:37 PM
NickS is banned!
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:39 PM
Not that I should encourage anyone to comment more, considering what it does to my productivity, but even at your low frequency of posting, you're a memorable part of the conversation around here.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:41 PM
the 19th-c getting cranky on the 18th-c's ass.
Your impenetrable lit crit jargon is unwelcome here.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:41 PM
LizardBreath is banned!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:42 PM
Bold words from a hypnotized crustacean.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:46 PM
"Bob's definition above is basically the 19th-c getting cranky on the 18th-c's ass. "
Heh. I don't know where the cryptic ones above were directing their snark, but I not only admit to my romantic nihilism, but wallow arrogantly in it like all rebellious sophomores. It was a very good year, my sophomore year.
Relatedly, I collect Fine-Art jpgs partly in an attempt to understand the difference between a Bouguereau angel and a pre-Renaissance angel. Seriously.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:47 PM
a Bouguereau angel and a pre-Renaissance angel.
Try not to embarrass them.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:55 PM
Bold words from a hypnotized crustacean.
If I weren't feeling very sleepy, and if I somehow dared consider bringing violence into my happy place, I would wave my claws forbiddingly thus—pince, pince!—and then scuttle.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:56 PM
Threateningly snapping one's abdomen works well too, I've heard.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 1:58 PM
LizardBreath, were you ever going to explain why how anyone would hypnotize a lobster?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:00 PM
And Bob, quoting Meredith on emotional responsibility isn't quite what I'd describe as "romantic nihilism," unless you were stating his position as an antithesis.
Ok, stopping now.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:03 PM
So they don't scream as much.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:04 PM
is basically the definition of a Modernist work of art, right?
Having recently read (for the first time, yes) "The Waste Land", I'm going to say that it sure didn't feel that I was allowed my own, unscripted response.
Contrast, for example, Treetop Flyer by Stephen Stills and Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner by Warren Zevon.
Would I have to listen to "Treetop Flyer" in order to do this? Can you summarize the relationship? (Is it like "Space Oddity" and "Major Tom" or more like "Southern Man" and "Sweet Home Alabama" or what?)
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:06 PM
81 -- Treetop flyer was simply one of the least imaginative songs I could think of. Jeremy captured the idea equally well in 67.
My point was that both Treetop Flyer and Roland explore, broadly, the territoy of macho outlaw behavior but that one is an interesting song and the other is not.
69,70 -- thanks.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:10 PM
75 -- Bob has an embarrassment of angels.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:29 PM
It's funny, as much as I enjoyed Sentimental Education I don't think I ever gave much thought to the title.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:33 PM
78: None of this is from personal knowledge, it's just what the guy in question told me. You restrain the lobster, holding it firmly in place on a tabletop, and stare deeply into its eyes. Keep staring, until the lobster stops struggling and becomes quiescent.
You ask, how do you know that the lobster is hypnotized, rather than simply bored? Good question: the answer is that a truly hypnotized lobster can be balanced on the tripod formed by its claws and its face (face?). A lobster that is merely temporarily quiet will be outraged by this, and will thrash around and fall over, but a hypnotized lobster will remain still enough to stay upright.
Why? I never found out. The guy was from Maine, though -- I suppose at some point there's only so much fun you can have making paper, and playing with lobsters is the next thing to do.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:33 PM
Is there a difference between hypnotize and entrance?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:35 PM
Adrian!
Posted by Lobster Rambo | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:38 PM
"And Bob, quoting Meredith on emotional responsibility"
I was quoting Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses quoting Meredith, and admitting I didn't quite understand the quote. I understand what Stephen was saying to Mulligan, a little, but the epigram confuses me. "...immense debtorship for a thing done." ?? Does that mean we acquire obligations thru our actions or our thru enjoyment? And who do we owe them to? "would enjoy (what?)"
And I veer like a drunken driver between the Schyller of Classicism and the Charybdis of Romanticism. If it's Thursday, it must be German Pessimism. What I don't understand at all is the 20th century.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:38 PM
None of this is from personal knowledge, it's just what the guy in question told me.
And you said (or implied) that men weren't pestering you for attention in college.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:43 PM
"My friend wants to hypnotize a lobster - do you know how that works? ... Wanna kiss?"
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:45 PM
89: Did you note the "very briefly" in the initial reference? This was not what I would have described as a successful relationship from my point of view.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:46 PM
You mean besides one being a verb and one a noun?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:47 PM
I'm no expert on Meredith, but I would understand that quote as blurring the line between enjoyment and actions. If we understand that we incur moral responsibility for our actions, how do we cleanly separate physical actions from "sentimental" or "aesthetic" actions? Meredith is implying, I think, that the sentimentalist has made an artificial distinction between those actions (physical) that incur responsibility and those (aesthetic) that do not. This Victorian "correction" of sentimentalism is based on Romantic political and I suspect deliberate misreadings of 18th-century theories.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:49 PM
Dude, "Adrian" is my thing.
Posted by Lobster Rocky Balboa | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:50 PM
Oh man, LB, that guy doesn't really sound like a winner. It seems likely that the only reason to hypnotize a lobster is to fuck with it a little before you kill it. Once again, I'm so glad I didn't grow up in a rural area.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:52 PM
Uh, 92 to 86 of course.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:53 PM
Has the shifting stress, shifting meaning thread been so soon forgotten?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:56 PM
You're quite right, Lobster Rocky Balboa. Yours is the immortal catchphrase; yours is the more ensequelled franchise; yours is the Academy Award. I hate you, Lobster Rocky Balboa.
Posted by Lobster Rambo | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:56 PM
It seems likely that the only reason to hypnotize a lobster is to fuck with it a little before you kill it.
Pretty much, although I have to say that while cruelty to animals generally bothers me, crustacean harassment doesn't. I suppose it's humilating for the lobster, but as described doesn't seem to involve actual pain.
(On roughly the same topic, am I the only person to whom 'catch and release' sport fishing seems much worse than catching fish to kill and eat them?)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:57 PM
And I veer like a drunken driver between the Schyller of Classicism and the Charybdis of Romanticism.
Surely the Guthe of Classicism?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 2:59 PM
I hate you, Lobster Rocky Balboa.
"You drew first [greenish] blood!"
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:00 PM
I wish I could help, LB, but 've never understood why people seem to be so madly against animal cruelty. I remember when I was seven, when I'd wet my bet, the only thing that would make me feel better about myself was setting a family pet on fire.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:00 PM
doesn't seem to involve actual pain.
Keep telling yourself that. Maybe you will be able to sleep at night that way.
am I the only person to whom 'catch and release' sport fishing seems much worse than catching fish to kill and eat them?
You are not the only such person.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:00 PM
What are the claws that clutch, what pincers grow
Out of this crusty-acean?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:03 PM
99. Tearing a big hole in a fish's cheek and then putting it back in the water for fun? Yeah, pretty bad. Somewhat better than killing fish and not eating them, I guess. Given the way most people fish these days (rarely, on excursion trips, with fish sounders), I suspect one of those two options is more realistic than the more ideal "alright, boys, we caught dinner, let's go home!"
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:05 PM
am I the only person to whom 'catch and release' sport fishing seems much worse than catching fish to kill and eat them?
Well, at least it doesn't end in death for the fish. But it does seem grotesque. Hunters should have a place where they can go and hunt each other. It's not rreally a sport if only one side is playin.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:12 PM
rrrrrreally. playing.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:14 PM
Ok, the answer(s) will probably just be a different thread today that I haven't read yet, but a) where is the first reference to a hypnotized lobster (the one before 73) and b)how did Tia know it was b-wo's birthday (assuming it is)?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:15 PM
It's alleged that if you hypnotize a lobster it will hurt less when you boil it alive. Measured scientifically by the number of times it spasms.
Yes, ick, I know.
I worked in a seafood restaurant (actually, two different seafood restaurants, depending on how you count these things. One was by a river, which was technically fresh water. But it served salt water catches (and served them fresh, if that's not too confusing), because it was close to the mouth of the river. Are you still reading this parenthesis?). I can tell you they spasm least if you keep 'em cool for a while first.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:17 PM
where is the first reference to a hypnotized lobster
Technically, it started with hypnotizing chickens, which as you know is what love is like.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:19 PM
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:23 PM
For that matter, it's doubtful what happens when / if humans are hypnotized. If you want to get all skeptical about it. I was just quoting authority.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 3:28 PM
I used to hypnotize people when I was in high school, for a science project and then for demonstrations in Psych classes and stuff. It was neat. I only got to the point where I could make people touch their noses with their hands without knowing they were doing it, but it made for good fun. Then I dropped them in vats of boiling water, and they screamed far less than usual.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 5:23 PM
I think that hypnotizing lobsters is manipulative. What you should do is treat them especially lovingly and affectionately the day before and right up to the moment of truth, when you should somberly explain to them that this world is governed by iron laws from which no one is exempt, so that there can be no blame and no regret. And then toss 'em in.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 5:29 PM
I think that hypnotizing lobsters is manipulative.
Sentimental, you mean. Hypnotizing lobsters is sentimental.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 5:33 PM
La délectation sentimentale: Histoire d'un jeune homard
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 5:41 PM
Holy cow, that rules.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 5:46 PM
That totally makes the time it took to look that up worthwhile.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 6:02 PM
Shush! You're destroying the illusion!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 6:17 PM
Illusion?
([whispering] I only looked up one word, and was surprised at how well it worked out [/whispering])
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 6:28 PM
Adrian l'Astice mantenne sempre l'illusione della sprezzatura!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 6:57 PM
Warum spricht man denn von Hummer? Gibt's Hummer beim Bergwerk?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 7:10 PM
And hey you guys, quit embarrassing the angels! (The zany meme is catching on like wildfire!)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 7:45 PM
Wow, but the anchoress is annoying. I can't quite wrap my mind around the idea that there are eternal divine agents *and* they care a lot about our pants.
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 8:46 PM
124 gets it exactly right.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 8:52 PM
121: Capisco.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 8:52 PM
It's amazing that anyone could make Peggy Noonan look sane, but I think that the Anchoress managed it.
And I'd like to say that the last time I got flagged for extra security, I got to go through a *whoosh!* machine instead of a pat-down.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:25 PM
Went to the top link of the Anchoress and it linked to Instapundit trying to make Bush look good over Katrina.
Now my brain hurts and I will have to have it removed.
(Oh, and I'm an expert on this: Saying "We heard a report unconfirmed, I think, we have not breached the levee. I think we have not breached the levee at this time" is not assuring someone that the levees have not breached.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 9:56 PM
All verbs savor now "savor" and variants. All friends (besides friends) savor now "friends" and friends. Friends, let us savor.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:06 PM
A *whoosh!* machine? Are you sure you were in an airport and not in, say, Willy Wonka's factory?
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:09 PM
A machine that one enters--glass doors in front of one--in which a swift gust of explosive-detecting air goes *whoosh!*, gradually disappating during analysis as your goosebumps go down---you know, I'll take it compared to the bra-pat-down I took four years ago.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:16 PM
Do you know that if I were to show you an (out-of-date) judicial opinion saying that it is not a crime to kill Peggy Noonan because reading the two articles of her's linked in this thread caused you emotional distress, and you reasonably rely on that opinion (not knowing it's been overruled by later law), you would have a complete defense to her murder under the law of New York State? True story (15.20(2)(c)).
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:18 PM
(not knowing it's been overruled by later law)
Damn you, w/d, you gave it away!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:24 PM
I went through the *woosh* machine at National! Very weird. They make everyone go through one if you're visiting the Statue of Liberty these days, too.
I agree with JM - it is at least better than a patdown. The last time I had one of those, it was far more...intimate...than they used to be. Oh, you're using the back of your hand? That makes it OK that you are spending 5 minutes rubbing my chest.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:28 PM
True, w/d but where would friends savor such a friend? From false friends I can savor any friend I savor.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:29 PM
Unless I savor paraconsistent friends.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:30 PM
I suspect that the *whoosh!* machine is very, very expensive.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:49 PM
What happens if you're wearing a skirt?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:51 PM
Whoosh machine model #7 YR ICH ™
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:55 PM
They're short puffs and they come from all directions so it's not exactly this but if you were wearing something flouncy, you'd probably want to hold it down. I doubt that a skirt that's part of a business suit would pose a problem.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 10:56 PM
Short puffs? Gawddamnit! Can't the government do anything right?!!
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 2-06 11:22 PM
Minneapolis airport security is prett lackadaisical. On the one hand, this is Lake Wobegon, and on the other, security is all Somalis.
Or maybe Ethiopians.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 4:05 AM
Short puffs, and no inhaling.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 4:06 AM
ai, jackmormon, so sorry to hear you had the bra pat-down.
i avoided flying the whole period they were doing that, because i knew i would get too angry. but i still get angry thinking about it happening to other people.
(am a chronic extra-security person. last minute plane tickets and no bags checked does that for you. or tickets that have you change planes in different cities coming and going. it would be nice if you could carry around a chart showing how many times you have been searched so it's clear you are an Extra Specially Vouched-For, Proofed, and Double-Proofed Passenger).
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 5:19 AM
To avoid getting patted down and to otherwise speed the security check-through, I have bought special airport shoes, airport belt, airport toiletries, and an airport briefcase. It's still not 100 percent effective at getting me through security smoothly, but it has helped.
Being stopped and searched does make me unusually angry, precisely at a moment when one would do best to show calm. I'm not quite sure why it makes me so mad.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 7:12 AM
The missus and I were flying back to NC from Portland a couple of years ago. She had bought a small mobile at a street fair that had some sort of fancy glass beads hung from metal wires, and the whole thing was wrapped up in paper to protect it.
Because it was going to be a long flight, she had taken a couple of Xanax, thinking she'd sleep on the flight. Then the plane got delayed, so we sat in the airport bar and had a couple of drinks. By the time the plane started boarding, as you might expect, she was feeling no pain.
So, predictably, they pulled her aside to go through her carry-on, and asked her to unwrap the mobile so they could see what it was. Mistake. She was perfectly willing to do so, but was now sufficiently tipsy that she proceeded to explain everything the artist had told her about it, all in slurred, exacting detail ("They use this kind of glass on the space shuttle! I like this one the best; see how it swirls inside?").
Ha ha, now they were trapped (and visibly annoyed) while this pie-eyed, oblivious hippie rambled on and on and on. It was hilarious.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 7:26 AM
"tipsy" s/b "hammered"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 7:34 AM
Anyway, although the parade's moved on, I want to try to define my problem with t-sentimentality better than I have thus far. Like I said, Ben's 50 is fine with me; I guess I'm not sure that that's what people mean when they say "sentimental." I hear a lot of things called "sentimental" when, in context or with further questioning, all I can see that the speaker meant by it is that it attempted to engage your emotions at all, and that the emotions it was trying to engage were either uplift or a relatively uncomplicated kind of grief. I don't think this is an interesting criticism. Another way people use it is to complain that the movie was trying to produce an emotional response in them, which is also not that interesting--I'd want to hear why the movie failed. But it's totally fair to say that the artistic choices were unmotivated, that its emotional cues were insufficiently hidden, that all of the steps it took were too familiar, like NickS said--and if that's what's meant by "sentimental," that's okay, I'm just not sure that is what's often meant.
59: Artificiality yes, manipulation no. Manipulation I am reading as "producing in the viewer the emotional reaction intended by the artist". But I don't see this as an intrinsic element of art at all. It is something you can do with art. And there is a lot of art which is created without an overt intended reaction. Manipulation is the essence of Hallmark cards.
A work of art which allows you your own, unscripted response is better all other things being equal than one which reliably produces a particular response.
I'll grant that there probably is some art which tries not to engage your emotions (I mentioned Brecht above). Even then I actually don't think that's an exception since the attempt not to engage emotion is just another way to guide the audience's emotional response. But we were talking about conventional narratives when we started this conversation, and they always do. I can't think of an exception, nor conceive of one, really. Also, I think you are conflating two things--what a work of art aims for, and what it does in the audience. Just because a variety of reactions are possible in the audience doesn't mean that the artist didn't have anything in mind for them. I'm not trying to say there's no gap between intention and perception (heck, there is in Hallmark cards, too), but nothing's happening in art if it's just an artist saying, eh, they can take from it what they will. If that's the case, why even bother making art? What would motivate it?
I'd like to hear some more nominations for works of art that are not trying to guide the emotional response of the viewer. I think this requirement would probably eliminate any movie that has a score. You mentioned Capote; I don't think this is true of Capote at all. I'd argue that the emotional response intended by the work is a mixture of pity and disgust for Capote and whatever the killer's name was; I'm not saying everyone felt that, but that's what it was going for. All of the efforts of the director to create mood--to control lighting and sound--what is that but an attempt to guide the emotional response of the audience? Audio cuts out when it finally flashes back to the murder of the father (right? that's how I remember it)--why does it do that? I think there are both emotional and, ach, what's the word I want--intellectual (?) reasons. Maybe intellectual, to convey a strange intimacy about the act, but emotional--to make us feel its bleakness and emptiness. You can say you felt something different in that moment, but it doesn't mean the director had nothing in mind, or that that choice to cut the sound wasn't purposeful and designed to control the emotional response.
I didn't think Capote was that great, personally. PSH was great, but the movie had one interesting relationship at its core that it meandered away from too often.
63: Eh, correcting myself on the fly only leads to the need for more correction. But since all communication is an attempt to produce an intended effect in the audience, maybe it is the same diff.
I view sentiment as emotions filtered and structured thru received ideas and social norms. It is nearly the opposite of compassion and empathy, it is a intellectual defense mechanism that is designed to prevent compassion and empathy.
I think I understand what Bob McManus means by this--like, you see a child picking a flower and the movie is relying so completely on a child-picking-a-flower is sweet and innocent trope, with no ascription of its own meaning to the image, that's sentimental, right? I can get behind that.
I don't think that's a true observation w/r/t Crash though. It's uncomfortable that the cop rescues Thandie Newton, especially since it doesn't nearly all the way redeem him, so the audience has to live with the coexistence of his fuckedness and his goodness. (Does anyone remember if the scene in the health insurance agent's office takes place after or before the rescuing scene? I can't remember.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:06 AM
I demand an answer to 108 b).
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:25 AM
See I say a work of art should not try to manipulate the viewer into having a particular intended response, and you read that as "not engage your emotions". But that's not what I'm saying. I don't watch a lot of movies and am not very well versed in moviedom -- you may be right that movies are pretty manipulative by and large.
An artist portraying two characters and communicating to the viewer that the two are having a fight, that one is angry, that the other is scared and resentful, is different and (if properly done) way more complex than the artist saying "be angry! be scared! be resentful!" and using lighting and soundtrack (or whatever the equivalent in his/her medium) to ensure that it happens. Portraying one of the parties as sympathetic is again, different from saying "sympathize with x!" though the effect is similar.
And the artist that portrays the characters and their emotions successfully and allows the viewer to empathize with them in his/her own way, is doing something different than the artist who determines what the proper response to a scene will be and uses props to make it happen. (And I think all of this can also be applied to types of art that don't have characters -- music, painting -- but my critical vocabulary is not up to the task.)
I like your thing about the child picking the flower -- that is essentially what I have in mind when I talk about artistic manipulation.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:28 AM
149: Here.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:29 AM
149 -- Wolfson posted that it was the anniversary of his birth, on a different thread.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:29 AM
Doesn't Brecht jerk emotions around? In Threepenny, at least, you keep identifying sympathetically with Mackie Messer despite all the repeated warnings that he's an asshole and that it's a play.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:43 AM
Oh good. Happy slightly belated birthday, Ben. And 13/24 is a significant fraction, so I'm happy to have been proven right.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:48 AM
I'm only repeating what other people say about Brecht. It could be totally wrong. But when I complained about the alienating, emotionless staging of the new Sweeney Todd everyone told me it sounded Brechtian, and my lack of emotional engagement was intended. But what do I know?
(working on another comment)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:48 AM
New Sweeney Todd = Awesomeness! Staging didn't interfere with my caring about what happened to characters at all, but just noting my different reaction probably isn't very helpful.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:55 AM
Have you seen the George Hearn video, w/d?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 8:56 AM
See I say a work of art should not try to manipulate the viewer into having a particular intended response, and you read that as "not engage your emotions".
I didn't misread you this way, though maybe I inartfully phrased something so it seemed I did. I only used the phrase "try not to engage your emotions" w/r/t Brecht, and this was to say that was another form of having a particular intended response.
Portraying one of the parties as sympathetic is again, different from saying "sympathize with x!" though the effect is similar.
JO, I really think the only difference here is what you notice, and this goes not just for movies, but just about any kind of story. Portraying one of the parties as sympathetic is just the same as saying "sympathize with x". The artist makes a kazillion choices to make X a sympathetic character, because (s)he wants you to sympathize. The difference you perceive is varying levels of subtlety and skilled artifice. It's totally legitimate to complain that emotional cues are insignificantly hidden, though I think movies and books can earn, in their course, big obvious ones, like the BM shirts.
The girl-with-a-flower thing is different. It's a complaint that the cues are cliched, not that they're present at all.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:00 AM
Not only haven't I seen that, but until I saw ST last weekend I had never seen anything Sondheim was involved with (I think, I could have seen such a thing without being aware of it).
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:00 AM
Well, I could see having a different reaction to the new Sweeney if you'd never seen the George Hearn, and especially if you were a Sondheim virgin (Oh. My God. w/d, have I got an oeuvre for you. Wait till you hear it.) than if you'd seen the video, knew all the words to Sweeney by heart, and had prior strong feelings about how it should be done right.
Also, where were you sitting. I was in the back row, and I'm not unwilling to consider that really affects your experience sometimes. I couldn't really see Michael Cerveris's face. But that was also a function of the lighting.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:05 AM
(Have you never seen West Side Story?)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:07 AM
I hated the new Sweeney. It wasn't so much the lack of emotion that bothered me, as much as the lack of coherence and sense, and the presence of The Tiny White Coffin Of Momentousness. I thought it was spectacularly unimaginative.
(Especially if you're going to use that conceit favored by high school sophomore auteur directors everywhere -- call it the "I'm going to stage the whole thing...in an insane asylum!!1!" card.)
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:09 AM
Yay, Drymala, now we can agree!
I maybe didn't hate it as much as you; I was entertained, at least, but holy moly did it not do what it needed to. If you stage the whole thing...in an insane asylum!!1!, it takes away everything important about the show. Sweeney is insane, but how could he not be, because the world is insane too. The play is about the real, cruel world, not one person's paranoid conception of it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:14 AM
158: Part of the problem is here - It's a complaint that the cues are cliched, not that they're present at all. The line between cues that are sufficiently well understood that we consciously recognize them as such and cliches is a blurry one; I'm not saying that in many cases they aren't distinct, but I'm not sure what explicit distinction one would give. In a sense, it sounds like Osner is arguing that if you can see the manipulation coming, it's a cliche. (Sorry if I misstated your views, Osner.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:16 AM
Tia, I'm guessing we'd agree on much concerning Mr. Sondheim.
But yeah, my girlfriend had never seen Sweeney and didn't know the story, and she spent the whole time wondering what the fuck was going on. Directors who bring their own special concept are fine, but they still need to tell the damn story, especially when it's as plot-heavy as Sweeney is. Also, John Doyle somehow made the canon's great musical thriller really really boring. And the instruments thing is totally unjustified. Especially since that's not a choice Doyle made for this particular text, but rather something he does with every single show he stages, because that's his thing. He's currently working on a production of Company with the same setup, I'm not even kidding.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:18 AM
I've seen West Side Story, you'll have to excuse me while I read up on Sondheim's career.
Also, I tentatively dispute that the entire show takes place in an insane asylum. I read it as most of the show being in flashback from a guy who is in an insane asylum, but perhaps this just makes me unobservant.
My seats were good.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:19 AM
164 -- no, that seems like a statement I would tentatively agree with. And Tia, I guess you are right about my "portray a character as sympathetic" statement. That really is an instruction to sympathize with the character. But I stand by my other stuff about "portraying the character as angry" vs saying "be angry".
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:20 AM
w/d, you had the right read, but you should know that this is Doyle's conceit, and not Sondheim/Prince/Wheeler's original intent (though I understand Sondheim loves the current staging).
And I'm guessing that part of what you liked was just the pure awesomeness of the text itself, if you'd never been exposed to it before, because it is indeed awesome.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:22 AM
I noted, while walking around during intermission, that a lot of people were confused by the story, but found this baffling and started mocking those people behind their backs. Not only was the entire plot communicated to me (except that I claim it wasn't in an insane asylum, and might be terribly terribly wrong about this) (and literally all I knew in advance was, "It's about a barber who kills people"), but I claimed at the time, and pretty much stand by the claim, that you could figure out the entire plot if you were deaf and just saw everything happening on the stage.
On preview, thanks Joe, I guess I didn't need that first parenthetical.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:26 AM
I had never seen anything Sondheim was involved with (I think, I could have seen such a thing without being aware of it)
Now having looked and fixed a grammatical error, let me reivse that to saying I'd never seen a professional theatrical production of any Sondheim work, nor any version at all of any of the productions for which he wrote both the music and lyrics listed under "Major Works" at the wikipeida link.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 9:49 AM
Tia, have you ever read Everything Was Possible, about the creation of Follies? It's pretty great, if you know the show well. That's probably my favorite of his, though it's almost impossible to stage.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 10:00 AM
148 -- the girl with a flower example is great and I think you state the dynamic well with "the movie is relying so completely on a [snip] trope, with no ascription of its own meaning to the image."
I also agree with you that this is not a good description of what we call "sentimental." I think this is a good definition of what would, in common parlance, be called, "emotionally manipulative."
Thinking about your comment, "if that's what's meant by "sentimental," that's okay, I'm just not sure that is what's often meant."
I can think of a couple of meanings of "sentimental" off the top of my head. I think the first is the one that you are objecting to, "sentimental means something that wants me to feel emotions that I am not interested in."
I can think of other meanings in which it would be a more legitimate criticism. The first would be a variation on the above, "sentimental means something that wants me to feel emotions I am not interested in AND which believes that it is superior to me because it is interested in those emotions and I am not." This is, essentially, o-earnestness.
The other usage that I think of is, "sentimental means something that focuses on the emotions of a specific moment or set of people while apearing to lack cognizance of the larger social backdrop to the story."
In other words this is something that is emotionally pitched at the wrong level. In this sense it may be the opposite of something that suffers because it's gestures aren't given any new significance. It is the fault of a work that is too wrapped up in it's own characters.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 10:22 AM
Wait, so "horrible guy does something heroic" and "guy who wants to do the right thing at all times ends up doing something horrible" are not cliches? Those were subtle plot turns?
I need to stop thinking about that movie because I thought it was sort of whatever when it was over and now I'm turning towards my friend's view near the end which was "If this thing goes on another five minutes, I'm leaving."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 11:24 AM
Anyway, it is possible to make a work of art intended to bring out emotions in the audience but so complex that the audience can't figure out, or agree upon, what those emotions should be. The counter criticism of "all art does that" with "that" being "attempt to evoke emotions" actually isn't very interesting either.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 11:27 AM
166: Okay. Honestly, I barely remembered the beginning till I read about it in a review, and then was reminded of it here by Joe, and I was weaving it into my larger problem with the new production; through failure (by my lights) to create real investment in Sweeney and his plight, it didn't say what Sweeney needed to say. Sweeney's reaction to the world is supposed to be comprehensible and sympathetic. Also, true what Joe said about the music. I have, like, an emotional orgasm every time I listen to the OCR "Kiss Me", though I have to fastforward through "Ladies in Their Sensitivities"--this production, not so much.
171: I haven't read it. Hey, do you want to get into a rank Sondheim's works flamewar? It could be fun, but then it will reveal that I'm actually not too familiar with Pacific Overtures, and I will be ashamed.
I also agree with you that this is not a good description of what we call "sentimental." I think this is a good definition of what would, in common parlance, be called, "emotionally manipulative."
Wait, no, I'm sticking to my guns. I don't like "emotionally manipulative" as a critique, any more than "sentimental," unless what is meant is "transparently emotionally manipulative" or "unmotivatedly emotionally manipulative," and see, you need other words there to really say what you mean. I think the girl with a flower thing is more like cliche, really, than sentimental, but until he comes back to contradict me I think that's what McManus was talking about in 27. He's further talking about being moved by the cliche, and I think that is properly called kitsch.
I can think of a couple of meanings of "sentimental" off the top of my head. I think the first is the one that you are objecting to, "sentimental means something that wants me to feel emotions that I am not interested in."
This is so, so helpful. E.g., I have heard people object to It's a Wonderful Life as sentimental, when as near as I can tell their sole articulable objection was that it was uplifting, when that is no objection at all.
The other usage that I think of is, "sentimental means something that focuses on the emotions of a specific moment or set of people while apearing to lack cognizance of the larger social backdrop to the story."
In other words this is something that is emotionally pitched at the wrong level. In this sense it may be the opposite of something that suffers because its gestures aren't given any new significance. It is the fault of a work that is too wrapped up in it's own characters.
I don't think I understand this yet. Can you say more?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 11:30 AM
emotions in the audience but so complex that the audience can't figure out, or agree upon, what those emotions should be
This helps me respond to Tia's "the emotional response intended by [Capote] is a mixture of pity and disgust" -- what mixture? You are saying the work intends to bring out a particular nuanced response which includes pity and disgust in some specific proportion? I don't buy that. I don't think that type of nuanced response can be scripted, and I think if you talk to a couple of people who saw Capote and liked it, you are going to get different reactions.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 11:39 AM
Wait, no, I'm sticking to my guns. I don't like "emotionally manipulative" as a critique, any more than "sentimental,"
I'm doing two things here, I'm trying to explore common usage, and trying to tease out some analytical structure that can help us talk with more precision than the common usage. I thought that part of your objection to the conversation was that it had moved beyond what is commonly included in the common usage of "sentimental." Of course a comment like "sentimental" or "emotionally manipulative" or "cliched" or "kitchy" will need modifiers to be more precise. That doesn't mean that there isn't something going on that we can talk about with precision, just that people usually don't.
[end picking nits]
I don't think I understand this yet. Can you say more?
I was trying to think of examples that weren't too provocative. I have a friend who constantly objects to "whiny white people that don't recognize their privilege." Contrast, for example, something like Dead Poets Society (sentimental) with A Separate Peace. Part of what is offputting about Dead Poets Society is that it constructs a drama that takes place entirely within the confines of a situation of relative privilege. It wants you to only look at the situation from within the emotional perspective of the characters. A separate peace is equally sincere in wanting you, the reader, to identify with the emotions of these boarding school students but, in my recollection at least, it's smarter about how that world fits into the larger world.
Consider also:
As Mann points out, 12 years of Nazi rule in Europe resulted in the death of 70 per cent of the Jewish population; in the first 12 years of California's statehood, the Native American population fell by 80 per cent. Anyone who imagines that a post-genocidal literature must be unreadable should try Little House on the Prairie, or perhaps Joan Didion's Where I Was From.
Bull isn't, precisely, accusing Joan Didion of sentimentality but it's a similar criticism (more precisely, the criticism falls less heavily on Joan Didion than it might because, unspoken, is the knowledge that she is completely aware of these facts).
Does that help?
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 11:54 AM
173: I never said Crash was subtle. In my first comment about it, I used the word "arias," which are famously unsubtle. I don't think subtlety is a particularly necessary virtue. But no, I don't think Crash was cliched, because the cliche you're talking about with the horrible guy is that the guy is redeemed and transformed, when I don't think that's what was supposed to have happened in Crash. If anyone remembers the sequence of the rescue and the insurance agent scene, that would be helpful. It's not that he's good now, it's that he got a chance to see another way. Maybe only one other way as per A White Bear's 22.
Anyway, it is possible to make a work of art intended to bring out emotions in the audience but so complex that the audience can't figure out, or agree upon, what those emotions should be.
Yeah, well, I don't think you're going to necessarily get lots of interrater reliability in responses, necessarily, like I said, you don't actually get them on Hallmark cards either, but I maintain that if you don't have something specific and meaningful you're trying to communicate, and that includes emotion, what's spat out will not cohere. On preview, JO, I don't mean that an artist actually can guide every aspect of the audience's experience, far from it. I mean that the goal is to communicate something specific and meaningful. I don't think there's a such thing as a conventionally structured narrative that doesn't have an emotion and an idea that it wants to communicate to its audience--there would be no motivation otherwise.
The counter criticism of "all art does that" with "that" being "attempt to evoke emotions" actually isn't very interesting either.
I don't know what to do with this. My point about complaining about emotional manipulation isn't that it's boring; it's just that it doesn't say what needs to be said. I don't know how to point that out more interestingly than I have.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 11:58 AM
176 -- This does a good job of conveying what you're responding to on an emotional level but I'm not sure how much analytical work it does. I imagine that if you talked to a variety of people who liked Crash they would also place different emphasis on what they liked.
I believe that it should be possible to draw a distinction between works that are (unpleasently) controlling of one's emotional reaction and one's that are not but I think Tia is correct that the distinction has to be based on something other than the (unpleasentness).
To go back to a musical example it might be generally agreed that Nina Simone is more emotionally present in here singing than Johnny Mathis is, but is there anything you can point to as evidence for that belief. I believe that there is, but that it's subtle and tricky to describe.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:03 PM
I'm doing two things here, I'm trying to explore common usage, and trying to tease out some analytical structure that can help us talk with more precision than the common usage.
Okay, sorry, I was confused.
Hmm, I didn't know people used "sentimental" for that lack of context thing.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:09 PM
Regarding the update, I had a different reaction--I thought it was implausible that the Iranian family would never have been called Arab before--are racist vandals really that hip to the fact that there's a difference?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:10 PM
"It wants you to only look at the situation from within the emotional perspective of the characters."
this is just wrong, as a critique of any film, book, or play. A good author always wants his audience to view the situation through the emotional perspective of the characters. Aside from the fact that A Separate Peace takes place during a war, I don't think it strays from that goal, assuming for the moment that A Separate Peace isn't sentimental.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:11 PM
But no, I don't think Crash was cliched, because the cliche you're talking about with the horrible guy is that the guy is redeemed and transformed, when I don't think that's what was supposed to have happened in Crash.
You have a higher threshhold for cliche than I do. I took this, and the other situational reversals to be "people are complex, and now you're going to see how in the most extreme ways possible." The cliche I see isn't about redemption - and not just because I didn't give a damn about whether or not he was redeemed so I wouldn't have been emotionally involved anyway - it's about LIFE and DEATH and HORRIBLE ABUSE situations being used to signify a point that could be demonstrated with a lighter touch.
but I maintain that if you don't have something specific and meaningful you're trying to communicate, and that includes emotion, what's spat out will not cohere.
Art doesn't have to be coherent. And artists can be confused by their own works. But what I think we'd need here are artists' accounts of their own motivations and intentions. I doubt that every single work of art had a specifc meaning behind it. Most? Yes. A requirement of art? No.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:11 PM
178 -- clearly "subtle" and "cliched" are neither opposites, not sufficient to describe what we're talking about.
[I note, in passing, that Tu Mama Tambien could be described as subtle but cliched in broad elements of it's plot, filling in another quadrant on the chart]
"original" is clearly too overused to do much good. Is there another word to describe whether something handles the material in a lively way? I tend to use the phrase "emotionally present" but that may just have personal meaning and fail to communicate usefully.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:11 PM
180 -- I didn't say that I was completely successful in distinguishing between them :)
182 -- A separate peace could easily be described as sentimental. I was struggling to think of a good example and freely admit that may not have been the best choice of contrasts. Perhaps the idea is bound to fail anyway. Contrast, for examepl, Breaker Morant and Apocalypse Now. I think both are good movies and that Apocalypse Now is the better of the two, yet Apocalypse now has been critcised for trying to make the war into just a setting for a personal jouney (matching the definition of "sentimental" that I was proposing).
I still think there's a meaningful analytical catagory there, but I am lacking in precision. Perhaps someone can offer assistance.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:17 PM
NickS: I think what people mean by "sentimental" is actually the opposite of your definition in 177: that the emotional impact of the scene is driven by cues in the work that are outside of or irrelevant to the actual characters. The work is sentimental because it seeks to create emotion through means other than the characters. The characters themselves are thin, but they are put into obviously emotional situations, and the audience is given cues such as cliched musical selections or lighting that they ought to cry now.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:22 PM
you seem to have a valid complaint agains works that accept a certain social class' worldview as the entire universe of human consideration, but I don't think that's "sentiment;" I think it's something else.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:24 PM
I in fact have a relatively high threshold for cliche because nearly everything is cliched; it's all a matter of degree, so for me to use it as a critique I have to see that someone's treading pretty hard on familiar tropes, not adding anything particular, not drawing .
Honestly, I don't think a light touch is particularly necessary either. I'm a fan of Italian opera. The movie was called "Crash," and its entire conceit was that it was going to focus on the most violent collisions. I think Drum was right about the knife edge thing. I'm pretty sympathetic to efforts to focus on moments of greatest intensity.
I doubt that every single work of art had a specifc meaning behind it. Most? Yes. A requirement of art? No.
Well, I think I've been trying to retreat into "conventionally structured narrative," but aside from any overly universalizing statements I may or may not have made, what I'm really trying to talk about is what criticims are elucidating for the things that we're discussing--Hollywood movies--which I think all do meet this criterion.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:25 PM
Eliot called Hamlet an artistic failure for something like a lack of emotional focus. But I don't have a quote and I've crossed over into unmitigated pretentiousness by bringing it up.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:28 PM
186 -- I certainly don't offer it as a primary definition.
I still think it's a meaningfull category. What if I were to call it "fuzzyheadedness"?
At the risk of moving the goalposts consider the anacdote here (noting that, like anything in HST, the character of the hitchiker may be real or invented as a foil). I believe that HST is not just criticising the decision making of the hitchiker he is also criticising the narrative that she tells. How would you describe his criticism of her narrative?
This may be a bad example, I don't want to get into HST's gender politics.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:33 PM
nearly everything is cliched; it's all a matter of degree
...
aside from any overly universalizing statements I may or may not have made
Posted without comment.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:33 PM
Lest my 177 derail the conversation too much I'm curious if anyone has a response to my 184.
[Is it a sign that I am trying too hard to be an "unfogged commenter" that I am writing a comment that's sole purpose is to reference my own previous comment?]
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:36 PM
191: Jeremy, what are you talking about? If I have to, I can prove that you can take nearly anything and frame it in mocking "Look at the cliche" terms. It's easy, because there are only a few stories to tell. If people are really, really experimental with method of storytelling, then it's harder, that's why I said "nearly everything" and not "everything." But unless we're going to say there's no value in repeating the old forms even if we do it well, then that's not really a problem.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:38 PM
Is it a sign that I am trying too hard
NickS: See.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:38 PM
Tia: I think you'd have to argue pretty long to convince me that "everything is cliched" is not a vast overstatement.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:41 PM
I mean my friend Dale Rinehart published a one-issue zine in high school dedicated to the notion that everything is cliched. I dug it then, thought it was a pretty cool way of looking at the world. But I was 14.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:42 PM
I think I am trying to tie too many things together in my attempted alternate definition. Text is correct that a large part of what I'm thinking of is a work that is so far within the context of a social class that it can't recognize that fact. That is clearly a poor definition of sentimentality. It may represent a different way in which a work can fail, but probably doesn't apply here.
I am vaguely thinking of another category that gives subjective emotions a primary position while, simultaneously, lacking in insight into those emotions. "Lacking insight" seems like a difficult phrase to define.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:43 PM
convince me that "everything is cliched" is not a vast overstatement.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:43 PM
On Capote:
"Oh look. It's an artist being ruthless in pursuit of his art and not caring about real people. Where have we seen THAT before? Ooh, and look, there's like this parallel between him and the thing he's describing. You almost might think artists are drawn to subjects because of their own psychological needs. And hey, in the end, it doesn't bring him satisfaction or resolution of his own demons! Unlike every other movie about a tortured artist!"
I could do this all night. Send me another one.
Since all stories are variations on each other, I was arguing for being less liberal with the application of the label "cliche." See 188, where I forgot to finish a sentence.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:46 PM
I in fact have a relatively high threshold for cliche because nearly everything is cliched; it's all a matter of degree, so for me to use it as a critique I have to see that someone's treading pretty hard on familiar tropes, not adding anything particular, not drawing.
Honestly, I don't think a light touch is particularly necessary either. I'm a fan of Italian opera. The movie was called "Crash," and its entire conceit was that it was going to focus on the most violent collisions. I think Drum was right about the knife edge thing. I'm pretty sympathetic to efforts to focus on moments of greatest intensity.
This is fine with me; it's a matter of our personal tastes and articulating how they differ with some precision. Which is what you've been going for, right? I happen to think that the treading in Crash was pretty hard and the tropes familiar and the title a sign that it was supposed to be done that way. The fact that it achieved what it intended makes it a more coherent movie but doesn't make the thing it achieved any more or less likable from a personal taste point of view. I doubt I'd like any movie that wanted to do and succeeded in doing what Crash does.
Well, I think I've been trying to retreat into "conventionally structured narrative," but aside from any overly universalizing statements I may or may not have made, what I'm really trying to talk about is what criticims are elucidating for the things that we're discussing--Hollywood movies--which I think all do meet this criterion.
A lot more than Hollywood has come up, but if we're now restricting ourselves to that, I'd still want accounts of how actual Hollywood movies were conceived of and what they were intended to mean by their producers/creators/writers, etc. You're probably right though, because movies that don't fit your criteria probably wouldn't make it into production.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:46 PM
Slol -- I was actually thinking of mentioning Ecclesiastes in 196. But I think "everything is cliched" is not a useful simplification of Ecclesiastes. It was Dale's jumping-off point.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:47 PM
195 -- I think you and Tia are still talking past each other. There's an important difference between saying "everything is cliched" and saying that everything can be described in "mocking 'Look at the cliche' terms."
The difference between the two lies in whether we can agree on a shared definition of "cliched." If cliched is a purely subjective judgement than there is always some perspective from which any work will appear "cliched." If we can agree on a shared standard (which will not be "objective" but will, at least be shared) than we can share judgements about whether a particular work is or is not "cliched."
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:47 PM
Genre is not cliche.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:51 PM
as far as that passage, I think the criticism is that the girl doesn't see the options that she has. She has a limited view of the world, and a warped one, and it has led her to think that she can only be herself while living in chicken coop with a smack head, or whatever Thompson called him. She isn't aware of her own lack of insight, but Thompson is, so I guess that's dramatic or situational irony, or something. If she were to sit down and write her own story, it would be missing something, because she is missing something. I don't know what the word for that is, besides unfortuante.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:55 PM
I've got it. The term we're looking for is: "the human condition."
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 12:58 PM
Essential truths of the human condition, understandable by all, through a work of unsurpassable transcendent beauty, a gift from the artist to us, which we can only behold but never quite comprehend in all its magnificent glory. It makes us laugh, it makes us cry, it makes us see what is at the heart of being human. It is a work that brings us all together.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:06 PM
unfortuante. I'm an ass.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:14 PM
it will reveal that I'm actually not too familiar with Pacific Overtures, and I will be ashamed
(Me either, Tia. Don't tell.)
I wouldn't dream of doing a best-to-worst list or anything like that, but I can do a list of favorites. I'm going to include WSS and Gypsy for these purposes, because his contribution to both was very important.
Favorites:
1. West Side Story
2. Follies
3. Merrily We Roll Along (we'll discuss this in a moment, if you like)
4. Gypsy
5. Sweeney Todd
6. Sunday ITPWG
7. Into The Woods
The following are shows I have no special love for:
8. Company
9. A Little Night Music
10. Assassins
11. Passion
The following I'm not familiar enough with to discuss:
12. Pacific Overtures
13. Bounce
14. Saturday Night
15. Anyone Can Whistle
16. A Funny Thing HOTWTTF
17. The Frogs
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:22 PM
203: What are you responding to eb? Tortured artist doesn't care about real people isn't genre any more than horrible man does something heroic is.
A lot more than Hollywood has come up, but if we're now restricting ourselves to that, I'd still want accounts of how actual Hollywood movies were conceived of and what they were intended to mean by their producers/creators/writers, etc. You're probably right though, because movies that don't fit your criteria probably wouldn't make it into production.
Okay, never mind. I do want to talk about more than Hollywood; I should have said that this critique often gets leveled in the place where it must have the least applicability. I don't think that there is much art that gets made without serious intent to do some desired kind of emotional work on the viewer, at least if we're talking about narrative, which is where I feel most competent. I'd like to find a way of talking about this that is located not within the author, but within the work, though. I haven't been successful with that so far. But anyway, if you take any art with a political goal, like The Grapes of Wrath, say, it can't function without attempting a broad control of emotional responses. If you don't feel anger at The Man, if you're not uplifted by Tom Joad's defiance and moved with pity and admiration when the sister (name?) breastfeeds the old starving man, it doesn't work.
And sure, eb, if subtlety and a light touch are important characteristics of art for you, I could certainly see hating Crash. that's perfectly sensical criticism that shows how our basic value differences made us respond differently.
(ooh, on preview I see JD is providing ample flame war tinder. It's gonna be a hot one tonight!)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:24 PM
"everything is cliched" is not a useful simplification of Ecclesiastes
I agree. But I haven't seen the movie.
Posted by slolernr | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:27 PM
Jeremy, if it isn't clear yet, I was not taking a cynical 14 year old stance; exactly the opposite.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:29 PM
Tia, you're going to try to explain to me why Assassins is brilliant, aren't you? I'm all ears.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:32 PM
Tia -- I'm curious if, after this discussion, you want to attempt describing the catagories that you think are important?
I think you're right to suggest that we don't have a shared definitions for our terms or for whether they are purely descriptive or explicitly critical, but can you propose a working definition?
I guess my question is are you just objecting to the fact that people are stating as universal aesthetic judgements that you don't share, or do you think that our weights are underweight? Are you asserting subjectivity, or proposing a effort towards greater critical precision?
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:33 PM
I haven't seen the movie.
(After checking IMDB to make sure you are not making a joke about a movie called Ecclesiastes:) Me either -- I'm not talking about Crash.
exactly the opposite.
Then it's hard for me to understand what your 188 means. When you say "exactly the opposite" -- what is "the opposite" of the "cynical 14 year old stance"? The cynical stance is roughly, "everything I see is a cliche, i.e. is unoriginal and not worth responding to on its own terms but only as a parody of meaningful reality" -- I guess the opposite of this might be "everything I see is a cliche and yet worthy of my vital response" but I can't really make sense of this. It seemed in your 193 like you are saying every plot element could be described by a lousy critic as cliched, I guess that's true but I don't think that reading of "everything is cliched" works in your 188. And, I don't see how that's the opposite of the 14yo stance.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:39 PM
In other musical news, I just read that John Travolta is going to play Edna Turnblad in the movie version of the musical Hairspray. File that under Just Plain Wrong.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:39 PM
(proposing an effort toward greater critical precision. Then you can get to the task of trying to engage with the other people's values. I think eb is wrong to value subtlety as a necessary condition for good art, but I don't think he was asserting a universal, and only because his terms were actually useful could I understand what he was saying. But I'm in the middle of a flame war here. I promise I'll get back to the question.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:40 PM
I saw that, Becks. I think it's kind of awesome, to tell you the truth.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:41 PM
Jeremy, I take it that Tia's view is not, "everything I see is a cliche and yet worthy of my vital response", but rather "clichedness (as conventionally used) is not relevant at all to my judgment of a work," though as always I should let people speak for themselves.
Neither quoted phrase was said by Tia in this thread (or anywhere else I'm aware of), of course.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:43 PM
215 -- My reaction to this news stops short of even looking at the name John Travolta. More like -- "What? The 'movie version of the musical'?"
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:43 PM
217 - I mean, at least they got somebody with experience in musicals. Not sure why the casting choice irks me but there's something about it that does. Perhaps because I expect someone more transgressive for something from John Waters and perhaps because it feels like they're trying to disassociate themselves from teh gay. Or maybe just because I associate Harvey Fierstein with the role so much. Dunno.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:48 PM
Everything old is new again, TMK.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:48 PM
(I just got timed out for quite a while (I think it was my problem as I couldn't check e-mail or load other pages); apologies if this double posts.)
From 193: It's easy, because there are only a few stories to tell.
203 was responding to this, but your elaboration about Capote (which I've not seen) makes it clear that you mean something more than: this story is a story of type X and therefore cliche because there are many stories of type X.
I'm actually with you on the most things are cliched point; I just can't seem to get past that with a lot of movies and I suspect that I like fewer movies than you do even though I really do like movies and, while I was on Netflix, watched a lot of them.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:48 PM
Different 188: Every story is an iteration of a past one in a meaningful sense; they are all cliche in the sense of having a formal similarity to other stories; it is easy to identify this element and apply the critical label "cliche" unjustly. Good ones include an element of the particular that stimulate us in a way that allows us to reconnect with a truth we've probably been told before. It's not that we're saying new things; we're saying them in new ways. Or, as NickS would put it, the territory doesn't change, only the map.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:49 PM
216 -- that's actually good news, since I need to stop reading this thread and get work done. But I will check back later to see Tia's grand unified theory :)
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:50 PM
220 - Huh. I think of Travolta as being sort of weirdly transgressive in a certain way, especially as a cross-dresser.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:50 PM
It's not that we're saying new things; we're saying them in new ways. Or, as NickS would put it, the territory doesn't change, only the map.
T.S. Eliot's version was: "Art doesn't progress."
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:53 PM
I think I read that Eliot essay freshmen year in college, but I can't quite remember its argument or my reaction to it.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 1:56 PM
I'm not quite sure how I can be "wrong" to value subtlety, but I can see how I can be in the minority, or, even at an extreme, the only person who does so.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:02 PM
In other words, all movies are (re)presentations.
It might be time to zoom out.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:02 PM
It is only by zooming in that we prepare ourselves to zoom out. Anyway, I'm off to read microfilm, where the screens do not display Unfogged. If I don't go blind, I'll check back in.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:14 PM
I am disappointed by Tia's lack of contribution to the alleged flamewar. C'mon, bring it!
(My list of "familiar with" isn't as long as Joe's, but he strikes me as pretty much right. Pacific Overtures has some great numbers. Don't know most of Merrily, but "Not a Day Goes By" is amazing.)
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:21 PM
Matt, you should check out Merrily. The score is very traditional -- so catchy, so jazzy/brassy, it sounds like really great Jule Styne. The book is troublesome, because the main character is weak and underdeveloped. But it's Sondheim's best theme, which he explores in Follies and Into The Woods as well -- the pain of losing your youth and innocence. It's also set with a baby boomer backdrop -- the time of innocence is the late 50s/early 60s, when literally anything seemed possible (the show ends with them watching the launch of Sputnik on the roof of their NY apartment building, and singing a heartbreaking song called "Our Time"), and the bitterness and disappointment are all rampant by the late 70s/early 80s, when the show begins.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:28 PM
(I might have to get to the flame war in a couple of hours I'm sorry. But when I'm done, it'll be brougten.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:30 PM
But anyway, if you take any art with a political goal, like The Grapes of Wrath, say, it can't function without attempting a broad control of emotional responses. If you don't feel anger at The Man, if you're not uplifted by Tom Joad's defiance and moved with pity and admiration when the sister (name?) breastfeeds the old starving man, it doesn't work.
But this (wish to manipulate) is the weakness of political art, qua art. When I read something and I can imagine the writer saying to himself "yeah, that'll knock 'em out, that'll make my point", that's when I feel boredom (not to say, loathing) coming on. Those scenes in Grapes of Wrath have power, to the extent they do have power, because Steinbeck cares enough to imagine a scene and describe it with precision and immediacy.
Charles Simic said "It is the dream of every cliche to enter a poem." Art is interesting to the extent it struggles against cliche, which desires to substitute itself for actual thought and feeling.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:30 PM
This may be repetitive, as I've only skimmed the 240 odd comments above.
It seems that many are focusing on the charge of sentimentality as the accusation that a work fails to evoke sympathy with the characters, either because the work seems too formulaic for us to suspend belief, or because the characters are simply too unbelievable to stir us, and so forth.
That may be right. But sentimentality can also occur when a story fails to RESOLVE the conflicts it has created in a way that we find meaningful or satisfying, and instead relies on a resolution that is at bottom an oversimplified appeal to a particular emotion. The resolution is generated not by the internal logic of the story or characters, but by the artist's desire to make a particular point. Unfortunately, the story doesn't make the point, and with the disjunction between the conflict and the resolution we are left feeling manipulated, with a sense that the story is artificial, a morality tale that never persuades. When the story attempts to distract us from this disjunction by banging especially loudly on a particular emotional key, sentimentality occurs.
Posted by Andrew | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 2:55 PM
I was just reading through movie reviews, deciding on my evening activities, and this made me think of you guys:
Not that there's a chance in hell I'm going to see that tonight.Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 3:08 PM
it's because ac is teh racist.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 3:19 PM
Oh, I'll see a sports movie now and then--mostly for the homoerotic content. I was thinking more of my companion, who has delicate and refined sensibilities, and would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to such a thing.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 3:28 PM
"Dragged kicking and screaming.
A lot of people would pay to watch, especially if clothing gets ripped in strategic places.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 03- 3-06 4:02 PM
To flog a dead horse while most have moved on to the next corpse, I still think there is something to the "sentimentality" criticism. All movies attempt to engage the emotions, but a "sentimental" movie in the manipulative sense attempts to determine the viewer's emotions. In a "sentimental" film, if you don't feel the emotion (or feel one different than the filmmaker intended), the filmmaker has failed. In an unsentimental film, if you don't feel the emotion, you have failed (or no one has). It's the difference between Schindler's List, an unabashedly sentimental film, and a good one, and Shoah (which I haven't seen; maybe it is sentimental in which case substitute something appropriate.) A dry accounting of inherently moving events can be emotional without being sentimental.
Film involves choices, and a film without any sentimentality is almost certainly a bad or useless film. It's not a dichotomy, but a continuum. There are good sentimental films and bad unsentimental ones. Still, it's a useful criticism.
Posted by mealworm | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 5:22 AM
I don't think this horse is dead. I'm going to get back to teh sentimental at some point. But first, flame war!
I'm judging these shows by score, not as coherent works, because I haven't seen all of them staged:
West Side Story (I wouldn't include this, but if we're going to, it goes first, because it's the best musical EVAR)
Sweeney Todd (I don't understand not listing this first after WSS. Every song from this, with maybe two or three exceptions and a couple of interludes, is classic.)
Passion (Have you actually seen Passion? What version? Because I listened to the OCR when it first came out and was meh, and then I saw the West Coast premiere, and ever after I adored the score. I think you need the experience of seeing it to prime you for the music. I also saw the PBS Michael Cerveris/Patti LuPone/Audra MacDonald concert version, which was also great.)
Follies (After attempting this somewhat analytically by listing top flight songs, I have to agree that it deserves a higher placement than I would have given it just on instinct. I'm not sure how to count cut songs. "All Things Bright and Beautiful" and "Uptown/Downtown" are both classics that were cut, but even without them Follies is doing well in the tally. Fuck, I'm listening to it now. "In Buddy's Eyes" --hot damn.)
Sunday in the Park
Company (What's the basis for your meh? Also, if I can consider cut songs, two other fabulous songs, and one decent one, were written for the "Being Alive" spot.)
Merrily (Yeah, I think you placed it too high. I love it, but I love all these shows. I can't come up with enough truly great songs from it to justify the high placement you gave it. I sure do love "Our Time" though. I had a show tunes-themed radio show in college, and I sang that song on air when we graduated. I was really off key, but I'm told it was endearing.)
A Little Night Music (considering cut songs, the axed version of "The Glamorous Life," sung by Desiree's daughter, is one of his best. Also "Now, Later, Soon," "Send in the Clowns," "Every Day a Little Death" (in a little gem way) and "The Miller's Son" are all great in my book.)
Gypsy (Yes, really this low. If I were trying to rank the shows as coherent artworks, Gypsy would shoot up near the top. But based solely on the score? "Rose's Turn" "You Gotta Get a Gimmick," "Everything's Coming Up Roses," maybe, and then what?)
Into the Woods
Assassins
Anyone Can Whistle (though the title song is my favorite song)
The Frogs
I can't judge: AFTHOTWTTF, Pacific Overtures, Evening Primrose (I love three of the songs I know, but wasn't this a one-hour TV special? It can't really compete.)
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 6:13 AM
mealworm:
I haven't been paying close attention for 150+ comments, but I think that eb, MK, and I all agree that "there is something to the 'sentimentality' criticism." Based on his review, yesterday, of some documentary or another, so does David Edelstein. AFAIAA, so does every other film critic.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 7:55 AM
"Every Day a Little Death"
Feh. This basically wrecks that score for me. There are like eight songs in "Into the Woods" that are better.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 7:59 AM
236: "The idea is to take a bit of sports history and prune and embellish it into a three-act screenplay that culminates in the Big Game. "
Which is why it is indisputable that "Shaolin Soccer" was robbed of its Oscar. By remaining faithful to genre conventions while simutaneously mocking the audience for their genre expectations it shone a funhouse mirror on contemporary culture and the filmic experience that Godard never managed to achieve.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 8:51 AM
243: What the fuck is wrong with it, mofo?
And seriously, after "Agony" "Giants in the Sky" and "No More" then what?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 10:38 AM
"Last Midnight," "Stay with Me," "Children Will Listen" (OK that's a double count), "I Know Some Things" and any version of the title song just off the top of my head.
As for EDALD, I'm listening to something else ("Things to Come" by Dizzy Gillespie) right now, so I can't count off in my head, but I was vaguely under the impression that it broke the "Every song is a waltz" thing. More important, what's to like? The title image is great, but the lyrics don't develop it hardly (do "buttons" and "bread" contribute anything beside scansion and rhyme?), there aren't any particularly clever rhymes, Anne's entrance on "so do I" is highly annoying (this may be an artifact of the original singer), and in general, eh. Maybe you could say some of these things about "Not a Day Goes By" but that's got a great melody and the lyrics are heartbreakingly direct instead of using a not particularly interesting list to pad them out. In other words, YMMV.
Let me also say that this is one weak-ass flame war between Tia and JD. You guys both start talking trash, then I have to do the work for both of you. And I don't even know that much Sondheim. Step it up!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 11:02 AM
Fuck, I completely forgot "No One Is Alone."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 11:10 AM
Ack, I'm an idiot. I totally forgot "Stay With Me."
I like "Children Will Listen" but weak-ass pseudo fan that you are, you totally fail to recognize that a thousand people could have written that song. It's just not that special. "I Know Things Now" not "I Know Some Things" [turns eyes heavenward in disgust] is a conceivable nominee, but, though admittedly this is part of the fairy tale pitter patter conceit of the show, it's still too neat and homily-y, in lyric and melody. The title song? Not even.
You happy, Weiner? I'm trying to go gentle on your shit.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 11:20 AM
You're overlooking the fact that, since "Every Day A Little Death" is not a good song, every song from Into the Woods that is good is better than it.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 11:43 AM
I don't think this horse is dead. I'm going to get back to teh sentimental at some point. But first, flame war!
I think the horse probably is dead, but I'm not willing to give up either.
I've been trying to think of ways to get at what we're talking about without using the words "cliched" or "sentimental" which we're trying to define.
I think Ben's "unmotivated" is a good start but clearly insufficient because one could imagine an avante-garde film in which everything was random images which would unmotivated but not cliched or sentimental.
First let me offer an example to think about. I thought of Psycho in which the action is clearly undermotivated, but the film doesn't feel either cliched or sentimental in conventional terms. To the extent that it works I think it's success is based on being unfamiliar and inventive. If you look at hitchcock parodies, I think that once the elements are made familiar it's easy to make them into cliches. So how would we catagorize Psycho? (Note, contrast with Vertigo which, for me, contains more emotional moments that are recognizable?)
I find myself thinking of using a variety of attributes to categorize a work, this list is far from complete, but here's a start (attempting, as much as possible to use terms that are not positively or negatively weighted.)
[Note: this will only get us so far, since at some point we do need to start talking about "good and bad" or "successful and unsuccessful" but, for the moment . . .]
Some of these will require definition, others should be obvious, for the moment I'm just brainstorming to see whether these seem like legitimate pairs that can be placed on a continuum or not.
Familiar ---> Unfamiliar
Naturalistic --> Stylized
Unmotivated --> Internally Motivated
Subtle --> Unsubtle.
Individualized --> Archetypal
Small Emotional Range –> Large Emotional Range
Small Emotional Dynamic Range –> Large Dynamic Range
Perhaps another for describing the extent to which the emotional content of a work is contained in cues that lie outside of lived experience (like theme music) vs a work that frames it's cues in the vocabulary of lived experience.
I would be tempted to add another category for highly structured vs. unstructured but I don't think that's meaningful. Almost any film, for example, is going to be highly structured just because of the requirement of having only 2 hours in which to tell a story.
The goal of this, of course, is not to endlessly divide for it's own sake but to attempt to build a vocabulary that we can share.
So, for example, could we all agree that Psycho is strongly Unfamiliar (or, at least, was at the time), highly stylized, undermotivated, individualized (though with good use of archetypal images), with a small emotional range, a mediocre but very well used dynamic range of emotions (dynamic range is used here, with analogy to the term in music that describes the contrast between loud and soft). I don't know whether I would describe Psycho as subtle or not, so that may not be a useful category. Obviously Psycho is completely unsubtle on one level but, at the same time, part of what I had in mind with that term was the use of detail, and Psycho is elegant in it's detail.
To throw a couple of other examples out for consideration:
In The Maltese Falcon when Bogart says, "When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it." It feels, like JFK's, "It has often been said that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." that this feels like the statement of a preexisting trope, but is the first explicit statement of it. Does this count as something both Archetypal and unfamiliar?
Is Casablanca a sentimental movie? Yes! But it's also fabulous. Can we agree that sentimental doesn't have to be a negative judgment.
In film, like any artform, the style can cut against the story. Consider Jules and Jim -- the story is, on the face of it, depressing, but movie leaves me feeling awake, excited, and happy. I'm not happy because bad things happened to characters that I liked, but I'm happy because of what the film conveys about storytelling and cinema. I'm happy because of the magnificent opening shot flying across the landscape. Does this matter in our analysis, or am I trying to drag far too much in to have a productive discussion? In the essay by Bruce Sterling I linked to recently he says of A Perfect Vacuum, "These are charming pieces, witty, ingenious, highly thought-provoking, utterly devoid of human interest. People will be reading these for decades to come. Not because they work as fiction, but because their form follows function with the sinister elegance of an automatic rifle." In that case it is praise but can the same comment ("form completely follows function") also be a criticism?
I suspect it is probably better if you completely ignore that last paragraph but I leave it in because I think it's interesting.
Posted by NickS | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 11:44 AM
(I swear I'm going to get back to this, but I might not have energy for a while. I just wanted to say that mealworm, I think you actually agree with me, in that "sentimental," meaning "tries to control your emotions" is a descriptor, not a criticism in and of itself, though we may disagree as to the frequency with which its apt (I'm not sure).)
Or in other words: Can we agree that sentimental doesn't have to be a negative judgment.
Yeah, that's what I'm sayin'.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 3:42 PM
It's gonna be a hot one tonight!
MY ASS
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 03- 4-06 3:48 PM
Not that I'm suggesting that you flame me back for my last comment, but Drymala really should be bringing it, unless he has a "life" or something.
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