Lounge of Justice - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Part 39

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[Consona]

Education these days is very fragmented and fulls of embarrassing gaps. Part of the excessive stimuli available in the electronic age, I guess.

A lot of people throw around terms from the currently popular postmodern curricula, but like the lead character in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge they likely have ever actually read the original authors and not just summarizing texts. I doubt many who talk about narrative theory have read Eco, Lucan, Derrida, etc. Much less Bretch, Ionesco, etc. They read summaries about postmodernism, but that has to ride on a wider understanding of modernism and structuralism. Sometimes in discussions people go on in huge pretentious rants, and being a pretentious BS-filled faker myself, I reply with not-so-veiled allusions to Mann, Hesse, Eco, Kant, etc. which generally are completely missed, and that tells me there is no much use on continuing conversations with such individuals.

Hey, even Terrio, our esteemed Oscar-winner BvS/JL scripter, in a statement a while back showed he could not distinguish between different Greek gods unlike any kid who read Edith Hamilton.

I think it was Harlan Ellison who said that in the modern age, in terms of being well-read, we are all fakers.

Yep, I've met only few people I'd be confident identifying as "well-read". Those were primarily teachers at the university. Maybe two or three guys from regular life.

The thing is, artists are those who present us with ideas, this alone is something that should automatically presuppose some level of education and knowledge.
And every artist who wants to make something of a value will IMO come to a conclusion that being well-read and educated is important to understand his craft and the whole world around him better.

 

[jfurioso]

There is just too much in any field nowadays to keep up even in cursory fashion.
I think Garcia Morente wrote that even among the "high-faluting" philosophers the last true encyclopedist may have been Liebnitz, as even Kant was rather lacking in areas like biology.

But I think there should be some effort to beef up on the big fundamentals. What these are, is another whole bag of beans.

 

[Greens]

I agree on the common-joe appeal of many online commentators. It is a matter of relating and feeling included.

But any serious artist must be educated in the larger sense of art. Film like theater is precisely an amalgamating artform, made up of several disciplines, and a basic awareness of the involved artistic sensibilities can only enrich and strengthen the artform.

Frank Miller became famous as a Western comic creator not just because he studied Western comics and made them himself. He also brought in influences and outright techniques from Japanese manga and chambara cinema that effectively expanded Western comics and made him a star.

Adam Hughes creates comic covers influenced by painter Alphonse Mucha. Many others bring in such external influences.

Science fiction was created by not merely adding to fiction the ranges of growing science, but also by expanding its narrative language thru the literalization of metaphor as an artistic device.

You're largely right, but I disagree with the idea that there is a list of things you need to do/read/see to be a real artist. Artists always bring their influences into their own work because that's how you learn in the first place, by imitation. I don't think putting up an arbitrary barrier of entry is the way to go. This is why the go-to advice from a lot of directors is "just make movies and get better".

 

[Consona]

There is just too much in any field nowadays to keep up even in cursory fashion.
I think Garcia Morente wrote that even among the "high-faluting" philosophers the last true encyclopedist may have been Liebnitz, as even Kant was rather lacking in areas like biology.

But I think there should be some effort to beef up on the big fundamentals. What these are, is another whole bag of beans.

Yeah, there should be some basic level of what one should know.

I laughed so hard when Alan Moore was talking about his research about how good public entertainment was during some late centuries and how it basically slowly went to s**t.

It's hard to keep up with all the new information you can get from anywhere these days, but you can still go read Plato and Aristotle and you'll find there basics for everything you'll ever need to thing abour. It's really amazing what these two guys were able accomplish in their work. If there were any aliens among us ever, it had to be these two guys.

 

[jfurioso]

You're largely right, but I disagree with the idea that there is a list of things you need to do/read/see to be a real artist. Artists always bring their influences into their own work because that's how you learn in the first place, by imitation. I don't think putting up an arbitrary barrier of entry is the way to go. This is why the go-to advice from a lot of directors is "just make movies and get better".

There probably should not be a fixed list, as you can find the influences and dialogue between various exponents easily in different sources but there needs to be a larger and wider awareness of art and overall knowledge alongside that personal effort in order to transcend incestuous, self-limiting regurgitation. Probably the very effort of making or putting things into practice ends up leading the artist to look outside his previous ranges of references. That is how it generally happens to me.

Like when Einstein had to use tensor calculus when working on Unified Field theory. It is said he stated that he needed more math.

This is something I have pondered a lot, as I am a rather bookish nerd, but I also delve in amateur fashion in many things with little formal preparation/training. And in practice things tend to lead to the other. There is a continuous feedback loop.

To use a wider example, for centuries many martial artists generally looked down on the grappling arts as coarser and lower-level, and while there were lots of competitions and matches and fighting going on, with restrictive rule sets that ensured forced distancing and other factors that favored particular styles, the moment there were actual public no holds barred matches it turned out that people who grabbed others and threw them onto the ground had a surprising success rate. It forced most reasonable people to understand that there was a wider range of combat that HAD to be taken into account if you were serious about things.

So we generally need to widen our understanding, in everything.

 

[Consona]

There probably should not be a fixed list, as you can find the influences and dialogue between various exponents easily in different sources but there needs to be a larger and wider awareness of art and overall knowledge alongside that personal effort in order to transcend incestuous, self-limiting regurgitation. Probably the very effort of making or putting things into practice ends up leading the artist to look outside his previous ranges of references. That is how it generally happens to me.

Of course. When you want to grow as an artist, you'll start to educate yourself. Why do we even need to discuss this?

 

[jfurioso]

I was once thinking about the tv viewing habits of my children. Having cable, they can switch at will between various channels feeding a steady stream of their favorite material. Thus, my kid can keep watching cartoons all day if he wants to.

However, in my childhood, there were only a couple of over the air channels and in absence of cartoons at all hours, and being a nerd afraid to go outside and be beat up, I had to watch all sorts of programming. So I watched old B&W movies made decades before my birth, series from multiple countries and times. I saw Bogart and Garbo. I saw Superfriends and Lone Wolf and Cub. There was a rather wide range of things the boob tube showed a fixated viewer. Nowadays, the larger bases of material available mean my kid need not stray from his comfort zones, and I do not know if that is good for him at all.

 

[jfurioso]

Of course. When you want to grow as an artist, you'll start to educate yourself. Why do we even need to discuss this?

Because there is always resistance and it needs to be overstated. Spanish playwright Lope de Vega said that in art anything worth saying had to be said repeatedly.

Decades back, Isaac Asimov wrote about the cult of ignorance in modern culture, about how people wanted to feel that their personal ignorance was just as worthy as somebody's else hard-gained knowledge. And things have not gotten better.

Sorry to all if I get pedantic over this, though. I'll be quiet now.

 

[Greens]

Of course. When you want to grow as an artist, you'll start to educate yourself. Why do we even need to discuss this?

But you started listing specific artists to learn from. You educate yourself because you want to be able to do something someone else can. Man, this songwriter writes great songs... I'm going to dissect his work and try to suss out their methods. There's not a list of songwriters you have to respect or learn from to be a real songwriter.

Maybe this was the intention of your post in the first place, and if so I agree.

 

[Consona]

Sorry to all if I get pedantic over this, though. I'll be quiet now.

****ing nonsense, man! You brought some great thoughts into the debate. Unlike some others...

And what I like about Greens is, he disagrees with me, but he can still make the conversation worthwhile. Unlike some others...

Because there is always resistance and it needs to be overstated. Spanish playwright Lope de Vega said that in art anything worth saying had to be said repeatedly.

Decades back, Isaac Asimov wrote about the cult of ignorance in modern culture, about how people wanted to feel that their personal ignorance was just as worthy as somebody's else hard-gained knowledge. And things have not gotten better.

The post-modern thinking is all about everything has the same value, so why educate yourself, which is hard, when you can be ignorant and it's all the same in the end...

Which of course is not. (and I'm saying that as a huge post-modernist nihilist )

But you started listing specific artists to learn from. You educate yourself because you want to be able to do something someone else can. Man, this songwriter writes great songs... I'm going to dissect his work and try to suss out their methods. There's not a list of songwriters you have to respect or learn from to be a real songwriter.

Maybe this was the intention of your post in the first place, and if so I agree.

Yea, I don't want to exhort there should be one true list of things you need to know to be an artist. That bullcrap. My point was, in the end, you'll want to educate yourself because you'll find that it'll help you understand it all better, it'll give you more perspectives of how to look at things, etc.

But starting with some a few thousand years old time-proved stuff is not a bad idea, IMO. t:

 

[jemoen]

Scorsese dragging the tomatoes site. Love a legend !

 

[harlequinade]

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=35786937&postcount=425

Good God, man

 

[Angel0fDeath]

That's the best one yet.

 

[Consona]

I don't know how to top that.

 

[nite-owl]

The Rick and Morty Schezhuan sauce fiasco is one of the funniest/saddest things to happen in a long time.

 

[harlequinade]

The Rick and Morty Schezhuan sauce fiasco is one of the funniest/saddest things to happen in a long time.

Can someone explain this to me? I keep seeing people mention it on twitter

 

[ArmsHeldOut]

This article from Martin Scorsese, courtesy of THR, is a must-read!

Martin Scorsese on Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Obsession and Why 'Mother!' Was Misjudged (Guest Column)

There is another change that, I believe, has no upside whatsoever. It began back in the '80s when the “box office” started to mushroom into the obsession it is today. When I was young, box office reports were confined to industry journals like The Hollywood Reporter. Now, I'm afraid that they've become…everything. Box office is the undercurrent in almost all discussions of cinema, and frequently it’s more than just an undercurrent. The brutal judgmentalism that has made opening-weekend grosses into a bloodthirsty spectator sport seems to have encouraged an even more brutal approach to film reviewing. I’m talking about market research firms like Cinemascore, which started in the late '70s, and online “aggregators” like Rotten Tomatoes, which have absolutely nothing to do with real film criticism. They rate a picture the way you'd rate a horse at the racetrack, a restaurant in a Zagat's guide, or a household appliance in Consumer Reports. They have everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film. The filmmaker is reduced to a content manufacturer and the viewer to an unadventurous consumer.

These firms and aggregators have set a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers — even the actual name Rotten Tomatoes is insulting. And as film criticism written by passionately engaged people with actual knowledge of film history has gradually faded from the scene, it seems like there are more and more voices out there engaged in pure judgmentalism, people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed and in some cases ripped to shreds.

Good films by real filmmakers aren't made to be decoded, consumed or instantly comprehended. They're not even made to be instantly liked. They're just made, because the person behind the camera had to make them. And as anyone familiar with the history of movies knows all too well, there [sic] a very long list of titles — The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo and Point Blank, to name just a few — that were rejected on first release and went on to become classics. Tomatometer ratings and Cinemascoregrades will be gone soon enough. Maybe they'll be muscled out by something even worse.

 

[nite-owl]

Can someone explain this to me? I keep seeing people mention it on twitter

I don't watch the show but what I understand is in a episode of Rick and Morty. The character Rick mentioned Schezhuan sauce from McDonalds and the fans started making a stink about bringing it back.

Eventually McDonalds brought it back but with a limited amount of supplies to a limited number of restaurants. But the fans got rowdy as hell when they couldn't get any.

I've heard that a guy drove six hours down from Canada to get some and I've seen a video of a guy jumping a counter and rolling on the floor calling himself 'Pickle Rick'.

 

[Fallen Angel]

Matt Ryan to Reprise 'Constantine' Role for 2-Part 'Legends of Tomorrow’ Arc http://bit.ly/2kCj5fm

 

[Arachnerd]

Can someone explain this to me? I keep seeing people mention it on twitter

http://ew.com/tv/2017/10/09/rick-morty-mcdonalds-szechuan-sauce-fail/

 

[harlequinade]

Six hours? For that? Even to me that's insane

 

[harlequinade]

I find the incorporation of Jar Jar to be even worse to poor Porg-boo than Consona's artwork :P

 

[Consona]

Jar Jar beats everything.