Coming from Husserl’s Crisis and in line with Marcuse, AH (for)see the rationalization of human thought: “Mind becomes in reality the instrument of power and self-mastery for which bourgeois philosophy has always mistaken it” (28). This, for me, is the most fruitful argument put forth in the work—the critique of scientific “This was observed as X=Y, so this must be X=Y always!” thought. “Repetition” and “repression” are the watchwords.
I read Adorno and Horkheimer, along with other critics such as Baudrillard, as the limit-end of one type of criticism. That is, I read them as if they are performing the extreme polemical example to make a point, to draw our attention to the other extreme. Now, obviously, I don’t really care about authorial consciousness—but I find it helpful to read these authors while seeing their writings as “This is what could happen if you don’t watch out! This is a warning!” The reason I’m mentioning this is because I think reading Adorno and Horkheimer (AH) this way allows one to not get caught up in all of their heavy-handed exacting yelling end-of-the-world mannerisms. AH’s writing style, which is meant to scare us into agreeing with them, ends up making us—critics ourselves, with the advantage of historical remove and not having to experience Nazism—react against them. They provide an endpoint from which to work back. Also, they have plenty of great aphorisms: “Every close-up of a film actress is an advert for her name” (133), “Advertising for advertising’s sake” (132) (most commercials today have no connection to the product).
I’ll note also that I agree with the snob nose-in-the-air description, especially considering Adorno’s dislike of Jazz (of course, today liking Jazz is often considered snobbish—so I suppose the Adorno of today would like Jazz but hate Country and Hip-hop). What’s odd about Jameson’s essay is that he, too, comes off as a snob. Here is a critic taking apart ideas of essential high and low positions, placing them within a dialectical relationship, and still coming off as sounding as if he doesn’t really disagree with AH—just he thinks they need updating, he needs to make them more palatable. Like any hard-line Marxist, he doesn’t destroy old Marxist arguments, he only refines and dialectically updates them (the old aufhebung maneuver). Perhaps also it’s his examples—The Godfather is low culture?—out of all the examples out there, that’s the one you choose? Why not some 70s TV gameshow? He’s putting forth this technical Marxist critique (which in many ways will only appeal to other Marxist-oriented readers), but the formula of his argument fails to match up with his examples, his content. I guess my question is, do we today even need these antiquated categories of High and Low art? Do they do us any good?
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In the same way we were discussing last week, I think there is a certain inevitability to the commodity culture that privileges one form of creative ability over another, and one commodity as more elite than others. Now whether or not those categories do us any good is another question entirely. As some other people have posted, it is certainly a small body of the intellectual community which determines this idea of high and low art. Using The Godfather as an example, however, those (Jameson at least) that determine high and low seem to be at odds with other cultural ideas of major artistic achievement. The Godfather won an incredible number of Academy Awards, grossed an unbelievable amount of money, and reshaped a significant (although minor) part of American culture. It became a significant cultural object itself, with countless parodies and spoofs. By any other account except this specific community’s, The Godfather was a success. But perhaps that is the resolution to this contradiction—The Godfather was not intended as “high art,” but instead as a great (by Academy standards), moving, and monetarily successful film. Coppola was not interested in meeting the standards of an intellectual elite, he served different masters (such as it were they happened to be Capitalist masters and not Marxist). My question is into what category Godard’s film would fall?
ReplyDeleteGodard’s film is an interesting contrast to The Godfather because whereas Coppola’s film almost exactly mirrors the performance of a play, Le Mépris contains a critical and fairly blatant distaste for everything that it is. The film brought me to a discussion of fact, verisimilitude, and the reification of this concept into a film which incorporates both—The Godfather suspends the disbelief Godard attacks. It is a shame Godard was unable to cast his wife as the female lead because then the dynamics would perhaps completely align.
The interplay within this film, if I understand the back-story of the actual production correctly, exists at three different layers: the story within the film, the narrative of the film itself, and the actual events occurring around the set at the time the film was produced. The film is able to blend these three realities into a coherent and somewhat illuminating narrative which confirms Godard’s emotional state at the time the film was created. The self-reflective quality is very valuable because each different layer (obviously mainly the two that we see) reveals a different aspect or tragedy about the situation; about the contemptuous situation in which the protagonist is embroiled. It is also an example, I would say, of a strong authorial consciousness that is showing the audience the very contempt said author has for a certain industry at a certain time. But I don’t think this detracts from the quality of the film. The quality of the rendering, as we have read in previous weeks, often is the difference between whether an object is considered art and, in the case of Le Mépris, Godard’s rendering of scenes is powerful enough to heighten his authorial voice as opposed to detracting from it. The cynicism and continued self-reflexive nature of the film added to the quality as opposed to tarnishing it. It also made the film more compelling. But does it move into high art, at least as far as Jameson would be concerned?