retro-quotes: a series of germane remarks, by others, plucked from all over the place, and from all over the time
"A nutty Puritanism still flourishes in the arts, not just in the schoolteachers’ approach of wanting art to be “worthwhile,” but in the higher reaches of the academic life with those ideologues who denounce us for enjoying trash as if this enjoyment took us away from the really disturbing, angry new art of our time and somehow destroyed us.....
"A nutty Puritanism still flourishes in the arts, not just in the schoolteachers’ approach of wanting art to be “worthwhile,” but in the higher reaches of the academic life with those ideologues who denounce us for enjoying trash as if this enjoyment took us away from the really disturbing, angry new art of our time and somehow destroyed us.....
"The
problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a
hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the
first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions
fulfilled again. Probably a large part of the older audience gives up movies
for this reason—simply that they’ve seen it before. And probably this is why so
many of the best movie critics quit. They’re wrong when they blame it on the
movies going bad; it’s the odds becoming so bad, and they can no longer bear
the many tedious movies for the few good moments and the tiny shocks of
recognition. Some become too tired, too frozen in fatigue, to respond to
what is new. Others who do stay awake may become
too demanding for the young who are seeing it all for the first hundred times.
The critical task is necessarily comparative, and younger people do not truly
know what is new."
--- Pauline Kael, "Trash, Art, and the Movies", Harper's, February 1969
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