Film Criticism vs Music Criticism

A technological development: the pencil, an eraser attached. With the pencil, I can put my words on page. With the help of the eraser, I can revise those words before you ever see them. Would this fact make you value my conversation over my writing? (I don't see why it would.) I think this would vary from individual: whether or not his conversation was more interesting than his writing. There are no generalizations to make.

In some circumstances, other people have the technical means to change what I write, even without my permission. Again, whether the result is more interesting or less depends on the circumstances, the magazine, the editor, the readers as various people imagine them. (In conversation I can be inhibited or inspired by the people in the room, and what I know or imagine about them. And I may have rehearsed what to say; or I may be following instructions. Perhaps I am under the control of aliens.)

Film criticism versus rock criticism: Are they produced in different circumstances? If so, what are the differences? Do they have different goals? Different conventions? If so, why?

Technical advances in plastic surgery have increased the importance of surgeons' chops in the presentation of self.

Surgeon statement = true. Also, the phrase "surgeon's chops" is top!

Erm, I'm way behind on this: I spent this evening cooking not thinking, cut myself TWICE, and got chili up my nose, which has only just stopped HURTING. Sterling is wrong about aura, but only because he means something difft than Benjamin did.

The invention we should all be considering is the MICROSCOPE.

The first wave of recorded performances were dominated by minstrelsy and cultural mimicry ("Cohen on the Phone" = second or third million-seller). Recording tec coincided with a surge in mediumism, and a parallel surge in ventriloquism.

Personality is the ectoplasm of the documentary arts. I have been fighting Doomintroll all evening and am unlikely to make sense for some while.

Microscope. Explain please. Tracer's prognostication: the realization that world is more than what our eyes can confirm for us. Re: ventriloquism - this is from a PR brochure for an AT&T exhibit at the 1927 "Century of Progress" exhibition in Chicago:

Those who heard the demonstration took special seats around a balcony rail and faced a small glass-enclosed stage... For each ear there was provided a telephone receiver, about the size of a thick English muffin and in shape adapted to a cupped palm... On the stage, facing away from the audience, was a tailor's dummy—Oscar III, The Dummy with the Microphonic Ears. In his plaster head, where his ears should have been, were two unusual telephone transmitters. The one corresponding to his right ear connected to the right hand receiver of each observer... Similarly, the transmitter on his left side connected by a different telephone line to all the left hand receivers. Each member of the audience heard, therefore, exactly what Oscar should have heard; each was acoustically in Oscar's place on the sound-proof stage. An actor entered and addressed a monologue to Oscar; but if you were an observer it was around you that he walked and to you that he spoke. After explaining the connection of the transmitters and receivers he drew the curtain. Then, without your eyes to undeceive you, you were actually in Oscar's place... A little rambling patter by the actor to throw you off your guard, a pause, and then right at your feet someone picked up a jingling bunch of keys and inquired, "Are these yours?"

Eyes are confirmers of rationality, the ears a doorway to magic. And let's face it, a muffin that relays sounds over a distance = supernatural!!

"Consumers' personalties don't make their way onto the public record": yes they do. Shape of careers of Armstrong, Elvis, the Beatles, Bowie [insert a hundred others here] = arguing out of received technics of performance with what they absorbed as consumers, how they behaved as consumers. "Being artists" and "being entertainers" always kept in tension with thmselves as (a) walking libraries of their fandom (b) jiving jukeboxes of their own fandom (c) enabled critics of their own fandom (latter less common, explicitly: of four named above, only Armstrong properly achieved it: tho of course HIS fandom was undertaken before record technology created-invented jazz or blues, so he had something much less intense to pull against).

Microscopes: any ordinary buffoon with a CD player can hear a Beethoven piano sonata hundreds if not thousands of time more than Beethoven himself ever heard it. Depth immersion even in music you MAY NOT LIKE is unimaginable compared to 100 years back.

Re: more than our eyes hitherto grasped. Brecht (big wonky infulence of Benamin) liked one particular thing abt movies; that they were a great big source-book of how we ACTUALLY move, not how we THINK we move (ie until Meuybridge, all thought horses' hooves left ground when they galloped: after him, world say that even at top speed horse, like man, always keeps one hoof on ground — except obviously when hurdling jumping etc...)

Anyway, for Brecht, this would be a great DEMYSTIFICATION of technique: of acting as spell-binding. Benjamin sort of concurs (he talks abt bike messengers picking over the movie they saw the night before), but is MUCH more conflicted. Cuz the actuality is conflicted: bikeboys adopt the technique, mimic it, add to it, play with it, same feeds back [x] years later (sometimes via bikeboy- turned-heart-throb [y]) into movie actor language. Our icons are allowed to be icons for being NO BETTER THAN US.

Second "microscope/magnification" effect: The *speed* of the play, the mutation, is also intensified (I *know* Frank doesn't hear this claim, but rap english is now very very far from — say — BBC Received Pronunc'n as understood in say 1966, ie within my or Kogan's lifetime: further, *I* think, than textbook Spanish is say from textbook Italian).

Sinker is right about Benjamin, I realized this yesterday and slapped myself. His sort of aura was destroyed, but it's hard to imagine what that aura was ever like. The new aura which replaced it is just as strong if not stronger, and different in character precisely because of democratizing potential. Sinker is also right about dialectic between icon/fan -- This is clearly a result of massization, where influence can spread quickly, masses can mutate it quickly, and (notably) somehow it takes a bit before it gets picked up again, prolly because distillation is harder than dilution, entropywise.

Different circumstances in film and music production NARROWING as music becomes a collective act -- producers are now more often teams than individuals (even Timba works in close collab with chosen recording engineer, & often with Missy) and albums tend towards collective rather than individual products. Difference between solo & group acts now more like films as star vehicles or ensamble cast. Precisely then, it is auteur theory which aids us in comprehending a governing idea over an album with input of 30+ foax. Mise en Scene equiv. these days to job of executive producer, often. This is less evident in rock as bands like lifehouse, et cet. can recreate their albums roughly in a live context. Also, there are some albums whose governing idea is simply the market and what it desires. Get it? Money binds pop-culture to the masses. Thus the most direct choice the masses exert is with their dollars -- not a fully unconstrained choice, granted, but nonetheless an ability if not to chose what is produced, then at least what is popular. This is not to say that QUALITY is selected for, but rather ETHOS must REFLECT.

Also, production trix in music = much LESS of a selling point than Special F/X in films. Explosions sell better than Korgs. Film also has screenwriter as seperate dept.

Also, hip-hop and r&b videos are at the leading edge of the creation of a new cinematic form. Has anyone seen the Tank video? See it! Plot starts as get it on r&b thing, then transforms into kung-fu action item, complete with motorbike and explosion. This is nonsensical outside of the "cinematic sampling" taking place not through direct sampling but skillful visual reference. Simultaneously emergent are rap concept albums that are beginning to work (prince paul's Prince Among Thieves) and now we are presented with the dilemma -- should we begin to treat music more like cinema? Or have we been remiss in not treating cinema more like music?

Also, I disagree with Sinker's point about Brecht and Demystification. Why? Well try to demystify through repetition the opening chords to California Girls. Impossible! Repetition creates the NEW aura, as we are not only Brian Wilson, but we are all the movies who have used that song and all the commercials who have used that song and that time we played that song and had great sex and that time that et cet. Thus it transforms from pop culture into FOLK culture. Enduring disposability as a trait all pop works aspire to. And thus while we are increasingly able to analyze those opening bars of California Girls, we are stymied by trying to explain the resonance which now extends much further than any innate musical characteristics. I hear powerhouse and think bugs bunny = causal reversal. The softer I hear powerhouse, or in the fainter snatch I hear it, the MORE I think bugs bunny = paradoxical phase.

Not that I said this at all clearly, but my pt abt Brecht & demystification was meant to be that he was kinda wrong. (Plus — to be fair to Brecht — I think he meant that the demystification would happen on-stage, not on film: so repetition not in the equation). Benjamin saw something else going on also, so his versh is in tension (but not fully worked out).

FX on as selling points records: mightn't these be music stuff we just don't any longer THINK of as "fx" (eg "explosions" = elec.guitar distortion?). Matt Black of Coldcut used to talk abt the core of a dance record being "a stupid noize to grab your head". Which would be a "hook" (tho prob. not a melodic/verbal one). Isn't 'Acid Trax', for example, perhaps *all* "explosion" and no "plot" or "character"?

Brecht argues for demystification as conscious act, not technological byproduct. Which makes the relationship to this discussion complicated. As for "explosions" in pop -- compare Hong Kong martial arts flix where the entirety of the character is captured in their method of fighting, with US flix where a gunshot is just a gunshot, an explosion interchangable with any other explosion. Which do musical noises more resemble?

I kind of think it's really easy to get ourselves confused (me, anyway): FX as selling point; are explosions even "FX" any more? (CGI dinosaurs are FX too...) And "explosions" = "noise", but an explosion ON a recording wouldn't necessarily be an "FX"? Matt's "stupid noise" needn't be an Attali- type noise: just some fuzzy-type synth setting. ("Wipe out!" on 'Wipe Out' is an FX, and a selling point, tho its FX-ness was not necessarily stressed at point of sale the way martial arts wd be...)

What is the equiv on a song of a film's story?

It is two minutes past two and I am old and have yoga tomorrow. That pillow looks very wickedly tempting.

What I mean, I guess, is that production fx on albums aren't selling points the same way visual fx are in films. And the more I think about it, the more I think that I'm wrong and that fx on albums DO = fx on films as a selling point. Also, the equiv of a film's "story" is an album's "concept"/artist's "personality".

So I think "FX" the way mark s. is using it = a noticeable intervention. Film uses special effects all the damn time but in the most unimaginative way possible: trying to push the envelope of professional seamlessness and realizm (jurassic park, etc.) - maybe the same way a Sade album does. Film has left unstarted an enormous project to blend photorealism and "noticeable interventions"; it's not within spitting distance of popular music in this dept. We have been remiss in making film not more like music. I loved the end of Irma Vep for its FX (new-style definition). Stan Brakhage. The part in Pulp Fiction when Uma draws a square with her fingers and it appears on screen, the Ikea scene in Fight Club. Still I feel that these instances are akin to my old complaint abt Stereolab, that they only use the really weird noises as intros and outros (like the opening credits of movies, where "anything is possible" and then we gots to get down to business..!)

Re: demystification -- "Technological byproduct" EQUALS a conscious act. Or that is my hypothesis (ibid). I vaguely remember Ren and Stimpy's creator ranting about terrible cartoons that made no effort to exploit the malleable reality made possible by the medium they were in. I think that has bearing on this conversation somehow. Basically that demystifying an organic whole is a result of the will to do so. Muybridge did have to go out there and set up all his little cameras. Tiny Toons still sucks even though it's in the same medium as the Simpsons. I feel that I am doing terrible violence to the essence of your arguments and mine so I'll stop now. Though I am quite awake.

Final Fantasy the Movie: as if someone released "Deep Forest", re- recorded with the most powerful Kurzweils on the market at a cost of millions -- and it comes out sounding stiff and awkward.

Hey! I grew up on tiny toons, among other things. Uh. I think we're all doing violence right now with the strained analogies I started. Not that there might not be something interesting to dig for.

So, new related question -- "naturalism" in film vs. music: the most important thing to learn about images is that the camera pretends to tell the "truth" but is as manipulable as anything. Hence, demystification of film undertaken as conscious act by french new wave, not byproduct of film. So the camera urges naturalism but does the recording studio? I think we expect noise to be purely synthetic these days, that the origins of music in the speech act made rhythmic are already fractured in perception, perhaps even that we are better equipped to handle a variety of sonics than a variety of visual stimuli. Perhaps our visual recognition system becomes set earlier in life and has a slower learning curve.

Also, unrelated, on the film vs. music thing, music can accompany life, while the concept of an "ambient" film has not been truly explored. (Ambience, on the other hand, is the WHOLE POINT of 57.3% of TV.) Thus music massizes through repition as much as quantity of audience, wheras film for the most part relies on its wide cultural reach. Also, folk-culture aspects stronger in music than film, also due to pervasiveness of ACTUAL MUSIC as opposed to pervasiveness of DISCOURSE W/R/T FILM.

If I had something to do it on I would leave movies running in the background. Predictably, arty-type stuff though. I have done this a few times in the past when I had a TV available and found it very interesting.

[Tracer: I meant the effect to be negative. Listeners engaging with recordings as solely such, not trying or needing to connect them to live performances, strengthens the effect that anti-performance production developments have on the "music is performance" mode. Admittedly this may not make sense despite any of my efforts to rephrase.]

Reviving thread.

I think this "how does nu-aura differ from old-aura" question is still interesting.

Tracer Hand's point about salient FX (artisans flaunting their ingenuity) being deemed appropriate for certain parts of movies and in certain fashions, but deemed taboo for others. "Auterist" movies in Hollywood create tension here, since a PT Anderson or Tarantino movie will flaunt its "virtuosity" (in quotes simply because this notion of virtuosity is bound by a certain understanding of art and craft) almost throughout and the audiences will recognize this an applaud. This would not be unthinkable in "Old Hollywood" but it was rare--Hitchcock got away with it, Ford too (in a v. different way), but few others. I've often wondered what this means for the future of Hollywood cinema. In a recent article David Bordwell says that the basic building blocks of Hollywood cinema haven't really become scattered/fractured as some critics say (in approval or remonstration)--that the classical codes are still in place but are "intensified"--i.e. stylistic moves that would be reserved for pivotal emotional moments in older movies (for example the subtle push-in when Joel McCrea is trapped in the cliffs in Colorado Territory, dir. Raoul Walsh) are used constantly in new Hollywood movies. Bordwell does agree this is ultimately somewhat limiting and may in fact suggest that the general lamenting about Hollywood has some basis in fact and isn't just intellectuals vs. the people. But he also warns against claiming that movies are less intelligible, or less fluent, than before.

Frank: way upthread you write,

The type of film theory that I hate: the sort that claims to describe the "nature" of the film "medium" and claims to be the theoretical foundation for making movies and for criticizing them. Even worse are claims that there's a theory of meaning (or of signification or of language) which provides the foundation for a critical method.

Who did you have in mind here? I'm curious.

Loathe as I am to zoom off on a tangent, as I did on the Kuhn thread on ILM, and despite my timidity to step into a thread of this intellectual quality (because I lack the artistic education and reading and intellect of the major participants here - I've loved reading it, I must emphasise)(and I wish Josh would come back here), but this touches on a major old area of interest of mine. I started a mag about comics back in 1981, and throughout the '80s I frequently talked about what I saw as the lamentable state of comic book criticism, especially in the UK.

Partly I was talking about low standards, but much of it was that comics criticism hadn't developed at all as a distinct form - the best writing was by people adapting slightly from reviewing books or films or something. Cinematic terminology was particularly levered in all over the place, to the point of cliche. The only place that seemed to be getting anywhere, in the English language, was the Comics Journal, and while I always admired that mag and aspired to its high standards (and I do think I did something to improve the craft of comic criticism in Britain, probably as an editor more than as a critic myself) I was uneasy with its old-fashioned high cultural assumptions. I would argue against that stance in lit or art crit, but it seemed especially inapt in a popular art form like comics. I explicitly referred to music writing a number of times back in those days. A blend of people writing serious academic critiques with a real understanding of critical methods and people ranting about political ideologies and others excited about the vigour and silliness of superheroes seemed far more desirable to me, and it's what I strived towards, I think with some success - but here I'm talking much more about attitude than about the critical toolkit.

There were a lot of things that were unique to the way comics worked that weren't covered by approaches transplanted from books and movies, much as those sources were valuable. The passage Frank quotes way upthread about Rossellini is a rewarding way to look at some comics, but of course there are other things to look at simultaneously that are unique to that form - where is the panel placed, how big, how does it realte to others, and on and on. I guess I'm saying that it worries me when people try to force parallels between the way of examining and talking about two differing artforms (except maybe in the earliest stages of developing a way of talking), because I think they are most often sources of error and misunderstanding, and they clutter the path to comprehending a form for what it is. Movies and music, despite certain similarities (I think demographics is a more important one than most that have been raised here), are such different forms that hardly any parallels sytike me as remotely useful. Cinema and comics and novels are storytelling forms, and therefore have substantial similarities, but music, like painting say, is not inherently (or is far less inherently) a storytelling form - and I say that as a big country (lowercase first letter on both words!) fan. Story is far more of an optional bolt-on in music (or painting) than it is in cinema, so I think the way we think about structure and pacing and meaning needs to be very different.

I think the purpose of music and the way it is consumed covers a very wide range of things. Much music has no narrative or meaning. I love some records for their stories and messages and ideas and the emotional content of their lyrics, but the absence or lack of appeal of these factors by no means makes a record uninteresting. A record can have appeal for a pretty tune and nice sound, or a driving, exciting beat or whatever. Nearly everyone values music to some degree, and they all have different relationships to it, and they use it in different ways and it does different things to their mood and feelings and it is involved in the way they relate to others in a variety of ways. I think all this is far less true of movies, which are consumed in two main ways (and both mainly involve sitting quietly facing the screen) and involve little or no interaction with others and don't accompany us on journeys or have the ambient role music does.

In conclusion my point seems to be that this is one of the best threads I've read in a while, and I think it's a pointless comparison because everything about the fields is too different to be worth the thought that everyone has put in, so apart from making a great thread we've all wasted our time...