was leafing through a copy of the rough guide to cult films i picked up in a charity shop earlier today, its like one of those dime a dozen books written by some snarky opinionated film buff reccomending films he likes amd trashing ones he thinks suck with a vague pretence at objectivity amd ngl i think this is how all film discussion should be handled,online film discourse has gotten way too letterboxdified and now the prince charles inema basically only does reruns of the first quarter of the letterboxd top 250 narrative films list.
everyones got way too far up their own asses about this shit, we need to retvrn to the video store spiritually and get a beer, go on tubi and watch some dumb italian bullshit where a load of guys get shot and lose a bathtub of blood each and the title sounds like the name of the average 14 year olds first doom wad
I don’t think what theyre talking about is anti-intetellectual at all. They’re talking about the commodification of “taste.” They’re talking about the affectation of being intellectual about film, as opposed to the genuine affection for the art of film.
I saw a meme once that really resonated with me about this, it went something like this -
Person who’s seen 100 films: 2001 a Space Odyssey is the greatest film, it opened my eyes to what film can be etc.
Person who’s seen 1000 films: you really need to get on this Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengence.
The idea isn’t that people shouldn’t watch film seriously and enjoy it seriously. Art deserves that, and its fun to engage with art that way, as you said. But the performitive “taking art seriously” is not people opening themselves up and embracing art or building their own taste or ideas about it as a medium. They’re cutting themselves off by believing that there’s “correct” films to watch and “correct” opinions to have about them.
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