It's not about an art vs. not art discussion, much as I respect Kipling.
"Postman today is best remembered as a critic of television: That’s the medium he directly blamed, in Amusing Ourselves to Death, for what he termed Americans’ “vast descent into triviality,” and the technology he saw as both the cause and the outcome of a culture that privileged entertainment above all else. But Postman was a critic of more than TV alone. He mistrusted entertainment, not as a situation but as a political tool; he worried that Americans’ great capacity for distraction had compromised their ability to think, and to want, for themselves. He resented the tyranny of the lol. His great observation, and his great warning, was a newly relevant kind of bummer: There are dangers that can come with having too much fun." (Emphasis added)
My whole take on the issue is basically that Scorcese is part of this. Him, and the whole cult of cinema that makes discussions like his more than just a one-time thing, where there are homages in films to other aspects of cinema, like that makes the movie better or worse, but fuels whole other levels of discussion and makes it a bigger deal. Another part of that distraction is taking seriously the Oscars and Emmys and other awards, and the that whole drama a few years back about whether or not Scorcese would ever win an Oscar until he finally did. When you get right down to it, much more symptomatic of the "capacity for distraction" is Scorcese's critique of the MCU. Certainly more than someone who just goes to the theater for 2 hours of mindless fun and goes on with his life after that. That's what the MCU is for most of the population. It's like criticising the manufacture and sale of cheap liquor as part of a hypothetical alcohol dependency. The whole thing about Scorcese's cinema snobbery is actually part of that distraction industry, where so much of the meta-critical industry is paying so much attention and offering so much analysis to the MCU and similar fare, when they came into being to pay proper homage to Scorcese and his peers and role models. The success of the MCU is a sympton of the distraction epidemic, but Hollywood commentary and industry watchers and the rest are collectively a far more serious risk factor in the promulgation of the disease.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
