Silent movies and its 'counteparts'

Is what people usually say by definition correct and thought through?

Usually, no, but I find it confusing that you completely misunderstand a very common and important observation.

Maybe I am not intelligent, thoughtful or educated.

Again, I am not saying something esoteric or difficult to understand which makes me wonder why you don't understand.

Because you can't blame a work of art for not being something it was not intended to be.

As you do throughout this, you are distorting what I said and putting words in my mouth. I never said anything close to "blaming" a work of art.

Only on the college level? Too sophisticated for high school professors?

I used that formulation because when I asked someone who teaches literature at a university if I was really being as unclear as you think, she laughed and said, "He does not teach undergraduates." She agreed that what I wrote is a commonplace observation and certainly correct.

Did you learn that at college (that you had to take fiction on its own terms for a term)?

I don't remember when I came to understand that, but I do know that it made lots of things more accessible to me.

How can I accept the conventions of the time whitout thinking about what exactly those conventions were?

Once again, you are distorting what I said. You said:

imagine what watching a movie at the time it was released was like

and I was saying accept the conventions of the time. They are not the same.

But what you also assume is that someone would necessarily think of that baffling experience as a negative one.

Again you are distorting what I said. I never said that.

So let's talk specifics: why is an adult needed for the cartoon experiment?

Because children small enough to never have seen a cartoon may well not have enough sense of reality to know that something strange is going on. Cartoon reality becomes a form of reality for those of us who grew up with them.I did think of another example, but I don't expect that you will understand it any more than you understood the others. Some years ago, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon came out to almost universal critical acclaim. And so I saw it and I hated it. I would not have seen it if I had understood its genre. It is a genre that I am only familiar with through trailers and that I don't like. If I were to see it again, at least I would understand the conventions of the film, and I might enjoy it as it seems to be the best of its type.

Wouldn't it be better to reject those conventions or accept them as something other than conventions?

We're not talking about social conventions. We're talking about what people expect in works of art.

What I think is that people whould resist forming expectations, and when a work completely defies the expectations that resisted their resisting, people shouldn't reject it furiously immediately but try to gain a new sense of perspective, through thinking the work and whatever helps them think.

I would've thought that it was clear that we are not talking about major philosophical issues about life and society.

Would it have shined for you?

I used it as an example of the difficulty that people have in having an aesthetic experience when presented with something completely different from what they are used to and expect.

If these exercises seem pointless, I ask you: have you recognized greatness in any recent works of art? What are those?

I am pointing out that it is frequently difficult to adjust to the unfamiliar whether because it is new or because it is old and the conventions of changed. I cannot imagine why you thought that your questions were in any way relevant to this discussion.

What do you mean when you say the past? Do Stravisnky and the impresionnists belong to it?

Well, they are older than Metropolis . Technological advances in film changed the style in movies so that its style is no longer familiar. There is a very large financial component in determining which movies are made.

The acting is no obstacle and it isn't very stylized.

I'm not going to scroll up and look, but I believe that was one of the complaints. It is certainly a frequent complaint.You know, you're really not making much sense. The issue that I am talking about only comes up when someone doesn't relate to a work because they are put off by the conventions. I would've thought it is obvious that is not always the case and a very individual matter. But when it is the case, understanding what the work of art is trying to do and how to take it may make it accessible and may result in someone loving it.How hard is that to understand?The idea that getting in touch with a work of art is greatly facilitate by taking the work on its own terms and understanding it as it was intended to be understood is just not controversial, or obscure, or difficult to understand. Of course someone can just immediately react to a work of art, but that is not by any means always the case. You can come to love works that initially left you cold by getting used to and understanding what they are doing. I believe that is not an unusual experience for people who have any interest in any of the arts.But if you have not had that experience, and you do not understand what I'm talking about, then you just do not understand what I'm talking about.

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