| Introduction
to the second edition of The Entertainment Industry
Welcome to the second edition
of The Entertainment Industry.
I thought I should give a
few reasons why I write movie criticism, since people who know me know
I hate criticism. Why is that? Because the nature of criticism is to
put complicated spin on some ridiculously simplified abstraction, which
is to say that it is ideological--Marxism and Progress and Manhood and
Free Markets and all that garbage--and therefore against what I think
of as an open society. Still, we'll always feel compelled to talk about
the things we love, so here I'm suggesting a pragmatic approach. I’ll
try to take what is useful from what has come before as the situation
demands it, shelve the rest, try to see clearly, and keep freedom in
mind. I won't let arrogant nerds spin their wheels on my art. Who am
I? I'm a poet with a bachelor's degree in journalism. I proceed on my
own authority. Here are some rules about the movies, applicable elsewhere
but never universally:
1) There's no reason to criticize
a movie unless it's to strengthen another art. There's never a reason
to criticize any art unless for that reason. This is the sense in which
I say that everything in the movies is allowed.
2) No one who doesn't practice
an art can improve an art. The point is action, impurity.
3) The last two rules were
written for the dull, who are always asking what the point is.
4) I accept everything, except
that I am liberal, democratic and egalitarian. This means that I will
fight even physical law until it becomes interesting enough to qualify.
5) Like other liberals, my
weakness is a tendency towards complacency. I'll fight it but not through
radical eternal struggle. Radicalism is the culminating expression of
complacency.
6) Radical politics and radical movies are the same thing. Everything
else is different.
7) Expertise spits authority
like a blowtorch spits fire. One makes tyrants as the other burns. You'll
never have to use either as long as you're smart, though if you're rich
enough you might have one or the other laying around in the shed.
8) Can movies be political?
Movies can be complacent or can increase complacency; but their positive
impact lies outside of politics.
9) Politics serve art in
a democracy: other forms of government believe the reverse is true.
This is why other forms of government wind up serving death.
10) We enjoy movies. We understand
other things. These are mutually beneficial.
11) Movies are always just
parts of movies. Now and again most of the parts in a single movie work,
but that's missing the point. A movie is made up only of those parts
you remember. These parts should be combined and broken apart at will.
12) For instance, Citizen
Kane is a musical, a comedy, a drama, a theatrical production, a
romance, a political fable, an actor's showcase, a defiant show of individualism,
a triumph of collaboration. It features men and women who are both old
and young. It is supremely self-satisfied yet thwarted by its limitations.
It is thoroughly middle class.
13) Snobbery flatters ignorance
no matter who thinks they have a right to it.
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