David Fincher -- c/d?

like those terrible moments where someone would raise their hands and make the trenchant point that a communist analysis couldn't be right for this text because communism wasn't even INVENTED yet, DO YOU SEE?

if you're a sociopath tho you can just eye the person making that point and know that they're an easy mark

3 semesters??

"but wait, joseph conrad went to africa so theres no way he could possibly be racist!"

Got it, there are politics in JB movies, but deeznuts doesn't think about or want to talk about them!

-- Alex in SF, Wednesday, July 23, 2008 10:26 PM (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

wait so something's only political if it accomplishes something? this is a very novel definition of "political"

by "novel" I mean "wrong"

-- J0hn D.

thank you, thank you

this is my point exactly: why the fuck does the 'SERIOUS BUSINESS/(politics)' of it matter if it DOESNT ACTUALLY MEAN SHIT

oh yes Carleton college was v v into the lit crit at that point. i should correct to say 3 trimesters, because we were still on some nutjob olde masters version of what a proper college should do. assholes. xpost

why would you discuss the meaningless politics of a movie guy xp

how could you not watch a movie about young men exiting life, becoming violent, and blowing shit up, and not be reminded of a thing or two out there in real life. seriously this takes no heavy lifting at all.

yes. it strikes me that it would take more effort to maintain a "this has no resonance to real life whatsoever" stance than the reverse!

Why would you discuss the meaninglessness of discussing the meaninglessness of the politics of a movie?

we're through the looking glass here people

alex/goole: where did fight club influence jack shit, other than a few dumbasses on this planet starting fight clubs, & were is your evidence for this

goole et al where is the evidence that fight club influenced mcveigh/osama/atta etc & if it isnt around then wtf are you talking about except some bizzarro hypothetical bullshit that doesnt actually exist

WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT INFLUENCE

or at least i'm not. and since i can read, i don't think anyone else is either.

"Why would you discuss the meaninglessness of discussing the meaninglessness of the politics of a movie?"

if youre not talking about influence than why do you give a fuck about anything other than how exciting the visuals/sounds etc are, or do you not get that thats sorta the idea with fincher at his best

this is my point exactly: why the fuck does the 'SERIOUS BUSINESS/(politics)' of it matter if it DOESNT ACTUALLY MEAN SHIT

no, it's not your point exactly. meaning is not construed by, nor reliant upon, nor really concerned at all with results. it's meaning. it's a separate sphere. I don't know why I'm bothering to explain this to you. yet here I am. "it's not going to accomplish anything" doesn't mean the same thing has "it doesn't mean anything," nor is it an 1) interesting or b) insightful criticism of anything. At all.

or to put it another way, ABORTION TIME.

"if youre not talking about influence than why do you give a fuck about anything other than how exciting the visuals/sounds etc are, or do you not get that thats sorta the idea with fincher at his best"

Mind-boggling stupidity here^^^

yeah & 'meaning', whatever the fuck that ultimately means, in cinema & literature & music, takes a serious backseat to the means of its expression, which is what the debate should be centered about xp

hating on directors/novelists/rock stars/rappers/actors/poets because of their perceived politics is stupid

You have a degree in point-missing, don't you?

state frankly for my retarded ass what your point is, then

deez, what about, say, social realism? are we to ignore the politics of the grapes of wrath? (just curious how far you're willing to take this)

hating on directors/novelists/rock stars/rappers/actors/poets because of their perceived politics is stupid

I tried real hard to spell out just how wrong this is but it blew up the spreadsheet

"he's not going to actually negatively impact the world! so, you can't complain about his odious politics!" wtf facepalm

Why bother? Seriously you haven't shown the faintest ability to comprehend even the simplest sentences posted above (many of which have been dumbed down CONSIDERABLY in the hopes that you would somehow get it).

Posted by others btw. I have contributed nothing of value on this thread.

where is kitten imagebomb

i thought grapes or wrath was boring as fuck & i imagine most people do - as literature its dry, as politics its been done better, fuck the grapes of wrath its a fucking joke

dude j0hn i listen to & love your music, would you appreciate it if people took some kind of political razor to your songs? when you write do you have this in mind in any way whatsoever? im asking sincerely.

"he's not going to actually negatively impact the world! so, you can't complain about his odious politics!" wtf facepalm

-- J0hn D

hahaha wow, u can not be serious here

do u hate like rimbaud, for example?

alex i love you & all but the simplest statements in this thread often seem to be pretty stupid ones to me

I think you're confusing politics with ideology, deeznuts. If by "politics" we mean "commentary on the state of the world," then how the fuck COULDN'T you argue that discussing it is irrelevant?

er, COULD

but arent the "politics" of something part of it's aesthetic effect, even by your standards? light and noise are moved into coherent patterns that take part in the semiotic systems around us....

on the other hand, you could read Poe's "Philosophy of Composition"

xp That sentence broke my brain.

Hah okay COULD makes a lot more sense.

"no one's politics matter unless they're politicians. 'matter' is here defined by having an immediate and measurable impact on history. people should therefore never worry a whit about anything expressed in art, nor even respond to the political implications of an artwork, even an explicitly political one. form is all; content is nil. perhaps many prominent thinkers have disagreed with this assessment, many of them having spent entire careers mulling this very question, but who're you gonna believe: them, or deeznuts?"

xpost I don't like to call ppl stupid but you really aren't getting it - I didn't say anything about liking/disliking an artist, that's not the issue, don't be stupid. one generally doesn't discount an artist owing to his politics exclusively, unless said politics pollute the work so severely as to render it unpleasant (this probably isn't a problem if you hold the "nothing matters" position you're advancing here). that one doesn't do so doesn't take one to the mindbogglingly moronic stage of "well, the politics don't matter," which you really have to be an idiotic reader to take up. "do you hate (name of artist)" is an extremely stupid question in this discussion but I probably shouldn't have expected better.

In my youth I used to be all Oscar Wilde about aesthetic detachment until I realized that the detachment was a pose.

i thought grapes or wrath was boring as fuck & i imagine most people do - as literature its dry, as politics its been done better, fuck the grapes of wrath its a fucking joke

winner of the point-missing contest here

deeznuts theory of criticism: if I like it then it has no politics esp. if it is pretty. If I don't like it then its politics have been done better. Also discussing politics is stupid anyway.

everything 'has politics', but common sense should dictate how much we actually give a shit about these perceived politics

it really depends on the distinctions one wants to draw. it's quite simple to reduce everything, even politics and ethics, to aesthetics. to say that a particular political ideology is "really" just a pose.

one could also, just as easily, do the reverse, and imply that all aesthetic decisions are in fact, at bottom, motivated by whatever political agenda one might have.

This is simple stuff.

no one who wants to avoid being a nihilist or ideologue or absolutist wants to really occupy either of these positions permanently, because they cannot hold water ultimately.

thus we are forced to move back and forth between them, negotiating our way as seems appropriate. like on most of this thread!

^^realness

meaning ... in cinema & literature & music, takes a serious backseat to the means of its expression, which is what the debate should be centered about

On that point: NO. Meaning, philosophy, politics, conceptual content, and the world of ideas do not and should not always take a backseat to art's purely formal content. The insistence that they should be so subordinated seeks to enforce a kind of intellectual myopia, a blindness to what are often art's most interesting aspects. Arguments of the sort DN puts forth usually seem predicated on the assumption that "ordinary people" and even the artists themselves aren't engaged with such concerns, so why be all egghead about it? But I won't grant that assumption, and why should I let other people's limitations define my thoughts and perceptions, anyway?

everything 'has politics', but common sense should dictate how much we actually give a shit about these perceived politics

yes. common sense tells you you should care according to the gravity of the matter under discussion, not the effectiveness of the art in affecting same. (Marxist theory differs, as I understand it.) common sense does not tell you "this won't change anything, so there's no reason to care about its politics."

i thought grapes or wrath was boring as fuck & i imagine most people do - as literature its dry, as politics its been done better, fuck the grapes of wrath its a fucking joke

winner of the point-missing contest here

-- J0hn D.

youre right, the grapes of wrath was intentionally boring & dry as fuck, just like fight club was intentionally funny & fun as fuck xps

in the end, theyre the same thing

Again why would anyone waste a serious sentence on you?

i've deleted three or four halves already...

pearls before swine

common sense does not tell you "this won't change anything, so there's no reason to care about its politics."

Everything contains and can generate interesting ideas about almost any subject, so long as you have enough thinking power to make the connections. Sure, that says more about the human mind than about the nature of the world, but so what? Who's keeping score?