She writes: “The fact that “Oldboy” is embraced by some cinephiles is symptomatic of a bankrupt, reductive postmodernism: one that promotes a spurious aesthetic relativism (it’s all good) and finds its crudest expression in the hermetically sealed world of fan boys.” If there are no women on this site willing to speak, I’ll let Ms. Dargis do the talking. Boys what do you think?
What do we think about Dargis? Or Oldboy? I don’t find much of anything useful in Dargis’ reviews. Didn’t like her writing for the LA Weekly – don’t like her after being promoted to the NYT. Though it was covered earlier, I DO like Anthony Lane’s reviews for the way they’re written. And I try not to miss Ebert & Roeper each week. After seeing them a review a film, I know 1. If I WANT to see it and 2. If I SHOULD see it. Their tastes in films are different and complementary. Also, Roeper openly mocks Ebert’s opnions on air; something Siskel never did, which is probably why God mercilessly killed him.
I thought Siskel died from an over-exposure to poorly made Holocaust films.
1. Reviews and reviewers: Dargis long ago lined up against postmodern boys’ films, however those separate terms might be defined. I’ll read her take on “Oldboy” the way I’d read other blind spots in strong critics’ assessments–like Pauline Kael always raving about DePalma, or Arnab missing the boat on “After Hours.” And I’ve always been irritated by her attempts to make a distaste for such films into a matter of politicized aesthetics, as if anyone who disagrees is an ass.
That said, what I like about her–and about Ebert and the rotting corpse of Gene Siskel and a couple other folks–is that she sticks to her fucking guns, in fact pulls ’em out and blazes away. She’s a passionate believer; at worst I want to yell back, and at best I am enthralled. But I get caught up in the struggle.
2. Re Oldboy & Good ole boys: Compare her pretty dismissive view of Park’s films to David Edelstein’s. Say what you will about a fanboyish appreciation of “Oldboy” or that aestheticized violence, to see appreciation of that film as only such boyish dimwittedness is a flat failure to engage with the film. I can almost put up with similar dismissals of Tarantino–even if the films are far more complicated and challenging than cheap exploitation knockoffs, he himself talks as if that’s what they are, … but articulating the relation between revengers’ tragedies and Park’s flicks is far more suggestive, and interesting, and useful, than spitting out a cheap easy link between “Oldboy” and hyperstylized violence (or hyperviolent style) in a new boys’ cinema.
That said…
3. Genderama: Jeff’s made this point before about us being mostly (all?) boys, and perhaps trying to rub our noses in our insensitivity to our own gendered blatherings. I’ll stipulate, for the record, that Jeff is more sensitive than me. By “sensitive,” I mean “wussy” and “girlish.”
But I tease. How boyish of me! Let’s pull back: is an appreciation of “Oldboy” easier for men? Or, put another way, inviting in issues of class and problems of ‘culture’ and elitism, I react to Dargis in a couple of ways.
First, I accept the criticism and pile it up with my day’s ration of self-loathing and feelings of inadequacy. I like action films, I like violent shit, I laugh at as well as with people, I was bored to tears by Bridget Jones. There’s a hint in Dargis–and many others’ similar criticisms–that to like such things is simply to complacently fall into the roles laid out for us in our blue nappies. I.e., I slap my forehead and say, oh, shit, I shouldn’t like “Oldboy” and Tarantino and shit blowing up. What a fucking cultural patsy/dupe I am.
Second, I seethe at how an aesthetic judgment I see as a highly suspect bit of cultural snobbery gets repackaged as political critique and thus sails on through my challenges, unscathed and self-righteous. Pfah. Psish. I sputter. I want to lay out a dazzling array of counter-readings, all political in their own right–issues of class underlying the film (how the ‘villain’ is a rich kid, the ‘hero’ a lower-middle-class shmoe) and readings of the film (the dismissal of a “Tarantino” aesthetics being tied to a dismissal of the potential countercultural receptions & uses of exploitative film–not least as a gob of spit, thank you Henry Miller, in the face of art), or a dull culturally-inensitive bit of Americo-centric assumptions (I don’t think one can read “Oldboy” and Park’s aesthetics of vengeance without attending to the sociopolitical contexts of the two Koreas). But then I slap my forehead again–is the only way to combat cultural elitism in its own language?
Talk amongst yourselves.
4. Just see “Oldboy.” It was among the best films I saw last year, on a dvd purchased illicitly through ebay. I fully intend to see it again. I also loved “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” and await, eagerly, the next in his trio of revengers’ tales, “Sympathy for Ms. Vengeance.”
I liked Oldboy by the way–though it does have gender issues–but found Dargis’ dismissal of the film playful and knew Mike would take the bait (and I won’t throw any cheap shots at Mike’s sensitivity though I have a hankering he’s far more girly than I). Oh, and Arnab, I’m stuck on the dock with you when it comes to After Hours.
mike is such a baby. i liked “after hours”–just can’t see it in my top 3 or 5 scorceses.
I wrote a really long new post today about Mike Reynolds’ unhealthy fascination with After Hours. But then the whole website seemed to go dead after I hit ‘publish.’ Too bad, it was very funny…
I don’t know if I understand why the hermetically sealed world of the fan boy is necessarily the “crudest” expression of a “bankrupt postmodernism.” It might be misguided, foolish–maybe even dangerous in some cases–but it doesn’t seem crude to me. to become so closely allied to a particular form–say, anime or asian revenge flicks–must take a rather complex set of responses which might be worth talking about instead of dismissing like Frau Mistress Dargis.
I am not sure of the extent of my own affiliations to the “fanboy”–I know that I have memorized most of the lines from The Wild Bunch and can sit around (as we are doing now) and discuss the merits of various scorsese films (for the record I like After Hours very much–it is one of the few films to actually have a genuinely “Kafkaesque” feel to it, if one means by that a combination of the comic, uncanny and everyday). I also know that while I admire Tarantino (and I love Kill Bill vol. 1, though not his other movies) I find his self-regard somewhat irritating (I don’t mean his personal self-regard but the kind of film-making that is sometimes only flashy—though I don’t know that I’d call this flaw “bankrupt postmodernism.â€)
Part of my dislike of Dargis—though I grant her the merits of being passionate and intelligent, etc.—is that she feels a strong loyalty to the role of the cineaste that obviously she puts into an antagonistic relationship to the “fan.†Unfortunately, between the two, I find the cineaste to be the even more ludicrous position, because at least the fan has a more direct awareness of the way film is caught up in other issues of commerce, consumerism, etc, even if that awareness isn’t as critical or sharp as it might be. Plus there’s often some vitality and immediacy to the obsessive fan relationship. I don’t mean that the cineaste isn’t aware of these issues, too, but that they rely often on a rather conventional idea of film as the vehicle for Serious Themes Approached Seriously, and fail to take into account that, for instance, genre movies have a different way of making meaning, sometimes requiring that you submit to their conventions without immediately looking for the distinct traces of the Great Artist. Godard doesn’t always trump the comic book, as it seems to in the world of Dargis and the like-minded. Or—those of you who seem to know her work better—am I being unfair to her?
I feel that I am in the middle between the ‘fan boy’ and the cultural critic (the term “fan boy†doesn’t really bother me…but, wonderingly I ask, if now it’s apparently chic to dismiss the tastes of an entire gender? Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say, “dismiss the possibilities for the analysis of the tastes of an entire gender?†sometimes in the face of identity politics it’s bracing to remember Marx—“No emancipation without that of society.â€) I can’t really resolve the tension between the two by throwing myself into one role and ignoring the other—especially since they have mutually antagonistic sources, the “fan boy†in the need to make subjective sense of the onslaught of materials and to take a part in the “community†(however abstract) of like-minded people, and the “cultural critic†in the much later taking up of the tools provided by a bizarrely anachronistic educational process.
Mike—I have reported your illicit purchase to the FBI. I have legally added Oldboy to the “Saved†section of my netflix cue, like a good citizen.
Mark–I have had similar trouble (sometimes taking a couple of times until the message is actually published)which is why I write the messages in a word document and then copy them into the little box here.Can you recreate it–after all, it’s an essential part of our hopelessly gendered blatherings to keep making fun of each other?
P.S. I think I would prefer Scorsese to go back into the bizarre dark comedy phase rather than keep going in the hollywood epic–Visconti meets deMille–mode of the last few years, though I liked Gangs of New York very much.
michael, your comments are intimidatingly brilliant. i have things to say about dargis (repeating things i’ve said before) but now we must watch “finding neverland”–perhaps sunhee will even post about it tomorrow, thus making jeff happy.
I second Arnab, Michael–the stuff on cineaste versus fan is as good an overview of those critical positions as anyone could want; I’m going to refer students here, ’cause lord knows I don’t know how to teach, beyond assigning required readings.
I don’t think Scorsese’s given up on dark humor–he gave it another whirl with “Bringing Out the Dead,” which while flawed was really intriguing, despite the annoying people on cellphones behind me.
To make Jeff happy, I am going to begin posting as Irene.
Arnab and Mike–thanks for the kind remarks! I agree about Bringing Out the Dead–I had overlooked that film, even though I enjoyed it when it came out. As for “Finding Neverland,” I’m not sure I envy you, Arnab–a bio film about the guy who wrote Peter Pan? is it worth checking out?