So why review them? Why not let the market do its work, let the audience have its fun and occupy ourselves with the arcana — the art — we critics ostensibly prefer? The obvious answer is that art, or at least the kind of pleasure, wonder and surprise we associate with art, often pops out of commerce, and we want to be around to celebrate when it does and to complain when it doesn’t. But the deeper answer is . . .Click here to read the rest of the review . You might or might not believe it. But, come to think of it, you probably wouldn’t be reading any of this if you hadn’t thought of a lot of this already.
We’re sensitive to the art vs. entertainment issue around here and mostly think it’s a false dichotomy. Firstly, one person’s art is another’s pretension, and one person’s entertainment is another’s cretinism. Also, art is subconsciously almost everywhere—in your kid’s playtime, at Target, on the Nissan 350Z, etc.—so it’s disingenuous to treat it as marginal or gay or whatever. One of our basic goals is to prove that the two are not mutually exclusive—that sounds dumb and obvious, but to many people it’s not (tho, of course, they’re probably not reading this).
But, with all that said, we set out to make Volume 4 more fun (“entertaining”?) than usual—whatwith it being a Summer volume and all. (release date: Aug.8th, by the way!) It has more than the normal laughs, thrills, and rocking. But it’s also filled with compelling, powerful stuff, including two very different films about immigration.
We contend that no matter what camp you fall in—e.g. if you feel anything more interpretable than a NASCAR race is called art OR if you think anything more mainstream than Godard or the Cremaster Cycle is mindless entertainment—we’re all probably a lot more similar than we think. These differences we draw are more about identity politics than about art or entertainment.
Posts
