moot point

December 24, 2011

"But it’s an impossible role in an impossible movie that has no reason for being other than as another pop-culture palliative for a trauma it can’t bear to face. In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn’t about Sept. 11. It’s about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies — or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers — and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage."

—

‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ Review - NYTimes.com

‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ : 9/11 :: ‘Life is Beautiful’ : the Holocaust?

(via doree)

This reminds me of David Mamet’s essay about Schindler’s List, “The Jew for Export” (I know Mamet is completely repellant these days but this piece is from the 90s fwiw):

[…]It is not instruction, but melodrama. Members of the audience learn nothing save the emotional lesson of all melodrama, that they are better than the villain. The very assertion that the film is instructive is harmful. It is destructive.

The audience comes to the theater in order to, and leaves the theater feeling they have looked down on actions that the have been assured—this is the film’s central lesson—they would never commit.

This “lesson” is a lie. The audience is not superior to “Those Bad Nazis.” Any of us has the capacity for atrocity—just as each of us has the capacity for heroism. But the film panders to the audience. It invites them (as does any melodrama) to reward themselves for Seeing That the Villain’s Bad; and, in the Liberal Fallacy, of feeling this perception is a moral accomplishment.

(via markrichardson)

This is good context for this (I posted an excerpt the other day as well, it’s great writing), but I would suggest that David Mamet has a really reductive view of what melodrama is and what it does.

(via markrichardson)

12:20pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZSRIbyDjrdEQ

(Notes: 50)