Hollywood and art
Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Words are flying out like endless rain into a paper cup
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns It calls me on and on across the universe
There's this... dream, it's more like a day dream. We are inside this garden, and I only know it's a garden because we feel so calm, so eased. We're not bored, we're not anxious, we're not waiting for anything. This garden smells like the English-speaking-bookstore, and it's fresh, and we're looking through books. They're all what we wanted, and when we touch them we get the feeling you have when the book has finally cut trough the skin and become part of you. We are devastated by the most overwhelming pains, and giggle with ridiculous banalities. It's only the three of us, and we chat about everything and nothing. And words just spill, making static bonds with the particles of air that hold us together.
Growing up movies meant for me, the easiest way to get a story told, through actors and solid imagery an entertaining story was shown. Growing up in the 90s it was mostly Hollywood formulas that inserted cliques and archetypes into my head, making it easier to understand stories as a whole and, sometimes, people too.
But then I became narrative conscious and started seeing how scripts were made as a formula and the whole business was ran by entertaining purposes based on star systems and making whatever people wanted to see. This led to me finding out there were movies that were well scripted, and thus were art. Sometimes they looked sort of pretty too. Because to my literary based creativity, a movie was just a medium to express a story.
And eventually I was told that the cinematography actually started being an art when the story scripted on words was superseded by the story told by the cameras. In every change of angle, in every closeup to the tear, every wide shot of a forest were not just props, it was the camera telling its own story. A language which consists on many complex linguistic and semantic constructions, and it is there, and it is what makes movies to be actually movies.
It was only then when I was not watching the adaptation of written scripts (for those too lazy to read), but realizing there was something else. And so I began watching cinema, not just block busters. It would be easy to blame Hollywood for making me believe movies were just cheap entertainment, and the lazy alternative of books. I could blame it all on it for blinding me away from the art and shoving entertaining formulas down my throat.
But it would be not just Hollywood, but the entire system I suppose. It got me thinking how every expression of art needs some context, some knowledge to appreciate fully. And if such thing is true, shouldn't education focus also on the ability to appreciate art? Isn't art an expression of society, and if so, shouldn't we all be mildly instructed on how to get it?
Personally, I think it's the same reason why the showbiz tries so hard to keep us away from reality. Art is reality, entertainment is mind numbing. We need to start understanding art its not just there so pretentious bourgeois can feel cultured in museums, galleries and independent film theaters. Art is the expression of a context, a culture, a series of transparent constructions which elude simplicity, and as such we can't just take it lightly. Beauty and truth are not to be taken lightly. (whatever they are)
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns It calls me on and on across the universe
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These are some beautiful statements I agree with. I haven't found anyone to share art with in this side of the country. (and if it makes me feel hipster, so be it!)
I'm really waiting forward to next week. :)