Certainly nothing I said was intended in the way you outline.

This preceded the remark you quoted:

Any artist surely should not be trying to make decisions for other people but simply making people aware of the richness and range of the possible decisions they might make.

Artists should respond to the world and express that response idealogy free. They ahould be trying to represent an immediate response to the world - not try to 'explain' it, account for it, reduce it to anything else.

The artist seeks only the smile of recognition - not the marching boots of support and validation.

Z

Sorry. Guess I get a bit twitchy around statements about what artists should and should not be doing.

I think most artists are socially engaged but inevitably they reflect in their output their own personal 'take' on the world. It's when that goes against the establishment, who do tend tolike closure, ie happy endings and everything in the garden rosy, that the problems start.

I'm conscious, here, too, of similar debates around modern and traditional trends in the art world. Maybe I've just had a bellyful of all those Van Dyk aristos in their satin suits. It's good that films reflect a wider range of experience and opinions than the mainstream pictorial media of the past. Not that they were meant for general consumption then, of course - until they crept into advertising.

Sheila

Sheila. No probs. Understand.

We live in the noisiest culture in history. Assaulted 24/7 by an onslaught of images and imagery that make the hottest Mistral seem like a balmy evening breeze. We are gathered up culturally long before we reach double figures in a stampede to buy and consume. Any and every aspect of our experience that moves, touches, excites, shocks, thrills, engages us is instantly commoditised, packaged through the misuse of every art and skill, including tragically, thought itself, to create excess value that is then shared inequitably. And we are told this is being a good citizen: it is good for the economy, therefore good for us. So it all gets faster and louder. Everyone is responsible and no one is to blame.

The first demand of an artist then is to demand and create a solitary space, to silence the manic cacophony of our culture so he/she can first see, then hear what the world may show or tell him/her. Then with a will of steel express that relationship to the world in such a way that it's original truth reamins an end in itself, never, ever a means to an end.

That we have genuine artists in every medium is extraordinary. That we have men and women collaborating to create films that reach us clean, orginal and thought provoking having had to travel through the polluted water that is the only means of delivery is close to a miracle.

This thread started about Horror as a movie genre and has, as ever posed the question 'what's in a name?'. Most of what JB so well describes as part of the 'horror' genre I can share and understand the value of, even when it is because it must be, to be truthful, ugly. Wanting to be entertained is no sin but as there are no limits we have to create them somehow or we would still attend public hangings and bearfights etc etc.

It's doesn't really matter to me whether Jennifer Chambers Lynch has talent or whether she uses it well. It's just that I can't help feeling it should matter to her. In Surveillance I see only a second-hand, plagiaristic effort to sell some of daddy's old stock, never anything special anyway and now long past its sell-by date.

Rambling again. Too heavy again. So: nice line from a West Wing episode I re-watched this week. President Bartlett is asked to pardon a Turkey every year at Thanksgiving. Two turkeys are provided but only one is chosen. Touched by the fate of coming second in this contest Press Secretary CJ Cregg tries to get Bartlett to pardon both. He says:

"You mean the winner gets pardoned and the second gets eaten?"
"Yes"
"Well if they used that system for the Oscars...I'd watch."

That's all folks!

Z

Unfortunately, 'Surveillance' has disappeared from the Cineworld listings. Looks as if I'm lined up for 'Duplicity' this afternoon.

Sheila

Interested in Duplicity. Within her range I think JR is under- rated sometimes. Haven't ever found Clive Owen very special except in the one about gambling which I can't remember the name of. But he is a bit dour. Only marginally more animated than the current Bond whoever that is. The one whose chest muscles move about more than his face.

Enjoy.

I wouldn't feel a sense of losss about Surveillance.

Regards

Z