Mark wrote:
> No, I'm not trying to reignite the debate. However,
I'm currently
> reading Geoffrey O'Brien's Sonata for Jukebox (one
of these days
I've
> got to read his Hardboiled America) and I ran across
this line
about
> defining rock and roll:
>
> "Any attempt to nail the music down is too
restrictive for a
culture
> whose whole point is to find out what happens when
every form of
> restriction is removed."
>
> An artisitic form cannot be pinned down as long as
it remains
alive and
> vital. If it still has an ability to evolve, it
cannot be
thoroughly
> contained (which may be why some are so meticulous
in narrowing
genres
> to very precise, specific time periods and titles),
since any
mutations
> would have to break through the existing boundaries.
The only
place it
> can be thoroughly dissected is on the autopsy table,
in retrospect.
I thoroughly agree with what you say here. A point I have
made elsewhere is that "film noir" and "rock and roll" and
"jazz" and "science fiction" mean, first, the works that
people commonly and by consensus speak of as being such.
There are of course always fringe and arguable cases, and
consensus is not absolutely everything. Nonetheless, a
definition of "film noir" that leaves out Kiss Me Deadly or
Laura or The Asphalt Jungle is not a common sense linguistic
definition, because those films are among the first hundred
that most people mean when they refer to film noir. Those who
would have it otherwise tend to be Platonic essentialists;
they believe there is some sort of "essence of noir" that
they have identified and that forms an absolutely
determinative test for members of the "film noir" class. This
may have very little to do with the way that most people talk
about noir, but from the eseentialists' position, that is so
much the better; arcane knowledge is quite sexier than
general knowledge. I wouldn't wish to deny them their
pleasure or their conceptual sandbox, but I do think that
they have gotten into the realm of private definitions, as I
stated in an earlier email. They have in turn accused me of
not having a rigorous definition with which to challenge
theirs, but of course that is just the point; I am arguing
for the more sloppy way that people actually use terminology.
I think it's truer.
Best, Mark
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