Actually, I believe this was an assumption that BlueRose made at some point when responding to one of my posts (sorry if it wasn't you, BlueRose--I could definitely be misremembering). I never mentioned the New Critics specifically. I generally take a hodgepodge approach, but I do love a good close reading and Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent" was definitely an ah-ha moment for me in college. Then again, I pretty firmly reject the whole idea that there can be such a thing as an empirical critical approach to art and I'll always elevate intuitive, personal, "gut" reaction over everything. The rest is totally fascinating to me, but that primary emotional reaction to a piece is what I consider to be most truthful. You can't argue that away when it comes to art.Novalis wrote:You mentioned being influenced by the New Critics at one point
This is very interesting to me. I was unfamiliar with the term "roughening." I'll definitely be looking into it (if there's a good primary source you can recommend, I'd appreciate it). I took a bunch of Humanities classes as an undergrad, when I had room in my schedule, but I was a film major so I only had so much time. I'm largely an autodidact when it comes to literary theory (in film theory, we touched on some of this stuff, but definitely skated along the surface).so you will no doubt be aware of their theoretical apparatus regarding the roughening of the medium, foregrounding of the artifice etc. As we all know this has been pretty standard artistic practice in many varieties of modernism across many artistic media for a long, long time. There's nothing 'pomo' or pretentious about your position -- it's one that any undergraduate of Art History of the early 20th Century would agree with (I'm currently pursuing a master's degree in this area). What the linguist Roman Jakobson called the aesthetic/poetic function of communication is fulfilled when the medium of expression enters the foreground, which is the same thing as the New Critics 'roughening'. As you say, it is not intended, within the formalist context, to sabotage illusionism but to aestheticise the production/artistic process. It's purpose is to produce aesthetic value, to prize and treasure the artistic process.
Anyway, I love this idea and it makes perfect sense to me. I see it all the time in most of my favorite narrative work, and I never claimed that Lynch was a pioneer on this front (in fact, somewhere above, I mentioned specifically that his work is part of a long tradition in this regard). Certainly, it's not the kind of aesthetic approach you see much on television, but that doesn't mean it's a brand new way to make cinema.
This is all tangential to the conversation, I'd say, but it does interest me greatly. I'd personally argue that our current corporate control of funding (especially when we're talking about a medium as expensive as filmmaking) is worse than the patronage system of old. And the idea of artists competing amongst ourselves for dollars and eyeballs is entirely toxic and detrimental to good art getting made. The art is the thing, indeed.Interesting work has been done in recent years linking this critical, formal, impulse in western art both with the philosophy of Early German Romanticism (Frühromantik) and East Asian artistic practice. Historically, in the former case the freedom of the artist was won when the patronage system was overcome... Remnants of the old order remain, and corporate control of media can often function very much as a New Patronage, in which artists are pit against each other competitively to fight for their attention. From what little we can glean from Lynch's comments on the subject, this generalised economic order and the competitiveness it relies on does not really interest him. The art is the thing. Most definitely the thing.
Lynch, interestingly enough, has discussed his thoughts on this, and he made his opinions pretty clear. Have you seen the recent documentary, "The Art Life?" He discusses getting the AFI grant that made it possible to make The Grandmother, which then directly led to getting into the AFI program, which made it possible to make Eraserhead. Immediately prior to getting that grant, things were bleak. He was broke, with a young family, and he says in the film at one point that he can only imagine what his life may have become had he not received that grant and had he not gotten into the AFI. His eyes go distant and you can just see an alternate life (a life like Dougie's?) flashing before him. It's maybe the most sober Lynch interview I've ever seen.
Lynch has also discussed many times that the only reason he's a filmmaker at all is that he "kept getting green lights." He's not a Cassavettes type who will build a film around the resources he has and move heaven and earth to get something made. He has his idea and if nobody will fund it the way he feels is necessary to make it happen, he just won't make it. He'll paint, and leave a film idea in the drawer if it comes to it. He's clearly frustrated by the need to beg for money (and horrified by the idea of a life without having gotten those "green lights"), but I think he just sees it as the way things are and does his best not to let it distract him from the work he can do.
Thanks for sharing. I doubt your thoughts, and the technical reasons behind them, would bore me, but I guess I'm a bit of an odd bird.Although I might not fully agree with some posters here w/r/t the 'visceral/emotional content is the primary content' (for technical reasons which would probably bore the pants off everyone) I am more or less behind counterpaul's arguments about the rationale behind Lynch's artistic processes, which certainly hold up historically.