On the German family not allowing themselves to see the evidence of horror all around them: when I lived in Bath I was told that the open courtyards below the ground floors of the grand Georgian houses would have been full of servants doing laundry, repairing things, even having baths. The trick for the society folk walking past was simply to never allow themselves to look down, or to notice the scruffy life going on right under their noses.
That Guardian roundtable made me reflect on one of Helen Lewis’s recent substacks about the politicisation of arts criticism and what a stifling bore it is to read aspiring intellectuals praise or condemn a film based on whether it reinforces their own moral viewpoints.
How difficult is it to engage with the a piece of art based on whether it achieves what it sets out to achieve, demonstrates great technical craftsmanship or ENTERTAINS rather than whether it flatters us and strokes our fragile egos?!?
I never thought I’d reach a stage in my life where I looked back fondly on the idea that art should challenge our preconceptions, but here we are, with 75% or critics seemingly determined to praise and reinforce only the dullest and least imaginative of achievements, and poised to condemn anybody who achieves something vaguely interesting.
It’s called civil inattention, the ability to ignore people in plain sight. Except of course the Höss family were engaging in hideously uncivil inattention. Such a great essay, missus, thank you.
Of the Best Picture shortlist I’ve only seen Past Lives, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, but I thought all three were scintillating films. Oppenheimer I thought was a masterpiece.
On the German family not allowing themselves to see the evidence of horror all around them: when I lived in Bath I was told that the open courtyards below the ground floors of the grand Georgian houses would have been full of servants doing laundry, repairing things, even having baths. The trick for the society folk walking past was simply to never allow themselves to look down, or to notice the scruffy life going on right under their noses.
That Guardian roundtable made me reflect on one of Helen Lewis’s recent substacks about the politicisation of arts criticism and what a stifling bore it is to read aspiring intellectuals praise or condemn a film based on whether it reinforces their own moral viewpoints.
How difficult is it to engage with the a piece of art based on whether it achieves what it sets out to achieve, demonstrates great technical craftsmanship or ENTERTAINS rather than whether it flatters us and strokes our fragile egos?!?
I never thought I’d reach a stage in my life where I looked back fondly on the idea that art should challenge our preconceptions, but here we are, with 75% or critics seemingly determined to praise and reinforce only the dullest and least imaginative of achievements, and poised to condemn anybody who achieves something vaguely interesting.
It’s called civil inattention, the ability to ignore people in plain sight. Except of course the Höss family were engaging in hideously uncivil inattention. Such a great essay, missus, thank you.
Of the Best Picture shortlist I’ve only seen Past Lives, Oppenheimer and Killers of the Flower Moon, but I thought all three were scintillating films. Oppenheimer I thought was a masterpiece.
https://culturall.io/how-nolans-oppenheimer-engages-the-atoms-of-great-biography/