Posts by Paul Litterick
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The robot monster is not even a robot (?!).
By what values?
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Which "those values"?
The values by which we consider films like Citizen Kane to be great. I agree that Robot Monster is unlikely ever to be regarded as a better film, but a more serious film of the period - The Man with X-Ray Eyes say, might.
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The high level of general agreement over whether or not Citizen Kane is a better film than Robot Monster (1953) would seem to suggest that there is some objective basis for value, no?
So long as you are judging the films by those values, those values appear objective. However, in some respects, Citizen Kane and other classics set the values by which other works are judged.
It is also noticeable how other values can come into play - someone said earlier that Avatar would be thought of better if it were a low budget indy. Values of authenticity - independent film-making auteurship - have come into Cinema, since Kane's day. Authenticity is not really an aesthetic value - it is an ethical one, but it often serves as an aesthetic value: think of all those sincere singer-songwriters suffering for their art. Think of The Hurt Locker for that matter: it seems to have beaten Avatar not because it is an aesthetically better film, but because it is perceived as a more sincere film. -
It came across to me that he was trying to say that the aesthetic value was in the quality of the way you interacted with the object
That may well be true of some forms of aesthetic experience - possibly of Avatar. Discussion of the film is part of the experience for many who have seen it, as is attributing meanings to the film. It seems to be an allegory without an obvious meaning, so intepretation becomes part of the experience of the film.
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We don't arrive at an answer to whether something is factually true by discussion (though we may discuss it, no discussion has any influence on the answer). How is aesthetic value different?
Because we are not arriving at an objective truth, but at a value . Citizen Kane is not a great film objectively, but it appears in most people's lists of great films and the qualities it possesses in abundance are those qualities by which greatness in films is judged. The Beatles are not the greatest pop group by any measurable quality, but their greatness could be shown by the influence they have had on subsuequent musicians.
These values can change. There are many composers and artists who were well-regarded in their day but whose reputations have suffered since. There are others - Johannes Vermeer is an example - who were little known in their day, forgotten after it, but rediscovered much later.
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The day that analysis and criticism provide a satisfactory answer to an aesthetic question will be a memorable day. I am not making space in my diary.
We set the rules. Our aesthetic values are subjective and communal - they are arrived at by discussion. It is easy enough to drop the names of great masters, while avoiding the fact that often their reputations went through long periods of neglect. They were not so good, in an objective sense, that people always recognised them as good.
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Make of that what you will. He's losing me a little because I tend to think that quality is entirely contextual, something he has only mentioned in passing so far.
He is losing you, Rich, because he is talking bollocks. Pirsig is claiming that aesthetic values are objective truths; more than that he wants these values to be accepted as elementary and natural. His aim is anti-intellectual, to prevent discussion. We must accept wisdom instead: that the wise (people like him) can detect this quality and we must accept their wisdom.
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Did I hear Rodney Hide on Morning Report say that Aucklanders are "sick of local government?" I think I did, and I felt a chill, and I thought of Brownshirts, so he must have said it.
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This should be a no-brainer.
That it should, but art and architecture are the two creative activities that everyone thinks they can do. People recognise that playwriting and choreography are distinct skills which require talent and practice, as do model-making and special effects; but making a five metre sculpture is something that a bunch of people can do in their spare time.
It shows how little we value public art as well. Further clues to this state of affairs can be found in our towns and cities, which are littered with badly-made tat, which is conservative, quirky, mawkish, kitsch and gauche, in about equal measures. Take, for example, the Canterbury Heroes, Sir Miles with the giant head in particular. Haydn's passage "filled with statues of the great players from Wellington's sporting past" could look something like this. I am just warning you, that is all.
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Hello? My page shows the full name and location of posters??? Is it supposed to do that?
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