How this bears on our own time is fairly obvious
July 17, 2024 12:21 AM Subscribe
One wonders if he could picture our current moment, when desire and expression are so ready-made, so undemanding and yet so effortlessly able to mollify and monopolize our attention. Open your streaming services—film, TV, music. The choices are overwhelming. Funny, then, that so much of it looks and feels the same, that every artist and writer and musician can tell of unproduced passion projects, that dissenting voices are so easily drowned out. Quantity drowns quality. That which exists is good; that which is good exists. What doesn’t exist is a challenge to this state of affairs. from The Last Avant-Garde [Alexander Billet reviews Dominique Routhier’s “With and Against: The Situationist International in the Age of Automation.” in the L.A. Review of Books; ungated]
Sure, today’s tech barons are a lot dumber than Nicolas Schöffer and Abraham Moles. But just pointing this out or denouncing them does nothing. In fact, the recent history of Elon Musk proves that such denunciations can be absorbed back into the spectacle, weaponized and turned against the already powerless.'
A trenchant, if sad article to read of what might have been if we had not blundered our way into a consumer-driven internet, beguiled by The Spectacle.
posted by aeshnid at 6:22 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]
A trenchant, if sad article to read of what might have been if we had not blundered our way into a consumer-driven internet, beguiled by The Spectacle.
posted by aeshnid at 6:22 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]
Open your streaming services—film, TV, music. The choices are overwhelming. Funny, then, that so much of it looks and feels the same, that every artist and writer and musician can tell of unproduced passion projects, that dissenting voices are so easily drowned out. Quantity drowns quality.
People always say 'quantity drowns out quality' as though it's its actually true, but who is defining 'quality' other than some 'elite', whether through education, money, or political influence? I guess the liberal answer is that it's fine if it's via education, but I actually disagree with that, as art is subjective, not objective. I personally think the stuff I personally like should be more popular, but maybe it's me that's wrong? IDK.
Maybe so much feels the same because it's not for you? The stuff that you like it's very easy to be critical about, and notice minor but important (to you) differences. The stuff you don't like bleeds together in a mass of nonsense, and the differences are unimportant, I guess unless you are into punishing yourself? Very puritan!
One does wonder what, say, the Amazon warehouse worker—whose work is already made intolerable by the algorithm—is to do when they are replaced by AI, without any recourse to a basic income program.
Also this comment is ironic when the unemployment rate is at historic lows, and the number of people working in the world is pretty close to modern highs. Almost anything is worth philosophical consideration, but what if reality is that we (as humans) will always have more work than we can do, with more people than we locally have (not necessarily globally - economic success and policy is not equally distributed, and jerks about immigration are growing in number), AI or not? Make sure you spend a few minutes considering that too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:35 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]
People always say 'quantity drowns out quality' as though it's its actually true, but who is defining 'quality' other than some 'elite', whether through education, money, or political influence? I guess the liberal answer is that it's fine if it's via education, but I actually disagree with that, as art is subjective, not objective. I personally think the stuff I personally like should be more popular, but maybe it's me that's wrong? IDK.
Maybe so much feels the same because it's not for you? The stuff that you like it's very easy to be critical about, and notice minor but important (to you) differences. The stuff you don't like bleeds together in a mass of nonsense, and the differences are unimportant, I guess unless you are into punishing yourself? Very puritan!
One does wonder what, say, the Amazon warehouse worker—whose work is already made intolerable by the algorithm—is to do when they are replaced by AI, without any recourse to a basic income program.
Also this comment is ironic when the unemployment rate is at historic lows, and the number of people working in the world is pretty close to modern highs. Almost anything is worth philosophical consideration, but what if reality is that we (as humans) will always have more work than we can do, with more people than we locally have (not necessarily globally - economic success and policy is not equally distributed, and jerks about immigration are growing in number), AI or not? Make sure you spend a few minutes considering that too.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:35 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]
Also, maybe I'm wrong (haven't followed that closely) but I'm pretty sure that the Hollywood strikes were extremely capitalist, with bonuses for universally popular material, not general pay raises across the board (at least not equal profit sharing between popular and unpopular material). It's not hard to imagine how that can be gamed, creating more LCD material that is popular for a limited subset of people to get that money.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:39 AM on July 17 [1 favorite]
Nah. I mean, you're not wrong. It's just that "quality" is so vague and amorphous. But in a lot of cases most people generally agree that something is "good" or "bad". Oppenheimer is pretty universally praised while "The Meg" is widely acknowledged as a steaming pile of garbage as art (it's not supposed to be good art).
But in both cases you'll find people who hated Oppenheimer but loved The Meg and connected with it emotionally (I don't see how that's possible but I don't need to understand why someone likes something).
So much of what's available is generally agreed to be of shit quality and there is just so much stuff that it's hard to find the stuff most people agree is high quality. Even then, we're presented with SO MANY options that it's hard to decide on any one thing.
And I've watched enough movies that I get a good feel for movies. There are times when a movie should, on paper, be terrible but the right people show up and decide to do a good job with what they have and they make it work. Sometimes a movie is shit and you can tell everyone phoned it in but I like it anyways.
A recent example off the top of my head is the Netflix movie "Day Shift". In the '80s that would have been a cheap B-movie for pre-teens that don't know any better. But I like action movies and no a fair bit about stunts and action sequences and the director is a veteran stunt performer that talked about the movie on the Stuntmen React show (YT Corridor crew) so it was clear that the stunt work in the film would be performed and captured really well (good camera crews are part of the stunt team and work as a unit).
I got what I wanted and expected from that movie. A pretty thin plot with a lot plot points that don't really make sense other than as a setup for some action stuff and those sequences were done extremely well. In my opinion they really elevated the stunt work to a work of art in that movie. Atomic Blond is another good example but that story is MUCH better and the plot points make WAY more sense. Most of the fights in Marvel movies that involve Black Widow are similarly well done (Scar Jo's stunt double is a former NCAA gymnast which turns out to be very common for women in that line of work).
Oh oh oh! The Lobster is movie that's totally weird and I don't think many people would like. It's more like summary of a more fully fledged film that you have to imagine. But, because I've watched an epic buttload of movies in my time it totally makes sense to me and I enjoyed the way the film played with film and story conventions. I know I've seen similar movies that attempt the same kind of thing and just fall flat.
posted by VTX at 11:04 AM on July 18
But in both cases you'll find people who hated Oppenheimer but loved The Meg and connected with it emotionally (I don't see how that's possible but I don't need to understand why someone likes something).
So much of what's available is generally agreed to be of shit quality and there is just so much stuff that it's hard to find the stuff most people agree is high quality. Even then, we're presented with SO MANY options that it's hard to decide on any one thing.
And I've watched enough movies that I get a good feel for movies. There are times when a movie should, on paper, be terrible but the right people show up and decide to do a good job with what they have and they make it work. Sometimes a movie is shit and you can tell everyone phoned it in but I like it anyways.
A recent example off the top of my head is the Netflix movie "Day Shift". In the '80s that would have been a cheap B-movie for pre-teens that don't know any better. But I like action movies and no a fair bit about stunts and action sequences and the director is a veteran stunt performer that talked about the movie on the Stuntmen React show (YT Corridor crew) so it was clear that the stunt work in the film would be performed and captured really well (good camera crews are part of the stunt team and work as a unit).
I got what I wanted and expected from that movie. A pretty thin plot with a lot plot points that don't really make sense other than as a setup for some action stuff and those sequences were done extremely well. In my opinion they really elevated the stunt work to a work of art in that movie. Atomic Blond is another good example but that story is MUCH better and the plot points make WAY more sense. Most of the fights in Marvel movies that involve Black Widow are similarly well done (Scar Jo's stunt double is a former NCAA gymnast which turns out to be very common for women in that line of work).
Oh oh oh! The Lobster is movie that's totally weird and I don't think many people would like. It's more like summary of a more fully fledged film that you have to imagine. But, because I've watched an epic buttload of movies in my time it totally makes sense to me and I enjoyed the way the film played with film and story conventions. I know I've seen similar movies that attempt the same kind of thing and just fall flat.
posted by VTX at 11:04 AM on July 18
"at least not equal profit sharing between popular and unpopular material"
I'm shocked that this would be shocking. People unwilling to pay for your art = make less money. How could it be otherwise?
posted by scivola at 5:02 PM on July 18
I'm shocked that this would be shocking. People unwilling to pay for your art = make less money. How could it be otherwise?
posted by scivola at 5:02 PM on July 18
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spectacular!
posted by HearHere at 4:38 AM on July 17