From: Chuck Kleinhans (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Sep 14 2005 - 18:22:34 PDT
On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:49 AM, John Lowther wrote:
>
>
> the question of introducing AG film to the uninitiated seems to run
> into the same sorts of risks and issues that introducing AG poetry
> to the similarly uninitiated has.
Well, I remember my first year in the university reading The Waste
Land and feeling that there was something hard about studying it (and
trying to understand the prof's lectures on it) but, along with my
friends taking the course, also feeling good about having learned
something "hard." It's not all that different than doing something
physical well--be that benchpressing a higher weight or making a
perfect omelet.
There is a kind of "smarty pants" pleasure in learning to appreciate
a "difficult" artwork.
At the same time, many "masterpieces" offer a variety of rewards to
different people with different levels of preparation and experience--
exactly why Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in the
English speaking world, or why you can both admire a Monet on the
gallery wall and buy a totebag with the "same" image at the museum
gift shop.
I also remember my dismay when a senior English major told me that my
prof's explication of The Waste Land was completely different than
Prof. X's, as I would see if I took X's course on Pound and Eliot.
Sigh....
Chuck Kleinhans
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.