Re: Christmas on Earth

From: owen (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Mar 28 2009 - 01:25:17 PDT


To me Christmas On Earth is a celebration. A young woman's playful
self discovery. Unfolding sexuality, liberation and bold carefree art
making. Not a film made to shock. It may shock and
that was probably enjoyed by the maker in a mischievous way. It is
playful adventurous ecstatic and self aware. I think the intention was
to present an honest joyful life affirming document, an expression of
an adolescent woman's new found love of self and the possibilities of
film art. Christmas On Earth !
owen

On Mar 27, 2009, at 6:14 PM, James Cole wrote:

> A distinction has to be made between using contextual evidence and
> committing the intentional fallacy. The intentional fallacy*
> doesn't mean that the artist can't shed some insight on the work.
> Obviously, if a person writing about it in an academic journal can
> offer an interpretation, so can the maker. It would be absurd to
> say that everyone but the maker is welcome to an interpretation of a
> work. The intentional fallacy arises when the maker isn't offering
> an interpretation, but is claiming that there is content in the work
> that the work does not really contain.
>
> If Barbara Rubin says "Chirstmas on Earth is about the life of
> Abraham Lincoln" and I said "Christmas on Earth is about the life of
> Abraham Lincoln because Barbara Rubin says it is," I'd be committing
> the intentional fallacy. There's nothing about Abe Lincoln in the
> film. But we're not really talking about content, we're talking
> about the title and which title is truer to the artist's intention.
> And, if we're talking about what the artist intended, then it seems
> pretty silly to bring the intentional fallacy into the mix.
>
> Furthermore, we're not talking about something where any of us has
> immediate access to the work. Since it's near impossible to see and
> not very much has been written on it, we've sort of got to take
> whatever evidence we can find. I think the evidence that Christmas
> on Earth was, in part, intended to shock and upset audiences is
> pretty clear. Certainly, there are very few places where you could
> show it where it wouldn't be somewhat shocking, and there would have
> been far less in the early 60's.
>
> -James
>
> *which is not really a logical fallacy, but a term coined by some
> critics in the middle part of last century. I've heard people
> suggest that the logic behind the logical fallacy is itself pretty
> fallacious (begging the question), in that it already assumes that a
> work's meaning is entirely contained within the work itself. A lot
> of pages have been written about this on both sides by people more
> trained in the rigors of logic than me, so I'm just throwing this
> out there.
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.