From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: "Art Films" and the Working Class (was Re: M-I: Film Iconography
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 15:23:16 -0600 (CST)


I'm not going to argue or develop the point here, but I would like
once again to simply raise it: "middle class" is *not* a marxist
term, and almost without exception discourse which uses it is either
non-marxist or has to be paraphrased to be intelligible as marxism.

Carrol

> 
> James wrote:
> >All the same, Loach trades in some serious misery, leading
> >one to suspect that he prefers a glorious defeat to an ignominious
> >victory - see his Spanish Civil War drama.
> 
> What happened to his film on Nicaragua? Is it released? Has anybody seen it?
> 
> >It wasn't until I visited New York a few years ago that I finally
> >understood. I had somehow stumbled into a party of rather arch New
> >Yorkers living in Brooklyn, who were all lapping up the latest Mike
> >Leigh. At last I understood: these aren't films *for* working class
> >poeple, they are art films, for middle class audiences that happen to be
> >*about* working class people.
> 
> I wouldn't dismiss art films for being art films. They have their own
> functions to play, I believe, not all of them being a negative one such as
> entertaining the middle class with what they believed to be the working
> class culture.
> 
> Besides, not all the audiences of "art films" are middle class (though it
> all depends on how you define this term). A large section of "art film"
> audiences are workers who might have some education but nonetheless toil in
> the low-wage segments of service industries (such as retail and education);
> Why not politicize them? Films and videos are still some of the cheapest
> entertainments available to workers, compared to dance, theatre,
> high-priced concerts, etc. that tend to be beyond the range of what we can
> afford.
> 
> The problem of many art films, as I see it, is their exclusion of
> politicized sections of the working class from cinematic representation. We
> almost never see "working-class intellectuals", the kind of people who may
> have little or no formal schooling beyond the compulsory period but
> nonetheless read books, have political perspectives, and act accordingly.
> And such people exist! There is no reason why left-wing filmmakers
> shouldn't give more screen presence to them. Instead, we get an
> over-abundance of workers as mute sufferers and survivors.
> 
> Yoshie
> 
> 
> 
> 
>      --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
> 



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---