Prophets of the Modern

https://isi.org/modern-age/prophets-of-the-modern/

by magda_wang • 7 years ago

3 1 7 years ago

xtiansimon• 7 years ago

I enjoyed this book review. Here is a passage,

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"The modernism Gabriel Josipovici advocates...a sort of artistic middle...way... One extreme his writing studiously avoids is...rote representation, or the notion that words correspond perfectly with numinous reality. [...] As Josipovici says of contemporary writers still laboring in the vein of nineteenth-century “naturalism,” they confuse the reality-effect for reality. The end result is usually a doubling down on grittiness, as if exchanging love for lust or a whisper for a curse in the novel allows some fuller entry into the depths of life. [...]

At the other end of the spectrum, modernism seeks to avoid the jouissance of pure abstraction, a language game that denies the existence of transcendent truth altogether. [...] As clichéd as it might be to point out, this really amounts to a kind of nihilism dressed up in garish academic lingo. And morally defunct as a complete denial of transcendent truth might be, it also makes for boring art."

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This passage summarizes nicely the author's modernist ethos. It reminds me why film is fundamentally modernist at it's core--Show don't tell. With this reading two quotes leap out as movie criticism: 'confuse the reality-effect for reality', 'complete denial of transcendent truth...makes for boring art.' Makes me think of action movies with lots of guns, and movies with rambling scenes without an evident plot.

Prophets of the Modern

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