Mutatis mutandis
Go
to a newsstand and buy a magazine: doesn't really matter which one.
That magazine will contain at least a dozen pictures that, were they
created by some artistic master centuries ago, the art lovers would
proclaim them to be achievements larger than life the same way they
praise Mona Lisa or Michelangelo's David. The art connoisseurs would
discuss the delightful way the light beautifully shines from the things
and surfaces in the picture, and then wonder what the artist could have
meant with the model's mysterious smile or the strangely intriguing
look that she gives.
This observation that even the very best that the old times had to offer is in every objective sense worse than even the cheap mass market products sold in Wal-Mart and Dollar stores today is especially true for movies. I realized this back when we watched the rather silly B-movie "Resident Evil", and for some reason, in the middle I started to imagine the way the movie would have been had it been made in the fifties: how the actors would look like, talk and behave, what the sets would be like, and so on. Thinking about it, as silly and plastic as this movie is the way it was filmed in the modern times, had it been filmed in the fifties so that the director's name were, say, Alfred Hitchcock, the movie buffs would compete in praising how well its actors depict various emotions and what kind of things it is possible to read all kinds of great things in the story and imagery. Movie freaks who just love the old science fiction classics would find all things praiseworthy in Milla's acting, the constant surprises offered by the story and the social criticism expressed between the lines. Of course they would also complain how very soulless the modern movies are and Hollywood just can't make them as well as they used to.
Or, consider what would have happened if Angelina Jolie had been born and "Tomb Raider" had been filmed fifty years earlier, to the extent and in the way that it could have been filmed back then. You don't think that today's film buffs and fogies would praise such movie as a classic that no modern movie could ever hold a candle to, comparing Angelina to Katherine Hepburn?
For some reason, people have a curious double standard where to put the dividing line between good and bad, depending on the age of the thing to be evaluated. The lousiest products of the yesteryear are automatically forgiven lots of issues that would cause the new product to be immediately tossed to garbage. The only thing that is good in the old movies, for example, is the sense of history they radiate by simply being so old. It's a bit like watching monkeys being dressed up and acting like humans: not because they do it so well, but because they can do it to some extent.
Even in the best of the old movies, acting and lines are stilted and wooden, cinematography and sets are lame, and there isn't much of a plot, surprises or entertainment to even speak of. The only reason why some Casablanca or Psycho are thought as good movies is that the other movies of their eras were even worse. Were an old movie remade as a modern copy identical to it in every objective respect and even better in many ways, just like Psycho was, the modern viewer would be freed from his sentimentality and see the film as the crap that it really is. And was.
There were few things that were done right in the past, and the further back we go in the past, the more wrong people were in every issue and the worse their lives were. Even only a few decades ago the life of the average person was materially and ideologically so poor and constraining that the average Western people would probably kill themselves if they suddenly had to go back to it.
This observation that even the very best that the old times had to offer is in every objective sense worse than even the cheap mass market products sold in Wal-Mart and Dollar stores today is especially true for movies. I realized this back when we watched the rather silly B-movie "Resident Evil", and for some reason, in the middle I started to imagine the way the movie would have been had it been made in the fifties: how the actors would look like, talk and behave, what the sets would be like, and so on. Thinking about it, as silly and plastic as this movie is the way it was filmed in the modern times, had it been filmed in the fifties so that the director's name were, say, Alfred Hitchcock, the movie buffs would compete in praising how well its actors depict various emotions and what kind of things it is possible to read all kinds of great things in the story and imagery. Movie freaks who just love the old science fiction classics would find all things praiseworthy in Milla's acting, the constant surprises offered by the story and the social criticism expressed between the lines. Of course they would also complain how very soulless the modern movies are and Hollywood just can't make them as well as they used to.
Or, consider what would have happened if Angelina Jolie had been born and "Tomb Raider" had been filmed fifty years earlier, to the extent and in the way that it could have been filmed back then. You don't think that today's film buffs and fogies would praise such movie as a classic that no modern movie could ever hold a candle to, comparing Angelina to Katherine Hepburn?
For some reason, people have a curious double standard where to put the dividing line between good and bad, depending on the age of the thing to be evaluated. The lousiest products of the yesteryear are automatically forgiven lots of issues that would cause the new product to be immediately tossed to garbage. The only thing that is good in the old movies, for example, is the sense of history they radiate by simply being so old. It's a bit like watching monkeys being dressed up and acting like humans: not because they do it so well, but because they can do it to some extent.
Even in the best of the old movies, acting and lines are stilted and wooden, cinematography and sets are lame, and there isn't much of a plot, surprises or entertainment to even speak of. The only reason why some Casablanca or Psycho are thought as good movies is that the other movies of their eras were even worse. Were an old movie remade as a modern copy identical to it in every objective respect and even better in many ways, just like Psycho was, the modern viewer would be freed from his sentimentality and see the film as the crap that it really is. And was.
There were few things that were done right in the past, and the further back we go in the past, the more wrong people were in every issue and the worse their lives were. Even only a few decades ago the life of the average person was materially and ideologically so poor and constraining that the average Western people would probably kill themselves if they suddenly had to go back to it.
I think that the inspiring value of a cultural product depends upon context. (For example, in 1935 Britain, Hitchcock's film "The 39 Steps" was a spectacular entertainment.) (It still is, if you have the Criterion DVD instead of the low-quality transfers that are still floating around like raw sewage in New Orleans last year.)
"Context" means not only a comparison to other cultural products but also a consideration of the relative effort and inventiveness that went into the creation of the product - relative to the amount of effort and inventiveness that the same product would require today. Almost anybody today can make "Psycho" - because Hitchcock did it 40 years ago, when hardly anyone could have made it. The film seems simple and cliche for only one reason: because it shaped the perceptions and preferences of the makers of the 40-years-worth of subsequent films which surrounded us while we were growing up.
The context is part of the inspiring nature of these achievements. Who today is making such influencial films? Who is breaking fertile new ground, as the masters of the past did? I can name maybe one or two people.
The founder of some new and fruitful direction in art, or in thinking generally, deserves admiration. His effort, inventiveness, and originality raised the average. Who is raising our average?
If a person as intelligent as Aristotle lived today and had the same extensive influence on future generations as Aristotle had on past generations, that would be one hell of thinker. So was Aristotle.
Note that George Lucas's original Star Wars ("Episode IV"), made in 1977, looks a bit cheesy today. But consider the important reason WHY it looks cheesy. It looks cheesy only because we are used to something better - special effects and technical tropes that grew out of "Star Wars" itself and out of the millions of bucks it made.
In short, you don't get a roof without breaking ground; and is the dirt-digger or the foreman inferior to the interior designer who hangs some nice curtains on the top floor after the building is completed?
("But," you might say, "those curtains are so much more pleasing and civilized than the dirty business of laying the foundation...")
An old Russian proverb tells of a pig who is so short-sighted that he digs up the roots of the very tree whose acorns he depends on. Or disrepects them.
The opposite attitude was displayed by Issac Newton, who said at the end of his life that if he saw farther than his predecessors, the reason was that they were giants and he stood on their shoulders.
The key is not to compare the products - they are always getting better, assuming rationality and a relatively benign political situation. The key is instead to compare the "creative sparks" in people. Gus Van Sant (maker of Psycho remake) or some shit casual photographer today might and do produce an image that is as shiny or shinier than the Mona Lisa. But, what would a person on the order of a da Vinci do with that camera? What would he invent to take that camera's place? It is unimaginable.
The point of this is not really to worship some old people from the past. It's to get inspired by that level of creativity.
The present is perhaps not much "worse" than the past was in this regard; mediocrity is, by definition, the common condition. It's simply that the past is longer than the present, so you have more heroes available to choose from there.
I must also dispute your remarkable assertion that everything in the past was worse, and everything today is an improvement. Is Brittany Spears an improvement on Beethoven? Is Phillip Glass? Is P.J. O'Roarke an improvement on H.L. Mencken? Is... well, you see the point. I hope! (I agree with you that the common man's life is much improved today and that this is a spectacular achievement.)
Posted by David Rowlett | 8:17 PM
One thing that happens is that the inventors of a new genre can use the most naturally appealing elements, while their imitators have to try to come up with something new, which might be something the innovators had considered but rejected as second-best. That's one reason why innovators often produce classics.
Another is that innovators are often major talents with the self-confidence and persuasiveness to get something new done.
Posted by Steve Sailer | 6:11 PM
Is the average level of creativity in art higher today or lower than in the past? How does our age compare to the early part of the 20th century or earlier centuries? I think that is the crucial question.
What do you think, Steve and David?
Posted by Markku | 3:56 AM
best regards, nice info
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