Re: banality

[jv <bardolph@home.com>]

>... I don't understand how intelligent people such as the ones 
>on this list could get trapped into some of the most inane 
>dialogue I have had the misfortune to witness.  I think it 
>has something to do with the medium.  Computers make people stupid.  

True, in some cases - did you see the way you formatted your message?

	So, Mr. filmmaker, all our comments are inane and stupid; then you want
us to "get off the humming thing" after YOU'VE had your lengthy say. 
Even the most raging PoMo in this discussion so far, Elmer Elevator,
whose positions and values could not be more at variance with my own and
probably finds me highly annoying (I even went so far as to accuse him
of being an English student), has more manners than you.  


>If you want to go rape history with digital alteration feel 
>free, but just know that you are contributing to a culture 
>where sacred things are being eliminated because they 
>can be, because that's the way we like it.  

Define "sacred."  Then, try to stretch your mind around this one:  There
are people who actually DON'T believe that the attribute ordinarily
referred to as "sacredness" has any objective existence or value
whatsoever...but then again, maybe those people have just been made
stupid by computers, and bad films.  You've actually raised another
valid point - does "sacredness" exist, and if it does in musical terms,
does GG's humming partake of it?  And what do you do with those inane
folks like me who think the "sacred" is a load of bollocks?


>We no longer see the importance of artistic choice.  
>The choice is ours.  The artist is a juke box for us.
>If we don't like it, we change it.  This is wrong.  

Your thinking is muddled, or you are not expressing yourself clearly, or
both.  What do you mean, exactly, by "artistic choice"?  Do you mean, my
freedom to choose among artists?  Or the artist's freedom to
choose...what?  And what's wrong with deciding that we don't like the
work of a particular artist, a lousy filmmaker perhaps, and switching to
another?


>But to use his desire for exploration as a rationalization 
>for altering his works after he is dead is sick....

Try reading the postings carefully before you reply - I know this is a
skill most people never acquire, but do indulge us with a little
effort.  This aspect of the debate is about whether or not Gould CLEARLY
STATED A POSITION that would allow digital tampering with his recordings
after the fact; some contributors here feel that he did, and their
comments have been anything but inane, and wholly relevant to this
mailing list.


>We are all being lobotomized by bad taste and 
>a culture that is increasingly global and culture-free. 

Just to take American culture as an example, the usual cultural whipping
boy of the West, I don't think it's in such a bad state if it can
produce South Park and Hilary Hahn in the same half decade; at least,
it's healthy way out on the extremes.  "The Blair Witch Project" also
gets my vote for Bomb-Throwing Cultural Revolutionary Film of the Year
for the way it flipped the bird to every possible rule of Hollywood and
the school of megabuck filmmaking in general, and yet was vastly
superior to 95 percent of major releases.  As for GG, the level of
interest in him and his music is probably at an all-time high worldwide,
thanks in part to the Internet; if this isn't a sign of cultural health,
I don't know what is.  (Of course it's the Internet which will probably
bear the final responsibility for Sony's decision to release de-hummed
Gould recordings, and when that happens I will go to church and light a
sacred candle for Tim Berners-Lee's sacred invention, the World Wide
Web).


Bardolph, Lost in a World of Computers and Sin