Film-Philosophy
Journal | Salon | Portal (ISSN 1466-4615)
Vol. 8 No. 18, May 2004
Vittorio Frigerio
Post-modern Bogeymen and the Alibi of 'Good Taste':
A Reply to Porton
Richard Porton 'Vagaries of Taste, or How
'Popular' is Popular Culture?: A Reply to
Frigerio' _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 7
no. 57, December 2003 http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n57porton I have only recently
discovered, with some surprise, that my review of Porton's
book _Film and the Anarchist Imagination_ [1] has
elicited a rather lengthy response. Its tone, as well as
some of its content, has convinced me of the utility of
offering some brief clarifications. Porton complains that I do
not specify clearly what I mean by 'popular literature' and
its relationship to 'high culture'. It seemed obvious to me
that a book review is not the place for an inevitably
lengthy theoretical discussion of that kind. My views on the
matter can be found in the articles 'La
paralittérature et la question des genres' and 'Cui
prodest? Réflexions sur l'utilité et
l'utilisation de la théorie des genres dans la
culture de masse'. [2] They are quite different from
those Porton arbitrarily attributes to me. Porton imaginatively
'suspects' that my position may be representative of a
supposedly excessive and unquestioning interest in popular
culture on the part of some trendy, post-modern, and
politically correct academics who 'fetishize' the popular. I
feel I am not worthy to take upon myself the weight of the
sins of this entire category. Most of all, I entirely fail
to see where in my review Porton may have got this rather
peculiar idea. There is quite a difference between
'fetishization' and the desire to study a cultural
phenomenon objectively and independently from any
prejudgment. Certain critics dogmatically refuse to examine
some aspects of cultural production deemed by definition to
be organically inferior. Porton seems to want to adopt this
strategy, but he makes the mistake of assuming that I am a
Mr Hyde to his Dr Jekyll. I do apologize for
apparently mistakenly capitalizing the 'd' in the name of
Dwight Macdonald. However, I fail to see why my statement
concerning him ('This critic, perhaps best-known for his
book _Against the American Grain_ . . . offered what is
conceivably the most extreme denunciation of the evils of
'masscult', and one of the most direct assimilations of
'high brow' avant-garde artistic creation with 'high art'')
would be 'unhelpful'. It is certainly not 'uninformed'.
Quite the contrary. It is simply a statement of fact. For a
critique of Macdonald's and the Frankfurt school's position
on popular literature, please see Umberto Eco's
_Apocalittici e integrati_. Nowhere do I suggest that
'popular and mass art [is] supposedly antithetical
to 'art films''. I do say, however, that they are two
different things, each worthy of being examined in its own
right. This is the main misunderstanding in Porton's reply.
He assumes that I view these forms as antithetical simply
because I say that his analysis would be more complete if it
took more fully into consideration 'popular' forms, instead
of almost exclusively 'high art', and he instinctively
understands this as an attempt to replace the one with the
other. I do not try to establish an inverted hierarchical
relationship between the two. Neither do I want to devalue
'high art' as he tends to devalue 'popular' forms. I see
them as complementary. As for Zola's and
naturalism's influence on nineteenth-century French
anarchist aesthetics, I do contend that it is indeed
extremely significant. It is simply not possible to limit,
as Porton does, Zola's relationship to anarchism to his
portrayal of Souvarine in _Germinal_. Indeed, many if not
most anarchist commentators did not see Souvarine as the
'vicious personification of anarchism', as Porton asserts,
and adopted the character as a shining incarnation of
absolute and intransigent revolt. Apart from _Germinal-_,
Zola's last two trilogies, _Les Trois villes_ and --_Les
Trois évangiles_, treat events and themes very close
to anarchist concerns and were the object of generally
glowing reviews in the French anarchist press of the period.
Zola's involvement in the Dreyfus Affair attracted the
attention of the anarchists and led to a complete
re-evaluation on their part of his work and his figure.
Articles on Zola, in practically all anarchist publications
of the late 19th and early 20th century, are almost too
numerous to mention. [3] More generally, naturalist
aesthetics with a 'popular' bent is very obvious in the
numerous short stories published by practically all
anarchist papers. Prolific militant authors such as Brutus
Mercereau or Mauricius (two particularly representative
names amongst many) are clear examples of how a naturalist
style can be combined with melodramatic conventions to
create a mythologized image of a certain class. It is easy
to fall back on the cliché of anarchists never
agreeing upon anything -- a cliché Porton rightly
denounces but uses nonetheless. It would certainly be
excessive to state that 'there was some aesthetic consensus
among nineteenth-century anarchists', as Porton thinks I do.
In my review I stated that 'sentimental romance,
swashbuckling adventure, and melodrama form an important
part of the fictional arsenal with which nineteenth-century
anarchists viewed themselves and their situation'. An
'important part' of a 'fictional arsenal' that also contains
other weapons. The naturalist point of view is one of them,
as well as one of the most easily observed in
late-nineteenth-century anarchist publications. Porton's appeal to
'faculty of taste' is perfectly legitimate, and his book --
as I have stated before and would like to repeat (the jam
now comes at the end) -- is extremely interesting and worth
reading. My point is that the author's chosen 'faculty of
taste' limits the scope of his investigations and prevents
him from identifying some characteristics of anarchist
aesthetics that, in my view, are nonetheless worth studying.
In my review I have attempted to point out what strikes me
as an underlying ideological assumption in Porton's book,
that leads him to prefer works somewhat related to 'high
art' or 'avant-garde' (elastic as these concepts may be) and
to devalue works marked by a 'popular' tone or 'genre'
conventions. This does not constitute a 'hatchet job'. It
constitutes the identification of some preferences clearly
expressed throughout his work. Ideological assumptions are
inevitable in all forms of criticism, no matter how
objective they claim to be, and Umberto Eco (in _Superuomo
di massa_) has pointed out how this is true even in that
most scientific of all schools of criticism: structuralism.
Porton seems to have chosen to take this statement of fact
as a personal attack. It is unfortunate, and quite typical
of that ailment common to most academics, be they 'elitist'
or 'politically correct': thin skin. But his rebuttal fails
to offer convincing arguments against my reading, and his
insistence on trying to include me in an hypothetical cabal
of post-modern academics endowed with debatable taste, seems
to me to do quite a bit to prove my point. Halifax, Nova Scotia,
Canada Notes 1. Vittorio Frigerio,
'Aesthetic Contradictions and Ideological Representations:
Anarchist Avant-Garde vs Swashbuckling Melodrama -- Porton's
_Film and the Anarchist Imagination_', _Film-Philosophy_,
vol. 7 no. 53, December 2003 <http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol7-2003/n53frigerio>. 2. 'La
paralittérature et la question des genres', in _Le
Roman populaire en question(s)_ (Presses Universitaires de
Limoges, 1997), pp. 97-114); and 'Cui prodest?
Réflexions sur l'utilité et l'utilisation de
la théorie des genres dans la culture de masse',
_Belphegor_, vol. 3 no. 1, December 2003
<http://www.dal.ca/etc/belphegor/vol3_no1/articles/03_01_Friger_cuipro_fr.html>. 3. For a more detailed
description of Zola's relationship to various anarchist
figures, see my upcoming 'La réception d'Emile Zola
chez les anarchistes', to be published by the
Université de Rennes II. Copyright ©
Film-Philosophy 2004 Vittorio Frigerio,
'Post-modern Bogeymen and the Alibi of 'Good Taste': A Reply
to Porton', _Film-Philosophy_, vol. 8 no. 18, May 2004
<http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol8-2004/n18frigerio>. Join the _Film-Philosophy_
salon, and receive the journal articles via email as they
are published. here
Save as Plain Text Document...Print...Read...Recycle
Film-Philosophy (ISSN 1466-4615)
PO Box 26161, London SW8 4WD, England
Contact the Editor (remove Caps before sending)
Back to the Film-Philosophy homepage
