Nick Zwar
Forumsvar Lagt Inn
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Innlegg
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I’m reminded of something sorta related. When I’ve discussed with colleagues, and they’ve been disparaging about a film, they’ve sometimes ended their argument with “but it’s got great entertainment value, I suppose”. A sort of reductive, faint praise when all else is lost. That’s often irritated me a little bit, especially if I love that same film for many other reasons than just its sheer entertainment value.
Hmm… isn’t “great entertainment” value the entrance card? If a movie is “entertaining”, can it be bad? If a movie is not “entertaining”, can it be good? Of course, it depends on what definition of “entertaining” one might use, and also of course, a movie may be “entertaining” for reasons totally different from the original intent. I consider Irwin Allen’s THE SWARM a highly entertaining movie, but probably not for the reasons Allen intended it to be. Perhaps some people use the term to simply say “I liked the movie”. Now just about all people watch or have watched movies, but not all people — probably not most people — are inclined to analyze what they like and why.
I never subscribed to the German split between E-Musik and U-Musik. Not in school, not now. It’s bollocks really.
First, the terms are misleading. Is all E-Musik “serious” and not entertaining? Is all U-Musik entertaining but not serious? That’s ridiculous. Apply that literally and Peter Gabriel’s Biko becomes E-Musik while Prokofiev’s First Symphony becomes U-Musik. Because one is more about being “serious” and one is composed primarily as an entertaining exercise. But no one uses these labels that way. Because these terms are ill advised and, in my view, come from a misguided intention to place one “type” of art above another. Note: I am not saying you cannot do that, I am just saying the way it’s been done has been misguided.
Because it is the same intellectual dead end as “Hochliteratur” vs “Unterhaltungsliteratur”, a dividing distinction that you will not find in that way in the Anglo-Saxon literature. I reject this divide because both distinctions smuggle in an evaluating hierarchy that cannot reasonably be upheld. At the core is a misunderstanding of art itself. Music and literature do not carry inherent value. Value is created in perception. Value lives with the listener, the reader. Exclusively.
So I used to search for a better lens, and found it (years, nay, decades ago, but still) when Leonard Bernstein nailed it in his Young People’s Concerts: The main difference between classical music and pop music, or jazz music is Western classical music is fixed. Written down. That is the main distinction. And it matters.
Because that fixation, those black dots on white paper, ironically unlocks a level of creative freedom pop music does not have. Because that Western classical music tradition enabled musical compositions and constructions of unprecedented complexity. A symphony can arc across an hour with precision and complexity no jam session could dream of. Pop thrives in the moment, it is tied to the performer. Classical thrives in architecture, in structures refined over years. Again, all borders are fluent, but this is still by far the clearest and best defined divide between classical and pop music.
Because it is not about “higher” or “lower”, and I think that is important. Not because you cannot divide and distinguish between “higher” and “lower”, of course you can and you should, but that distinction should be apart from definition. It is highly problematic if you impose evaluating terms on definitions, because evaluations are inherently subjective, but definitions should strive to be applicable and “true” regardless or personal perception.So I had my issues with these terms as far back when I was in school, and now that I have read many more book since then and heard a lot more music since then, I think that way even more.
I agree with Thor, it sounds like a more personal reservation against the phrase, which of course is fine. I would not hesitate to call Prokofiev’s first symphony “a really fun score”, but I would not mean that to denigrate the music, quite the contrary. But that’s just me, others may differ.
To get back to the topic, I suppose it depends on what you mean by “fun” score. I don’t think calling something a “fun” score automatically means it is a lesser score. I think Haydn’s Symphony No. 87 or Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 1, both among my all time favorite symphonies, are fun, fun in the best sense of the word. GREMLINS is a score I would consider “fun”, which doesn’t mean it isn’t also great. I think it is “fun” when a composer plays around with and subverts expectations. When Saint-Saens slows down the famous “Can-Can” for the tortoises, that’s just pure fun, as is the entire score.
I’m impressed you were so quality conscious at the time, almost as if you were always looking ahead into the future.
Well, that’s both a blessing and a curse with me. I do have a tendency to be a bit of a perfectionist, which can be both a a good quality as well as be quite hindering, depending on what it is that you’re doing and try to accomplish. So over the years I tried and learned to cope. In case of “collecting” movies and music, I really was looking ahead. I bought my first CDs at a time when I couldn’t actually afford a CD player, but I knew one day I would. Same with movies, I knew one day a better format would come along, and so it was.
I’m happy that I can henceforth ignore Tall Guy here too, personally and manually, without the aid of tools and A.I. 🙂
Qualification is a given for Germany, if German football/soccer ever gets so low they don’t qualify for a World Cup Tournament, it’s over with the country.
Everything is currently wabbly, who knows what they’ll eventually achieve. The last two World Cups were abysmal (for Germany), the worst I remember in my life time… so it can only get better. 🙂Of course to a large degree the evaluation of originality is a matter of knowledge on the listener side. The evaluation of any piece of art, music or not, depends to a large degree on the knowledge of the listener. That’s why those who write professionally about it should have some substantial background knowledge. You cannot evaluate or appraise art without contextual knowledge.
I think originality is very important, I think that’s obvious. But I also think that “originality” is often misunderstood, especially when it comes to film music forums. People hear a snippet of a melody or theme from something else, or hear that a composer repeats certain elements he has used before, and dismiss a work as “unoriginal”. But “originality” is not a holy grail per se, and “originality” does not mean that every note must be new, never been used before, and every theme unprecedented. That would be ridiculous. Motives, ideas, concepts can and should be recycled and re-worked, originality is not about only using materials no one has ever used before, it’s what you build with them that matters.
A film score can borrow. A film score can recycle motifs, echo melodies, re-use parts and patterns and whatnot. In some sense, music works like a language, and languages thrive on shared words, sentences, and building blocks. If you’d dismiss every novel as unoriginal because it contains the sentence “he said” your shelf would be pretty empty. What matters is not that ever note is “original”, but what the composer builds with them. I love Jerry Fielding’s STRAW DOGS, which is obviously highly influenced by Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. Jerry Fielding freely acknowledged that (would be hard to deny though), but that doesn’t mean STRAW DOGS isn’t an original composition. It is. It’s not a rip-off or plagiarism, it is an original film score that used ideas and techniques from a classical (theatrical) piece of music as a basis for its concept. That is still original.
My experience is similar to Thor’s. I have been a film buff for as long as I can think back, but I do not have that many physical copies of movies. A couple hundred maybe, I don’t know. The main reason: I am really iffy when it comes to quality. Over the decades, I have amassed a lot of music, I have LPs, CDs, digital downloads… but quality is top. I always knew buying movies doesn’t give me the quality I actually want… until Bluray (and later, even better, 4K/UHD disc) came along. So I buy those now occassionally.
The story: I had some issues with movies on VHS and DVD… quality issues. I certainly watched them, and I bought some DVDs, but the quality wasn’t good enough for me to consider “collecting” them… I always waited for something better to come along.
Back in the day, we used to watch a lot of movies on VHS, and I actually had an early Sony Video8 recorder, as that had somewhat better picture and sound quality than VHS. What I did was rent movies on VHS from a local video rental, with a recorder, and then watched and taped them, so I could re-watch and analyze them.
But the quality of VHS and video tape was atrocious, I did not find it satisfactory. So I only bought one pre-recorded VHS tape in my life (Hoosiers, in a supermarket… because it was so cheap, cheaper than renting it at the time). VHS quality was sub-par.
Then came DVD, that was much better… so I did buy a few DVDs… alas, the sound tended to be off. Somehow, picture quality was a huge improvement over VHS (certainly considering what TVs back in the day could show), but the sound was of. I found out, that was because PAL DVDs were often sped up, at 25 frames a second instead of 24. That was the reason why movies in Europe on DVD were often “shorter” than the US version, but it was also a reason why the sound was off. What a bummer. So I never bought that many DVDs… maybe 100… and I got rid of most of them. Because what happened was:Bluray came along. Wow, now there was a home video format that was finally satisfying… great image, great sound… the first home video medium I really love. So I replaced my DVDs, I got rid of most of them and replaced them with Blurays, because Blurays are finally are “good enough” in quality, so good, you could actually screen them on a big screen. 4K Blurays are even better.
And so I do have some Blurays and 4Ks, not sure how many, but I don’t really “collect” them. Nowadays, I watch movies less than I would listen to an album, so buying most movies seems superfluous. I usually stream movies I want to watch (Amazon Prime has them up to 4K/UHD), and buy only those I really want to keep and watch all the extra stuff.
I do buy my favorite movies or movies I really want to have if there are some exciting editions out there, like I bought the 4K/UHD remastered version of David Fincher’s SEVEN (haven’t watched it yet), because that is one of my all time favorite films (I did have the DVD (which I gave away), the Bluray (which I still have), and now the 4K disc), and I do have some other films I bought (like DUNE I&II), simply because I want to watch them whenever I want in the best possible quality, but I am very selective about what movies I buy. I haven’t counted my Blurays though, so I’m not sure how many I have. A lot less than music though, that’s for sure.But most movies these days I watch streaming.
I think Varèse Sarabande does it as well. Also, many people have a certain monthly “allowance” for CDs and try to prioritize what and when they buy something. So speculation might help there as well.
I think those who are just impatient and immature and want what they want now are there as well, but I don’t see them as the majority.
Well, in a crime novel I tend to hope my speculation turns out wrong, because then I’m genuinely surprised. 🙂
Some people like crosswords, or Rubik’ cubes, or “the price is right”, and I don’t see speculation about future releases any different, so I have no problem understanding it, at least I’m not puzzled by it.
(Not to mention that not being so invested in it myself once had me missing out on a highly coveted score I had wanted. But that’s less likely to happen nowadays.)
