Anti-intellectualism vs Academic self-absorbtion
Monday, April 25, 2011 at 8:00AMI have a dilemma…
I’m a practitioner who finds the rank anti-intellectualism that Most filmmakers and screen arts practitioners exhibit to be suffocatingly abhorrent. At the same tme, I’m an academic who finds the incessant narcissistic self-indulgent wank of Most academics equally painful to stomach.
Where is the happy middle ground i can play in? Where are the filmmakers not afraid of ideas, who embrace deeper thinking about their art and process? And, where are the scholars who are able to actually communicate ideas effectively to an audience broader than their own self-obsessed and self-important fellows?
A forum discussion on the website www.nofilmschool.com (a site i usually like and have contributed to) recently had me feeling decidedly ill as a particular post followed by comment after comment disparaged the very notion of education itself, openly dismissing knowledge and learning as nothing more than a waste of money that “wont get you a job”. (see footnote*)
The fundamental implication of comments left on nofilmschool.com such as “the basics of filmmaking are so simple that every day new interesting videos are made by amateurs.” span well beyond whether film school can get you a job; they speak to a rejection of critical ideas, knowledge and thinking itself - a celebration of the mediocre rather than the extraordinary - that just leaves me with a migraine. The last thing the world needs is more filmmakers who think so little of the art of cinema, think it so paltry and elementary…! Such out of hand dismissal of cinema’s complexity does cinema no justice and leads to a lowest-common-denominator race to the bottom of the banality barrel.
But… Having said all that i find myself confronted by one of the core causes of this educational-rejectionist way of thinking. I all too often come across film academic presentations, papers and classes which prompt me to jump fence and cry out loud - “is it any wonder there is so little respect for formal higher education? Is it any wonder we’ve cultivated an anti-intellectual culture among film artists…?
Case in point….
Prof Rolf G. Renner is a scholar from the University of Freiburg, Germany and the opening paragraph describing his research and a presentation he will be delivering at the University of NSW states:
“The criticism of irrationalism against the discourse of postmodernism does not take into consideration that the subversive rejection of tradition, which made the experience of “desire” a “leitmotif” of an aesthetic discourse, also focusses on political phantasies reflecting changes in the economic situation”
What the Fuck Does That Mean….?
Leaving aside the fact that this is possibly the worst and most convoluted sentence I’e ever read, entirely lacking coherence, i’m much more troubled by the seemingly non-existent attempt to make any ideas it might contain accessible, intelligible or even comprehensible.
Don’t get me wrong, i am never one to suggest the watering down or the dilution of language - I’m often accused of using 5 more words and many more syllables than are necessary in a given sentence - but I’m also a multi-degree academic scholar with a deep grounding of PhD research in visual aesthetics, cinema and post modernity, Yet, i have scant fucking idea what he’s talking about or what this paragraph means…?!?!? Not without multiple re-readings.
My issue with this above is that there is no apparent effort to communicate to anyone outside of the inner confines of the writer’s own head, or at best their immediate like-minded colleagues. There is no invitation extended to the outsider to come in. As such this strikes me as just another example of the extraordinary self-indulgence and uncritical self-absorption that so many film academics I’ve encountered exhibit.
Research, Comprehend, Communicate - these should be the mantra of the teaching scholar else they be of no use to the wider community nor to the world in general. It seems this example demonstrates (or at least i can speculate that in its abstractness it might demonstrate) a fair degree of research, but Comprehension and Communication seem entirely absent. If I, as a fellow scholar well versed in these topics, cannot penetrate and make any clear understanding of what the fuck he’s talking about, then what hope has anyone else got of engaging with Mr Renner’s ideas? I believe ideas are powerful and important but they are neither of these things if they cannot, or are not, shared and exchanged.
More specifically the outline fails any effort to address the two fundamental sectors that such film scholarly work should be armed at - Audiences and Filmmakers. And this is the yard stick i would challenge all film scholars to test their work against. To ask themselves, is their research efforts serving to either:
a) elevate, edify, expand or educate the perspective of Audiences?
and/or
b) elevate, empower, encourage or expand the perspective of Filmmakers?
If you cannot firmly say that your research benefits either of these two groups then i would suggest you are yet another self-indulgent academic wanker doing nothing to break down the dangerous trend of anti-intellectualism that plagues both audiences and filmmakers alike.
Now, just to be clear. I do not know Prof Renner (though i gave a keynote lecture at his university in Freiburg Germany last year) i know nothing of his work and i have not been to this presentation. For all i know, it could be the greatest set of ideas ever spoken aloud. My intention is not to overtly single Prof Renner out, rather my goal is to point out by quotation and key example the systemic problem of contemporary film studies in the context of an increasing body of younger people who openly reject higher education as without value or purpose when it comes to cinema and creative arts.
I also want to make clear that im not suggesting all research needs to or should be watered down for the mass populous, indeed complex ideas often need complex engagement. My favourite fiction book author is Umberto Eco but he is without doubt complex and challenging to read and the fact is I had to work up to him to fully appreciate his work - metaphysically walk before i could run so to speak. Audiences are, as such, a broad church with room for a wide diversity in levels of sophistication and engagement - a scholar needs know their audience just as a filmmaker does. The audience for Avatar is not the same as the audience for Black Swan, yet both are great films, films with sophistication and depth but which do not alienate their audiences, rather they invite them in and elevate them. Scholars need to follow this idea and i thus suggest strongly that if the ONLY audience for your academic research is an inner circle of fellow researchers then you have strayed far too far down the rabbit hole of your own self absorption. Your audience can and should be bigger than that, the usefulness of your work, its value to the art of cinema can and must be broader that the cloistered inner circle.
Hence i return to my challenge for film scholars - if your research doesn’t benefit audiences (by expanding their potential understanding and engagement) and doesn’t benefit filmmakers (by increasing their understanding or ability to articulate cinematic ideas) then your work is failing to be of benefit anyone, it is failing to be useful.
As scholars we need to be part of the solution to the problem of growing anti intellectualism and anti eduationalism by making ourselves and our work relevant and inviting. This presentation blurb above strikes me as a precise example of how to fail that test…
___
* FOOTNOTE
It is worth noting that the debate on nofilmschool.com was predicated on the high price tag of film school, that such programs as NYU and USC film schools in the US can leave students with mountains of student loan debts which are perceived as not worth it for what is delivered by the film school. What the debaters fail to recognize in their vehement opposition to film school and education in general, is that such piles of debt are largely only a US phenomenon and not applicable in most other western nations.
I find it very frustrating that such an across-the-board anti-education stance premised on ‘cost’ ]s derived almost solely from the privatized economic rationalist approach to education that America takes. For Europe, Australia and much of the rest of the world tertiary education is heavily subsided and the massive debt burdens that fuel the anti-education rant out of America are not actively present. Thus my frustration at those in the US who decry the value education entirely when they should be directing their anger at the real culprit - an absurd elitist approach to education funding as a national policy. A policy simply not in step with the rest of the world.
Now of course this doesn’t address the issue of whether a particular film school education is a good one or not but it positions the main beef of the nofilmschool.com debate as a US national policy issue that has infected the American perspective of education across the board.
Reader Comments (4)
Cheers for another great class. Have used celtx for a couple of projects - very cool! Great site; good resource.
Tanya (Melb doco)
Mike
That said, I and others think that international students would bring a great internationalist perspective to AFTRS and there has been talk of how to open AFTRS to internationals with things like exchange programs and the like.
Ceratainly we have students in our programs with an age range from 20-60 years and a huge diversity of life experience.
There is however an Open Program division that offers short courses which are open to anyone and increasing talk of online distance courses that might made availible to overaeas students.
Cheers
Mike