2012-01-24
post/16422264693
quote 21:01:18
“ Aren’t Oscarbatory films like The Artist, Hugo, and Midnight in Paris the high brow equivalent of the Transformers, easing the viewer into the same warm nostalgia bath, just with the particulars adjusted to reflect a different audience’s adolescent fixations? Might they even be even more meretricious because they rely on the borrowed auras from the canonical works/figures they reference (Méliès rather than Mégatron) to activate feelings of barely-earned recognition, which somehow invokes in the audience the false spirit of learning, or at very least, the smug satisfaction of the pub trivia warrior? ”
Todd Serencha, via perpetua.
I think this might be a more forceful statement of what I was nudging towards. (I’ve seen all three - but none of the Transformers films - and enjoyed them all, but I still take his point. They just happen to be catering to my tastes.)
Also, I have to remember “Oscarbatory” for next year.
