Monday, July 13, 2009

Bay of Blurgh

I'm just now getting around to reading this terrific piece Ebert wrote up last week in response to all the dunderheaded responses he got for daring to criticize Michael Bay's brilliant piece of cinematic history Transformers 2; I really appreciated this comparison he allowed while talking of how often he gets knocked for acting above the general audience by daring to let us know that he (gasp!) knows things about cinema and its history:

"A reader named Jared Diamond, a senior at Syracuse, sports editor of The Daily Orange, put my disturbance eloquently in a post asking: "Why in this society are the intelligent vilified? Why is education so undervalued and those who preach it considered arrogant or pretentious?" Why, indeed? If sports fans were like certain movie fans, they would hate sports writers, commentators and sports talk hosts for always discussing fine points, quoting statistics and bringing up games and players of the past. If all you want to do is drink beer in the sunshine and watch a ball game, why should some elitist play-by-play announcer bore you with his knowledge? Yet sports fans are proud of their baseball knowledge, and respect commentators who know their stuff."

A great point there. I suppose it's the fact that sports knowledge only really feeds itself as a form (it's mostly math really) while film branches off into a billion different directions that differentiates the two - for example, you really don't have to know anything about Transcendental Meditation to understand somebody's RBI but it helps to at least be aware of David Lynch's predilection towards that weirdness to pretend you have any idea what's going on in Inland Empire. But still. It's a valid argument. Especially this part:

"So let's focus on those who seriously believe "Transformers" is one of the year's best films. Are these people wrong?

Yes. They are wrong."

I'd say of myself here that, well, "Who am I to offer an opinion when I haven't even seen the film," but fuck that noise. I have Roger's back here all the same. If Michael Bay can make billions of dollars off of the concept that "Ignorance is bliss," then I can at least spit a little of that back in his face.
.

No comments: