lubitsch wrote:But there is one point that should be made and that's the influence of TV, video tape, DVD and now Blu-Ray. Each time one of these new mediums is introduced it starts with a selection of the titles most in demand. Obviously mostly the current films, but also older films which are culled together from the classic film pantheon. The first big DVDs were things like The Third Man, Seven Samurai, Frank Capra and so on and on. So each new media tends to reinforce this canon of established masterpieces which are studied more closely in the literature and among film makers.
This might sound more insidious if you hadn't just said that the canon being reinforced is simply those movies most in demand to begin with. If the canon is being decided by viewer demand, what is there to complain about?
Plus the fact that these canonical films are continually being released means people are continually seeing them and reevaluating them instead of simply accepting their status and moving on.
lubitsch wrote:My point is that the film canon freezes into a solid pantheon with very little movement up and down by now. And this has undoubtedly some effects on e.g. film schools, universities, TV programmers, writers of film literature and so on, it's a spiral pushing the strong more and more to the fore and the weak back, so that you begin to sound like somebody who's merely craving for attention if you take a few pot shots at established masterpieces. This may very well be the case and the writer of the blog post referenced here may have been ill adivised to fire off such a broad attack, but I think the problems behind film canons are far too less discussed.
Personally, I think the "problems behind canons" are mostly the invention of iconoclasts or, as Kerpan noted, theoretical and ideological viewers, or people whose taste happens to be at variance with it. The tropes that tend to get used by people against the canon are either ones of freezing, or stagnation, or solidification--pretty much anything involving non-movement. The problem with such tropes is that they imply something pernicious, which I'll get to later. A canon is a standard, it is something by which other things are tested or discriminated. The film canon is not a solidified and numerical "best films" list, it is a collection of films that are generally accepted to have reached a particular level of excellence and against which other films are judged in order to better understand their merit. The thing about canons that their detractors never realize is that they are always in a state of comparison, with each other and with possible new claimants. To wish them away is to wish standards themselves away, and indeed this is often the thing you get. A lot of people have the strange idea that states of constant flux are more trustworthy than states of periodic flux or states without flux. They seem to mistrust anything which appears to resist flux and to stand steady, and associate them with negative tropes like freezing or stagnation, ect, as tho' change were "the good" and anything resisting that is not doing its duty. The assumption is that everything is relative, and everything which is not relative, canons and so forth, should be made relative, which means essentially that standards ought to be abolished in favour of a change so constant it is better called chaos. This seems especially delightful to people with a particular ideological bent, who can now freely teach everyone about their particular cultural niche without having to bother about whether any of these cultural products are any good. Once standards are gone no one
has to see anything. No movie by Kurosawa, or Antonioni, or Godard, or Lang, or Fuller, or whomever is better than any other movie, stuff like The Dark Knight included. Indeed, one is then more likely to be taught The Dark Knight than any of the former (which is probably already happening).
What has been gained? People who want to discover overlooked films essentially want a canon that they can put those films in and have them seen. Paradoxically, they tend to go about this by attacking the idea of canons under the misapprehension that if the canon were to go away they'd have a better chance. But they actually have less of a chance since A. their overlooked film no longer has a standard to be judged by, even favourably. B. No one has to see these films, and whether or not they're among the best that's been made is an irrelevant category. You're better off having an ideological, social, or political reason for having people watch them than the idea that they're just 'good.' Canons do not prevent overlooked films from being noticed; they are not an active power structure trying to hold the little guy's head under water. That's absurd. Canons are there so that one can gain a good understanding of the best that's ever been made--as far as general consensus goes--and use their judgment accordingly. A good example of this is Mauritz Stiller (who is most certainly on his way to canonization). He has been rediscovered thanks to DVD, and this is in large part because we are able to compare him to the current silent film canon and see how well and truly he fits in their company. Ignoring the canon would make it difficult to get people to bother with Stiller. Certainly Sir Arne's Treasure benefits enormously from being compared with Dr. Caligari, made the same year. The standards of the canon let you see how good he truly is and to explain said greatness to someone else. Without that, you cannot explain his greatness, just why he happens to fit your taste.
My last point: canons are not as staid as people would have you believe (that one is more an assumption than a real observation). Film is still a very young medium, and sometimes it takes a whole age to pass and a new sensibility to arise before there are any adjustments. Citizen Kane has only been at the top of the canon for, what, fifty, sixty years? Did not Battleship Potemkin hold that spot at one point (at least in the cahier du cinema poll or whatever)? There hasn't been a ton of change, but then there hasn't been much time. If you'd like to look at literature canons for a moment you'll see that canonization is not amaranthine. In the 18th century there was no more renowned, loved, read, and canonized work than Edward Young's Night Thoughts (1742-5), a book length poem on dreams. It was popular enough for Samuel Johnson, the critic of his age, to remark: "...for those who have read the Night Thoughts, and who has not read them?" The work had entered the canon and spent probably a good 50 or 60 years there. Ever heard of it? No. No one besides scholars knows this work let alone reads it (it's boring and dated). No one decided to remove it from the canon; there was no choice, no metaphysical hand that chipped away the stone edifice on which it was carved. People just stopped being interested in reading it. Writers stopped finding it a source of influence. And so it left. Film is young yet, there will be changes to the canon, because standards cannot help but shift ever so slightly with the flow of taste and sensibility. But standards cannot be erased, and nor should they. They are necessary and helpful and I don't see how there could be culture without them.
