Is the cinema the art form Americans will be most remembered for?

Hmmm. The premiere cinema awards are at Cannes. How is that American’s own?

@DarkScribe Ever heard of Hollywood? The Oscars are far more prestigious than Cannes. And I never claimed that the cinema was exclusively American now did I? What I am asking is will America be most remembered culturally for Cinema or something else. I didn’t meant o infer that only America would be remembered for cinema.

But hey, you know of another county that makes movies. Great for you. I love fluther but the one thing I hate about it are all the contrarians.

@Fausnaught The Oscars are far more prestigious than Cannes.

Only in America. America is only a part of the world. In most parts of the world, and even among many Americans, a Cannes award is considered more prestigious than an Oscar. (Look at the US advertising when they are promoting a Cannes winner.)

I doubt they will remember anything positive….

@DarkScribe I work in the film industry and I collaborate with many, many international cinema workers and all of them dream of working in Hollywood and going to the Oscars. They view American cinema as the real McCoy and view their own national film culture to be a satellite. There are some who enjoy European cinema over American, but that is taste. Most professionals know where the true art is being made with no restrictions.

@Fausnaught Most professionals know where the true art is being made with no restrictions.

You’re funny. You should write comedy.

all of them dream of working in Hollywood and going to the Oscars…. Wow. That’s unbelievable. Literally.

In the future, art will blend more with technology, even when looking at art of the past. 20–21’st century films will probably seem more like transitory development into more advanced storytelling methods. It probably wont be seen much more then just primitive technology. Our movies might be like cave paintings to them.

I’d say most foreign films are better than America’s, so no. We’ll just be remembered for being selfish bullies.

Man there are some cynical people on this site today. Bunch of goth kids talking about the pain the in world. Jesus. Lighten up.

@DarkScribe Nice rebuttal. Use my works, then just mock. Very intelligent method old boy.

@Fausnaught

Are you a snob?

@zophu No but I find the dark minded mentality of many of the fluther users to be tiresome and counter productive.

As @cheebdragon says, I too doubt there will be much that is positive these last few decades. Before everyone screams “WHAT ABOUT THE CLASSICS” yes, I agree, I can point to lots of movies I LOVE but oh my what a sea of drek they float in. Seriously though, have you watched any European cinema honey? I’m sorry to say that the Oscars are getting more and more irrelevant every year to anyone either not in the industry or outside of America, they’re increasingly being seen as, like most award shows, the industry blowing smoke up its own butt. Your question though was is cinema what America will be remembered for art wise? no I don’t think it will because making money isn’t the same as making art.
hugs

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To answer the question, I think jazz and blues are more uniquely American art forms, but certainly the impact of the American cinema on the world has been profound.

@Fausnaught Disagreeing with you is having a “dark minded mentality” and is “counter productive? When did this happen? (Maybe my spam filter ate the memo.)

I am a journalist, and until twelve years ago a film critic. (One of my more interesting duties – lots of free videos.) There is no way that I would rate generic American Cinema higher than generic European Cinema. America has produced some indisputable classics, but they are rare. Hollywood and its second string sausage factories churns out dross, so poor that they need massive advertising campaigns to attract audiences.

Given that this question is about America, and not about cinema, I’d say yes.

I think America will be remembered for its films rather than its music or television (the other media don’t stand a chance). America had such a central role in the early days of cinema, and a large proportion of extremely popular (quality aside) movies continue to be produced in Hollywood. Not only artistically, but also technologically, the US film industry has had a huge influence (for better or worse) on world culture.

@iphigeneia Gets it. Thank you for actually reading the questions and not just answering in a way that furthers your hatred for America as many people on these boards seems to do.

@janbb I think jazz and blues are more uniquely American art forms

Jazz is indisputably American, there are no other contenders, although many other nationalities have enthusiastically taken it to heart.

@Fausnaught DarkScribe You’re an idiot. This is a question about America not movies. Give it a rest.

Hmmmm

This question you mean? Is the cinema the art form Americans will be most remembered for?

(Us idiots cannot read minds – we have to assume the question was intended as written.)

The American cinema is how America spreads its culture. Does any other nation do that as effectively? I bet if you look at the highest grossing films of all time for many European nations, you will find American movies top the list. Despite your tastes, you have to admit no one uses the medium with the same power and innovation.

Even if silver fox over there is a snob, he has to admit that American’s do it better than anyone else.

@DarkScribe You must not have been a very good critic, dude. Most critics aren’t any good. Those who can’t do teach, and those who can’t teach, criticize.

@Fausnaught DarkScribe You must not have been a very good critic, dude.

Oh, I wasn’t. I pissed people off all the time. I didn’t rewrite the blurb presented with the review copies like many did. I would actually watch it and then make comment.

By the way, my “critique” of you presumption seems to have garnered a reaction. I guess that us “not very good”, idiots can still pull the strings. ;)

American cinema is prolific, but European cinema is refined. Movies like Audrey Tautou’s “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain” have little competition from American cinema.

I’m pretty bad with historical perspectives on contemporary things. I’d really like to hope jazz and blues (for that matter most music) is right up there with cinema. Most major contributions to art seem to be cyclical but cinema has had such a comparatively short period to work with it’s hard to say. I’m not sure being the medium of mediums is enough in and of itself to merit it’s historical significance, after all performance art has been around much longer and pulls together many of the same components. But I find it hard to believe that in a few hundred years there won’t be some films which are pointed to and held as meaningful examples of this times culture, trends, dreams, fears, and failures. In terms of medium, it certainly is a massive historical component of our ages culture.

I think you should consider how technology is progressing. Art doesn’t just use technology, it is technology. The future’s not going to have snobs looking back at us like we do now to the Renaissance and say, “how profound.” The culture will be a technological study as well. If Humanity’s going to survive on this planet, we’re going to design every aspect of our lives, and we’re going to be aware of those designs.

@DarkScribe Of course I was talking of jazz and blues as American in origin and not discounting the later contributions of other countries. (I don’t think we’re in disagreement here.)

I’m addicted to the Turner Classic Movies Channel. The U.S. has produced some amazing works of cinema. But, now, most (not all) of the movies, produced in mainstream Hollywood, are crap. Sophomoric hijinks and romantic comedies (with the same exact plot every time!) seem to be the most popular forms of expression.

I think the U.S. will be remembered for creating and developing a lucrative industry. And, really, I think that industrialization of film (toys, merchandise, etc.) will be the lasting legacy. There are many old gems in the U.S. film repertoire, but fewer new ones.

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@jealoustome I disagree. Hollywood puts out just as many good films as bad. The bad ones make the money so the good ones can be made. That has always been the case. There were just as many bad movies in the golden age of which you speak. They aren’t on turner classic now because they aren’t classic. The gems will always shine. Now as they did then.

America has not so much been known for great films [although there many] as for big expensive films. Many other countries [note repeated mention of France] have produced a higher percentage of ground-breaking, creative cinema. If America is to lay unique claim to an art form it would be jazz, if to an entertainment technology, it would be TV.

@Fausnaught I completely agree that many bad movies were made in the past, and, you’re wrong, a lot of them are still played on TCM. :) I don’t agree that Hollywood puts out just as many good films as bad, but that is probably subjective and we would not be able to agree on this point if we were sitting with a list of films in front of us.

I love to watch movies. It’s one of my favorite things. I love Monty Python and Aliens and everything in between. I’m afraid that I don’t have the sophistication to name Foreign Filme and haven’t seen that many. I saw The Tin Drum and didn’t get it.
I can however, state that the American film industry cranks out poor quality movies with predictable plots like sausages. The use of gratuitous sex and violence does nothing to cover the fact that they are nothing more than fodder to begin with. Yes, there are a few good movies each year, but the greater percentage are just pulp.
I hope we can produce something else by which we can be remembered, so we aren’t looked back on as a society of mindless idiots who were entertained by childish, sophomoric drivel as a matter of course.

When you say cinema, I don’t think of American films as a group. The big studios make big movies. I’d rather go see a film that has won something at Cannes (I have been there and it’s vibe is SOOO much better than LA) or at Sundance or a Golden Globe and there are plenty coming out of the States on that list.

In Hollywood, there seems to be more money than sense, if you get my meaning. Spending the kind of money they did on things like ‘Transformers’... just blows my mind.

Yeah, it’s a culture of sorts, but it’s not the kind of culture I’m very interested in. And I don’t think I’m a snob. I love Jackie Chan movies and Alien movies and Star Trekk and Firefly….

There are some GREAT movies coming out of the States. I loved The Beautiful Bones, but was only lukewarm with the new Alice in Wonderland. I thought the treatment of the children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are, was great and was super impressed, but I’ve been a fan of the writer since I read his first book. (I mean Dave Eggers) .

The US film industry has loads of resources and people, but, you said it yourself, good film and stories are often a collaboration. Look at New Zealand’s contribution to the Lord of the Rings. Slumdog Millionaire was GREAT!, and I have books of Indian short stories that ALL deserve to be made into film of some sort.

I hope you and your coworkers continue to be inspired by movies of ALL sorts and that your dreams of working and crafting on big budgeted stuff comes true. Only through guided passion comes true art, but without passion, there is nothing new under the sun.

Older films are perhaps better, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen a film that will remain a classic for eternity in the past 10 years. At least an American film. Lord of the Rings was from NZ right? And Narnia had a British director. I can’t think of any other epics I’ve seen lately.

I weep for a future that marvels at anything that has been on either television or film.

@Blondesjon I weep for a future that marvels at anything that has been on either television or film.

Here, have a box of tissues. (I’ll see whether I can find a wholesale source for you.)

@DarkScribe . . . my bad. i forgot about Benny Hill. <sniff>

I think America is pretty much synonymous with pop culture. American will not just be remembered for film but for bringing media culture to the world.

That depends. when I say the following names, do you think of chopped liver?

Ansel Adams
Georgia O’Keefe
Frederick Church
Jackson Pollack
Lee Krasner
Louise Bourgeois
Alexander Calder
Robert Rosenquist
Jasper Johns
Little Richard
Bo Diddley
Marvin Gaye
Billie Holiday
Benny Goodman
Thelonious Monk
Samuel Clemens
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Willa Cather
Carson McCullers
Mickey Mantle
Sugar Ray Robinson
Mahalia Jackson
Paul Robeson
Pete Seeger

Let’s just start with those.

@dpworkin That depends. when I say the following names, do you think of chopped liver?

No, I think “How did Ansel Adams get among a bunch of musicians”?

You don’t read very carefully.

@dpworkin . . . i think of liver spots.

I think of Portnoy’s family dinner.

@dpworkin You don’t read very carefully.

I read very carefully. I recognise the musicians, some writers, but not all of the artists who are purely American. This is an international forum. (And I am very familiar with Ansel Adams.)

The question was about America, was it not? Shall I have named Surinamese?

@dpworkin a significant percentage of your list is pop culture [includes pop art]:
Robert Rosenquist
Jasper Johns
Little Richard
Bo Diddley
Marvin Gaye

and two are athletes , which is off-topic.

I do not see Robert Frost, Aaron Copeland, the Peale family, Frank Lloyd Wright

Off topic? America will be remembered for cinema, but not for its great athletes? What do you mean? I didn’t even mention Jonas Salk or Richard Feynman or Frank Lloyd Wright, or Robert Oppenheimer or Daniel Webster.

We are talking ART forms here — and if you include athletes how could you leave out “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”?

Jonas Salk or Richard Feynman or Frank Lloyd Wright, or Robert Oppenheimer or Daniel Webster.

Architecture is considered an art form, medical or scientific research is not. Neither is powerful political/legal oratory.

No one is denying the greatness of the achievements.

It’s all art to me. You wanna start the what is art controversy? Jonas Salk was a master of the medicinal arts. Physics isn’t art? Boxing isn’t art? I left out thousands and thousands of artists who should have been included, among them Mohammad Ali. I don’t have the time or the space to be exhaustive; I was merely trying to suggest that we are not limited to pop culture or to cinema. Do you honestly think I’m wrong, or are you just being disputatious because you’re on the rag?

My background in art, design, and art history truly leads me to make this distinction. I am not trying to be a pill. I acknowledge the ARTFULNESS of brilliant contributions to the world. However, I mean “artfulness” as an almost magical suprarational element that makes the accomplishment possible, not as a discipline.

Furthermore, I make a distinction between fine art and applied art, such things as the art of cooking, fashion design, glass-blowing etc . .

I just do not like to water down words so they lose meaning.

Ok, so scratch the ones you think are not artists. I assume that would leave F. E. Church and Willa Cather, and Frederick Law Olmstead and Henry James and Calvert Vaux and Albert Bierstadt and Frank Stella. Not good enough to triumph over middling cinema and pop culture?

Well, Sstella is on the edge of pop art, and Olmstead—architecture, furniture design, landscape architecture . . . my lines grow fuzzy. But I really think finding the lines is a little silly, it was just more the thrust of the whole thing.

And maybe I am ashamed of that stupid comment about Portnoy’s dinner.

OK, then, Joseph Stella. We are not squabbling over taste, we are testing a broad proposition, and I say that America has fostered world class art and artists for more than 200 years.

@dpworkin The question was about America, was it not? Shall I have named Surinamese?

No, the question was about cinema with relation to America. But yes, lets try renaming it to Surinamese – see if that improves matters. :)

I say that America has fostered world class art and artists for more than 200 years.

I have no problem with that statement – just with cinema topping the list. For a start, as a child of the sixties, raised on three continents I find that American Television had a more far reaching effect than cinema. US TV shows introduced America to the world, not American cinema. TV illustrated US lifestyle, cinema told (or tried to) a specific story. People learned more about America watching Bewitched or Gilligan’s Island than watching the various blockbusters of the time.

Fair enough Joseph Stella, although I like Frank Stella’s work better. I agree that America has fostered world class art—I have never disagreed with that. I was only noting originally that America’s unique contributions were jazz and the development of television [and of course Al Gore’s internet]. I do believe America holds its own and then some, but that was never at issue.

@DarkScribe Not only don’t you read what I say, you don’t even read what you say.

@dpworkin Not only don’t you read what I say, you don’t even read what you say.

Your point? (You seem to be in a very pedantic mood today.)

It has been 80 years since Keaton, Lloyd and Chaplin were at the heights of their skills, and they are remembered in stills today, not for their films. To tell someone who Harold Lloyd is, you describe his hanging from a clock. Chaplin is remembered as the tramp, but people aren’t familiar with the soul of his work.
Jazz music from that same time is still enjoyed today, though few remember the names. Paul Whiteman was a giant (in several ways), but does anyone know some of the songs he made famous?
I think the art forms America might be remembered for are film, jazz, rock, or dance, or perhaps something like advertising or automobile design.

Paul Whiteman covered black music to make it acceptable to racist white folks. He never wrote an original thing in his life.

@DarkScribe My point is that you don’t make coherent arguments even based upon your own posts.

@dpworkin My point is that you don’t make coherent arguments even based upon your own posts.

I think that you are taking this all a lot more seriously than it warrants.

Show me my “incoherence”? I’ll try to elucidate for you.

I didn’t say Paul Whiteman wrote anything. I said he was one of the giants of the age.
Don’t limit his contributions to music as: covered black music. Keep in mind that was helpful in breaking race barriers. He was the original bandleader for Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. His “Nobody Knows What A Red-Headed Momma Can Do” is one of my favorite songs of that era.

Paul Whiteman was a talentless pimp. I’m glad you liked one of his songs.

It makes me laugh when someone easily demeans someone so famous and talented.
Original bandleader of the greatest song of the greatest American songwriter was just a talentless pimp.
Let me add two items from the Wikipedia entry for him.
Paul Whiteman had twenty-eight number one records during the 1920s and thirty-two during his career. At the height of his popularity, eight out of the top ten sheet music sales slots were by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra.
In his autobiography, Duke Ellington declared, “Paul Whiteman was known as the King of Jazz, and no one as yet has come near carrying that title with more certainty and dignity.”

Thanks for showing my argument that he was largely forgotten is correct.

We were talking about movies. How did this get so off topic?

We were talking about what contributions America has made to the world of art. Dion DiMucci had number one records, too.

So what’s wrong with The Wanderer???

Get some sleep.

A hundred responses and not one person gave me a great question vote. That is depressing.

@Fausnaught Perhaps you should look back at your approach to how others answered your question…you were a bit contentious…

@Fausnaught , Well, i thought I have you the most on topic and balanced answer and I didn’t get ‘great answer’ from anyone… sniff

I’m sorry you were unable to see that as a wry comment on the way we take such things so seriously on Plurk. But your response was deliberately offensive, and for that reason it has been flagged as a personal attack.

@dpworkin gee… not sure many people would have seen that as a ‘wry’ comment. I was certainly taken aback and it wasn’t even directed toward me.

wry (r)
adj. wri·er (rr) or wry·er, wri·est (rst) or wry·est
1. Dryly humorous, often with a touch of irony.

Communication is difficult over the internet and may ways of using irony and sarcasm are lost when we just type words.. there is no tone of voice or body language to go with the comment. Having said that… I still can’t imaging any tone of voice or body language that would have made your comment inoffensive.

I’m sure you are very capable of getting your points across without misunderstandings or targeting the poster on other threads.

@cazzie Who put a dime in you? Your post is off topic, and I don’t care what you think of me or the way I choose to express myself.

You want to talk about ‘off topic’.... now?