Sunday, June 05, 2005

Your heart of darkness? No, thanks. Picked off my backlog of magazines, NY Times Magazine Annual Movie Issue "Us & Them: What Globilization Has Done to Films" (Nov 2004) -- American movies used to concern themselves with the boy or girl next door. I liked that -- those characters had real complications and possibilities, and still do. But the arrival of globalization is not complicating the American stories being told; it is simplifying them. And that has consequences. If you think about your life, you may find that films have been extraordinarily influential. The way you dress, act, talk or wlak often follows what you saw in the movies. And now, instead of being known for our sense of conversation or style, we are known for our blood and gore. [Lynn Hirschberg, "Is the Face of America That of a Green Ogre?"] What if you are searching for your complex heart-of-darkness story but your medium's Hollywood just wants another Shrek? 9:09:30 PM    comment []  trackback [] Looking for heart Murrah's comment on my previous post reminds me that "inspirational" and interactive blogs are best when they arouse emotions. Sometimes vitriol scours the soul. Working on craft is easier for me than conveying a fresh perspective. Or posing the questions that provoke conversation and debate. Maybe a sign of the times is our obsession with craft . Isn't that what Faulkner was getting at in his Nobel speech when he told young writers to get back in touch with the real conflicts of the heart? Are too many people running back to school to get their MFAs instead of facing their heart of darkness and making art? How does even the humble half-baked blog entry start poking around for those universal truths as opposed to simply copping a trendy 'tude? 8:23:58 PM    comment []  trackback [] Half-baked thoughts Interesting... I'm always wondering how to get my postings to be more interactive. Half-baked. : Fred Wilson (second link today) talks about fully baked vs. half-baked blog posts. I prefer half-baked. Fully baked is a lecture or a book or a show. It says, "I'm done. Eat what I tell you." Half-baked is a conversation. It says, "Join in. Add some pepperoni before it's done, make it better, make it right for you. Enjoy."In the end, itreally is just a simple attitude shift: It says that when we publish something, we know it's not fully baked; we expect it to be debated and challenged and remixed and improved; we welcome that.  [BuzzMachine] It's just so easy for me to get into long-winded big-sister lecture mode. Should I be more open-ended? 9:50:44 AM    comment []  trackback []

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