I usually don't copy and paste things whole-sale into my blog unless their lyrics. The few times I've quoted from other blogs/articles, I usually have a witty comment to add. In this case, I don't. I simply wanted to share the genius of 2 AV Club writers. Enjoy:
What are your pop-culture "sacred cows"? What entertainment opinions do you consider so inarguable that attempts to argue the subject provoke instant rage or frustration?
Steve Heisler
That's a perfect segue into something I argue constantly: the early Beatles are just as substantial and worthy of merit as the later stuff. Endless praise has been lumped upon everything past Rubber Soul—and I'm not denying the pure, unfiltered genius that gave way to Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and just about the entire Beatles oeuvre. It's just that even at Please Please Me, the Fab Four were making the kind of experimental yet commercially viable music they made later. This was just its early stages. Lennon, McCartney, and Harrison (yeah, Starr not so much until the mid-'60s) took the rock 'n' roll not yet popular with white America, mixed in raw blues and skiffle (high-energy, country-inspired folk music), and gave it a smiling face—together, that's no small feat. Plus, those guys were in their late teens/early 20s at the time, which is still pretty amazing to think about. McCartney ensured the timing was airtight, Harrison handled the kick-ass guitar solos (his "Can't Buy Me Love" ditty, while short, is a personal favorite), and Lennon penned more honest lyrics than most bands. (Listen to "Help!" and "I'm A Loser," and try to ignore the upbeat tempo.) In short, opening with "Tomorrow Never Knows" would have been career suicide; the early stuff made the audience for that career-changing track.
Donna Bowman
I'll cheer Tasha's principle and apply it to my favorite lump-dismissal rage-inducer: musicals. If I had a nickel for every time somebody told me, "Oh, I don't like musicals," I'd open my own nickelodeon. You don't like entertainment in which music is integrated with the action? I'd say you don't like entertainment, full stop. Now, I understand that accepting certain conventions of certain musical entertainment forms, like people singing to each other instead of talking, takes a suspension of disbelief. But these same people generally have no problem with the suspension of disbelief needed to accept action movies or romantic comedies. Convention is convention; throwing out one because it's preposterous on its face makes as little sense as mandating the teaching of counter-evidence for evolution, but not for the theory of gravity.
The "I don't like musicals" assertion that sends me all the way 'round the bend actually came up in the "Guilty displeasures" thread—Singin' In The Rain. The person who could find Singin' boring or silly is not a person I care to have existing in the same world as me. Such a statement, as is often the case, tells me more about the person making it than about the movie. If there was ever a movie that displayed the ability of musicals (and, I would argue, cinema itself) to simultaneously communicate sophistication and sincerity, it's Singin'. Anyone who is able to accept joy into his life will at least be able to understand its greatness. Only a truly dedicated curmudgeon—the kind of person who sees a dark cloud behind every silver lining—could dismiss it as worthless.
No comments:
Post a Comment