But she does phrase it as an either/or. She gives no qualifier whatsoever on her statement about art having a positive viewpoint. She doesn't say "some art based on..." or even "to insist upon art based on...". She says plainly and simply that "art based on the empowering message and the positive image is part of this juvenile condition."
No, you can't make honest art out of treacle, but there's a difference between treacle and sugar. "Everybody lived happily ever after" is for fairy tales, but it's entirely possible to have a happy ending to a story without implying the permanence of such happiness. One can have an honest, mature narrative which ends on a positive note and leaves the future progression open. In fact, that tends to be my default assumption: that the future is unspecified.
As a particular instance, in Secretary I don't assume that Lee and Edward stay together in marital bliss forever. In fact, I think it's a distinct possibility that things run aground in the near-to-middle future from the end of the epilogue. This is not to say that the movie isn't a fairy tale as shot (this possibility being clearly not the one the director intended the audience to assume), but just to exemplify that the end of a narrative is not necessarily extendable to the end of the characters' lives.
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Re: I call straw man
Date: 2004-02-01 12:51 am (UTC)No, you can't make honest art out of treacle, but there's a difference between treacle and sugar. "Everybody lived happily ever after" is for fairy tales, but it's entirely possible to have a happy ending to a story without implying the permanence of such happiness. One can have an honest, mature narrative which ends on a positive note and leaves the future progression open. In fact, that tends to be my default assumption: that the future is unspecified.
As a particular instance, in Secretary I don't assume that Lee and Edward stay together in marital bliss forever. In fact, I think it's a distinct possibility that things run aground in the near-to-middle future from the end of the epilogue. This is not to say that the movie isn't a fairy tale as shot (this possibility being clearly not the one the director intended the audience to assume), but just to exemplify that the end of a narrative is not necessarily extendable to the end of the characters' lives.