hate this article on chinese films

[ravaged]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/movies/05darg.html

i don't understand how an article as pointless as the freshman compare-and-contrast essays i was forced to grade can make it to the paper. the critic doesn't even bother to define glamor or come up with a few decent arguments before venturing to string together a few totally different works under different circumstances by relating them all to the political system (without stopping to think that maybe, just maybe, the polity isn't the source of all creative endeavors). the article is awash in references that add neither context nor purpose to these comparisons, and there're even a few factual errors. i'd just like to ask him the same question i pose to all my students: why would anyone care about your essay?

i just love paragraphs that start with "if mao (or madame mao) were alive, he (she) would..." so tired. why not just come out and declare "look at me, i've read up on my chinese history 101! weeee! bow to me as i make blindingly obvious remarks about communism!"

i don't know why i'm so ticked off by this article, but to me laziness and mediocrity are much better laid bare than windowdressed as cleverness and profundity. ugh.

[tiffany]

haha, u read that too? I just felt like whoever wrote this thing has no understanding whatsoever of chinese culture and completely did not get the movies----well, cannot really blame him, he is talking a little about wang kaiwai movies, after all

[ravaged]

it's just so pretentious!

[tiffany]

well, afluent american strives to seem international-cultural intellegent and has the gall to criticize marilyn monroe studying acting, u expect anything unpretentious out of his mind?

[Jun]

It seems like a typical outsider-looking-in kind of silly article. I'm sure many American readers find it very illuminating...