Occasionally, someone will point out that Marines like Full Metal Jacket, finance guys like Wall Street, and some men like Fight Club more for the masculine fantasy than the critique, and then some teacher’s pet will sneer, “But that’s a misreading of the theme, you idiots!” No.
A work of art is not it’s goddamn theme, or whatever is the obvious and overt intention of the art’s makers.
I blame our education system for this, teaching students to hunt down the theme (and discard the work), treating art like it’s a freaking riddle to be solved.
I blame our education system for this, teaching students to hunt down the theme (and discard the work), treating art like it’s a freaking riddle to be solved.
Marines know FMJ is “anti-war”. Finance guys aren’t confused about Oliver Stone’s politics. The bros punching each other in parking lots after watching Fight Club weren’t under the impression that Pitt was the hero of the film. They didn’t care (and the art didn’t make them care)
A work of art that spends most of its time indulging in our love and fascination with certain types of transgression, only to go “but that’s bad” at the end, is not doing the moral formation you think it is.
While the teacher’s pets confidently asserting the theme whenever someone “misreads” a film will undoubtedly get an A+ on the imaginary quiz they’ve been prepping for their whole lives, the fools happily using the art, and violating it’s creator’s intentions, understand it better
Art is CHAOTIC. And should be.
Critics get so testy when you point out that FMJ is the greatest recruiting commercial for the USMC ever made, while remaining so incurious as to why.
https://twitter.com/faceyouhate/status/1463188807864487946?s=21
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