Philistines and Cinephiles: The New Deal

Abstract

1. There is first a problem with French word which, as Genevieve Sellier1 and Noel Burch have shown,2 is a modernist, formalist, and masculine attachment to cinema-and not at all, thus, equivalent of love of cinema. of De Baecque (whose book is an essay, and not rigorous ethnological study of a behavior), is a Parisian version of this cinephilia. And it has not varied since time of Cahiers du cinema (the 1950/1960s): there is still a cult of Great Men (the Auteurs), esotericism, aestheticism, sexism, and especially a disgust for of others, in words of Pierre Bourdieu. One sees it clearly when one talks to a Parisian critic:3 he/she conforms still to Baudelairian model of the one who knows (how to appreciate Modernity), above vulgar taste of public. It is amusing, in this sense, to read petition that Jean Douchet wrote at time of bad financial press about Cahiers, titled future of Cahiers du which was published in various journals in April 2008: The cinema concerns us all in a pressing way: artists, philosophers, writers, filmmakers, critics, actors, directors of festivals. . It lacks only one category of people: those who are not part of this little world, that is to say, common mortals! 2. Then, there is love of cinema, which is, alas, called in France popular (while it is cinephilia a la De Baecque that would have to be called elitist cinephilia, in order to leave term to refer alone to love of cinema). This love has existed for a very long time, and was always organized as a personal or collective cult, whether by reader responses of film magazines from 1930s or cine-clubs of 1940s.4 Today, in France, it is found still in magazines (Premiere, Studio, and all specialist revues, like Mad Movies, for gore, which prints every month as many copies as Cahiers du cinema). But there are practices added now: discussion sites and forums on Internet, which make more or less public debate of fans around their favorite films, and screening (also more or less collective) of DVDs, their loan, and their exchange. passage from theater screen to TV screen also bears a sociological importance, since one no longer has to live in center of a large city to see rare films. However, these technologies do not change fundamentally esprit de culte, which remains same as in other spheres of art.5 3. central paradigm of cinephilies is always same. In elitist cinephilia, it is always Kantian aesthetic, based on intuition, ineffable, immediate sense of dealing with an Artist or an Artwork.6 In popular cinephilia, it is always expertise. An expert is someone who has experience: he has seen many films and discusses especially qualities of one in relation to qualities of other. For example, to make a sociological observation in manner of Becker,7 one can learn to love films of kung fu only after having seen some hundreds of kung fu films, so that one can detect small differences that confer value on one film and mediocrity on another. Otherwise, one remains a philistine, not a cinephile. But technological changes of these last twenty-five years favor largely this paradigm of expertise: it has effectively become easy (either legally, or illegally) to see entire filmographies. One can order or pirate on Internet some thousands of films once impossible to find, and acquire an enormous culture in several months. As for miscegenous character of new cinephilia, whose members like equally films, TV series, and video clips, that is not either: young Turks of Nouvelle Vague were obsessed by literature, almost more than by cinema. 4. This changes something for history of styles. Thanks to multiplication of cable stations, television spectator can acquire more encyclopedic competence than authors of official histories of cinema, who wrote at a time when it was difficult to see everything. …