Photography vs. movies: Misc TRP discussion during break?

[alice wellintown]

I recommend:

Charles Sheeler and Cult of the Machine
Karen Lucic
At the dawn of the twentieth century Henry Adams proclaimed that the
machine was as central to our modem American culture as the Virgin was
to medieval culture. We worshiped in our factories as our ancestors
worshiped in cathedrals. In this century we also raised up bridges,
grain elevators, and skyscrapers, and many were dazzled by these
symbols of the Machine Age—from American presidents such as Calvin
Coolidge to European artists such as Marcel Duchamp. Charles Sheeler
(1886–1965) was one of the most noted American painters and
photographers to embrace the iconography of the machine. But was he
high priest or heretic in the religion of mass production and
technology that dominated his era?

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/LUCCHX.html

Forced to speculate, I would say that P's texts are as ambivalent as
Sheeler's. The obvious difference is that critics misread Sheeler as a
machine prophet, though  Lucic and others have recently argued
convincingly that he was not, while critics misread P as a Luddite
prophet, though his own statements on this (including his essays,  on
Orwell, Sloth, Luddism, his development as an author ...), argue, not
so convincingly, it would seem, that he is not.

More interesting, by far, is how and to what end  P, like hundreds of
his predesesors in American art, uses photography and film in his
fictions. His tone or his attitude is not so easily discerned and
seems a near futile project at this point. But the tradition, from the
obvious starting point--Hawthorne's HSG-- through Crane's use of
Brady, and so on, is worth considering.




On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 9:16 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Recently we plisters had a very interesting--to me at least---
> discussion about some of the possible attitudes of TRP to
> photography and movies in his fiction......
>
> I held out for a steadfy dissing satire of photography......many others,
> such as John C., thought that that did not explain TRP's obvious love of
> movie-going, obvious love of many movies visible in the text, etc.
>
> Which seems as true as rain.
>
> So, I could not help turning over the works
> in my mind---rereading all of them since then [UNFUNNY JOKE]---in what passes for thinking in my life.....
>
> And this possibility occurred to me. Does TRP make a lifelong distinction between photographing what we take as the world [while reading] his fiction versus all the photgraphs that make up a movie in his fictions? Movies which are entertainment, some are even art, let's say, that is, that he presents filmed artifacts as fictions, metaphysically, while shots of "reality" or life---and 24fps's deathly failure---are part of a vision which steadily disses "capturing" "shooting" life while it should be lived.
>
>
>
>
>