Mia Goth: Euro Twit or Next Gen Talent?

Well, I think that the ayes have it. She is next gen talent by the estimation of our august jury of MoFos.



I am still on the fence, but if nothing else this one appears to have caught our eye. And I will concede that, at present, she is my favorite browless actor. And that might be saying something.

Nature is inherently messy by nature. This is why science has to be careful and systematic. I don't know why the the discussion of art should be any less careful in light of its complications.



I can appreciate the caution not to be overly deductive, to attempt to reduce everything to one definition, method, or theory. That stated, any given analysis should still be careful in staking what the assumptions, interests, processes, etc., of that analysis entail.

Sure.

This is all good, up to the point where you're loosely talking about "what it means to us" and affect in those many many different ways.


I don't want to put words in your mouth or assume your process, but if we hold that any and all readings are valid, plausible, and of equal value, then we're stuck in cosmic expansion of subjective responses. At a minimum, we need a means by which saying a reading is less well-warranted than another. We need a sorting mechanism. If not "right" vs. "wrong," we need a means of marking "better" vs. "worse" interpretations or we will be left with an overwhelming mass of the infinite tangle of conflicting takes.



Without a clear sense of how you filter subjectivity in this process, I don't see a way forward scholarly conversation. Again, I'm not trying to piss you off. I'm looking for bedrock. What can I treat as good in a conversation with Crumb? What counts as a defeater?

Sure, but it is the focus of the conversation if we're talking about the film, if we are interpreting the film, and if we are evaluating the film.



Perhaps the source of our disagreements has to do with different questions? If we are asking different questions, then we should not expect the same answers. Myself, I want to know about the film, how it works, what it means (more or less objectively, at least in a timely sense). I look to my feelings and impressions and the feelings and impressions of others as a source of evidence (signs) from which I am trying to make inferences to the text (and its function).



You've made it clear that you're not all about your emotions and private responses to the text, but I am hoping to find out what your stance is such that I can make sense of a "good" or "warranted" reading on your view.

Sure. The reason why I am doing it is because I presenting the evidence of how one (or so I condescend to be) relatively competent observer saw the film (a data point). We rub our subjectivities together in the suasive art of dialectic, seeing if we can change minds or have our minds changed. If I tell you how I feel about a film, I am vainly referring to what I think is actually there, in the film, in some way. It's my starting point (my itch), however, to persuade anyone else (or at least offer a prima facie case) I will need to find a way of scratching with something outside the itch (appeals to coherence, theory, audience response, history, interviews, etc.). I will likely fail, but to the extent that I succeed, I will have achieved (however imperfect and impermanent) an intersubjectivity. Alternatively, if someone changes my mind, I will also have entered into an intersubjectivity.

Yes, absolutely. Not necessarily absolute conclusions that hold for eternity, but best warranted assertions about "better" and "worse" contextualized to the discussion at hand--at least a temporary presumption in favor of some view as a result of reasoned discourse.

A consensus is simply a source of evidence. What I am after is evidence. I'll take it where I can get it.

And that is fine as that is another species of evidence (albeit not as compelling, because everyone has an opinion).



I also have many consensus divergent opinions. Worthwhile conversations rarely emerge from beige statements like "I agree with the majority that Star Wars 1977 was a good sci-fi film." We debate controversies. We speak because we feel something needs to be said. And this means, quite often, cutting against the grain. But in so doing, I will still need evidence to make my case regarding my controversial claim. I will work from agreements that the mass of the audience (or the mass of the portion of it I am concerned with) as dialectical starting points (we're all agreed that...) to scaffold my way up to establishing my contentious claim.

I don't disagree. The quality of a film is a constellation of elements. It is one of the mast amazing alchemical mixtures that we find in art. So many hands, so many people, so many elements, etc. A film is a corporate accomplishment.

This is all fine. And please do not take offense to this, but this sounds more like you looking under your own hood--even if you're not trying to. I don't begrudge your right to explore your response to the text as a sort of autoethnography and I don't begrudge your response as a sort of evidence. It's just that I don't really trust it as evidence for the questions that interest me (i.e., questions about the text). Like you said, I am looking for more definitive proof.

Again, that's cool. And again, I don't begrudge you any of this. I am just looking for more definitive proof.

Sure, you're playing a different game. That's fine. You have intersubjective contact with people you care about (i.e., your trusted friends).

Again, I think that the main audience is often wrong. Sub-audiences are often wrong. They are a "sign" of what is in the text, but they are not definitive/constitutive of it. That stated, those aspects of the text which a relevant portion of the audiences sees as "there" provides me a handhold of foothold with which to ascend the rock face. There are other handholds and footholds.


If, however, you want me to follow up your path up El Capitan, I need to know where the handholds and footholds are and I also need to know your general path of assent.
This is tough for me, because some generalizations are needed to establish that "X" is really in the film. If something is concretely within the film then everyone who watches the film should see it, and we should be able to compare it to similar concretizations.

I can only say that I've seen City of the Living Dead. Scared me when I was kid, in part, because I wasn't quite sure what the hell was going on and because he does seem to have a knack for atmosphere/tone.

Right, one of the cliche rules of horror movies is the "rules of the monster" (e.g., don't fall asleep, don't feed after midnight, don't bury in pet cemetery, you can kill it with fire or sunlight or holy water)--these rules are presumably there to ground the horror (making it seem real), but probably moreso to establish the suspense (like modern movies that describe exactly what needs to happen in the 3rd act, like its a quest in a video game). From what I recollect of Fulci, he doesn't give those comforting rules, you just know that bad s**t is going to happen. As a child, it seemed to me that the fault was my end, that I was missing something, like I was trying to listen in on a conversation among adults that I didn't get, that I was as lost as the characters (i.e., the threat was plausible and real and I was falling behind in understanding). As an adult, my response is more along the lines of "What the hell was that?"

Sure, when I was 12, this was a source of terror.

We should note that you are referring to properties of the text that I think most people would agree are "there." Moreover, your interpretation of how this works has a plausibility and coherence to it that we might test.



And, to hit the easy button, I happen to agree with you, which means that you've already got a handhold/foothold (relative to our conversation we have a local intersubjectivity), thus you can work from what you've said so far as this is in our mutual commitment store.



If we disagreed, however, we would likely be in a pickle. If, for example, I felt that City of the Living Dead is perfectly linear and explains everything to the audience, we would have to go back to the text to look for features. We might look to critical responses to see how other eyes saw it. We might consider certain known rules of story-telling which give standards of coherence/clarity. That is, if we disagreed, we would need to look for evidence.

Yep, it was a weird ending. Sort of "F*** it! THE END!!
OK.

OK.

OK.

No, I think I'm tracking it.


On to the next step?

Just to keep me sane, I'm probably going to approach each of my responses separately. If you want to respond to anything fine, or if you want to wait until I get through more of your post, fine as well (although I imagine if you respond to every single post immediately, we might never get through all of this).




Because it's not science and I'm not sure why we would want to treat it that way.



This isn't me saying the pursuit of what greatness in art means should be abandoned. Only that this shouldn't be the primary concern. It obscures what it actually offers us for the trade off of the novel ability to put films on lists and rank them.



And what does art offer us? Well, for starters, specifically an escape from this objectivism you are demanding. Where everything has to be scoured for specific meanings and proof to figure out if it has any value. So we can bolster confident that this movie is better than that movie (as if this should actually make us like a film more or less because of some imposed hierarchy)



I want art to be a space where we cut this bullshit out, where we drop our intellectual and philosophical and emotional trousers and just show what we've got, warts and all. Not kill ourselves with too much foresight all the time and instead aim for some kind of instinctive truth. Because when I sit around talking with most people, or listen to other people talking to eachother from a distance, I frequently get the nagging feeling it's all a charade. We're not putting it all on the table. We don't really understand each other and we aren't really saying anything. And for good reason, since much of the time we live in fear of being ostracized or rejected or not getting ourselves invited to the cool kids table. And it's oppressive. It's soul killing.



But when art is offered as a place to shake out all the elements of our personalities and obsessions and weird thoughts that we don't know what to do with otherwise. And the result of this is if someone also connects with this loose brain change we have lying around, it can be a revelation. It can change your life. And the only way this can happen is if there is a place where it makes sense to sometimes not make sense. Where there can be a sense of impossible faith that someone out there might connect with what we are saying. Where we can create a sense of communion with others based on what we worried might instead just be embarrassing or unlovable or completely impenetrable to anyone else.



Art like this can act like a light for people. And if we have creativity start being dictated by these outside forces of 'intersubjective worth', this shaggier form of art dries up under that withering gaze. People become less likely to come to art for these personal exorcisms anymore, since it has been decided it is now only yet another space where we have to measure up to the standards of the community. Or the intelligensia. Or the popcorn stuffed masses. It refuses to allow the artists to take real chances. To push the form in unexpected directions. To be misunderstood. And these things are important to a lot of people (yes, we can count that number in the hundreds of thousands). These things are important if art is going to remain vital, even, ultimately, to conventional tastes since these bolder and weirder films eventually pass their influence down to the mainstream. Slowly but surely. They are an ecosystem with each of them feeding the other in both direct and nebulous ways.



Now of course, if the majority does still does find 'intersubjective worth' after the creative person put what they needed to out there, unfettered from conventions or a need for approval, than all the better. But to me this is more the cherry on top of a sundae. It still can taste good without it. (and, before you say otherwise, I'm not saying some artists can't take the approach of being very deliberate in their process, where every element is thought out with precision and they know exactly how their audience will react from one scene to the next, and what it all means....Hitchcock, Kubrick left nothing to chance and are all the greater for it.....but they are only one strain of what art can be...art can be more)


Basically when you are pushing for the arts to just be another science, with rights and wrongs, concrete and erroneous proofs, things suddenly start to matter a lot less to me. As an analogy it starts beginning to feel like those who have cherished collectible items sitting up on a shelf and all they do is speak lovingly of how much they are worth. But all I ever want to know is, do you love it? Because if you do, tell me all about that and spare me the details of how much more it would be worth if it was mint. And if you just love it for it's monetary value, just sell the ****ing thing already and don't mention it to me. Just buy me lunch.

Because the exploration of art is, in some ways, harder than science. The scientist has picked the easier set of problems in terms of objectivity of results. The scientist rolls their marbles down the slope and they get an exact measurement which can be replicated.

We must be cautious, and rigorous, precisely because it is NOT a science.

The experience of art is NOT the same thing as the critical discussion of art.

There is the old chestnut about explaining jokes and dissecting frogs. You can dissect a joke and explain why it's funny in much the way that you can dissect a frog to explain why it jumps, but at the end of the procedure you will have a dead joke and a dead frog. At the point that we decide to make arguments to explore the meaning and function of a work of art we've moved beyond the phase of experience into dissection.

We all can think of examples of what happens if someone isnt cautious in science.



But if we aren't cautious or rigorous in art criticism, what terrible thing will happen exactly?


No. Both of these things are looking at their specimen from entirely different angles. They can even reach separate conclusions (which is one thing I assume is a deal breaker for you). But through those different takes we can discuss the disparity between them and what that might mean in regards to what the film is doing.

Contradictions are not an insurmountable evil for a quality discussion. They sometimes are the reason the conversation is worth having in the first place


And it should be stated that I'm completely fine that some people are going to throw the baby out with the bathwater if something doesn't stand for them. That's entirely within their right and I understand the thinking that leads to someone to do this...even if I think it ultimately makes them miss out on other things they can get from the film.


It's all about maximizing what we might find worthwhile in any given film. I am basically against the notion that we refine our tastes the more we watch and discuss. I feel instead we broaden them. Or at least ideally. The fact that I feel the opposite is what is more likely to happen, to be very unfortunate.





My general attitude about what most films are supposed to mean, as in their thematic subtext and if this subtext is supported in what we have watched, is that it usually speaks for itself. We should feel it in our marrow even if we haven't yet hashed it out it into words. And I think it's better kept that way, honestly.


It's why I rarely will break these things down with any kind of severity because I assume who I am talking to has picked up on the basic principals too. It feels redundant to just start pointing at what I essentially feel we both already know. Or maybe it's even worse than redundant. Much like a joke,.breaking it down into its naked components makes it feel less potent. Like a magic trick that has been explained into irrelevance. That mostly just makes you feel stupid for falling for it.



I feel like the best criticism to keep specimens alive on the table, is to continue to treat it like a living thing. Talk about it as this thing we had some good or even maybe troubling times with and nudging it if it remembers them too. Poke it a little to see what noises it makes. Consider it as a whole with both parts we like and parts we dont. Parts that are at least still twitching, and aren't all in pieces on the ground.

The consequence of "getting it wrong" is irrelevant to the point that it is harder to get an objective result in art criticism.



If we propose to engage in serious art criticism, however, we also propose to get into that uncomfortable business of doing that hard work.

So long as we do not lose categories like "better" and "worse," and "more likely," and "less likely," we can reasonably entertain two equally (or almost equally) strong conclusions in some cases. However, these two conclusions must still prove to be more justified than a thousand other "takes" that might be put on the table (e.g., "It was all a dream!" or "they're all robots" or "the filmmaker clever subverted the audience's expectation to be entertained").

But the ultimate goal is still filtering and creating a hierarchy (e.g., good from bad, better from worse, right from wrong, plausible from implausible). We are, after all, trying to find what is really there to be found (otherwise we are just looking under our own hoods).

They are our starting point, yes. All communication starts in a place of pain/need (something that needs to be said). If we all began in perfect agreement about all particulars, there wouldn't really be anything to discuss.


If that works for you, coo. I am after something different. I want to know what a reasonable person of goodwill, what a person with a refined palate, would find worthwhile about a film. And I want to know this because I want to understand how the thing works independent of what it does for me.

If it did, why would we all so frequently disagree? If so, why have people, for centuries, made a living as professional critics (i.e., people who explain themes, and subtext, and so on)?

I would think that a critic of magic would have to have a good idea of how magic tricks are generally pulled off. There is a reason why Penn and Teller are the hosts of "Fool Us" and we're not. They can criticize magic and write books about magic and do documentaries about magic, because they understand the components.



Also, listen to professional comedians talk about the process of joke writing and the features that are part of a joke and you will find (as you probably have already found) that joke writing is a much more pedestrian process than people success. If we spent three months with a professional comedian, watching them slowly revise and rewrite a new joke, we would, at the end of the process find no "magic" or "mirth" in the joke, but rather a workman like accomplishment.



A useful critic of football need not ever have played the game, but they still must understand strategies, formations, player assignment, rules of the game, etc. They must understand the components.



For any of us who would endeavor to understand the ticking clock, we must learn the mysteries of the mainspring, jewels, cogs, and wheels, to finally see how those components work.

Penn and Teller seem to still love magic, although they know just about every trick in the book.



Poetry critics love poetry even though they can describe, dipthongs, eye rhymes, and versification in excruciating detail.

And yet the joke still becomes unfunny if you explain how it works. And yet you still, by your own account, feel robbed by a cheap ruse when a magic trick is revealed.



I find that I can watch a film in many modes. I can let the film wash over me and just "experience it." I can carefully take notes to try to understand it. I can engage with it for the purpose of evaluating it.



The joke can once again be funny if you just tell the joke or listen to it (letting it wash over you). We can always find another frog and enjoy its jumping and croaking without setting out to kill it having already learned it's secrets. And the movie can spring back to life when you return to experience it. Criticism, however, involves taking the watch apart.



The thing is not dead forever, but for the purposes of criticism, yes, the artwork is on the table.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that Mia Goth is mother to the Shia-Spawn, but I won't hold that against her.

She seems lovely in interviews and once name-dropped Max Beckmann, so she's ok with me. She has an unusual look. I don't seek out her stuff but I'm generally pleased when she shows up in whatever I'm watching. Haven't seen the Ti West films yet.

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Captain's Log
My Collection

Exhibit B for the Euro Twit Hypothesis.



I may be right. She may be crazy. But it just might be a lunatic that you're lookin' for...

I feel like Mia is a bit overrated right now, but then also I've thoroughly enjoyed every movie I've seen with her.

I've liked her in the two films I've seen her in, first Marrowbone (2017) then Emma (2020) where she was truly excellent.

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

I've grown to really like Shia LaBeouf. I think he's a good actor, if not also likely an insufferable knob in real life.


He's fantastic as John McEnroe in some stupid ****ing tennis movie.

Same re Shia. Always been a fan.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

20 years ago a certain youngster in my life was a fan of Even Stevens and at the time Shia struck me as a talented kid who might have a future. When he started to have a film career I was pleased because it proved my instincts right, so I did not share in the anti-Shia sentiment that accompanied his casting in Indiana Jones. To this day, Crystal Skull is still the most recent thing I've seen from him so as far as I'm concerned he still has my support.
Some of his personal stuff seems weird but who am I to judge.