Talking about metasystems was fun in the 70's and 80's, but once the print journalists got hold of the concept, they beat it to death, and it's still dead. (My favorite metasystem is from TV: those two old guys on the balcony cracking jokes on "The Muppet Show." The jokes all reference the show in progress, so it's all there: self-referential humor in a framing device that criticises criticism.
I'll be brief: after looking over my blog entries I'm not seeing well-reasoned arguments, I'm seeing an outline. The whole thing looks more like a lesson plan for a Film Appreciation course that I may teach someday.
The current technology for watching movies suits me just fine: Netflix DVD's (soon to be replaced by all-streaming-all-the-time-every-movie-ever-made). This gives movie-watching an anti-historical feel. So why should I be cranky about the state of film comedy today, when I can watch Fatty Arbuckle tonight?
I'm thinking of William Butler Yeats. (Remember him? He's what you guys would have read in Chaminade, if we were in Ireland, instead of "Invictus".) Yeats had this rather terrifying way of looking at cultures: there are great ones, and then there are worthless ones. Worthless ones! I was raised in the 60's: "It's a Small World" and "The Family of Man." We were taught to try to appreciate all cultures: everyone must have something good to contribute...
Instead Yeats had this attitude that some cultures were (I think he used the words) "tired, infertile, weak." Well, if he could think that about an entire culture, then I don't feel so bad being disappointed about the decline of (what's now called) physical comedy.
On a more positive note, I can quote Richard Ellman, the biographer, that "we're still struggling to be (James) Joyce's contemporaries." And that's how I feel about some of the more difficult movies of the 20th Century: they speak to us now, even if the presentation (on the small screen) may not be perfect.
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