x359594
24th June 2012, 18:47
The great age of first-generation auteurism was 1954-1976. This is when Andrew Sarris did his most influential work. Building on the critical work of Andre Bazin Francois Truffaut launched auteurism in 1954 in the pages of Cahiers du Cinema, and a huge flood of auteurist writing emerged, first in France, then in Britain with Movie magazine and Robin Wood, and in the USA with Andrew Sarris and others.
1954-1976 was also the Space Age. The USSR started plans for Sputnik in 1954, and Eisenhower launched the US space program in 1955. But by 1976, the Space Age had come to and end.
1954-1976 was also the great creative period of computer invention. People don’t always realize it, but things like the internet, personal computers, databases, and hypermedia were all fully functional by 1976 at government institutions like DARPA and industry research labs like IBM, Xerox PARC, BBN, and Bell Labs.
With the political shift to the right and the transition to neo-liberalism in the late 1970′s government spending was diverted to the military and an ideology glorifying business became widespread. Lies were told portraying businessmen like Steve Jobs as computer innovators. All Jobs did was make products out of government and research lab developed technology of 1954-1976. The right also pulled the plug on the Space Age. Spending for government programs like NASA was authorized only to the extent that it served a military purpose.
Writers in 1954-1976 were extraordinarily good at spreading ideas about science. Isaac Asimov on science, Martin Gardner on mathematics, and the science documentary films and books of Charles and Ray Eames brought science ideas to a wide audience, in an an extraordinarily understandable form. They didn’t simplify or dumb down: they explained complex ideas clearly.
The auteurists were a parallel operation to Asimov and company. They too concentrated on spreading real ideas about film, advanced, complex and intellectual, in a clear form to a very wide public.
What the auteurists were doing for film, other scholars were doing for other media of popular culture. Frank Buxton and Bill Owen’s Radio’s Golden Age (1966) documented Old Time Radio. Ray B. Browne, Marshall Fishwick and Russell B. Nye founded the Popular Culture Association in 1970, to spread academic study of popular art in universities. Nye helped found the Comic Art Collection at Michigan State University. Under archivist Randall W. Scott, the Collection now has 200, 000 comic books and countless comic strips, all open to the public to read.
Mystery fiction got its first bibliography by Ordean A. Hagen. Several histories of prose mystery fiction were published, the best being Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler, editors: The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976). Histories of prose science fiction were written such as Donald Wollheim’s The Universe Makers (1971) and Brian Aldiss’ Billion Year Spree (1973).
Sarris and the other auteurists took part in an era that stressed ideas, intellectualism, and research. They were not part of our conservative age, when people’s worth was equated with founding start-up companies.
We have a huge amount to learn from these great thinkers. [Thanks to Fellow Worker MG]
1954-1976 was also the Space Age. The USSR started plans for Sputnik in 1954, and Eisenhower launched the US space program in 1955. But by 1976, the Space Age had come to and end.
1954-1976 was also the great creative period of computer invention. People don’t always realize it, but things like the internet, personal computers, databases, and hypermedia were all fully functional by 1976 at government institutions like DARPA and industry research labs like IBM, Xerox PARC, BBN, and Bell Labs.
With the political shift to the right and the transition to neo-liberalism in the late 1970′s government spending was diverted to the military and an ideology glorifying business became widespread. Lies were told portraying businessmen like Steve Jobs as computer innovators. All Jobs did was make products out of government and research lab developed technology of 1954-1976. The right also pulled the plug on the Space Age. Spending for government programs like NASA was authorized only to the extent that it served a military purpose.
Writers in 1954-1976 were extraordinarily good at spreading ideas about science. Isaac Asimov on science, Martin Gardner on mathematics, and the science documentary films and books of Charles and Ray Eames brought science ideas to a wide audience, in an an extraordinarily understandable form. They didn’t simplify or dumb down: they explained complex ideas clearly.
The auteurists were a parallel operation to Asimov and company. They too concentrated on spreading real ideas about film, advanced, complex and intellectual, in a clear form to a very wide public.
What the auteurists were doing for film, other scholars were doing for other media of popular culture. Frank Buxton and Bill Owen’s Radio’s Golden Age (1966) documented Old Time Radio. Ray B. Browne, Marshall Fishwick and Russell B. Nye founded the Popular Culture Association in 1970, to spread academic study of popular art in universities. Nye helped found the Comic Art Collection at Michigan State University. Under archivist Randall W. Scott, the Collection now has 200, 000 comic books and countless comic strips, all open to the public to read.
Mystery fiction got its first bibliography by Ordean A. Hagen. Several histories of prose mystery fiction were published, the best being Chris Steinbrunner and Otto Penzler, editors: The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection (1976). Histories of prose science fiction were written such as Donald Wollheim’s The Universe Makers (1971) and Brian Aldiss’ Billion Year Spree (1973).
Sarris and the other auteurists took part in an era that stressed ideas, intellectualism, and research. They were not part of our conservative age, when people’s worth was equated with founding start-up companies.
We have a huge amount to learn from these great thinkers. [Thanks to Fellow Worker MG]