Sense of Life and Artistic Preferences

(Chapter 4 of the book Idealism: The Forgotten Principles of American Cinema)

Although most people don't have a fully formed and conscious philosophy, we all carry a series of values and philosophical judgments subconsciously, which form what Ayn Rand called a "Sense of Life".

This is a valuable tool she created and that I'll borrow here to better explain why people have such different preferences in the field of art.

Sense of Life is the total sum of a person's fundamental values, which results in a particular way of looking at the world. It is a subconscious assessment of man and existence, which establishes the nature of our emotional reactions - the "lens" through which we see the world. Our Sense of Life does not come primarily from our explicit, intellectual convictions; it is formed subconsciously, based on experiences and judgments we have accumulated since childhood, and which may or may not be in harmony with our conscious opinions. Even without understanding anything about philosophy, throughout his life a man has to make choices, form an opinion about himself and the world around him, and, depending on his conclusions, he will arrive at a generalized feeling about existence - a basic emotion that will underlie all his experiences.

You can't understand another person's preferences and decisions in everyday matters without understanding the concept of Sense of Life. It is on the basis of our Sense of Life that we choose our friends, our romantic partners, our favorite music and films. We are attracted to things that are in harmony with our Sense of Life, and repelled by those that are not.

To the extent that a person has control over their mind, their Sense of Life can be shaped by themselves throughout their formative years, and reach adulthood in harmony with their conscious convictions. But in most cases, a person's Sense of Life is formed by random influences, cultural osmosis, is full of contradictions and is often in conflict with their explicit ideas. Either way, no one can avoid forming a Sense of Life.

Here are some examples of philosophical questions that are essential in forming a Sense of Life:

- Is the universe a stable, logical place, governed by natural laws, or is it an incomprehensible chaos to man?

- Is our mind is capable of understanding reality, or is reason impotent?

- Does man have free will, or are his choices and character are determined by other factors (culture, genes, instincts, social status)?

- Is man capable of achieving success, happiness, or is life made of pain and tragedy?

- Is man essentially good, or is he evil by nature?

- Can people live together in complete harmony, or are their interests necessarily in conflict?

- Is seeking happiness important, or is avoiding pain what really matters?

- Should a man pursue his personal goals and be happy, or should he sacrifice himself for the good of others?

- Should man have ambition, self-esteem, dream big, or should he be humble?

Different answers to the above questions will result in people with different Senses of Life and will directly interfere with all their choices, preferences - including their artistic preferences. It's important to remember that, from one extreme to the other, there are intermediate positions between all these answers. For example, a person may feel that: 1) Happiness is the natural state of man and that conflicts are the exception; 2) That life is full of conflicts, but that they can be overcome with great effort; 3) That life is made of conflicts, and that happiness can only be achieved in moderation; 4) That life is tragic by nature and happiness is an illusion.

Our Sense of Life classifies things according to the emotions they evoke. In The Romantic Manifesto, Ayn Rand gives a series of concrete examples and imagines what emotions these examples would evoke in people with different Senses of Life. For example: "a discovery, triumph, a heroic man, the skyline of New York, pure colors, ecstatic music", or "the folks next door, a known routine, a humble man, an old village, a foggy landscape, muddy colors, folk music". For a person with a more positive view of life and mankind, the examples in the first group should evoke admiration, exaltation, a sense of challenge. The examples in the second group should evoke boredom, disinterest or repulsion. For a person with a more negative view of life, the emotions evoked by the examples in the first group would be fear, guilt, resentment. The emotions evoked by the examples in the second group would be relief, comfort; the security of living in a universe that isn't too demanding.

A person's Sense of Life is something we perceive almost instantly, because it involves everything about them: every thought, emotion, gesture, posture, tone of voice, facial expression, way of dressing. In a work of art, an artist's Sense of Life is expressed through its content and its style (through what he decides to portray, and how he portrays it). These two aspects - content and style - can be in harmony or in conflict with each other, just as a person's conscious and subconscious values can be in harmony or in conflict.

The content reflects the artist's more conscious values. What kind of message does the story convey? What kind of events and people does the artist choose to portray? Heroes pursuing noble goals? Ordinary people with no great virtues? Or corrupt and immoral people? Are these people portrayed positively (being attractive, effective, successful) or negatively (being repulsive, ineffective, unsuccessful)? A hero portrayed positively indicates an artist with a benevolent Sense of Life. An immoral character portrayed negatively can also indicate a benevolent Sense of Life, as mentioned earlier. However, a hero portrayed negatively or an immoral character portrayed sympathetically indicates a malevolent Sense of Life.

Style reflects the more subconscious (and usually more revealing and true) values of the artist. For example: does the artist communicate his ideas in a clear, precise, understandable way? Or in a nebulous, murky, chaotic way? Is the story dramatic, exciting, structured? Does it have purpose, climax, a clear direction? Or is it monotonous, with episodic events that don't lead to any resolution? Does the artist portray admirable, attractive people? Or does he put ordinary figures on the screen?

Senses of Life are formed by the combination of countless perceptions about life, and can be extremely diverse. Nevertheless, it is possible to roughly classify Senses of Life as more malevolent and more benevolent. A Malevolent Sense of Life is dominated by negative answers to the most fundamental philosophical questions: life is tragic, the universe is chaotic, reason is impotent, man is despicable and doomed to suffering, our interests are in conflict, etc. A Benevolent Sense of Life is dominated by positive answers: life is essentially good, the universe is knowable, man is admirable and capable of achieving his goals, our interests need not be in conflict. As should be clear by now, Idealism is essentially based on a Benevolent Sense of Life.

Sense of Life is not enough of a tool to determine whether a work of art is good or bad, but at the same time, there is no way to arrive at absolute esthetic criteria that are not linked to a Sense of Life or to certain pre-philosophical judgments. Even merits such as "clarity" or "coherence", which seem like unquestionable esthetic qualities desirable in any work of art, are already an expression of a benevolent Sense of Life: they reflect someone who believes that the universe is intelligible, that reason is effective, that objective communication between artist and viewer is possible, that showing something harmonious and pleasing to the viewer is something desirable. It would be impossible for an artist with a completely malevolent Sense of Life, both in content and style, to make a great work of art, because if he really believed that man is evil (which would include himself and also his audience), incapable of achieving his goals, that communication is an illusion, he would have neither the motivation nor the ability to make a valuable work of art. Therefore, it is only to the extent that an artist possesses a benevolent Sense of Life, even if subconsciously, that he can achieve something of real esthetic value.

Although the Sense of Life is a big part of it, other factors can influence a person's artistic preferences - issues like temperament, cultural context, etc. For example: two people may have similar Senses of Life, but operate intellectually at different levels. One may have a greater capacity for abstraction than the other, a greater intelligence than the other, and this will attract them to more complex works of art that are more in harmony with their type of mental functioning.

Now, let me give you a concrete example of how our Sense of Life shape our artistic preferences:

WHY I DON'T LIKE GAME OF THRONES

Game of Thrones, from my point of view, has a conflict-ridden view of reality based on the idea of scarcity: that we live in a universe of limited resources and, therefore, that life is a great battle between men to see who will get control of these resources. It's an idea held by both left and right in the world of politics, but while the left focuses on what should be done about the weak in this context - on how they will take resources from the strong in order to guarantee a minimum for the less fortunate - those who believe themselves to be the strong (such as the characters in Game of Thrones), are focused on obtaining these resources and planning how they will reign over the weak once they are victorious (these people are usually very interested in warfare strategies, etc.). Both sides have the same conflict-ridden and pessimistic view of the world in which only a few can succeed, and therefore the others must inevitably be sacrificed in the process.

Another thing I reject here is the relativistic view of virtue that tends to accompany this kind of mentality: being powerful and successful in this universe is entirely related to beating others, defeating opponents. These people are incapable of thinking about virtue in an objective way, based on man's ability to deal with reality, to produce, and achieve his personal happiness. It's only the other person's defeat that proves their virtue - the ability to dominate, to defeat, to be relatively stronger on the battlefield (arrogance and aggressiveness are positive qualities for those who think this way).

It's a mentality that reflects a desire for the unearned, a desire to obtain values at the expense of others. While the weak (from this perspective) seek the unearned motivated by altruistic ideas, saying that they should have what they want precisely because they are weak and incapable, and that without the sacrifice of the strong they wouldn't stand a chance (in other words, the strong should give them what they want, even if they don't want to do it, because it's a necessity), the strong want the weak to give them what they want because they have power. Since they are strong, rich, have the best tactics, the most powerful weapons, the largest armies, and the weak depend on them to survive, then the latter must do what they want, they must obey them, serve them, love them, respect them, even if they don't want to.

It's the mother's ethics vs. the father's ethics in an archaic family dynamic: the mother who wants the child to do what she wants out of a sense of guilt, duty, because she is weak, helpless, even if it's against his will. And the father who wants the child to do what he wants out of fear, obedience, "respect", also against the child's will.

What these people fear in the end is finding out what others would to do if they were actually free. They dread dealing with people in full freedom, who can act voluntarily, based on their real values and desires - people who are seeking happiness and not just mere physical survival. This is because they feel deep down that if everyone were independent, free, and could choose with whom to share their values (material or spiritual), they would have no chance of obtaining it. So they are attracted to this tragic view of existence according to which sacrifices are necessary, people are dependent on each other and resources are scarce: it's the only way they can feel that they have any power, that they can get what they want from other people, because their personal wants will no longer pose a threat, will no longer be part of the equation.

Just as an example of how this view of reality is transmitted by the series, observe how often we see in Game of Thrones women who show contempt for certain men, don't seem to attracted by them, but end up going to bed with them anyway (in the first episode of Season 8 alone, I remember the scene in which Euron manages to persuade Cersei to have sex with him, and another scene in which Bronn is in bed with 3 women at the same time, apparently prostitutes). These are common scenes - characters who are despised deep down, but who nevertheless manage to make others act in the way they want, because they have the power, and because in this universe made of conflicts and wars, people have no choice but to serve them.

I don't want to suggest that everyone who likes the series does so for this reason, or because they share these values, nor am I saying that the series is artistically bad just because of its Malevolent Sense of Life, but it is through this lens that Game of Thrones makes me see the world every time I stop to watch an episode. The series transports me to a world where power is the most important and desired value - power over others, power of coercion - and this is not a world I want to spend much time in.

What attracts us to Idealism?

(Chapter 3 of the book Idealism: The Forgotten Principles of American Cinema)

Watching my two-year-old niece fascinated by a cartoon on TV, I thought about what attracts us to Idealist art on a primitive, unconscious level. At first glance, it couldn't be a very sophisticated need regarding values, life goals, otherwise such a small child wouldn't be as naturally attracted to a cartoon as an adult is to a movie. Nor could it be a desire to admire the virtues of the artist, to appreciate aesthetic qualities. That comes later, when we are older and understand that there is someone behind a work of art - the child doesn't even know that the cartoon has an author.

On a basic level, Idealist art attracts us because it offers us an escape to a more understandable, benevolent universe - a universe better suited to our minds and our happiness. I don't mean "escape" in the sense of cowardice, self-deception. But in the same sense that a house is an "escape" from harsh weather, discomfort, predators and other external threats - something that gives us a structure conducive to life, which is not automatically or perfectly provided by nature.

Reality itself is infinitely complex (much more complex than the human mind is capable of grasping in a single moment), which results in an eternal quest for order, understanding and simplicity. The universe is also indifferent to life (not necessarily hostile, but not favorable either in an active way). Life has no intrinsic meaning other than the one which we give it ourselves. In life, we are active, and the external universe seems only passive, indifferent. Art has the ability to invert this, and make the external universe appear to become active and meet our needs. Art gives us a sense that life has an intrinsic meaning, making us feel for a moment that we are participants/players in a larger plot. For example: if we crash our car in real life, the event seems arbitrary, unnecessary, there is a cold, uncomfortable silence following the impact. Only in the future, through reflection, will we perhaps be able to make sense of the event and understand what caused it (an analogy made by Robert McKee in his book Story). But in a movie, if a character crashes his car, the event is automatically accompanied by an emotion, a meaning. Emotions and meanings are already present there, at the moment the events happen, giving everything a sense of structure and importance that in reality wouldn't exist or would take us a long time to see.

Young children are generally not interested in live-action movies that attract adults. Why? Because they can't yet absorb the values behind the story or understand the complexities of the adult world. They don't understand abstract principles, they don't know how a romantic relationship works, what's the purpose of a career. They are still at a primary, concrete level of awareness. They only understand simple things and objects - home, food, the sun, a car, mommy, dog, etc. And in a cartoon, these things are represented in a simplified and benevolent way. Not as they actually appear in reality: objects with complex tones and textures, interacting with various lights, reflections, mixed with other objects that children don't know what they're for, animals that behave irrationally, etc. - but as simple, minimalist shapes, with bright, pure colors that are pleasing to the eyes: a simplified (understandable) and benevolent universe, according to the child's cognitive ability.

Adults can handle a much higher level of complexity than a child. Nevertheless, art still offers them a simplified and benevolent picture of reality. Art does this on a concrete/visual/sensory level: in a movie, images are photographed in such a way as to create a certain spatial order, production design and color grading reduce the color palette to something more beautiful and harmonious, soundtrack and sound design transform random noises into ordered, pleasurable vibrations. But art also does this on a more conceptual level: human beings in movies have clear and understandable motivations, represent consistent archetypes, they possess solid characteristics that define their personalities, the story has a planned structure, beginning, middle and end, a message to be extracted - something very different from the complexity and apparent chaos of our everyday experience, in which people often behave in contradictory ways, meanings are not always clear, various narratives intertwine and are not always concluded. Not that life doesn't make sense. People do act based on motivations, they do have certain personalities, the events we see do have causes and consequences - the point is that it's not always easy to see this in daily life. Art has this power to make the invisible visible, the abstract into something concrete and tangible.

Naturalism and Experimentalism (which I'll discuss later) are forms of art that rebel against this basic need of the human mind. They intend to show the universe in its raw form - as a complex, chaotic, meaningless, negative place, ignoring and sometimes even mocking man's attempt to understand reality, to seek beauty and order in things. Contemplating the universe in this chaotic, unfiltered way is not a primary human need. In a way, Idealism can be seen as the most essential form of art, the purest and most necessary to human consciousness, while these other forms of art are derivative - distortions that could not exist independently, and exist only as a contrary reaction to Idealist art, an attack often based on cynicism and personal frustrations (which, in a way, is also an attempt to give order to things, but not the kind of order that will give the audience confidence to pursue happiness and achive their goals, but rather an "order" that will serve as a rationalization for their problems and limitations, an way to remain stagnant without feeling guilt).

As Ayn Rand observed, although Romanticism (like Idealism) is often accused of being an "escape", it is actually the category of art that best equips us to live, inspiring the kind of virtues we need to face our problems and achieve our goals. If happiness is possible, then it is Naturalism (and other forms of Non-Idealism) that represents an "escape" - a permission to abandon all values and flee from the challenges associated with the pursuit of a good life.

What Is Idealism

(Chapter 2 of the book Idealism: The Forgotten Principles of American Cinema)

Alfred Hitchcock, without knowing it, gave a great summary of what Idealism is when he said: "Some films are slices of life, mine are slices of cake".

As a writer, I naturally feel obliged to look for the most economical and efficient definition for a new concept - a simple phrase that has the elegance of a mathematical formula. But when we're talking about something as complex as art - and about a specific style of art that is associated with numerous philosophical premises - a little more than a sentence is needed.

First and foremost, Idealism is the type of art that recognizes that the purpose of life is the achievement of happiness and its own enjoyment. It is a category of art focused on providing the audience with a pleasurable and inspiring experience, based on the original vision of an artist who, making the best use of his virtues and talents, creates this experience according to his own values and interests (based on what he would like to experience as a spectator).

Since it is art, an artistic work must be the authentic expression of an artist's creative vision (or sometimes of a collaboration between artists), but, to be Idealist, it must be created with the intention of providing an inspiring and pleasurable experience to the audience - leading them to the highest emotions and states of consciousness possible within the context of each work of art (how it will do this is something I will discuss in future chapters, the important thing here is just to understand the artist's initial intention, how they view art and its value for man).

Idealism understands that there is much we can experience in life as conscious beings beyond what we naturally encounter in our daily lives - and the Idealist artist is the one who, through their imagination, sees these possibilities and materializes them for the audience's delight. Idealism seeks inspiration, motivation, pleasure. It shows us how extraordinary life can be.

The more a work of art is a canned, inauthentic commercial product aimed solely at making a profit and pleasing the audience, the less artistic it will be, and therefore its ability to inspire will be limited. In many cases, purely commercial films can still entertain and have some artistic qualities. But the best of them are usually results of the vision of a talented producer, someone higher up in the production hierarchy, who ends up being the main visionary behind the work - as in the case of films from the Hollywood studio system era. Yes, Casablanca (1942) is great and in line with Idealist principles, even if it wasn't made by an auteur director. My argument is that if it was the authentic expression of a particular artist, it would have an even greater power to impact the spectator, because individual achievements always inspire us more than collective achievements that don't have a specific face behind them.

THE 2 TYPES OF SPECTATORS

In the audience, there are two distinct types of spectators that need to be differentiated for the purposes of this book: those who see art as a source of inspiration (who feel stimulated by the projection of positive values; by beauty, virtue, happiness - by the vision of the ideal) and those who see art primarily as a source of comfort, a remedy against life's frustrations, and who feel demotivated by the vision of the ideal. Idealism has the first group as its target audience.

The Idealist spectator is not necessarily superior in character, nor is he necessarily happier and more virtuous in his personal life. Idealism reflects a person's ideals, their aspirations, what they believe to be the true essence of life and of man. A person can have a number of personal flaws and problems, but if they preserve this positive vision of what life could be, they will still have a taste for Idealism. So while I might imply that Idealists have a superior attitude towards life, I'm not saying they are automatically better people, or that artistic preferences are definitive proof of character.

IDEALISM REGARDING WHAT?

Note that there are two ways in which a work can be Idealist. It can be Idealist only in content (a general positivity conveyed by the story, the theme, the characters), but what's most important is not this kind of Idealism, after all, a work of art can have a positive attitude towards life, convey an optimistic message, but still be a tedious experience for the audience.

Although content is relevant, what's most important is the artist's Idealism in relation to the experience he wants to give to the audience - the level of pleasure/satisfaction/exaltation he is willing and able to stimulate with his techniques. That's why a work of art can be Idealist even if it has a pessimistic message. What matters most in the end is not so much the explicit message, but how it is presented, what states of consciousness a work of art generates in the spectator. Of course, works of art with depressing themes and decadent human beings can hardly be as inspiring as those focused on positive values, heroes and achievements - these are the most purely Idealist - but, within certain boundaries, less optimistic works of art can also be considered Idealist.

That's why I usually separate Idealists into two groups: Pure Idealists, those who focus on the positives, and Critical Idealists, those who present negative situations, corrupt characters, but in a tone of criticism and condemnation. The first type is a step above and is the most perfectly Idealist, having as one of its best representatives in cinema Steven Spielberg (especially in his first two decades of career). The second type is still Idealist, and is well represented in cinema by Stanley Kubrick. Although this type of artist shows morally decadent characters, undesirable situations, there is still a sense that their reference values are the same as those of the Pure Idealists - it is from this angle that the criticism of the characters is being made. They still convey the message that man should be virtuous, that life could be positive, but instead of showing happiness being achieved, they warn the audience showing what happens when men don't act rationally, when they aren't virtuous. The first type celebrates the positives, and the second condemns the negatives, but both can have positive results, just as in mathematics we get a positive result when we multiply two negative numbers.

By valuing both individual expression, talent, authenticity, and the audience's experience and pleasure, Idealism represents the ideal union between art and entertainment, and is the natural path both for artists with a more authorial inclination but who also value the audience's experience, and for artists more inclined towards entertainment, but who also wish to bring authenticity and artistic quality to their creations (when the two intentions are not naturally balanced).

Idealism is based on broad principles that can be applied to all forms of art. Some arts, however, are more expressive and more powerful than others when it comes to Idealism. Sculpture, for example, although it can demand great skills from the artist and can project positive values, does not have as much capacity to provide an "ideal experience" to the viewer as cinema does. In this sense, the arts that involve a controled temporal experience (music, theater, cinema, etc.) have a great advantage over static forms of art, as they allow for much greater control by the artist over the audience's experience. Furthermore, arts that combine narrative elements (which communicate verbal, explicit content, and stimulate the intellect) with sensory elements (which stimulate our senses, especially sight and hearing) present more possibilities and can create more intense experiences than arts that are only verbal/intellectual (such as literature) or only sensory (such as instrumental music), because they recreate reality in a more complete way and make a fuller and more integrated use of our mental capacities (which is why film is the most expressive and equipped art for the purposes of Idealism, especially when visual storytelling is allied with the power of music).

Idealism can be seen first and foremost as an attitude, a basic desire to inspire, give pleasure and delight that guides an artist's decisions, and which can be observed not only in art but also in other creations that include artistic elements. Someone like Walt Disney, for example, building his theme park attractions, was representing Idealism much better (and in my opinion creating highly sophisticated form of art) than a filmmaker or writer committed to Naturalism.

OBJECTIONS

One of the most common objections to Idealism is that this style of art can create high expectations of life, and thus cause frustrations and psychological damage to the audience. This type of criticism often comes from people who have a mistaken view of the function of art in our lives. Art's function is not primarily to teach us how to live our daily lives. It's not a practical guide. Our minds have the potential to reach incredibly high levels of pleasure and inspiration, and one of the great values of art is its ability to take us to these states, which are rarely possible without its aid. Drawing a parallel - sex can provide physical pleasures that are unattainable in the rest of our routines, and yet it is something seen as important and healthy by most people. Nobody has sex (I hope) limiting their possibilities of pleasure, thinking that an excessively pleasant experience would harm the rest of their life, would make the rest of the days frustrating and unsatisfactory. Art is the sex of the mind, a moment of celebration, an experience that has an end in itself (the meeting of the artist's pleasure of expressing himself and creating a certain experience to the audience, with the pleasure of the spectator of contemplating his achievement and living through that experience). Art shouldn't be a balanced simulation of the states of consciousness that are appropriate to everyday life, in the same way that Hitchcock wouldn't say that you should eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Even though art can serve as a reference and can create certain expectations regarding real life, the audience doesn't need it to be realistic and didactic in order to feel inspired and extract some useful message from it. With the exception perhaps of very young children, everyone knows that art is not real life and should not be interpreted in that way; that in art things are shown in an exaggerated, stylized way, and that what we take from it is only an abstract message - we shouldn't take it literally. If you feel inspired by seeing Superman at the movies, what you should take away from the story is at most an example of strength, confidence, charm, integrity, which may inspire you to improve your character in your personal life. But if someone whines about not being able to grab a red cape and jump out of the window, that's much more the person's problem than art's. Art is not like religion, which claims that the supernatural is real and possible. Art is admittedly "make-believe", an activity whose purpose even a four-year-old child can understand without needing further explanation. People who have unreasonable expectations of life and of themselves will have psychological problems even without the "help" of Idealist art. A person who doesn't deal well with their limitations will suffer even from the existence of people who are more virtuous than them in their group of friends, at work and on the internet. They will feel miserable even without the reference of Superman. A pychologically healthy person, on the other hand, even if they don't have great virtues, will be able to enjoy heroes and feel inspired by them without the experience causing them any harm. It's not Idealism that makes some people insecure and frustrated, but emotional problems that they already carry within themselves.

That's just the beginning of a definition of what Idealism is. But being an artistic work focused on inspiring and giving pleasure to the audience is still something vague, which can be interpreted in wrong ways. To understand what the essential elements of Idealism are, and in what specific ways it will provide this experience, we'll have to go into more detail.

Introduction

(Chapter 1 of the book Idealism: The Forgotten Principles of American Cinema)

This book was based on a series of theoretical texts that I wrote over more than 10 years on my blog. Writing film reviews in the 2000s and 2010s, I began to realize that everything I loved most about American entertainment was in decline, deteriorating - everything that had been an inspiration to me in American popular culture during my childhood and adolescence in the 80s and 90s was being forgotten, abandoned and sometimes even attacked.

I hope the book doesn't seem motivated solely by a sense of personal nostalgia. As we saw so humorously in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, it's a common phenomenon for each generation to believe that there was a "golden age" in their youth, and that the current culture is decadent, pessimistic and worthless. But once I've explained the fundamental elements of what I've come to call "Idealism", I hope to convince you that there has indeed been a remarkable change in culture in recent decades, and that Idealism doesn't just concern my personal taste, but principles that describe a real category of art and entertainment, which coincidentally was on the rise when I was growing up. Yes, I inevitably have a special fondness for the entertainment of "my time" and this will become evident throughout the book, but when I look to the past and think in terms of universal principles, I see that Idealism was as present in American culture in 1939 as it was in 1989.

This is not the first time that the US has gone through an "Anti-Idealist" phase. The fact is that culture is like a pendulum and is always swinging back and forth. "Idealist" and "Anti-Idealist" forces are always fighting each other, alternating in power and fighting to see who will be the dominant force of the moment.

What determines these changes are the prevailing ideas in the culture, the predominant philosophy in a particular era, which ends up impacting the behavior, trends and art of that period. An explosion of Idealist entertainment occurred at the end of the 70s, along with a renewed sense of optimism about the US, after the period of turbulence and pessimism that characterized the late 60s and early 70s. Think of the emergence of filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, George Lucas, artists like Michael Jackson, and the kind of entertainment they created from then on. Something changed in the culture, and suddenly the population went back to admiring heroes, went back to looking for a sense of innocence, of optimism, went back to valuing ambition, and suddenly entertainment began to reflect these values. There was an explosion of new talents that would become the entertainment icons of the following decades (and our great references to this day). Entertainment not only became more innocent, more optimistic, but also became grandiose, highly sophisticated. Everything in the US had to be "larger than life", ambitious, innovative, high-tech; superstars were popping up everywhere. There was something Olympian about the efforts and talents demanded of artists at that time. An almost superhuman level of skill and performance was expected - and all this was being employed in productions aimed at children, young people, families, not just to impress critics and intellectuals. John Williams has a musical talent on a par with the great composers of the 19th century, but he wasn't writing music for concerts, he was writing for people to eat popcorn and cheer on Superman and Indiana Jones at the movies. It was as if making the audience dream and feel good was the noblest mission in the world, and the best minds and talents on the planet were committed to fulfilling it.

This attitude was observed not only in the movies but also in various areas - in advertising, technology, business. Think of how Steve Jobs revolutionized computers at that time, how Michael Jordan took sport to another level, how Whitney Houston's voice set the standard of excellence for all the singers who came after, and how even in unexpected areas like illusionism we had the emergence of a star like David Copperfield. This period from the second half of the 1970s to the end of the 1990s was a small "golden age of Idealism", and it was the last period in which this spirit prevailed in American culture. By the end of the 1990s, entertainment had begun to become darker, more self-critical: the artists of the "golden age" began to lose their hold on the culture, less talented imitators who emerged didn't have the strength to replace them, and 9/11 served as a final blow to American optimism, officially making Idealism a thing of the past, and since then we've been plunging into one of the most cynical and darkest eras in the recent history of Western culture.

My aim with this book is not to call for the end of other types of art. It's not to turn all art into Idealism nor to say that only that should exist. It's not to condemn those who like other types of art and prefer to produce other things. If good Idealistic art were being produced abundantly today and being appreciated, I wouldn't mind if other artists were producing other things. All styles of art can co-exist peacefully, and it's up to the viewer to decide what they want to consume or not. The problem is that when Anti-Idealist forces gain too much strength in the culture, they tend to repress and destroy Idealism, so that it practically ceases to exist (and when it does, it is no longer appreciated as it should be).

What I want with this book is simply to make creators and viewers aware of what Idealism is, to explain its essence, its fundamental ingredients, to give it a philosophical basis for its existence, and with that perhaps to make it rediscovered and appreciated again.

INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS

In this book, I'm going to focus mainly on the art of cinema, not only because I consider it to be the most complete and influential of the arts, but also because it's the one I know most intimately. However, the basic principles of Idealism are applicable to all forms of art, and I will provide examples of this throughout the chapters.

This will not be an extremely technical book. It won't be a manual on how to make a movie, how to write a script, how to become a trained filmmaker ready to shoot. Idealism is about broad principles, not about applying those principles to every aspect of art (which is why they are principles that can be applied to different arts). It is not a substitute for specific knowledge of the techniques and skills that each particular art requires.

Talent and technical knowledge are indispensable, and one of the main reasons why art is becoming increasingly impoverished is that, in addition to the loss of certain ideals and values, there is also a loss of technique, of the whole craft of entertainment. These techniques are no secret, they haven't been hidden from anyone. If artists are abandoning technique, it's not because of a lack of access to it, a lack of books on the subject, but because of a lack of belief in the philosophical premises behind such techniques. It's not difficult, for example, to draw a beautiful face, once you've studied a few notions of facial harmony and proportion. But if you believe that beauty is an outdated concept, that projecting beauty into art is morally dubious, what motivation will you have to master these techniques? So if today's culture has become cynical about beauty, self-esteem, pleasure, happiness, reason itself, it's only natural that artists are ignoring techniques that were developed on the basis of these principles. No one is going to adopt and apply certain techniques unless they are convinced of the purposes behind them. 

Many of the ideas I will present here were based on my own original observations, but obviously I have been influenced and benefited by the ideas of many people who have written about art and cinema in the past. I learned a lot from Alfred Hitchcock, for example, in the book of conversations with Truffaut, I learned a lot from screenwriting "gurus" like Robert McKee, Syd Field, or by reading interview books of great filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg. But the biggest influence on my philosophical understanding of art was certainly Ayn Rand and her books on aesthetics, especially The Romantic Manifesto. Rand's theory of Romanticism has great similarities with what I'm going to call Idealism here, and although I disagree with Rand on several of her positions, Objectivism provides important philosophical foundations that will complement and support my ideas, for those who are interested in delving deeper into this line of thought later. However, it's important to point out the differences between Rand's Romanticism and my vision. The main one is that I focus much more on entertainment than on what Rand called "serious art". I even tend to use the two terms interchangeably, because in Idealism there isn't really a contradiction between art and entertainment. Rand sometimes said this too, but although she expressed sympathy for things like James Bond and detective stories, in the end she considered popular art to be an inferior form of art, something less sophisticated and less important. For her, great works of art necessarily had to be philosophical, intellectual, have something explicit and profound to say about ethics, human nature. Rand didn't see the viewer's pleasure as such a primordial issue in art. She didn't have a great appreciation for humor, for example, she didn't consider contemporary music to be real music, she didn't have much sympathy for fantasy, she abhorred the horror genre, nor did she consider cinema to be a fully developed art at the time. Idealism is already favorable to all this and assumes that popular art is just as important - sometimes even more important - than "serious art" (sophisticated art that does not care about entertaining).

If you think about what actually introduces changes in culture, in people's behavior, what kind of art most influences people to choose their careers, shape their personalities, educate their children, decide what kind of life they want to live, how they will dress, what will be that special song they will play at the highlight of their weddings - you will see that entertainment is much more than a pastime for most viewers.

Even in Rand's life, popular art played a key role: it was by reading escapist adventures like The Mysterious Valley, watching American action films from the silent era, and listening to her favorite operettas that Rand got the inspiration and emotional fuel she needed to move to the US (where she went straight to Hollywood to work on Cecil B. DeMille blockbusters). That is to say, even though Rand rarely emphasized the vital importance of entertainment for human beings, I believe that on some level she would sympathize with the vision presented in this book.

Como a mídia física deveria ser hoje

Um Pen Drive com um design temático que vem dentro de uma caixinha tradicional de DVD/Blu-Ray. Quem compraria?

O Christopher Nolan está numa campanha pelo retorno da mídia física, por isso lembrei dessa ideia (meio óbvia) que tenho há uns anos e que ainda me parece bem prática...

Jogos Vorazes: A Cantiga dos Pássaros e das Serpentes

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes / 2023 / Francis Lawrence

Satisfação: 6

Categoria: IC

Filmes Parecidos: séries Maze Runner, Divergente, Harry Potter / O Doador de Memórias (2014)

As Marvels

The Marvels / 2023 / Nia DaCosta

Satisfação: 2

Categoria: IC

Five Nights at Freddy's - O Pesadelo Sem Fim

Five Nights at Freddy's / 2023 / Emma Tammi

Satisfação: 4

Categoria: IC

Nyad

Nyad / 2023 / Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi

Satisfação: 7

Categoria: I

Dinheiro Fácil

Dumb Money / 2023 / Craig Gillespie

Satisfação: 5 (Mista)

Categoria: IC

Filmes Parecidos: BlackBerry (2023) / A Grande Aposta (2015) / Joy: O Nome do Sucesso (2015) / Wall Street: O Dinheiro Nunca Dorme (2010)