Right back at me.

So, there's this: I enjoyed Kill Bill on a visceral level (oh, I am too much) while there is someone out there who bathed in all the cinema history being presented for a new audience. Is his enjoyment superior to mine? Did I experience low-art while he, looking at the exact same thing, experience some sort of high-art?

Well this is easy. Of course his enjoyment is not superior. Appreciation? Perhaps. But if we are speaking merely of the sensation of enjoyment (the visceral impact of the film, as it were), then there is no distinction to be made. Good is good. Bad is bad. Anything beyond your (not you, Carl, just generally) initial reaction exists in the realm of intellectual debate, not on the emotional plane. Now, can you derive enjoyment from knowing more about the film? Sure. But then the enjoyment is no longer about the film itself, but about your knowledge of filmmaking devices and cinematic history.

This distinction, in my opinion, is a necessary one, because increasingly, it is no longer being made. Appreciation of the craft and/or its place in the overall oeuvre has become synonymous with enjoyment of the work itself, and in some cases, supercedes it. People can yell "anti-intellectual" all they want, but the truth of the matter is this: we're over-intellectualizing everything today. Let me tell you something, folks: not every mundane subject needs gravitas. For some reason, a great number of people (many of them, I imagine, self-styled intellectuals and/or hipsters) want to revel in the minutiae of the mundane, and for no other reason than to inform everyone else what they know about a given subject. The kicker to all of this is that if you point this out, you get branded a philistine. Pointing out the futility of pointing out futility, for example (ha!), is tantamount to intellectual treason. Well fuck that nonsense. (See what I did there?) Not every little thing needs to be analyzed mercilessly. Let's just enjoy things at face value for a change. Modern critical thought seems to deem this unnecessary. Face value, it is reasoned, cannot provide adequate intellectual sustenance. We need to make sure you know why you're enjoying the things you're enjoying, or else, you're not enjoying them as much as you should be. They've completely flipped the script. In short, appreciate, then enjoy. I really think that's why I'm on such a metal run lately, because metal, almost uniformly, is totally lacking in pretense, and just wants to kick your ass.

The bottom line, Bentham was wrong, Motorhead is right, and I am spent.

fin