Subject: Re: Public Intellectuals
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 27 2001 - 09:22:59 GMT
Actually, I don't turn to self regarding clowns to that at all -- as in any
field, some participants are self regarding clowns, and some are pretty
intelligent and insightful. In my case, literature is one (emphasis on
"one") of the places I turn for life direction, so the critics are helpful
in that they can (when they're doing their job) illuminate the literature,
and give me new ways of looking at it. So I don't, myself, really look to
the critics for moral direction, but they help me understand one of the
places I am looking.
On another level, people writing and working in humanities fields have
indeed reshaped western moral thinking on even the most popular levels.
Disney's Pinocchio, released in what...the 1950s?...had personal individual
purity as its primary moral concern. Don't lie. Don't smoke. Don't
drink. Etc. Disney's Pochohontas, released in the 1990s, had relocated
the primary concern of moral thinking to the social sphere -- understand
other cultures, be tolerant, respect nature, etc. Disney is, of course,
now as always reflective of the society to which it panders. Its movies
have changed because its audiences have changed, and the changes have been
brought about by the very people you say are doing such unimportant
work...
It's usually a mistake to define an entire field by its worst participants
:).
But you already know that.
Jim
Scottie Bowman wrote:
>
> The Louis Menand (New Yorker) history of literary
> intellectuals in 20th century America seems to illustrate
> perfectly my view of them as bald men squabbling over
> the possession of a comb.
>
> I'm intrigued to learn that Jim turns to such self-regarding
> clowns when he has decided: '... to make sense of [his life],
> find meaning in [it]... live [it]better ...'
>
> Scottie B.
>
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