Lew Crippen
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- May 19, 2002
- Messages
- 12,060
I can see that I was imprecise in using the term ‘generation’, Seth. “Generation’ is commonly taken to mean (I’m doing this without a dictionary) the time that it takes to replace the fathers (and their brothers and sisters), with their sons (and daughters and nieces and nephews).
Therefore your grandparents are of one generation, your parents the next, you (and any siblings) the third and your children (should you and your bride decide to reproduce) a fourth.
Although times vary (I have one set of cousins where the youngest has a nephew who is older then she), many take this span to be about 30–35 years (33 is a number often used).
What I meant by this imprecision, was that those critics one in ascendancy (such as Kael, Truffaut, Sarris, and the like) have now mainly bee replaced (and yes I know that Sarris is still writing) by Rosenbaum, Ebert, and Turan (among of course many others). They too, will be replaced by a bunch of (now) wet-behind-the-ears, young pups, who will no doubt strive to make their mark by challenging what has come before (and especially what has been praised before).
While I don’t expect to see Citizen Kane or Vertigo replaced by a Michael Bay movie, it would not be unsurprising to see either or both fall in the critical esteem—and much less surprising to see films like L’Atalante fall out of favor altogether (confirming many of the opinions of those writing in the S&S thread ).
Fashions come and go in all disciplines, and I see no reason to believe movies are exempt. I’m pretty sure I wrote once before in a thread like this, about a physicist, who back in the 50s when there was debate between the ‘big bang’ theorists and those who favored a ‘steady state’ universe, said that the debate would end when all the ‘steady-staters’ had died out.
So if a more-or-less ‘hard’ discipline has to wait for another generation in order for a theory to become (for a time) unchallenged, I’m of the belief that it takes a while for the identification of ‘classics’.
And as for becoming a voting member of one of the secret societies, I am sure that I have not agreed with Dome, Jim, Walter, George, Seth, Rob, John Rice, Brook and Walter, plus the entire international HTF membership, so I expect that I’ll be disallowed a vote no matter the club (and I refrain (but barely) from using Groucho’s line).