Jason Lapeyere writes: >a film is defined by popular critics as "realistic" if it >shows an audience what they believe to be true about themselves at the >time that they see it. The recent trend in Hollywood cinema of showing >the President of the U.S. as incompetent and ineffective in films like >"Absolute Power", "Primary Colours" and "Armageddon" - this representation >is acceptable to American audiences of the late '90s but probably wouldn't >have washed in the late '50s. Why? I think a simplistic answer would >look at the disillusionment of American culture with big government and >the perception of politicians as cut off from the public. In that sense, >it is "realistic", but bear in mind it's a constantly shifting definition. True enough: any work that plays the game (form or content) can be called realistic nowadays. This is however quite the opposite of Courbet and his Stonebreakers (not a rock group). *Realism* then introduced the other as a subject for art in a way that terrified the painting world. At that time *realism* was a revolutionary tool: no wonder it got quickly domesticated into a parody of its former self! Jean-Pierre ---- To sign off SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]