>> Heck, so what if she "revised" history, everyone else did too. >>Once you get past the obvious propaganda stuff I see a real master >>filmmaker at work. Even today people are just "discovering" some of the >>techniques she mastered a long, long time ago. >> > More than this (since I know you don't in any way mean to >imply this sort of thing in your wildest imagination), can "techniques" be >separated from the cause to which they are put? More than that, as Susan >Sontag demonstrated quite convincingly years ago, in "Fascinating Fascism," >Riefenstahl was obviously and clearly a fascist and a Nazi sympathizer. It Er....um....gee, I don't REMEMBER passing the "Political and Social Awareness Mandatory" sign on the way into this discussion.....must've been there, though, elsewise there wouldn't be such a darned authoritative ring to that rhetorical question. (To which, my answer is a resounding "YES||", btw) >makes no sense to defend her on purely aesthetic grounds, as if her values >and beliefs, not to mention her contribution to the Nazi effort, were >merely "something to get past." Has cultural relativism and "pluralism" >allowed us to accept the Nazis as just one more value system to "get past" >in our aesthetic sensibilities? Let's see....hmmmmm. Literary Criticism types fawn all over DeMan and Foucault, neither of which were exactly exemplary human beings (one being one of those pesky Nazis and the other intentionally infecting other people with HIV and all).... Yup, in fact, it DOES seem that in our rush to value EVERYBODY'S opinion without drawing any distintion beyond "It's just his/her CULTURE|", we may have left the door open to a Neo-Nazi uprising. But, is this because we appreciate someone's style of filmmaking, or because our political agenda (often used as a battering ram in the halls of academe) has finally ricoched out of control? I think the AESTHETIC quality of ANYONE'S workMUST be separated from the politics of the artist. In fact, with Derrida arguing about the death of the author/auteur, we can't even assume that an author/auteur exists at all. All there IS, is art. See? Ask a rhetorical question, and then someone goes and disagrees with you| Denise ___________________________________________________________________ º Denise M. Bryson, Northeast Missouri State University º º Division of Language and Literature º º Kirksville, Missouri 63501 º º º º [log in to unmask] º º º º "You keep using that word....I do not think it means what you º º think it means." -- Inigo Montoya -- º ____________________________________________________________________