Glen Norton writes:
>While we're on the subject of Godard, another "must-see" in this context
>is TOUT VA BIEN (1972), which depicts the disapointment in the failure of
>Marx/Maoism (at least in the way Godard had pictured it) during
>the period just after May '68. Since then, Godard has all but rejected he
>ever believed in Maoist doctrine.
 
I find it interesting that Jean-Pierre Gorin, who co-directed TOUT VA BIEN
and was something of Godard's Maoist mentor, also rejected Maoism shortly
after the completion of the film and moved to Southern California(!)  I
wonder who corrupted who? ;-)   Actually, Gorin did go on to make several
documentaries as politically critical (if not as polemic) as anything he
and Godard did during their Dziga Vertov days.
 
>Which has greater
>impact and/or sway over that black nebulus Baudrillard calls "the
>mass"[es]? Narrative realism (i.e. Hollywood and its clones) or the
>avant-garde (if such a thing even exists)?
 
I believe an avant-garde cinema as separate from a Hollywood cinema
certainly exists.  While they both possess aesthetic and ideological
similarities imposed by any number of factors, their differing modes of
production and distribution draw a very real (if not sharply-focused) line
between them.  And let's not forget all those filmmakers straddling the
fence in varying degrees such as Todd Haynes, Abbas Kiarostami, Richard
Linklater, Atom Egoyan, or Godard himself.  How do they sway "the masses?"
 
>Or is cinema (and, by extrapolation, all art) simply an enclosed space, a
>>simulation of power, given its political authority by theoreticians and
>not >through the medium itself?
 
I'm not sure I understand the question- by "theoreticians"  do you mean
film acadmeics, popular reviewers, directors, studios, or all of the above?
Likewise with the "medium itself"?
 
p.s.- Glen, I love your Godard quote!
 
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Jerry Johnson
Texas Center for Writers
 
"I begin with documentary and give it the truth of fiction."
 
                                        -Jean-Luc Godard
 
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