Film is an inferiour medium to literature

Film is an inferiour medium to literature.

I have no doubt that the chorus of philistines that make this hole their home and routinely imbibe the putrid contents of this garbage bin will rise up against me for this post, but that itself will only lend credence to an obvious consequence of my theory, which is that this medium attracts a lower class of person because it is a lower form of art, if it can be called even that.

Literary communication is learned over the course of many years and perfected through intensive schooling, which are absolutely required to achieve even the lowest form of proficiency (one can learn a language while remaining ignorant of a literary form, as illiterates prove). This is a medium which eliminates noise and delivers its substance through rigorously defined concepts: words describe ideas, which represent objects. The reader processes literature through an intense use of his cognitive abilities.

Visual communication, can be purely sensory, in that it delivers information directly from the senses, without the filter of the conscious mind parsing it for sense and linearity. Cinema, at its beginning, took a more static form, inspired by theatre, which lent it a more structured, ponderous. This did not last, and over the years, it has degenerated into a garbled mess full of shooty-shooty-bang-bang, noise both visual and auditive.

While our visual sense has always required us to filter noise, modern media immerses us in a form of visual communication not found in nature, that is to say for which our visual sense has not evolved: syncopated flashes of images designed to be attention-getting and immediately stimulating. This is hypnotic: the mind demands structure but cannot find it, and shuts down in the face of the constant sensory overstimulation, which is why you don't remember the plot from a movie you watched just last week.

You're wrong.

:^)

>Film is an inferiour medium to literature.
>inferiour
damn, made it 4 words into your troll post before you fucked yourself over
try again tomorrow OP, you haven't earned my smug anime face response yet

Fuck off pseud.
Disregarding an entire branch of art and expression is anti-intellectual.

grammatically incorrect. fuck off back to the literature section of your local b & n and grab that last copy of infinite jest

Film is a medium with two dimensions. Literature has only one.

Film is objectively superior for this reason.

What about reading on a kindle?

>a picture is worth 1,000 words
>literally 1,000,000 pictures in a movie

TV > movies > audio books > books

I totally agree OP

Literature is an inferiour medium to instrumental music.

Tolstoy hated movies. From What Is Art:

>Pick up any newspaper of our time, and in every one of them you will find a section on theatre, movies, and music; in almost every issue you will find a description of some exhibition or other, or of some particular painting, and in every one you will find reports on newly appearing books of an artistic nature - poetry, stories, novels.

>Immediately after the event, a detailed description is published of how this or that actress or actor played this or that role in such and such a drama, comedy or opera, and what merits they displayed, and what the contents of the new drama, comedy or opera were, and its merits or shortcomings. With the same detail and care they describe how such-and-such an artist sang such-and-such a piece, or performed it on the piano or the violin, and what the shortcomings or merits of the piece and of the performance were. In every large town there will always be, if not several, then certainly one exhibition of new paintings, whose merits and shortcomings are analyzed with the greatest profundity by critics and connoisseurs. Almost every day new novels and poems appear, separately or in magazines, and the newspapers consider it their duty to give their readers detailed reports on these works of art.

>To support art in Russia, where only a hundredth part of what would be needed to provide all the people with the opportunity of learning is spent on popular education, the government gives millions in subsidies to academies, conservatories and theatres. In France eight millions are allotted to art, and the same in Germany and England. In every large town huge buildings are constructed for museums, academies, movie studios, cinemas, conservatories, dramatic schools, and for performances and concerts.

>Hundreds of thousands of workers - carpenters, masons, painters, joiners, paper-hangers, tailors, hairdressers, jewelers, bronze founders, typesetters - spend their whole lives in hard labor to satisfy the demands of art, so that there is hardly another human activity, except the military, that consumes as much effort as this.

>But it is not only that such enormous labor is expended on this activity - human lives are also expended on it directly, as in war: from an early age, hundreds of thousands of people devote their entire lives to learning how to twirl their legs very quickly (dancers); others (musicians) to learning how to finger keys or strings very quickly; still others (artists) to acquiring skill with paint and to depicting all they see; a fourth group to acquiring skill in twisting every phrase in all possible ways and finding a rhyme for every word. And these people, often very kind, intelligent, capable of every sort of useful labor, grow wild in these exceptional, stupefying occupations and become dull to all serious phenomena of life, one-sided and self-complacent specialists, knowing only how to twirl their legs, tongues or fingers.

>But this, too, is not all. I recall attending once a movie set for one of the most ordinary new movies, such as are produced in all European and American movie studios

>I arrived when the first scene had already begun filming. To enter the set I had to pass backstage. I was led through dark underground corridors and passages of the enormous building, past immense machines for the changing of sets and lighting, where in darkness and dust I saw people working at something. One of the workers, his face grey and thin, wearing a dirty blouse, with dirty workman’s hands, the fingers sticking out, obviously tired and displeased, walked past me, angrily reproaching another man for something. Going up a dark stairway, I came out backstage.

...

>Amid piled-up sets, curtains, some poles, there were dozens, if not hundreds, of painted and costumed people standing or milling around, the men in costumes closely fitted to their thighs and calves, and the women, as usual, with their bodies bared as much as possible. These were all actors, male and female dance groups, or ballet dancers, awaiting their turns and piles of costumes and set dressings. My guide led me across the stage, over a plank bridge through the camera crew, where sat about dozens of engineers and electricians of all sorts, and into the dark stalls. On an elevation between two lamps with reflectors, in an armchair with a bullhorn in front of it, script in hand, sat the director, who conducted the actors and costumes crowds and dancers and the overall production of the entire movie

>When I arrived, the shot had already begun, and a procession of Indians bringing home a bride was being presented on set. Besides the costumed men and women, two other men in short jackets were running and fussing about the stage: one was the assistant director, and the other, who stepped with extraordinary lightness in his soft shoes as he ran from place to place, was the dancing master, who received more pay per month than ten workers in a year.

>These three directors were trying to bring together the acting, the dancers, and the procession. The procession, as usual, was done in pairs, with tinfoil halberds on their shoulders. They all started from one place and went around, and around again, and then stopped. For a long time the procession did not go right: first the Indians with halberds came out too late, then too early, then they came out on time but crowded together too much as they exited, then they did not crowd but failed to take their proper places at the sides of the stage, and each time everything stopped and was started over again.

>The procession began with a pantomime by a man dressed up like some sort of Turk, who, opening his mouth strangely, sang: ‘I accompany the bri-i-ide.’ He would sing it and wave his arm - bare, of course - from under his mantle. And the procession would start. But right away the Frenchman does something wrong at the end of the pantomime and the director, recoiling as if some disaster has taken place, yells "cut" through the bullhorn. Everything stops, and the director, turning to the procession, falls upon the Frenchman, abusing him in the rudest terms, of the sort that coachmen use, for having done the wrong step. And again everything starts over. The Indians with halberds again come out, stepping softly in their strange shoes; again the actor sings: ‘I accompany the bri-i-ide.’ But this time the pairs stand too close together. Again the yelling of "cut," the abuse, and it starts over. Again, ‘I accompany the bri-i-ide,’ again the same gesture with the bare arm from under the mantle, and the pairs, again stepping softly, halberds on their shoulders, some with serious and sad faces, some exchanging remarks and smiling, take their places in a circle and begin to dance. All is well, it seems; but again the yell of "cut", and the conductor, in a suffering and spiteful voice, begins to scold the male and female troupe members: it turns out that they fail to raise their arms from time to time while dancing, as a sign of animation. ‘Have you all died, or what? Cows! If you’re not dead, why don’t you move?’ Again it starts, again ‘I accompany the bri-i-ide,’ again the female troupe members dance with sad faces, now one and now another of them raising an arm. But two of the female dance members exchange remarks - again a more vehement yelling of "Cut". ‘What, have you come here to talk? You can gossip at home. You there, in the red trousers, move closer. Look at me. From the beginning.’

>'Again, ‘I accompany the bri-i-ide.’ And so it continues for one, two, three hours. The whole of such a shoot continues for six hours on end. The yelling of 'cut', the repetitions, the positionings, the correctings of the actors, the extras, the processions, the dancing, all of it seasoned with angry abuse. The words ‘asses, fools, idiots, swine’ I heard addressed to the actors and dancers a good forty times in the course of one hour. And the unfortunate, physically and morally crippled person - leading man, background extra, dancer, - to whom the abuse is addressed, keeps silent and does what is demanded, repeats ‘I accompany the bri-i-ide’ twenty times over, dance one and the same routine twenty times over, and again marches about in his yellow shoes with a halberd on his shoulder. The director knows that these people are so crippled as to be no longer fit for anything except blowing a horn or walking about with a halberd in yellow shoes, and at the same time they are accustomed to a sweet, luxurious life and will put up with anything only so as not to be deprived of this sweet life - and therefore he calmly gives himself up to his rudeness, the more so in that he has seen it all in Paris and Vienna and knows that the best directors behave that way, that it is the dramatic tradition of great artists, who are so enthralled by their great artistic feat that they have no time to sort out the feelings of the performers.

>It is hard to imagine a more repulsive sight. I have seen one worker scold another for not supporting the weight piled on him while unloading goods, or a village elder at haymaking abuse a worker for not building a proper rick, and the worker would be obediently silent. But however unpleasant it was to see, the unpleasantness was softened by awareness of the fact that some necessary and important task was being done, that the mistake for which the superior scolded the worker might have ruined something necessary.

who gives a shit

>What, then, was being done here, and why, and for whom? It was quite possible that he, the director, was also worn out, like that worker; one could even see that he was indeed worn out; but who told him to suffer? And on account of what was he suffering? The movie they were filming was of the most ordinary kind, for those who are accustomed to them, but made up of the greatest absurdities one could imagine: an Indian king wants to get married, a bride is brought to him, he disguises himself as a minstrel, the bride falls in love with the sham minstrel and is in despair, but then learns that the minstrel is the king himself, and everyone is very pleased.

>That there never were and never could be any such Indians, and that what was portrayed bore no resemblance not only to Indians but to anything else in the world, except other movies - of that there can be no doubt. That no one communicates in pantomime, or expresses their feelings in a quartet, standing at a set distance and waving their arms, that nowhere except in a movie does anyone walk that way, with tinfoil halberds, in slippers, by pairs, that no one ever gets angry that way, is moved that way, laughs that way, cries that way, and that no one in the world can be touched by such a performance - of that there can also be no doubt.

>Involuntarily, a question comes to mind: for whom is this being done? Who can like it? If there are occasional pretty shots in the opera, which it would be pleasant to see, they could be shot simply, without those stupid costumes, processions, pantomimes and waving arms. As for the ballet, in which half-naked women make voluptuous movements, intertwining in various sensual garlands, it is a downright depraved performance. So that one simply fails to understand for whom it is intended. For a cultivated man it is unbearable, tiresome; to a real working man it is totally incomprehensible.

>It might be pleasing, and then just barely, to some depraved artisans who have picked up a gentlemanly spirit but have not yet been satiated with gentlemanly pleasures, and who want to give testimony of their civilization, or else to young lackeys.

>And all this vile stupidity is produced not only with no kindly merriment, with no simplicity, but with spite and beastly cruelty.

>It is said that this is done for the sake of art, and that art is a very important thing. But is it true that this is art, and that art is such an important thing that such sacrifices should be offered to it? This question is particularly important because art, for the sake of which the labor of millions of people, and the very lives of people, and, above all, love among people, are offered in sacrifice, this very art is becoming something more and more vague and indefinite in people’s minds.

>Criticism, in which lovers of art used to find support for their judgments of art, has lately become so contradictory that, if we should exclude from the realm of art all that the critics of various schools deny the right of belonging to art, almost no art would be left.

>Like theologians of various trends, so artists of various trends exclude and destroy each other. Listen to the artists of the present-day schools and you will see in all branches of art one set of artists denying the others: in poetry, the old romantics deny the Parnassians and decadents; the Parnassians deny the romantics and the decadents; the decadents deny all their predecessors and the symbolists; the symbolists deny all their predecessors and les mages, while les mages simply deny all their predecessors; in the novel, naturalists, psychologists and naturists deny each other. And it is the same in drama, movies, painting and music.

>So that art, which consumes enormous amounts of human labor and of human lives, and breaks down love among people, not only is not anything clearly and firmly defined, but is understood in such contradictory ways by its lovers, that it is difficult to say what generally is understood as art, and particularly as good, useful art, in the name of which such sacrifices as are offered to it may rightly be offered.

End of chapter. Then in the rest of the book Tolstoy defines what is art, explains the difference between good and bad art, and he gives his arguments. It's the greatest book on art ever written.

Tolstoy closes the book with::

>Art should make it so that the feelings of brotherhood and love of one’s neighbour, now accessible only to the best people of society, become habitual feelings, an instinct for everyone. By calling up the feelings of brotherhood and love in people under imaginary conditions, religious art will accustom people to experiencing the same feelings in reality under the same conditions; it will lay in people’s souls the rails along which the life behavior of people brought up by art will naturally run. And uniting the most diverse people in one feeling and abolishing separation, the art of the whole people will educate mankind for union, will show them, not in reasoning but in life itself, the joy of general union beyond the barriers set up by life.

>The purpose of art in our time consists in transferring from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that people’s well-being lies in being united among themselves and in establishing, in place of the violence that now reigns, that Kingdom of God — that is, of love — which we all regard as the highest aim of human life.

>Perhaps in the future science will open to art still newer, higher ideals, and art will realize them; but in our time, the purpose of art is clear and definite. The task of Christian art is the realization of the brotherly union of men.

>The purpose of art in our time consists in transferring from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that people’s well-being lies in being united among themselves and in establishing, in place of the violence that now reigns, that Kingdom of God — that is, of love — which we all regard as the highest aim of human life.

The Artist is responsible for inspiring people, not the medium in which he chooses to work, a passionless artist inspires nothing.

>future science will open to art still newer, higher ideals
This is Tolstoy's future, film has evolved.

what an excellent way to end the thread

Film is only 120 years old as a storytelling medium, it has barely evolved.

Poetry existed for 10,000 years before The Iliad, yet that's still seen as the first great poem of western civilisation, a poem written like 2700 years ago. I doubt most people read anything older than that. Shakespeare was a little over 400 years ago, and that's still seen as very old fashioned, despite it being literally thousands of years after The Iliad.

That shows that film is literally an embryo right now. It's just been invented. The first narrative film happened in 1895. We're barely figuring our its grammar.

>The Artist is responsible for inspiring people, not the medium in which he chooses to work, a passionless artist inspires nothing.

I think you don't understand Tolstoy's point, which is ok, because you haven't read the book. Tolstoy's not saying the medium shoudl inspire people- Tolstoy is saying the process of making movies and other art shouldn't be so complicated- and it should be in the service of something important. The purpose of art is to transmit emotions.

>art shouldn't be so complicated
art is complicated, if you doubt this go to a bookstore and have them direct you to the how to section and thumb through a few books on art.
>and it should be in the service of something important. The purpose of art is to transmit emotions.
If you cannot inspire someone you will accoplish neither of these goals

>inferiour

>art is complicated, if you doubt this go to a bookstore and have them direct you to the how to section and thumb through a few books on art.

Yes, I'm sure they know more than Tolstoy, who literally wrote a book called "What is art?"

>If you cannot inspire someone you will accoplish neither of these goals

Nobody disagrees with this.

>This is a medium which eliminates noise and delivers its substance through rigorously defined concepts: words describe ideas, which represent objects.
Fucking lol, there's nothing "rigorously defined" about the concepts used or discussed in literature. Every part of this post is retarded but that's the worst.

This is so ridiculous it feels like bait. The printing press happened. The industrial revolution happened. The internet happened. The only reason it took so long for poetry to take its form was because its advances were made in a vacuum, in a city or in a province. Most innovation never reached the global stage, and so the same lessons were probably learned over and over again by poets all over the world, centuries apart. Progress had to be slow because the technology didn't exist for the global communication which accelerates the quality of art.

The environment in which film has been developed is so obviously incomparable that I shouldn't even have to type this.