Frank Kogan

If every shot radically decenters the actors, then "decentering the actors" becomes the center of the film.

Hmmm. My complaint about rock criticism and musicwrite is that the critics don't know how or aren't willing to sustain an intellectual conversation - and this seems to be a problem of concentration: a refusal to communicate, a refusal to understand, and a refusal to follow through. But this isn't because in today's de-centered world people are too pulled this way and that to concentrate on the same subject matter (though it is difficult to gather people together to all talk about the same thing). Rather, the problem is that when person B says to person A, "You said X but I did not understand you, and you said Y but you seemed to contradict yourself," and A never gets back to B with a response, or A gives a response that just repeats X and Y in slightly re-worded form, this isn't because in today's culture A has so many interesting things to think about, in a wide variety all over the place, that he just never really got around to thinking about B's comments (though of course the culture does provide quite a variety for anyone who wants it). It's more that noticing problems and possibilities in his own ideas just isn't something that A finds fun, or that A even knows how to do.

And the reason the health care debate is so distorted isn't because, e.g., people are distracted by what's happening with Conan and Jay or whoever else happens to jump in front of their radar and if people hadn't been distracted they'd have taken the time to find out what's actually in the health bill, and if the media would only report what's in the health bill people would then know it. My guess is that under no circumstances would people take the time to find out what's in the health bill. (Confession: I don't know what's in the health bill.)

(Not sure how well the last two paragraphs hook up with the issue I was raising in my post. Over on Tom's Tumblr, in response to his linking Hornby's horrendous review of Kid A, I made a couple of points on the supposed "time" issue, which I recast as an issue of when and whether people are willing to put effort into what they do with their leisure time. The reason I didn't repost here on my lj, as I would normally do when I post something so substantial, was that I hadn't said anything new; really all I was doing was subtextually repeating my gripe about how hard it is to get people to play with me. But if I were to repost, I'd have add the frame, "How do we model reflective thinking and intellectual interchange as something that people might potentially view as fun? And also, how do we engage the problem of incompetence? People spend a lot of effort and emotion online arguing poorly. Is there a way that arguing well can seem more rewarding than arguing poorly?" [Speaking of de-centering, I've now wandered far away form my original topic.]