Godard once said: "Culture is the rule and art the exception"

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I don't think it's rich coming from Godard at all. Based on the movies of his that I've seen, I think he is qualified to talk about art if he wants to.

This is a rather sweeping statement. I'm not sure I agree. In any case, there's a big difference between making art that pays tribute to popular culture, and making art which is a mere product of popular culture (if such a thing is possible).

If anti-rockism is to be equated with a haughty dismissiveness towards any claims made for the exceptional or disruptive qualities of art or the artist's role, then I don't think I can get on board with it.

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OTM Nate. The "rockism" thing tends to simply be an assault leveled at romanticism, if not the premise of art in general. this whittling down of actual debate to a single catchphrase is getting really pointless for me, and resembles right-wing talk show rhetoric more than intelligent people engaging in a discourse.

Poorly expressed by me. I meant that art could be considered a natural part of our more general social space instead of something that is outside it or opposite or is somehow fighting it. All those things art can do, but it can also be about deeply reinforcing a certain predominant cultural ideals and even effacing the author, ie like Ancient Egyptian art or certain Hollywood movies from the studio star era. Art can do many things but modernists tend to glamorise the alienated individualist aspect of it.

that said, art is not simply a structual product. leave structuralism behind, though, and you still can't deny intransigent things like tradition, markets, ect, all of which play their role in the production of art and culture alike.

but again: what is so radical about godard these days?

Actually, Godard says both those things in 'JLG on JLG'. The second part of his formulation has been mis-attributed to me. Or perhaps it's part of my nefarious plot to googleconquer the googleworld.

I think he disrupted some preconceptions about what a film could be. Sorry if that's vague. Anyway, my point is not that the conventional or popular culture cannot also be art. Also, I suspect that Godard's statement is not a rigorous philosophical thesis that should be parsed by rules of strict logic or should be applied universally. I think it's more of one artist's personal motto. More of an aspiration, perhaps. It makes sense to see art as part of a dialogue with culture, but I don't think any artist ever sat down and said, I want to make something that is a pure product of my culture.

Exactly right. But the thing is: this is culture's definition, practically, of the artist.

If Spielberg had made his best films in the '50s, JLG and the Cahiers crowd woulda creamed over them.

(mark s and Morbius's comments inevitably call to mind Marty McFly playing Van Halen for Chuck Berry's brother! Or is that just me.)

Are Godard's retrospective elaborations of Uncle Ho's niece credible to scholars of Godard? What did Colin McCabe say?

Colin MacCabe (My apologies for the misspelling of his name.)
Do you recoil when you encounter blackface?
Did Uncle Sam's nephew and Uncle Ho's niece provoke the same reaction at the time? Would it today?

MacCabe doesn't mention those scenes except to say that Pierrot features "a much stronger reference to Vietnam and American imperialism" than the earlier films.
That entire scene, with the princess and the sailor on the dock, is really dreary. I don't think it's racist because it's framed as a pantomime and a caricature, but I can imagine some viewers being put off.

Could Godard's work be perceived as against cultural imperialism? In À bout de souffle I thought he was having fun with American culture in a way that reserved judgment, or did not need to judge, but definitely not with Pierrot le fou. If there is a statement, is it against popular culture or imperialism? (It has been a long time since I watched the first film mentioned.)

This is reminding me of a documentary by Louis Malle that followed a farming town in Illinois, which brings to mind the quieter style of Rohmer. I guess every nation has things that can be easy targets but are also good and interesting representations of a culture.

(I think Godard could carry to any screen. I think Rivette was for the stage and Rohmer and Malle for film (because they are quiet?).)

love this quote