Ostendes tuum et ostendam meus

ba dum chhh

[elizabethanism]

In 1993, the New York Times published an article criticising Federico Fellini and some other foreign language films for being “hard work”. MARTIN SCORSESE sent this incredible letter in response.

[arukou-arukou]

[Transcription:

New York, 19 Nov 1993

To the Editor [New York Times]:

“Excuse me: I Must Have Missed Part of the Movie” (The Week in Review, 7 November) cites Federico Fellini as an example of a filmmaker whose style gets in the way of his storytelling and whose films, as a result, are not easily accessible to audiences. Broadening that argument, it includes other artists: Ingmar Bergman, James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Bernardo Bertolucci, John Cage, Alain Resnais and Andy Warhol.

It’s not the opinion I find distressing, but the underlying attitude toward artistic expression that is different, difficult, or demanding. Was it necessary to publish this article only a few days after Fellini’s death? I feel it’s a dangerous attitude, limiting, intolerant. If this is the attitude toward Fellini, one of the old masters, and the most accessible at that, imagine what chance new foreign films and filmmakers have in this country.

It reminds me of a beer commercial that ran a while back. The commercial opened with a black and white parody of a foreign film–obviously a combination of Fellini and Bergman. Two young men are watching it, puzzled, in a video store, while a female companion seems more interested. A title comes up: “Why do foreign films have to be so foreign?” The solution is to ignore the foreign film and rent an action-adventure tape, filled with explosions, much to the chagrin of the woman.

It seems the commercial equates “negative” associations between women and foreign films: weakness, complexity, tedium. I like action-adventure films too. I also like movies that tell a story, but is the American way the only way of telling stories?

The issue here is not “film theory,” but cultural diversity and openness. Diversity guarantees our cultural survival. When the world is fragmenting into groups of intolerance, ignorance and hatred, film is a powerful tool to knowledge and understanding. To our shame, your article was cited at length by the European press.

The attitude that I’ve been describing celebrates ignorance. It also unfortunately confirms the worst fears of European filmmakers. Is this closed-mindedness something we want to pass along to future generations?

If you accept the answer in the commercial, why not take it to its natural progression:

Why don’t they make movies like ours? Why don’t they tell stories as we do? Why don’t they dress as we do? Why don’t they eat as we do? Why don’t they talk as we do? Why don’t they think as we do? Why don’t they worship as we do? Why don’t they look like us? Ultimately, who will decide who “we” are?

–Martin Scorsese

End transcription]

[melgillman]

I drew a quick little comics essay today about a topic near and dear to my heart: horror for kids!

Or, “why some kids like to read books that scare them, and why you should let them.”

[antidisneyinc]

when hayao miyazaki said that true love was two people inspiring each other to live…recognizing just how hard living is, putting one foot in front of the other every day, how easy it is to lose our passion for it…… that’s the real shit

[queenmoriarty]

POV: you now live with the village witch

[hndmra-deactivated20220525]

Jerusalem - Palestine.

[fullmetalfisting]

My boyfriend has to go to the ren fair for work but i can come and he wanted to do a matching costume. He was like “I want to be Frodo” and I was like “oh cool I can be Shelob” which was, apparently, not the couples costume he was thinking of

[fullmetalfisting]

I was like “babe she has the most screen time of any woman in Return of the King” and my boyfriend was like “that cannot be true,” looked it up, and said “i can’t believe that’s true”

[moreglitter]

finally a strong female character who doesn't shave her legs

[citizencosmos]

[adeptasororitas]

The most relevant meme to ever meme.

[tiktoksijustthinkareneat]

[ladyhistory]

Me entering any museum: man I’m so excited to learn all the things

Also me: GIFT SHOP GIFT SHOP GIFT SHOP

[wandering-elf]

There are two dragons inside of you. One hoards knowledge and the other hoards trinkets. They’re both very excited when you bring them to a museum

[creating-a-mess]

100 year old Galapagos tortoise with a few weeks old Galapagos baby posing for a new family photo, and its own baby photo from 100 years ago.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

love that for 100 years people have looked at these beasts and thought “heehee what if the big one wore the little one like a hat”

[brightwanderer]

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

[lone-nyctophile]

The academic urge to study every ancient mythology.

[chanelbagsandcigarettedrags]

[heckifiknowcomics]

[hobbithouses]

It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,' he used to say. 'You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no telling where you might be swept off to.

[ispyspookymansion]

if you want me to consume a new media you MUST catch me at the exact moment when the stars are aligned and the air pressure is equal to the current degree of the sun’s peak against the horizon and all the cosmic energies are perfectly unified (aka my old interest is fading out) or i will nod and say “im adding that to my list!” Knowing theres no chance i will check it out

[ispyspookymansion]

“unless its a book!” “unless you tell me it has gay people in it!” “this but only for live action shows” “theres a good chance i’ll get to it eventually” no wrong this post is not for you this post is ONLY for bitches who could have a treasured friend recommend them something that sounds grown in a lab to be your personal catnip and, with no choice in the matter, immediately know it will never be the right time to watch/read/listen to it

[sisterofiris]

One of the most powerful moments I experienced as an ancient history student was when I was teaching cuneiform to visitors at a fair. A father and his two little children came up to the table where I was working. I recognised them from an interfaith ceremony I’d attended several months before: the father had said a prayer for his homeland, Syria, and for his hometown, Aleppo.

All three of them were soft-spoken, kind and curious. I taught the little girl how to press wedges into the clay, and I taught the little boy that his name meant “sun” and that there was an ancient Mesopotamian God with the same name. I told them they were about the same age as scribes were when they started their training. As they worked, their father said to them gently: “See, this is how your ancestors used to write.”

And I thought of how the Ancient City of Aleppo is almost entirely destroyed now, and how the Citadel was shelled and used as a military base, and how Palmyran temples were blown up and such a wealth of culture and history has been lost forever. And there I was with these children, two small pieces of the future of a broken country, and I was teaching them cuneiform. They were smiling and chatting to each other about Mesopotamia and “can you imagine, our great-great-great-grandparents used to write like this four thousand years ago!” For them and their father, it was more than a fun weekend activity. It was a way of connecting, despite everything and thousands of kilometres away from home, with their own history.

This moment showed me, in a concrete way, why ancient studies matter. They may not seem important now, not to many people at least. But history represents so much of our cultural identity: it teaches us where we come from, explains who we are, and guides us as we go forward. Lose it, and we lose a part of ourselves. As historians, our role is to preserve this knowledge as best we can and pass it on to future generations who will need it. I helped pass it on to two little Syrian children that day. They learnt that their country isn’t just blood and bombs, it’s also scribes and powerful kings and Sun-Gods and stories about immortality and tablets that make your hands sticky. And that matters.