Synchronicitousness
A thing that has been popping up a lot this week across various things - books I've been reading, threads on Twitter, papers at the symposium yesterday - has been that thing about the valuing of Works of Art in various fields for doing things which are visibly technically difficult or remarkable, or demand Effort from the person engaging with the work, or are not For The Ordinary Common Reader who just wants to enjoy something...
And the consequent downputting of work which does not go showing off its craft/technique chops, even though they may be there, because they're not putting them are the forefront, they're being used in the service of telling the story or whatever.
I'm not saying this is universally gendered - instances which cropped up here and there were V Woolf and G Stein, given that the context in a couple of instances was Modernism - but it does tend to be weighted in that direction (one of the discussions was around awards in the realm of cinema and what gets to be rewarded). In interwar litcrit it was v much related to the rise of the idea of the professional critic who was not merely a belle-lettrist but had had proper university training and was eddycated in the field.
An elitist view which tended to skew male... This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/3027052.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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