The new tribalism in the age of the media is not necessarily the enemy of commercialism;
it is a direct outgrowth of commercialism and its ally, perhaps even its instrument.
If a movie has enough clout, reviewers and columnists who were bored are likely to give it another chance, until on the second or third viewing, they discover that it affects them “viscerally” — and a big expensive movie is likely to do just that.
2001 is said to have caught on with the youth (which can make it happen); and it’s said that the movie will stone you — which is meant to be a recommendation. Despite a few dissident voices — I’ve heard it said, for example, that 2001 “gives you a bad trip because the visuals don’t go with the music” — the promotion has been remarkably effective with students. “The tribes” tune in so fast that college students thousands of miles apart “have heard” what a great trip 2001 is before it has even reached their city.
Pauline Kael
“Kubrick was impressed by the meaning of cinema as pure knowledge more than anybody else (except Tarkovsky).
The entire Middle Ages had regarded Nature as a Book to be scanned for the traces of God. Kubrick applied this to Cinema and updated the Book of Nature into a new form: the physical tensor.
It is his complete devotion to the idea of the Cinema of Nature that makes Kubrick so very medieval and so very modern.
The gap between medieval and modern is this:
The Medieval Book of Nature was for contemplatio like the Bible.
The Renaissance Book of Nature was for applicatio and use like movable types.
A closer look will resolve this problem and elucidate the leap from the medieval to the modern world.”
Not Pauline Kael
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