What the Manolo Is…

Manolo says, it is Tuesday, time to see what the Manolo is…

The Manolo had not seen the
Annie Hall movie in many years, and after viewing it two nights ago, is happy to report that it has held up remarkably well, indeed, most of the jokes still seemed fresh, and the topic, love found and then lost, is as timely and as bittersweet as it has ever been. It is truly the lovely, funny movie.

This is not to say that everything in the movie has survived, or that the film is as completely trenchant as it was in 1977. For the example, the era of Freudian analysis has passed (as perhaps even the era of Freud himself). Likewise, also gone is the era of intelligent art cinema, when we would eagerly stand in lines to see the latest Ingemar Bergman film.

And this leads the Manolo to the next natural conclusion (reached over lunch yesterday with the Manolo’s good friend Izzy) that high-minded intellectual and philosophical discourse, which is both mocked and celebrated in Annie Hall, has mostly vanished from the popular culture.

For better or worse, no one could produce the movie that makes comedic reference to Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death and Jacques Choron’s Death and Western Thought, and expect to be understood in any meaningful way.

Comments

klee 16 years ago

So when will the Manolo be watching Project Runway???? We miss your witty and insightful recaps!

Manolo the Shoeblogger 16 years ago

Many apologies. The Manolo has been happily over-occupied. dining with friends and attending parties, in preparation for his Argentinian adventure, and so he has not yet had the chance to watch the most recent episodes of Project Runway.

bookgirl 16 years ago

Not totally gone, I recently read the great book Socrates Cafe, by Christopher Phillips, who promotes this kind of thinking in all sorts of settings. Highly recommended!

megaera 16 years ago

Oooh, add some Biaggi to your Piazolla! (I do love Piazolla, but apart from the music, I’m not overly enchanted with Tango Nuevo.)

Noga 16 years ago

“…that high-minded intellectual and philosophical discourse, which is both mocked and celebrated in Annie Hall, has mostly vanished from the popular culture.”

To be succeeded, alas, by the multiculti mambo jambo so beloved of the post-modernist deconstructionalist literatti. Ex:

“Then she points to the poststructuralist theoretical feminists who destabilize the concept of the subject as masculine/male by saying that the female isn’t a subject, isn’t fully in the Symbolic, that “woman” is on the margins, in the body, and is thus more free to play than man.”

SteveG 16 years ago

These articulate comments remind me of one of the latter scenes in “I Claudius” where Claudius is conversing with Livia just prior to her death. He asks here many questions about who she has murdered, and one of her replies is: “Lost your stutter, I see.”

ChaChaHeels 16 years ago

I think this is for the worst–after all, instead of people working at taking in great art and movies and literature for their own sakes and for the pleasure this gives, we live in a world where people are satisfied to read gossip pages about celebrities, so they can feel superior to them.

I think the post-modernist deconstructionalists are at least a bit challenging, and for that I’m grateful (and besides, I’m going to spend the whole day thinking about how women are more free to play than men, now!)

xoconostle 16 years ago

Not only has the popular culture abandoned a healthy intellectual discourse, it has demonized it. Woody Allen poked fun at clueless intellectuals brilliantly, hilariously and mercilessly in “Annie Hall” and “Manhattan,” but unfortunately that sort of image, of the unethical clueless braniac, is pretty much the dominant meme in today’s popular lexicon. This very comment would be dismissed as “elitist” by many in today’s climate. Meanwhile, it’s always nice to check up on what The Manolo is reading… :-)

Karl Fassbinder 16 years ago

Ingmar Bergman! So dark! But also so playful!