Prophets of the Modern

I enjoyed this book review. Here is a passage,

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"The modernism Gabriel Josipovici advocates...a sort of artistic middle...way... One extreme his writing studiously avoids is...rote representation, or the notion that words correspond perfectly with numinous reality. [...] As Josipovici says of contemporary writers still laboring in the vein of nineteenth-century “naturalism,” they confuse the reality-effect for reality. The end result is usually a doubling down on grittiness, as if exchanging love for lust or a whisper for a curse in the novel allows some fuller entry into the depths of life. [...]

At the other end of the spectrum, modernism seeks to avoid the jouissance of pure abstraction, a language game that denies the existence of transcendent truth altogether. [...] As clichéd as it might be to point out, this really amounts to a kind of nihilism dressed up in garish academic lingo. And morally defunct as a complete denial of transcendent truth might be, it also makes for boring art."

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This passage summarizes nicely the author's modernist ethos. It reminds me why film is fundamentally modernist at it's core--Show don't tell. With this reading two quotes leap out as movie criticism: 'confuse the reality-effect for reality', 'complete denial of transcendent truth...makes for boring art.' Makes me think of action movies with lots of guns, and movies with rambling scenes without an evident plot.