I wasn;t talking about Europe at all. Mickey Spillane, for instance, is one of the best-selling authors of the 20th century. The guy was absolutely huge and is by no means obscure. But -- The success of the Hammer TV show and Spillane's own stardom (he's been in movies and TV shows) only helped him be dismissed by the literati. The American tendancy is so largely to dismiss certain things until the "right" film director references them (anyone else remember the great Chet Baker scare of 1989?) and promotes that thing just so. The Europeans (and japanese) have long proven a more astute eye about our culture. It wasn;t until the French reprints of Goodis and Thompson that film noir -- arguably our greatest original form of popular literature -- was rediscovered in this country. Why? because someone accredited said it was okay to like it. The thing I find insulting isn;t when obscure things are brought to light ie the Sonny Clark memorial Society or that Herbie Nichols group. It's when things that are in the cultual mainstream -- Burt Bacharach, Mickey Spillane, Johnny cash -- are suddenly admitted to the exclusive fraternity of what is cool because some media-appointed hipster says it's cool and suddenly a lot of people approve. BTW -- Bunuel is referred to in just about every film text in this country, so people shouldn't need an album cover to know they should check him out. They should just be curious about something with such a longstanding reputation as being great. Believe it or not, Fellini's movies are fairly known in this country -- "Amarcord" will occasionally even pop up in a crossword puzzle. sh on 12/16/03 10:01 AM, Efrén del Valle at efrendv@yahoo.es wrote:
The idea that someone like Tarantino -- whose movies I've not seen -- somehow "made it cool" to enjoy blaxploitation films or whatever is a little offensive to me. To some of use growing up in the city during a certain period of American life, those movies were our Saturday afternoon. Were the cultural norms my youth a guilty pleasure until some hipster movie director accredited the cultural aspects of it? Was Mickey Spillane a guilty pleasure for me until John Zorn "sponsored" him?
Of course we don't need to remind you that not everyone lives in the United States (America is very big and the term should be used accordingly, by the way). For many of us, blaxploitation didn't even exist before that (it's an exaggeration, of course, we did but perhaps he made us note that there were some interesting movies to watch; before that it was a rumor, so to speak). I wouldn't feel offended if you checked a Luis Buñuel film after seeing the "Madness, Love and Mysticism" cover. That would be ridiculous. Don't compare your tradition or daily life exposure to certain "products" to those of someone in another country. Mike Hammer was an incredibly successful TV series that 99% people remember in Spain (at least in Catalonia), but I bet only 1% of them would even know Spillane's name vaguely. If I were you, I'd feel satisfied if a guy, after listening to one of my albums, wanted to check where all that music came from. It's how things work, so don't feel insulted so quickly.
Efrén del Valle JZ: Morricone Tribute (bootleg)
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