Popular Cultures, Ordinary Criticism: A Philosophy of Minor Genres

Abstract

Let us recall the controversy sparked by the proposal, in August of 2018, to create a new movie category for the Oscars-"best popular film"-which would have recognized blockbuster movies, including, for example, Ryan Coogler's Black Panther (2018), a superb film that is now being honored again due to the untimely death of its lead actor, Chadwick Boseman.Opponents argued that, in principle, the Oscars already recognize films that are both "great" and popular: from New York- Miami (1935) to Titanic (1998), Gladiator (2001), and The Lord of the Rings (2003).But for at least the last decade, it has been rare that a "popular" film (one with a very large audience such as Black Panther, which was a formative experience for many viewers) has been acknowledged by the institutions of cinema, and there is a certain virtuous hypocrisy in rejecting, even on the basis of excellent arguments, the creation of a specific category for movies that are in fact excluded from artistic recognition by the Academy.The debate made clear the difficulty movie critics and the institutions of cinema have in accounting for the reality of "popular" culture.The audiences for art have changed since the end of the last century, and, due to a lack of study, adequate theoretical tools, and clear awareness of culture's shift toward "the common," philosophy has not yet sufficiently observed or analyzed this democratization of art in the age of digital media, or the constitution of a new set of values through the mass distribution of television series.And yet what we are witnessing today is simply the realization of what Ralph Waldo Emerson and later John Dewey called for: an art anchored in the spectator's experience and in everyday life 1 ; an art that is not cut off from ordinary life or placed upon a pedestal.In 1939, Walter Benjamin reflected on the effects of new technical possibilities for reproducing musical and plastic works of art; today, the expansion of the audience for art and the creation of new forms, agents, and models of artistic action and practice thanks to the digital turn 1

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