Kristin Thompson ja David Bordwell pyörittävät aika erinomaisen mainiota elokuva-aiheista blogia Observations on film art and Film Art. On mahtava lukea tekstiä, jossa yhdistyvät akateeminen leffatutkimus ja perinteinen filmihulluus. Linkkasin jo aiemmin Bordwellin erinomaisiin merkintöihin coveragen käsitteestä ja vaikutuksesta ja Departedista.

Uusimmassa, Walt Disneytä käsittelevässä merkinnässään Bordwell analysoi muun muassa Disneyn animaatiotekniikoiden ainutlaatuisuutta. Samassa jutussa tulee naseva sivallus elokuvakritiikin suuntaan:

The other big-picture explanation Gabler offers is a Zeitgeist model. Disney represents the American imagination. By tapping into Jungian archetypes, his 1930s films could both “capture and then soothe the national malaise.” – – Despite these claims, Gabler doesn’t dwell much on the ways the studio seized what he calls “the American psyche,” perhaps because he senses that such explanations tend to be uninformative. One can grab almost any cluster of traits, find them in American popular art, and assert them as quintessentially American. This is how mainstream journalists make current Hollywood releases worth writing about: treating them not as artworks with distinctive appeals and a place in traditions and histories, but as reflections of whatever immediate social trends the writer chooses to pick out.

Touché!