“Profoundly disturbing moral choices”

I agree that we can perhaps paint literature or movies in a scale and say this movie is easier to understand or this one does a better job of presenting its themes or whatever but I do not agree with Scorsese and Le Guin with what seems like a black and white division of good art or bad art.

This is where I think you're confused about the issue. This isn't about elitist gatekeeping of what genre is and isn't art. It's about making a distinction between thoughtful storytelling and entertainment storytelling. It's the difference between Transformers and Citizen Kane, both of which were extremely popular.

I was trying to give examples not of hidden gems but of incredibly popular art that was panned by critics but is now considered high art. The classic example of this is Shakespeare which in his time was popular theater like going to a pantomime or musical and is now considered high art. The point being that the value of a piece varies. Perhaps in 500 years endgame will held up and studied in school like we study Shakespeare today. Who knows?

Shakespeare was not panned in his time. Maybe you're thinking of Chaucer. But, that isn't a good analogy, because those works that you listed were dismissed because of their genre, not their content. A good example of this is Edgar Allen Poe, whose work was dismissed by critics as sensationalist trite, based purely on the fact that they were gothic shorts. Anyone really reading Poe at the time, knew he was great. That isn't the case with the MCU. And that is the odd thing about your argument. I don't think anyone, including the MCU filmmakers would try to claim their movies are of the same storytelling caliber as Scorsese or anything other than entertainment. Note that Scorsese didn't say those movies were "bad." He said they were like a theme park, which is exactly the goal of the MCU filmmakers. They want to make a product that everyone enjoys, not thoughtful storytelling, but entertainment storytelling. Scorsese isn't dismissing a genre, he's criticizing the actual storytelling in the MCU.

Again, I love the MCU. I'm in the process of re-watching the whole series. I also enjoy Warhammer 40K novels. I can enjoy those things and at the same time acknowledge Scorsese's and Le Guin's point.

/r/Fantasy Thread Parent