Ludleth19
In graduate school for example, it was pretty painfully obvious that most people didn't actually read a book and come to their own conclusions, but rather read summaries from people they already agreed with and worked backwards from there, especially on more theoretical matters.
I feel like on the long term this just leads to a person superficially knowing a lot about a wide variety of topics, but never truly going deep and gaining real understanding on any of them- it's less "knowing" and more the feeling of knowing.
Again, not saying this in an accusatory way because I totally do engage in this behavior too, I think everyone does to some degree, but I just feel the older I get, the less valuable this sort of information is. It's great for broad context and certain situations I suppose, but in a lot of areas I consider myself an expert, I would probably strongly disagree with summaries given on subjects and they also tend to miss finer details or qualifying points that are addressed with proper context.
I think you and I may have different standards and taste. I don't disagree that there's plenty of good stuff being made, but a lot of it is hard to find and sorting through all the chaff is a gigantic pain.
This just points to the broader issue I was getting at in my previous comment. Record labels have never been great for artists, but they've pretty much abdicated any value they brought as a sort of filter awhile ago and have handed that off to algorithms that are questionable at best.
Quality also isn't always rewarded "fairly" or given a fair chance to catch on with a different market than whatever insular scene it exists within- this is compounded further via the insular nature of online groups too. Music labels and streaming platforms offer basically no support to musicians and groups who need it the most and who could benefit from a more hands on approach, and instead defer all their resources onto a few golden geese, because its safe and pays the bills.
This is short sighted though and creates an atmosphere of stagnation- a similar process is happening in film as well, culture is just being mediated by algorithms and markets, which is why culture has become so stagnant, predictable, boring, and circular.
I think this also simultaneously highlights the genius of someone like Felini with 8 1/2, referentiality done right to actually get at deeper themes/characterization, not just for the sake of referentiality itself.
This was written by someone who hasn't seriously engaged in reading novels lol
Novels have been doing this sort of thing on a pretty deep level since basically their inception, and in more modern contexts no movie could replicate something like Pale Fire or Gravity's Rainbow for example. Self-referentiality is also a pretty boring trick after awhile, self-awareness and referentiality are very juvenile creative traits that often (not always) are seeking some sort of pat on the back for the mere act of referentiality itself.
These things should be starting points, not the focus of an entire work unless there's a broader point to be made. Fredric Jameson has written a great deal about this sort of thing, it's basically the default position of culture in a lot of ways now, there's nothing inherently exciting about it.
This isn't to say one medium is superior to the other or anything, I just find it to be a very weird critique of "mere" novels when self-referentiality goes way deeper there, the only things I can really think of that come close are 8 1/2 or maybe some of Charlie Kaufman's work like Adaptation.
We undoubtedly have reaped immense benefits from the industrial revolution for example- that doesn't mean I'd have any interest in living through it or that it was executed in a way that prioritized the people who lived during those times.