In the previous article (only last week) I said I was considering doing a series of articles about research, and best practices for it. Over the weekend that followed, three things happened:
- I got a comment from Corey Creekmur saying that my article was both interesting and important, but that I should keep in mind that it was not until fairly recently that it became easy to do deep research, as films were not available to watch to the extent that they are now.
- I read two new articles about film, in Swedish newspapers, whose ideas of the history of the areas the articles' focused on were both expected and completely wrong.
- I got an email from a friend wondering why I was continually writing about, and complaining about, these things. "Just do the work the way it should be done and let conventional wisdom take care of itself. It always has and it always will."
To the first point; Corey is right but, as I said in my article, the researcher needs to adjust their arguments so they do not go further than what the research tells them. When you have less access to the necessary films this should be reflected in the scope and reach of the arguments you try to make. If you do not have access to the necessary films, you should not argue as if you had. Another problem is that contemporary research, and books/articles, often rely on older articles and books, despite them not being fit for purpose. Corey also said that it is worse when researchers and writers today do not do the required research, even though they can. I agree with this too.
But one reason why proper research is often (I am tempted to say usually) not being done is that most people, whether scholars or critics or journalists, seem to be knowledgeable enough of the conventional wisdom, and do not see any need to do the required research, because they believe they know what is needed (as in the two articles I referred to above). But that conventional wisdom about film history, whichever aspect of it that it concerns, is almost always wrong. I do not know why that is, but it is a fact. Whether we are talking about technical developments, studio systems, genre developments, audience reactions, box office numbers, New Waves, golden ages, censorship rules, neorealism, directors' reputations, or any other thing you could think of, it seems as if at some point it was collectively decided that "Now we know enough." and what was considered the conventional wisdom at that point remains uncontested, regardless of how ahistorical and misleading it might be. Whatever you think you know about a period, genre, movement, convention, or country,
assume that it is wrong unless you have watched a lot of relevant films
and done proper research yourself. There are those who are doing, or have done, the kind of research that is needed to break with the conventional wisdom, and published on it, but that has not helped much in terms of general awareness.
In film studies, and film criticism, there has over time been an increased emphasis on women and on ethnic and sexual minorities, but while this is right and important, it is not the same as questioning that conventional wisdom. It is more frequently a case of taking the conventional wisdom for granted and adding to it, or criticising the conventional wisdom as if it was the truth of how things were.
Which leads us to my friend's comment. He too is right. Since this is the situation, I will have to accept this and move on. Not least because my writing might become intolerable if I turn into a writer's version of another Fredrik (or Frederick), Max von Sydow's character in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), railing against the world. (“If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.”)
I might still do book criticism on the blog as this remains relevant, as long as the book in question is something widely known and used. That is another difficulty, to know to what extent something that bugs you is even known to other people. It can sometimes feel like "everybody" is talking about something, but that is hardly ever true. More often than not it is probably just a handful of people online, and it will all be forgotten the next day, even if it was a four-page spread in a leading newspaper. It is best to let such things slide. But a new book by, say, David Bordwell is a different matter. If I am going to engage in discussions and criticism of someone else's work, it should be with somebody like that (not that I often have reason to complain about Bordwell) and not some hack. To criticise some unknown person's recently published PhD thesis, regardless of how bad it is, is not worth the effort, and might even be cruel.
[A postscript is now available here: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2021/05/conventional-wisdom-part-ii.html]
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I use "conventional wisdom" in the way J.K. Galbraith defined it: "Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability. They are highly predictable. It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom." (From The Affluent Society (1958).)
If you wish I had provided specific examples of common mistakes/misunderstandings, I choose not to because there are too many. But I have written repeatedly about it on the blog before, and examples are easy to find here. Such as my recent posts about "New Hollywood".
