Mary's Reflections on American Print Culture

Do we do this today? I think of movie genres--Romantic Comedies, Art films, Dramas, Historical Fiction. What do we expect out of each one? Do we automatically think that a period film about Mary Queen of Scots is of higher quality than another Sandra Bullock movie, built around the ubiquitous "meet cute" plots (Roger Ebert's affectionate term for many romantic comedies)? Do we miss opportunities to discover where beliefs are being challenged or re-ified simply because we do not give credit to a certain genre?

Davidson thinks that the novel was actually given much credit which is why there was so much uproar over it. What in our day is like the novel? What causes uproar in the same way the novel did? or is our society so full of diverse and competing genres that the same type of response to a genre would likely not be repeated? Do the small factions of society who put up a fuss over trend like Harry Potter or The Da Vinci Code because of religious reasons carry the same persuasive power that the preachers in the early national period did? What are our most effective pulpits today?

One thing I wonder about today in the same way I suppose people wondered back in that early period of our country--Will people think for themselves or will they be constantly moved by the literature that dominates the society? I was having a conversation with someone about this concept of "ideology," wondering if we can ever distance ourselves as an objective viewer of even our own ideologies. Though it is hard to see a situation in which one could be a disinterested critic of his own views and the views of others, I still see that there is a need for critical evaluation. The problem comes when we try to decide on what grounds we will make our critical evaluations. Davidson reminds us that even as the grounds the aesthetic value of literature changed as books became more available to the public, the grounds on which one evaluated their social value could change too. Is this something always in flux, I wonder? We may be foolishly convincing ourselves that standards for good literature or profitable literature exist when really we are constantly changing these; in fact the production of literature and the creation of genres, if we look through Davidson's lens, significantly affect these changing standards.

I like standards, but with literature, I think that standards and criteria must always be contextual and flexible in the face of economic and social changes. When we learn how to critique, though, based on our socially constructed standards, I think this gives us more agency for producing works which will continue to move, inspire and change. Criticism and evaluation should be a dynamic rather than static, retrograde process.