Snobbery from someone named after the main character in a crappy romance novel. Brilliant.
May I ask what you mean when you assert that something is ‘film canon’. Are you using ‘canon’ to mean something other than what it usually means?
Uh-oh. I *was *totally on Claire’s side with this, but **lissener **had to go and post in there that she was right, so maybe she really is a bloviating snob.
Here I was, girding to reflexively mock smiling bandit for his novel approach to fighting ignorance (i.e., starting a thread to announce it), and then I read the linked thread, in which Ms. Beauchamp does indeed come across as quite the tongue-clucking snob. But hey, lissener’s got your back, so that’s something, right?
ETA: Curse your quickness, bup.
Really? You don’t understand what she means? Or are you just being kind of an ass?
What do you think it usually means? As far as I’m aware, both of those films are considered to be on a selective list of high quality, influential films which are “required viewing” for those who wish to be film literate. Although the half of Bridge Over the River Kwai that has the boring American stuff instead of Alec Guinness is pretty forgettable.
See also: Citizen Kane, Gone With the Wind, On the Waterfront, etc.
Yes, in the sense that Marlon Brando would now be an obscure actor if he hadn’t been in Superman.
Good thing that’s not what he said.
‘Sir’ Alec Guiness was knighted by the Queen in 1959, 18 years before that comic book movie, Star Wars, came out.
So, yeah, he had a little previous work experience. In my opinion he was a legendary actor.
There’s certainly a very good argument to be made against the modern film canon - for one thing, it isn’t very “modern”, it’s pretty subject to fashions (so the auteur theory gets big and suddenly Vertigo and The Searchers rule the roost?), it’s still too centered on Western films, etc. Only half of Bridge Over the River Kwai holds up, like I said above. But the OP was more of a “you don’t have to watch stuff made before you were born to be culturally literate - who watches that stuff, anyway? People’s dads?” thing, which rubs me the wrong way.
It was silly for Claire Beauchamp to make a case for Guinness through the theater, however, since obviously I can’t go back in time and see him in a play. I’m sure every neighborhood Blockbuster has Lawrence of Arabia, though.
You ARE trying to pit someone else, right? Not just come in here and masochistically prove that YOU, in fact, are the tard in this fight? Cuz, well, it’s not working. Just so you know.
I think canon usually means some writing or tenet that a church has made official doctrine, and, by extension, the body of work that is an ‘official’ part of an artist’s or cultural phenomenon’s oeuvre.
So fanfic is not canon. Whether a Star Trek novel is canon may be a meaningful thing to talk about, to decide whether incidents in that book affect the characters in the work that is canon.
Never heard it used to mean the ‘can’t miss’ part of a, well, canon.
OK, now I really think you don’t know what it means.
I don’t think anyone is disputing that. The question is whether not knowing that automatically qualifies one as being culturally illiterate.
As an example, my brother is a well educated professional who has travelled the world and this country quite a bit. He is well informed on current affairs. He reads quite a lot, both fiction, non fiction, popular magazines, more “literary” magazines, and so on. I’ll bet he couldn’t name three movies Alec Guinness was in. He watches movies sometimes, but Alec Guinness movies is not his cup of meat. Does that make him, as one poster asserts, blindingly culturally illiterate?
She took her user name from one of my favorite literary characters (Sept 22!) so as far as I’m concerned, she can do no wrong.
I was (mostly) cured of that when someone responded, “I hope you get help with your ennui.”
From Mirriam-Webster:
3 [Middle English, from Late Latin, from Latin, standard] a: an authoritative list of books accepted as Holy Scripture b: the authentic works of a writer c: a sanctioned or accepted group or body of related works <the canon of great literature>
3c is the usage at hand. When you see the phrase “Western canon” or “literary canon”, that means “a set of books educated people can generally assumed to be familiar with”. You know, the one with Shakespeare in it. When you see the phrase “film canon”, you can generally expect to see some Citizen Kane action. When you see the phrase “OMG the Buffy movie is so not canon,” that’s the definition you’re familiar with.
Of course there is also the musical canon (interestingly enough, Pachelbel’s Canon in D is a composition in the “canon” form, and it can probably be found in the “musical canon”), canon law, canonical scripture, etc.
ETA - “Canon” is one of those words that looks really weird the more you type it.
Here’s a thought experiment for the stuck-up elitists here abouts. Can anyone deny that sports is huge part of our culture? I mean tremendously, staggeringly, blindingly huge?
Does not knowing who won the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship last year, or the names of the last three Super Bowl MVPS, make someone culturally illiterate? Here’s a clue. There is more to culture than movies. Much much more.
I dunno, there are stage actors of the past who are still famous and culturally relevant. Shakespeare and John Wilkes Booth, for instance.
For their acting? 
Look, if we were talking about “Oh my god, you philistine! You haven’t seen Last Year at Marienbad?!”, you might have more of a point there. Bridge Over the River Kwai is a movie about a badass British army guy, a badass Japanese army guy, and a badass American army guy. There is a prison camp escape and a scene where they get the special effects by throwing a real train off a real bridge. It’s hardly a film with no popular appeal.
ETA - and looking down-thread, it even has the “Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” song as the musical contribution. I mean, really.