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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jeremy Ackerman-Yost" data-source="post: 5162700" data-attributes="member: 4720">This is the core of your mistake.There never was an opportunity for dialogue.  Ebert has rejected efforts to have a dialogue on this in the past.  His mind is closed.That is not slander, but a fact.  But it's cool.  He's playing out the role history has laid out for him as an elder of a recently established art form when another one starts to appear.You don't see the criticism community of painting or sculpture loudly proclaiming these things because they already lost to film and have become comfortable with the notion of a bigger space for art to live in.  Film, however, is currently King of the Mountain.  Some filmmakers (and lots of film critics) have the memory deeply ingrained of when film wasn't Art.  They remember when they were the virtuous Barbarians and Art was under the control of some Evil Empire.  But they conquered that Empire, and in their minds Film sits on a throne.  After all, that's what happens when you kill the other Arts and take their stuff, right?  But they've been there a while, and now they're afraid some other barbarians are at the gate.  They fear for their throne, not yet realizing that it is not and never was a singular throne.So Ebert and some like him will stand up and deliver speeches to the people, telling them how awesome Film is, and how much Film has done for them, and how could they abandon Film for these upstart Barbarians, who aren't Art anyway.Everyone is acting out their part in the cultural narrative.  All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again.Which is why I learned to study history.  It makes the present hysterical to watch, black humor though it be.</blockquote>

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