SAINT ETIENNE – “Popular”

As I am sat at home waiting for a delivery of blue vinyl floor tiles, with plenty nothing better to do, I looked this up! Turns out that Germans and Austrians DO sometimes eat schnitzels with spätzle or spaetzle — which is indeed a kind of southern teutonic noodle (either as gnocchi or vermiform). There is much debate whether this practice predates the song however.

To return to one of the many slightly less O/T discussions:

A very well established British film monthly recently invited its critics and reviewers — as well as a large number of bigwigs across the industry — to participate in its newest ten-yearly poll of the “Ten Greatest Films of All Time”, a very long-running project. They are careful not to be dogmatic about the definition of “greatest” — as the guidelines put it:

“As for what we mean by ‘Greatest’, we leave that open to your interpretation. You might choose the ten films you feel are most important to film history, or the ten that represent the aesthetic pinnacles of achievement, or indeed the ten films that have had the biggest impact on your own view of cinema.”

That encourages contributors to cut across and perhaps distinguish three different qualities, I think: is this important? is this good? does this mean a lot to me? The first looks at something’s place in a broader history — the second at the way something handles the tasks it has set itself — and the third begins to approach (but is not quite the same as) a purely personal response. As a rubric, this — to me — hints at the idea that they would love people to be perverse, without saying so out loud. Because if the poll ends up crowning the same set of films as it did last time, that’s a bit boring (and hence counter-productive for the magazine).

On the whole, I tend to think “historically important” delivers the least interesting polls, because voters will end up second-guessing a result very largely outside their input, with much-too-potent reversion to mean, and worrying about “standing the test of time” (zzzz) and “influence” (grrrr) and other dreary factors. But a poll that strongly emphasises “unexpected private pleasures” risks having a vast pool of hundreds entries with a single vote, and runaway winners with just four votes, or whatever. So I think the unclarity of definition — the fact that some vote to this convention, others to that, and so on — does actually make for more thought-provoking polls, precisely because the wrinkles sometimes create more unplanned run-off than monolithic affirmation.

From a magazine editor PoV, the purpose is in the end to deliver interesting writing and reading in coming months, rather than to sum up all culture and switch off the lights. An element of trolling is essential: too much from too many people cancels itself out.