Canon is a concept that applies in all arts, it represents the best, the greatest, the ones that should be remembered in history. In film history, it is decided by “our most respected thinkers about film” (Owen Gleiberman, ‘Vertigo’ over ‘Citizen Kane’? Why the new Sight and Sound critics’ poll is full of itself). But canon is flawed, The Greatest Films of All Time, (Sight & Sound, September 2012) are old and monotonous. Of 100 films on the list, only three of them were made in 21st century, the latest one is Mulholland Dr. by David Lynch in 2001. Film was invented in 1892, mathematically 15 films made between 2000 and 2019 should be selected in the top 100. Why only three? And where are the short films? Where are the animations? What about superhero movies? Do they not deserve a place in canon?
In Canon Fodder (Paul Schrader, 2006), Schrader “posits five criteria upon which to base a film canon” (pg. 44), and one of them is “strangeness” ——“originality”. Fresh storytelling, fresh techniques, fresh perspective. However, in postmodern time, “Nothing is original” anymore (Jim Jarmusch, MovieMaker Magazine, 2004), “Each text is an intersection of other texts” (Julia Kristeva, 1980. Word, Dialogue, and Novel). Therefore, as time passes, originality will be more difficult for filmmakers to achieve, and the pathway to the canon will be narrower each year. Also, due to the rise of “high concept” films, companies tend to repeat the same formula for guaranteed profit, originality is no longer considered most important for most of film companies. But this phenomenon heavily applies in Hollywood, that’s why many “low concept” films we see today are produced in Europe.
The definition of canon has set up its undemocratic nature. The power of deciding canon is held in minority but not every audience. If viewer engagement is a criterion (Schrader, 2006), why didn’t most of the viewers get to vote? Better question, what will happen if everyone gets to vote on this? Assume the public is not insane enough to throw 23 Marvel movies onto the list, the result might look similar with the IMDb Charts: Shawshank leads, then the Godfather, then the Dark Knight. That wouldn’t be too bad. But there is no guarantee that at about 45th there won’t be a “Trump” on the list. After all, Donald Trump is a deformed product of democracy. If people have never met George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, how do they know what “Great America” looks like? Similarly, if they’ve never seen Citizen Kane or Vertigo, how can they comment on the greatness of films?
We have to face the fact that “fine arts are not a closed system” (Schrader, 2006), neither should film canon be. Modern arts look much different from Mona Lisa or Inferno, Pop Art became a form of arts and Coca Cola is one of its symbol (Flavia Frigeri, Pop Art: Art Essentials, 2018). Maybe film scholars should start to consider accepting avant-garde films such as Fast Film (Virgil Widrich) to be one of the film canon. Fast Film is what we might call a mashup today, it consist of existed films which means it challenges the idea of originality with every shot of it. But still, Fast Film is absolutely creative and technical and worthy to be entitled as “fine art”. After all, “motion pictures were not so much an art form as they were a transitional phase” (Schrader, 2006). Morality is mentioned by Schrader as well, “It makes sense that great films have great moral resonance.” Actually, lots of canonical films don’t. Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958) is about a man’s obsession with another man’s wife. L’avventura (Antonioni, 1960) is about a man falls in love with another woman in the search of his fiancé. Most French New Wave films are not quite moral. And Play Time (Tati, 1967) is not presenting any resonance at all. If morality is not a necessary criteria, the films as confronting as “Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1928) will have no reason failing to be a canonical film.
There are approximately 500,000 movies currently in existence (Vogel 2011), the obsession with picking only 100 of them clearly does not satisfy everyone. The current “greatest films of all time” are not actually all viewed by the public, some of them are hard to access, and most importantly, no one should be forced to see films that they are not interested in (except film scholars). So one way to resolve the issue is to admit that, there can be multiple categories for “the greatest films”. As long as there is film canon, there can be short film canon, or animation film canon, even superhero film canon, or a cult canon. Canon for critics can be independent from canon for public.
Maybe there is a better way to settle this argument about canon, Dada. “Dada means nothing” (Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918). Maybe there shouldn’t be any canon at all. “Criticism is useless, it exist only subjectively, for each man separately”. Or maybe everyone should have their own, separate list. Anyway, the idea of common criteria is defied by Dada. The first criteria listed by Schrader, Beauty, can only receive this from Dada: “A work of art should not be beauty in itself, for BEAUTY IS DEAD”. Not even to mention morality, because even “logic is always wrong.” Dada would be highly praised by anarchists, if there were anything to be praised in the void of Dada.
Manifesto (Julian Rosefeldt) was exhibited in ACMI in 2015, on many screens at same time, and it was edited to be a 90-minute feature and premiered at Sundance Film Festival. There is no conclusion says in which way it was presented the most influential, but personally I think hearing different manifestos arguing over each other in one room is the most representative way to reveal the nature of manifestos. They are all rebellious, all unique, whereas all a bit cynical. Most manifestos included in Manifesto are not dated, ironically, like canon. The earliest one was Manifesto of the Communist Party (Karl Marx/ Friedrich Engels, 1848), most of them were written in 20th century and the latest one is Golden Rules of Filming (Jim Jarmusch, 2002). Anyway, what promotes a good manifesto these days? World War I and II are way past us. Cold War didn’t make it to the 21st century either. We are all in peace and it is hard to imagine where else we can liberate ourselves to. Racism, Sexism, these are the issues that currently draw people’s attention, that’s where we get manifestos such as A Queer(’s) Cinema (Manuel Betancourt, Film Quarterly vol. 72 no. 3, Spring 2019, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2019), which shout out to break stereotypes. But compare with Dada Manifesto 1918, A Queer(’s) Cinema sounds weak. It is rather a introduction or description than a manifesto, it’s not even a speech. “Queer Cinema is not universal.” “Queer Cinema is intersectional.” Etc. And it ends with “I want queer stories on film to be as expansive as the lives they seek to represent.” It doesn’t have one exclamation mark in it, not one! It is simply a statement, like every other statement the government made, or an organization made, it’s not challenging, it’s planning, it’s requesting. 2019 is boring, and phony. People did not change, they are the same homophobic people in 2010, only learnt to pretend to be nice and mild. The society promotes the idea of community rather than individual, then conformity thrives. But art cannot survive in conformity. We need to challenge religion, challenge knowledge, challenge society, challenge ethics, and challenge authority, not to wait for them to accept individualism, but to make them. If we want gay narrative in film, we make them. If we cannot distribute them to cinema, then we will have a salon. Breakthroughs of arts come from chaos and rebellion, not negotiation or compromise. That’s why there will be no symbolic manifesto born in 2019, as long as we are still afraid what other people think.