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As hard-core a stance as Nabokov . . .
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Sandy Klein sends a link to a Glenn Kenny's Premiere Magazine review of Sofia Coppola's film "Marie Antoinette," which begins by invoking VN:
What is the social responsibility of the artist? According to the great Vladimir Nabokov, it's zip. By the lights of novelist Barbara Kingsolver, though, literature "is a tool for changing the world." (I would infer that Kingsolver views the other arts similarly.) Few artists * or perhaps I should say would-be artists * take quite as hard-core a stance as Nabokov; more of them tend to side with Kingsolver, but most occupy a middle ground, seeking to avoid preachy wet-noodle-ism while at the same time aspiring to, you know, relevance. This is just one reason why there's so much mediocre art around, but that's not the subject at hand here, so never mind. What is the subject at hand is director Sofia Coppola's third feature film, and if it is in fact true that the artist does have a social responsibility, it is undeniable that in reimagining the life story (or rather, part of the life story) of Marie Antoinette as a glitzy, sassy (in every conceivable sense of the word), anachronism-dotted comedy of manners, Coppola has completely abrogated said responsibility.
http://www.premiere.com/moviereviews/3197/marie-antoinette.html
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