to take a page from josh blog (which seems to be back)... some ideas on film, easily applied to the indie (mentalist, bourgeois) / pop (sensualist, working-class) "war". (see comments in the 'float on' thread.)

"What concerns me is how ... women, children, whoever, are being asked to dael with their previous enjoyment of [popular movies] - a pleasure shared wtih family, friends and their general social and cultural environment. It seems that they are being left little room for any response other than feeling stupid, or despising those who are still enjoying these 'perverse' pleasures. ... Rather than seeing the pleasures of 'the masses' as perverse, perhaps we should acknowledge that it is the bourgeois 'will to truth' that is perverse in its desire for knowledge, certainty and mastery. ... The crusade to save the masses from the ideology that dupes them can obscure the real social significance of their lpeasures and, at the same time, blind us to the perversity of radical intellectual pleasures. The alternative is not a populist defense of Hollywood, but a reassessment of what is involved in watching films. This becomes part of the experience of oppression, pain and desire. Watching a Hollywood movie is not simply an escape from drudgery into dreaming: it is a place of desperate dreaming, of hope for transformation." -- Valerie Walkerdine, "Video Relpay: Families Films and Fantasy."