Hollywood's New Yorker: The Making of Martin Scorsese

Chapter 5: What is Scorsese?: Scorsese's Role in Contemporary Postmodern Culture

165 5 What Is Scorsese? Scorsese’s Role in Contemporary Postmodern Culture There is no more suitable or potent image or symbol for our time than the image of the blind art collector. I think that sums it up. If you were going to write a history of the era, you should call it The Blind Art Collector, and Other Stories.  The 2010 hbo documentary Public Speaking, a profile of New York writer‑intellectual Fran Lebowitz, initially seems an odd project for Scorsese to direct. Other than the commonality of New York itself, no connection is apparent between the Italian‑American male filmmaker and the Jewish‑American female writer. But from Lebowitz’s opening remarks quoted above, the attraction becomes clear, especially since Lebowitz has become known less as a writer and more as an intellectual commenting on the cultural scene. Much of Lebowitz’s commentary is an argument against postmodernism and what she views as the disaster of culture’s “democratization.” She rants about the terrible effect of television, which has replaced the world itself, and argues that much of Andy Warhol’s notion of “fame” was meant as a joke that, unfortunately, most of the culture did not understand. The dwindling standards that have occurred in the past decades seem self‑evident to Lebowitz and her commanding presence and intelligence dominate the 166 Hollywood’s New Yorker picture. Scorsese himself is mostly seen in the corner of the frame, laughing and responding to Lebowitz’s remarks. The one oddity of the otherwise conventional talking‑head profile is the inclusion of two sequences using clips from Scorsese’s own Taxi Driver. They illustrate Lebowitz’s discussion of New York in the 1970s, as well as her driving a Checker cab. They are entirely apt for the illustrative purpose they serve, but because Scorsese is quoting himself, it causes a certain dissonance. Why does Scorsese include these seemingly self‑aggrandizing allusions? Perhaps to make a personal connection to Lebowitz, to make the link between them in the viewer’s mind. But I would argue that it relates more to Scorsese’s status as an artist‑intellectual. Certainly, Scorsese does not want to be the “blind art collector” of the postmodern era. The allusions to his masterpiece Taxi Driver emphasize that however much he may be a historian, critic, and even collector himself, he is first and foremost an artist. Furthermore, he is an artist who was established by high modernist criticism, freed from the postmodern label that often stigmatizes contemporary artists. Distinctions between high art and mass culture were breaking down in the 1960s, resulting in movies (particularly Hollywood movies) being taken more seriously than before. But this does not mean that distinctions went away. The rise of postmodernism in the 1970s challenged the mod‑ ernist idea that high art has to be separated from the contamination of mass culture, but this attempt did not have any lasting effect as Lebowitz’s remarks demonstrate. Thus, while Scorsese as a Hollywood figure has benefited from the acceptance of popular film as a legitimate art form, the great divide remains. Furthermore, Scorsese has come to represent the last Golden Age of American film (from which Taxi Driver comes), which has been implicitly or even at times explicitly linked with modernist high art. Scorsese is often positioned in opposition to postmodern culture, not only by academics like Robert Kolker but also by fellow filmmakers like Paul Schrader. Scorsese’s work outside of his feature films has undoubt‑ edly contributed to his reputation as a serious, modernist alternative by critics who view postmodern culture as a negative, “contaminating” force. However, what makes Scorsese an intriguing figure is that he con‑ tinues to circulate within this culture and thus cannot avoid being “con‑ taminated” in some way. Taxi Driver may be something of a canonized museum piece, but it is also a part of the popular culture. While the text itself continues to be the subject of critique and debate, it has also been transformed by its status as a popular cultural object. Many critics continue to treat Taxi Driver simply as an autonomous art object and deal with its internal features, but its textual meaning is constantly being negotiated through its status as an iconic film (even by Scorsese himself 167 What is Scorsese? in Public Speaking). The film’s meaning can no longer (if it ever could be) be judged outside...