TS Eliot Finds Himself

Looking to catch a flick? Well, have I got news for you. At the Wandermere theater here in Spokane you could see The Call (its got Halle Berry), The Croods (Nicholas Cage is a caveman. Type casting?), a little something about Oz or Olympus Has Fallen (Girard Butler as himself).

It’s all a little depressing, I know. But before you decide not to have Spring Break because there’s just nothing to see, consider this:

While none of those films fits very well is a larger aesthetic tradition, they do fit in the minor tradition from which their structure is borrowed. TS Eliot is clear that a work of art is not good simply because it fits in. It will fit in, later, on account of its excellence. If this is the case, does TS Eliot take issue with Adorno? For Adorno avers that cultures essentially recreate themselves, producing the same narratives over and over because they are the kinds of narratives the capitalist system is designed to produce. And if Adorno is right, the canon is itself a capitalist construction. It is not a mark of excellence. It is determinism. Excellent texts will be considered excellent because they fit inside the system that built them.

I do not think Adorno and TS Eliot can be right at the same time. I do think neither would go see the movies at Wandermere. One because the films do not fit into the canon and the other because they do. In the interest of democracy and simplifying our critical canon, I think we should vote. Who is more right? Adorno or Eliot?