Criticism and Ideology: A Note on Cinema

Abstract

Partisan cultural criticism does not originate in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, any more than does the idea that works of art must primarily serve purposes that are desirable, according to some canonic prescription. It is no surprise, then, that moralists—religious, educational, and political—are among the first to take seriously, pro and con, the "magic shadows" of the cinema, applying measures of intended meaning and potential consequence even prior to those of aesthetic value and merit as entertainment.