CraveOnline: It fascinates me that “elitism” has become such a dirty word to a lot of people. We’re not looking towards experts in their fields.
David Cronenberg: Sure. Well, except when you talk about working out and training. People often talk about elite athletes, and nobody complains when you talk about elite athletes because everybody knows that, democracy or not, you are not [necessarily] going to be Olympic level in terms of your sport, you know? There are very few people who can be elite athletes. So you can take it from there. It’s not so horrible to talk about elite athletes because we know what it means, that some people just natively have physical talent and they also have the will and the drive to be wonderful athletes, who compete on an international level. Nobody complains about that. They don’t think it’s not democratic. It’s like, “Why can’t I be in the Olympics?” Well, you have to be an elite athlete first.
“Everybody has a right to an opinion, but I don’t have to read that opinion.”
I think it’s the same. Really, ultimately, I don’t want to read the comments that people make below a critique of a film. I’m not really that interested in what everybody… because, as you say, it devolves so quickly into weird little bigotry and animosities and stuff. There’s no balance there. There’s no real intellect there. So that’s a problem. It’s a problem with the democratic approach to art.
You know, art is not democracy. The film set is not democracy. The film set is a dictatorship, and it needs to be. It’s hopefully a benign dictatorship, but you don’t get everybody voting all the time on what lens you should use.
And yet, at the same time, the appreciation of art is subject to subjectivity is it not?
Absolutely. Even then though, any critics will say “this movie is not for everyone.” What do they mean by that? Well, you know what they mean by that. Everybody has a right to an opinion, but I don’t have to read that opinion.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast and The Blue Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
