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Culture and the Moving Image
Vulgar Modernism: Writing on Movies and Other Media
For the past dozen years, J. Hoberman has been publishing witty, impassioned, vivid film criticism in the pages of New York's alternative weekly, The Village Voice. His first collection includes a variety of these (mostly) movie reviews, as well as a number of longer essays and film-festival reports, all written during the 1980s. For Hoberman, film criticism is a form of social commentary, and his articles reflect a decade when an actor was president, the Vietnam War was refought on the nation's movie screens, and soundbites determined elections. The variety of Hoberman's interests and the intellectual depth of his critiques are remarkable. Writing from the perspective of Lower Manhattan, he places movies in the context of the other visual arts—painting, photography, comics, video, and TV—as well as that of postmodem theorists such as Leslie Fiedler and Jean Baudrillard. Demonstrating the widest range of any American film critic writing today, Hoberman is equally at home discussing the work of Steven Spielberg and Andrei Tarkovsky, films by cutting-edge artists Raul Ruiz and Yvonne Rainer, and historical figures as disparate as Charles Chaplin and Andy Warhol. Vulgar Modernism offers an entertaining, trenchant, informed, and informative view of the past decade's popular culture.
- GenresFilmNonfiction
300 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
J. Hoberman
40 books81 followersAuthor bio from Verso Press:
J. Hoberman served as the senior film critic at The Village Voice from 1988-2012. He has taught at Harvard, NYU, and Cooper Union, and is the author of ten books, including Bridge of Light, The Red Atlantis, and The Dream Life.
J. Hoberman served as the senior film critic at The Village Voice from 1988-2012. He has taught at Harvard, NYU, and Cooper Union, and is the author of ten books, including Bridge of Light, The Red Atlantis, and The Dream Life.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 16, 2008
J. Hoberman is one of the few film critics where he says he likes something I will check it out. I like his writing style, plus the fact that he mixes low-art with high-art. Meaning he loves all the Midnight movie stuff as much as a great European classic film. He also likes art films or artist's underground films as well. A very well balanced view of the cinema arts. This is a great collection of his early essays/reviews. A film geek needs to have this collection in their film library.
July 4, 2022
Dude finds a way to talk about Jack Smith in an Indiana Jones review.
July 13, 2019
J. Hoberman called "The Village Voice" home for over 30 years, having done a review of ERASERHEAD as his very first piece; he started out as the third-string guy but has been the senior critic since 1988. Now that both he and Jonathan Rosenbaum, his collaborator on MIDNIGHT MOVIES, have both left the weekly reviewing grind, it seems a colder place for criticism, at least in print. It's good that each of them has a web presence - and some books, for those of us still stuck in the paper age.
VULGAR MODERNISM was Hoberman's first collection, first published in 1991 and collecting a goodly-sized chunk of his writings for the "Voice" as well as a few pieces originaly written for "Film Comment" and other publications. Most of the pieces are 2-3 page (1000 words or so) single film reviews, but there are longer portrait-pieces on directors like Scorsese and Lynch, and also some writings on other arts, including an excellent piece on George Herriman's seminal early 20th century comic strip KRAZY KAT. Hoberman tends to cover the avant-garde and "outsider" American cinema a little more than his colleague and MIDNIGHT MOVIES collaborator Rosenbaum; witness the several articles on Andy Warhol and Jack Smith. And he's got a taste for what is often considered "bad" cinema - Ed Wood and Oscar Micheaux in particular. My favorite article in the whole book in fact is probably the piece on Micheaux, Wood, the French surrealists and the bad movie books of the Medveds. Hoberman has a tendency to a certain self-conscious hipness at times, a smugness I think, which can get tiresome, but the best pieces like the bad movies one profit from his erudition and his dismissal of some of the critical norms that even a Rosenbaum or Dave Kehr have accepted.
Like Rosenbaum and many of the other critics who cut their teeth in the alternative weeklies, Hoberman has little patience for or interest in commercial, American "blockbuster" cinema; what few mentions of Spielberg and Lucas you'll find aren't terribly complimentary. So be warned, this is "elitist" New York criticism - at it's best. If that's your bag (it should be obvious now that it's mine, mostly), I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend this. The cheap paperback is apparently out of print, but you can easily get it used.
VULGAR MODERNISM was Hoberman's first collection, first published in 1991 and collecting a goodly-sized chunk of his writings for the "Voice" as well as a few pieces originaly written for "Film Comment" and other publications. Most of the pieces are 2-3 page (1000 words or so) single film reviews, but there are longer portrait-pieces on directors like Scorsese and Lynch, and also some writings on other arts, including an excellent piece on George Herriman's seminal early 20th century comic strip KRAZY KAT. Hoberman tends to cover the avant-garde and "outsider" American cinema a little more than his colleague and MIDNIGHT MOVIES collaborator Rosenbaum; witness the several articles on Andy Warhol and Jack Smith. And he's got a taste for what is often considered "bad" cinema - Ed Wood and Oscar Micheaux in particular. My favorite article in the whole book in fact is probably the piece on Micheaux, Wood, the French surrealists and the bad movie books of the Medveds. Hoberman has a tendency to a certain self-conscious hipness at times, a smugness I think, which can get tiresome, but the best pieces like the bad movies one profit from his erudition and his dismissal of some of the critical norms that even a Rosenbaum or Dave Kehr have accepted.
Like Rosenbaum and many of the other critics who cut their teeth in the alternative weeklies, Hoberman has little patience for or interest in commercial, American "blockbuster" cinema; what few mentions of Spielberg and Lucas you'll find aren't terribly complimentary. So be warned, this is "elitist" New York criticism - at it's best. If that's your bag (it should be obvious now that it's mine, mostly), I certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend this. The cheap paperback is apparently out of print, but you can easily get it used.
January 5, 2012
I decided to add this one today in light of the announcement that the Village Voice has fired Hoberman after close to 30 years on staff (he was their senior film critic from 1988 until yesterday). This was the first book of his I read and one of the most important books in helping me define what I liked and cared about when it came to cinema. He helped me understand that Tashlin and Tarkovsky could both be loved with equal passion and that there was as much art to be found in the Honeymooners or a Friz Freling cartoon as there was in the most esoteric or avant garde cinema. I don't mean this come off as a eulogy or anything -- the man continues to write books and I am sure his byline will show up elsewhere soon. But I thought it appropriate to acknowledge his pivotal role in my life long love of film.
February 27, 2012
J. Hoberman was the centerpiece of the Village Voice's legendary film section for some two decades. Nobody had better coverage of the films playing in New York. Since New York got everything, this meant it had the best coverage of world cinema of any newspaper in the world. In this book are reviews on everything from Syberberg, to Nam June Pak, oscar Micheaux, to Oliver Stone, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger and Jean Luc Godard.
Hoberman ranks high among American movie critics, at least for me. His writing captures the extraordinary, all over cultural energy of the 80's, a time when world cinema, unbeknownst to Reaganite America, was exploding. The Village Voice, smart alecky attitude can wearing at times, but beyond that, this is one of the finest books of movie criticism available.
Hoberman ranks high among American movie critics, at least for me. His writing captures the extraordinary, all over cultural energy of the 80's, a time when world cinema, unbeknownst to Reaganite America, was exploding. The Village Voice, smart alecky attitude can wearing at times, but beyond that, this is one of the finest books of movie criticism available.
July 12, 2013
Some great pieces in this one. Gives a great glimpse of the state of cinema, specifically in New York, through the 1980s into the 1990s. I stopped about 2/3 of the way through as the final sections are mostly movie reviews, which are enjoyable but I'd rather access them when I watch the films discussed.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews