I have always considered that people who love movies are just film fans, like sports fans, you have your favorite type and you might be sectioned off into a sub set like football fan or baseball fan/ horror fan or western fan, but you are essentially still considered a fan. But for some reason people can’t just leave it at that. I was over at Jim Emerson’s site last week and came upon this article that really bothered me. He was talking about an article by Dan Bordell that puts “true” film fans into one of two categories, cinemaniacs and cinephiles.
Here is the part of Bordell’s article that bugged me, “… I do see differences. For one thing, most cinemaniacs like only certain sorts of movies–usually American,often silent, sometimes foreign, seldom documentaries. Do cinemaniacs line up for Brakhage or Frederick Wiseman? My sense is not.
Cinephiles by contrast tend to be ecumenical. Indeed, many take pride in the intergalactic breadth of their tastes. Look at any smart critic’s ten-best lists. You’ll usually see an eclectic mix of arthouse, pop, and experimental, including one or two titles you have never heard of. Obscurity is important; a cinephile is a connoisseur.”
How many of us fit into either of those two definitions? I know I don’t and it bugs me that there is a contingent of people who are pushing their own views about fandom being the only type there is. Emerson himself in his article about the article says there is nothing wrong with not being either of these types, yet then goes on at great length to voice his fears that he is slipping from being a cinephile to a cinemaniac and equates it to converting from Catholicism to Episcopalianism.
And there in lies the problem, that belief that one way is better than another way. We need to stop alienating people with elitist attitudes about film and just like what we like without forming value judgments about somebody who prefers Highlander to Citizen Kane. It is possible to enjoy both Fillet Mignon and hot dogs (though usually not at the same meal).
