Ebert ☙ Criticism ☙ Morality

Roger Ebert discusses the challenge of reviewing Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl's notorious masterpiece.

Whether it is truly great or only technically qualifies because of its importance is the question. As faithful readers will know, I have been avoiding this particular opportunity with dread. I felt it would involve grappling with the question of whether evil art can be great art. Since moral art can obviously be bad art, the answer to the flip side would seem to be clear enough, but it took me a fearsome struggle to thrash out 'Birth of a Nation,' even though many more excuses (of time, place and context) can be offered for Griffith than for Riefenstahl.

Meanwhile, we're getting ready for The New Knowledge Forge a one-day colloquium on wikis, links, and social software next Monday in Porto. J. Nathan Matias will be talking about “Ethical Explanations: Creative Approaches to Software Documentation”, asking how we ought to document the ethical and social questions of software.

George Landow will speak on Moving Beyond The Hammer of the knowledge forge. I'll be talking about my NeoVictorian program and especially about nobitic information gardening — the knowledge sickle. And Stewart Mader (WikiPatterns) will be there too. It’s open to the public — and surprisingly inexpensive. You can pop into Porto from all sorts of places — England, Ireland, France, Germany — for almost nothing. Join us!