Vulgar auteurism

According to film critic Peter Labuza, vulgar auteurism "seems to have been an unconscious movement before it ever had a name", as the earliest criticism identified as exhibiting "vulgar auteurism" was published in the Canadian film magazine Cinema Scope in 2006 and 2007.[3] Cinema Scope writer Andrew Tracy coined the term in his 2009 article, "Vulgar Auteurism: The Case of Michael Mann".[4] Initially pejorative,[4] the term was repurposed by MUBI user John Lehtonen.[4] Over the years which followed, MUBI's online film magazine began to publish more and more articles defending genres and directors which were unpopular with the critical mainstream.

It derives its name[5] from the auteur theory, a key component of film criticism which posits that the director is the author ("auteur") of a film and that films should be analyzed in terms of how they fit into a director's larger body of work.[6] Also known as "auteurism," the auteur theory was introduced by French critics associated with the film magazine Cahiers du cinéma during the 1950s and popularized in the United States in the 1960s by Andrew Sarris.[7]

In 1981, J. Hoberman coined the term "vulgar modernism" to describe the "looney" fringes of American popular culture (e.g. the animators Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, MAD Magazine, TV pioneer Ernie Kovacs and the films of Frank Tashlin).[8][9][10]

Several critics, including Richard Brody of The New Yorker and Scott Foundas of Variety, have drawn parallels between the earliest French and American proponents of the auteur theory and vulgar auteurism. However, many commentators on the movement consider vulgar auteurism to be distinct from the classical auteur theory, pointing to its concern with visual style over theme. The question of whether vulgar auteurism is a legitimate separate movement or a subset of the auteur theory is a point of disagreement among film critics.

Vulgar auteurist ideas gained currency when one of the movement's leading proponents,[11] critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, became the co-host of the television program Ebert Presents: At the Movies, produced by Roger Ebert. However, while "vulgar auteurist" criticism was becoming popular, the term and the movement to which it corresponded remained obscure until the publication of an article by Calum Marsh, "Fast & Furious & Elegant: Justin Lin and the Vulgar Auteurs", in The Village Voice on May 24, 2013.[12][13]