You Could Have Seen the Mona Lisa (Doug Dillaman, 2021)
Added 2022-01-21 00:47:12 +0000 UTC
I wanted to say a quick word about this film, which I recently caught up with. As was the case when writing about Frederic Da's Teenage Emotions, I feel a bit awkward commenting here on a film made by a friend and subscriber to the Patreon. However, since the ranks of filmmakers seem to be swelling here, I guess I'd better get used to it.
You can (and should) watch Doug's film here. As you might expect, Mona Lisa arrives smack-dab at the junction of art and tourism, considering the perversity of La Gioconda's unique position in the Louvre. Despite the fact that the place is teeming with masterpieces and various material artifacts from across the entirety of human civilization, thousands flock to one crowded room in the museum to gawk at one, single, aesthetically above-average Renaissance canvas. In the film, we witness an abbreviated journey to see the Mona Lisa, while Dilliman's narrator suggests a number of other choices one could make.
The punchline, if you want to look at it that way, is that for most of these cultural pilgrims, there really isn't anything else they could have done. They need to see the Mona Lisa, precisely because everyone else does. Its popularity generates its own meaning, so perhaps we can add another early invention to Leonardo's resumé: the meme.
