Ray Carney

Ray Carney, also known as Raymond Carney, is an American "interdisciplinary arts scholar" primarily known for his work as a film theorist. His primary field of study is the works of actor and director John Cassavetes. He teaches at Boston University and has written several books on Cassavetes.http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/aboutrc/bookstore.shtml

Pragmatic aesthetic

While Carney decries surface style and finds using symbols to gain meaning from a work to promote shallow understandings of art, he believes that it's at the surface that the meaning of the work lies. He posists a world where art is appreciated for what the work actually contains rather than what is read into it, an aesthetic he refers to as pragmatic.http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/acad/forms.shtml Living moment to moment, he argues, one can, for example, just appreciate the acting in a film and gain meaning from that, from what the characters actually say and do, and the tonal shifts that accompany these actions.

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