SCREEN-L Archives

November 1993

SCREEN-L@LISTSERV.UA.EDU

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Subject:
From:
Ramona Curry <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 21 Nov 1993 11:46:04 CST
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Thanks to Jeremy for providing the information about how to fetch files of
messages compiled on SCREEN-L.  As perhaps many other SCREEN-L subscribers,
I've (again) saved that to my own files and at some point when I find more
time or have occasion to use the material listed may exercise that option.
 
But in the meantime, I'd prefer to approach Screen-L not as a repository
or on-line library, but as a conversation group.  I, too, do not have interest
in every item posted, and quickly discard many items after glancing at their
contents, or even just at the subject line, if I have no interest in that
line of conversation.  I don't post often myself and I've dropped subscrip-
tions to networks that made me feel overwhelmed with information or inquiries
I considered extraneous to my interests.  But I personally have been glad to
see SCREEN-L revive a bit in the past few months, after a marked decline in
posting that I suspect was associated with 1) summer schedules and/or 2) the
advent of the H-FILM list, in which many SCREEN-L subscribers also partici-
pate.
 
While I have not been interested in -- or have even felt aggravated by -- some
of the discussions that have recently dominated SCREEN-L, others have given
me welcome information or unexpected insights or sparked my thinking.  These
qualities -- both the aggravation and the inspiration -- also characterize the
semi-public collegial conversations in which I engage at occasional dinner
parties or public lectures around my university or at conferences; it is of
such conversations that collegiality consists in part.  And it is one of the
contributions that the new technologies can make to the lives of academics,
perhaps especially those such as myself, who, while richly stimulated by
colleagues with related intellectual interests, feel a bit isolated from
a body of specifically film/media scholars in between conferences. (I teach
in an English Dept. and have only 1 colleague in my dept. and 3 or so across
this large campus with whom I speak with any regularity about cinema/tv --
besides with my students.  And they have benefitted from my subscription
from SCREEN-L, in my recalling conversations in which I had little interest
but on topics which they wished to pursue, e.g., science fiction films.)
 
To extend the metaphor of SCREEN-L as a virtual conversation:  I should hate to
be at a dinner party in which people who started a line of conversation in
which others were not interested were told simply to shut up or to go outside.
And that people who were curious about the results of the outside conversation
might later drop by (especially considering that "dropping by" involves noting
and executing a number of unfamiliar commands, comparable to having to climb
out a window and shimmy up a gutter.) I think the SCREEN-L "party" is in a room
large enough that participants can just cruise by different groups and move
right on (dump the messages without reading them!) without the network's
having to change policies about postings or needing to evaluate topics for gen-
eral relevance.  As at a dinner party, guests always have the option of
starting their own conversation, withdrawing to a corner, or even beating
a fast retreat -- and on SCREEN-L, there's no social sanction for doing that!
 
Enough metaphoring-- this just a rare contribution to an ongoing conversa-
tion before I myself retreat to my work and the rest of my life.
 
Ramona Curry   [log in to unmask]
 
Department of English
University of Illinois  at Urbana-Champaign

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