In Message 11 Nov 1993 13:27:40 -0800 (PST),
  Chris White <[log in to unmask]> writes:
 
>> Subject:      Re: silent films and history
>
>Surely I can't be the only one out here who finds this entire
>discussion petty and slightly ridiculous.  How can somebody summarily
>dismiss 60+ years of cinema with a mere wave of his/her hand?
     Yes, I agree that the discussion had gotten out of hand.  It started,
as I recall, because someone questioned the term "postmodernism" and
claimed that all that is labeled postmodernist existed previously.  This
got everyone involved in a discussion of silent films (which, BTW, I also
happen to like).
     Perhaps, in this case, the best response to what seems ridiculous
would be a bit more of the ridiculous.  In any case, as I have
remained silented during this discussion, I have recalled Jorge Luis Borges'
story, "Pierre Menard, Author of the _Quixote_."  A ridiculous story, to be
sure, about a literary scholar who sets out, some three-hundred years after
the death of Cervantes, to write the novel _Don Quixote_.  Says Borges,
"He did not want to compose another _Quixote_--which is easy--but _the
Quixote itself_."  And so he wrote and produced something, but he gave up
on the project when he realized he was failing.  Borges says,
          It is a revelation to compare Menard's _Don Quixote_ with
      Cervantes'.  The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter
      nine):
               . . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time,
          depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser
          to the present, and the future's counselor.
      Written in the seventeenth century, written by the "lay genius"
      Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history.
      Menard, on the hand, writes:
               . . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time,
          depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser
          to the present, and the future's counselor.
     History, the _mother_ of truth: the idea is astounding.  Menard, a
     contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry
     into reality but as its origin.
     (Me again--no longer Borges.)  One conclusion I reach from this is that
Menard could not write the _Quixote_ because, although he wrote word-for-
word the same thing Cervantes did, the words--because they were written in
a different context--had a different meaning.
     So, I would suggest, it may be with "postmodernism."  Although the
postmodern may, indeed, return to the past and repeat strategies of the
past, it does so in a different context--and this makes it different.  I
believe with many scholars that the term--though, like all labels or terms
of periodization, it invites abuses when it is reified--is a meaningful
one with which to examine changes occuring in contemporary cinema.  When
I use the term myself, I attempt to do so in the context of modern archi-
tecture, an area where many scholars who otherwise object to the use of
the term "postmodernism" find it meaningful.  The question I would ask is
whether something is happening in film (and literature and other forms of
art) that parallels postmodernist architects' (the name they gave themselves)
response to modernist architecture.  Limiting myself to Argentine film
(which is the area I write about), I would answer--have answered--yes.
     But then I think Borges should have the last word, and I quote again
from "Pierre Menard, Author of the _Quixote_": "There is no exercise of the
intellect which is not, in the final analysis, useless. . . .  Fame is a
form of incomprehension, perhaps, the worst."  (Both sentences seem
pertinent to any discussion of postmodernism.)
Currie Thompson