----------------------------Original message----------------------------
From: Tony Williams
English
SIUC
 continued - far outweigh charges of "academic arrogance" and"nitpicking".
Imagine the response of a history professor to a series on the Civil War
which got a number of dates wrong (cf CITIZEN KANE's date) and only used
a small proportion of the available material. As one correspondent has
pointed out, many films from the teens and twenties (as well as the 60s-
70s era) were not used as important extracts.
  Kevin Brownlow and David Gill produced film history series in the past
that were both well-researched and accessible to a mass audience. Just because
a series is aimed towards that market, we should not allow its errors and
flaws to pass unchallenged. The better works of popular culture survive
because they stand up to criticism and pass the test. This writer is proposing
a false dichotomy contrasting well-researched works appealing to "academic
arrogance" with mass-produced works of a sloppy and incoherent nature. This
distinction does not work. An introduction can be well-informed, thoroughly
researched, and capable of appealing to a mass audience. The appalling
AMERICAN CINEMA audience has none of these qualities. Because correspondents
pick out "flaws" does not necessarily mean they are engaging in elitist,
arbitrary judgements. Like any work, AMERICAN CINEMA should be open to
criticism and not viewed in the light of being a mass audience introduction
and excused from making errors because of its market constituency.