Murray Pomerance writes:
"Isn't the notion that "Anything that can be read is a text" a little
sweeping?  And doesn't it presume a rather purist approach to "reading"
(to just *read* the word "reading" for a moment [!])?  I mean, do I
*read* everything in the same manner?  Mike Frank's letters here are
certainly texts for me; but like every other soul on the Net, I sweep
across tons of horsemanure daily in order to find the *texts* I want to
*read.*  Is that sweeping, "reading"?
 
Further:  Is seeing, reading?  I think the supposition that it always is
betrays a hidden antiocularcentrism.  My experience of depth, of form, of
color, of light, is ocular, yes, but not--I'd submit--textual.  Not
reading.  Perhaps, on the basis of what I see, I eventually come to a
reading, or a deduction."
 
 
 
Maybe we need to step back, take a few deep breaths, and check our
 vocabularies.The following words are getting tossed around (by me included) and
 seem to
cover a range of meanings:
 
TEXT--work, object, narrative line, thematic core, visual/aural content,
perfomance
 
READ--experience, understand, analyze, interpret, see
 
 
To tie this problem of usage to the original question about film and video
(and address Mike Frank's frustration about the film-as-text), we can say
the larger problem here is one of emphasis in our approaches to film:
 
Film is an artistic medium
 
Film is a social/commercial medium
 
Some of use emphasize one aspect, some the other, some try to integrate both--
but it is rather like the physicist trying to explain light as a particle or
a wave, when really it is--paradoxically--both.  Or misuse another overused
scientific analogy, we cannot determine a particle's position at the same time
that we measure its speed.  At the very least, we have to shift gears in
looking at a film.
        So I can say that I enjoy the stock character acting of STAGECOACH,
its neatly delineated narrative line, the evocation of motion through camera
placement and the use of folk music motifs--but at the same time I can note
that the narrative does rest on certain assumptions that are a) somewhat
sexist and b) very racist.  Similar problems occur when we try to address
what is "great" (if that is the right word) a film like BIRTH OF A NATION
OR TRIUMPH OF THE WILL.
        Certainly, we address non-aesthetic questions fairly well with video,
and video may serve for certain aesthetic issues, less well for others.
But then, if we talk about ideological implications of the apparatus or
placement of the subject, the quality of the image may become more important.
 
One approach might be to follow David Bordwell's suggestions in MAKING MEANING,
summarized as "the study of how, in determinate circumstances, films are put
together, serve specific functions, and acheive specific effects" so that
"the construction of implicit and [ideologically] symptomatic meaning can
coexist with the study of form and style in given historical circumstances."
Thus, perhaps, Mike and Gene can each have his own cake, if not consume it
too.
 
 
And, by the way, Murray, your "reading" of that scene from APOLLO 13 was a
very nice one!
 
 
 
Don Larsson, Mankato State U (MN)
 
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