Bravo to whoever it was that suggested that what is largely at issue
here is CONtext.
 
John Mowitt's book, _Text: The Genealogy of an Antidisciplinary
Object_ (Duke UP, 1992), is helpful in thinking about the use(s)
and limits of the word and the idea of "text."  He begins his
chapter, "The Textual Analysis of Film," this way:  "Nowhere outside
the disciplines of literary study has the textual paradigm found a
friendlier reception than in the disciplines of media criticism, and
specifically in the discipline of film studies.  In attempting to map
the genealogy fo the text, it is therefore necessary to examine this
development and offer some account of the following three issues: (1)
what forces converged to encourage this particular form of
interdisciplinary excahnge? (2) what happened to the notion of
textuality as it emerged within film theory debates? and (3) what
does the sort of reconsideration of textuality being undertaken here
imply for the practical work of film analysis?"  And in concluding
this chapter, Mowitt writes: "Because of the precise ways that
different disciplines were drawn into the conflict over filmic
interepretation, even the surpassing of literary models left their
[its?] mark within the concept of filmic textuality.  Regardless of
how important it was to displace the positivist approach to cinematic
meaning by appealing to the concept of 'reading' a film, it has now
become urgent to pressure the very limits of reading themselves."
 
Perhaps not incidentally, given a (analogic) turn this thread took
the other day, Mowitt's next chapter is "Toward a Textual Analysis of
Music," in which he focusses on Eisenstein and Prokofiev's _Alexander
Nevsky_.  Anyway, this is a useful book, and I think it helps reveal
what's good--productive--about "text" and what's not.
 
This brings me to that analogic turn:  Gene Stavis made this analogy
the other day:  78 rpm record=video;  CD=film.  Mike Frank called
this "wonderful" and used it to search, again, for what's behind--or
perhaps under--the text (his preferred word), the work (Stavis's
preferred word), the constructed, mediated object and the experience
prompted by that object (my own unwieldy phrase).
 
Much as I usually agree with Gene Stavis's remarks, I find his
analogy misleading for several reasons:  First, film and records are
both analog media;  CDs and video are digital;  many audiophiles
dislike CD's for reasons that are similar to (though not exactly
the same as) the reasons many cinephiles dislike video.  Second,
records and CD's are both "home" or "personal" media over which the
auditor exercises control--you can pause, skip forward or backward,
etc.;  film, at least in its theatrical, "cinematic" uses, doesn't
permit those sorts of control.  These aspects of each of these media
contribute to our experience of them and the sorts of meaning and
pleasure we take from them.
 
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the differences between film
and music muddle the analogy, as I think Mike Frank's response
showed.  For many people, Mike Frank apparently included, what is
behind/under/in a sound recording is the live performance that
precedes and is superior (or at least preferred) to the recording,
something that no longer exists for many types of music.  (Recordings
of free improvisation make this an interesting issue.)  Most of our
interest in (fiction) film has nothing to do with "live" performance,
and, at any rate, few of us believe that we could ever see anything
like what we experience through film "live."  The other thing that
many people feel is behind/under/in the sound recording, again Mike
Frank among them, is "the score" (and we are back to writing, and
text in the strictest sense of the term), though of course for many,
many types of music and sound there simply is no "score."  Mike
Frank's notice that many musicians don't much care about audio
quality is interesting (and true in my experience, too, though
within limits--a Kenner Close 'n' Play is no good), but to
attribute that, across the board, to the "score" seems wrong to
me:  What do musicians who don't _read_ musical notation experience
when they listen to records?  (And does this aspect of the analogy
hold true for filmmakers?  Certainly many, many of them must see a
lot of video, but do they not care much about the equipment they
use?)  What about all the music in the world that has no score, no
written aspect?  To return to the analogy, and the reason that Mike
Frank manages to get many people on our list a bit exercised:  His
happiness with this analogy suggests that filmmakers really
see/hear "the score," i.e., "the script" when they experience a
(crappy) videotape in a (lousy) playback system.  This may be so--I
think Gene Stavis would suggest that this is mostly what video is
"good" for, but I think he would also say that it limits us to a sort
of literary analysis, a sort of analysis we can do with film, in
addition to careful attention to all the other aspects of the work.
 
Another way of thinking through this issue might be the idea of
"excess."  Video tends to focus our attention on the "exessively
obvious" (Bordwell's phrase for the classical Hollywood
cinema) aspects of film--the narrative.  Film permits us more easily
and completely to pay attention aspects of the film that are in
excess of this obviousness.
 
And, at last, one of my experiences with the film/video difference:
I can watch film all day--eight hours, projected on screen or on a
movieola monitor--without getting too tired.  I've never been able to
watch more than six hours of video, whether projected or on a
monitor, without feeling completely whipped.  This suggests to me
that there may indeed be important neuro-psychological differences in
the way we (I?) process these difference media.
 
Thanks for reading.
 
Arthur Knight
William & Mary
 
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