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May 1996, Week 5

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Subject:
From:
Meryem Constance Ersoz <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 30 May 1996 11:54:16 -0700
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I have to disagree with Murray, somewhat, on this one, much as I
appreciate, as always, his passion and enthusiasm for his topics. I
agree, on one hand, that ideological sound bites are too often
substituted for either a knowledge of history or for a situated critique.
But I also think that given that film IS an historical act, as Murray
points out,  the process of rejecting the film, as fetish object which
has the power to reify (over and over again) some of our culture's most
distasteful institutions, can be an extremely empowering
act to an individual viewer. The power to say, "I have seen this version
of history before, and I refute it thusly" (Johnson scholars insert petulant
pebble-kicking here) can, in itself, be liberating. This act, it seems to
me, does NOT indicate an individual who lives in a vacuum but, rather, an
individual who is--perhaps--aware of a level of interpretation which was
*not* available to the auteur who, consciously or unconsciously, chose to
drown the waiflike, raven-haired beauty just one more time (apologies to
Altman fans but I just finished being irritated by the inclusion of this
imagery in SHORT CUTS), as if that tired cliche of beautiful dead woman
had not been overworked ad nauseaum by Poe et al. (interested parties
check out Elisabeth Bronfen's take on the subject in OVER MY DEAD BODY).
 
I think this sort of rejecting of history by our students, who we suspect
don't know enough history to be qualified to reject it, may seem dubious
to us because it values ideology over other qualities--how the auteur is
manipulating film and narrative techniques, perhaps...how the auteur is
working to produce art. But I'm not sure that the alternative is any
better--fetishing technique or originality over what the film has to say
and to whom. Or to put it another way, it seems equally irresponsible, to
me, to gloss over the misrepresentation of African-Americans and the
lionizing of the KKK, because  foregrounding them might somehow snatch
something away from the technical or artistic merit of Griffith, as it is
to ignore the ways in which Griffith was able to make use of devices
(cross-cutting, the close-up, you all know this routine) and focus on the
issues of representation to the exclusion of understanding film as an art.
 
I don't think it is helpful to separate issues of content and art. I
think the appropriate response to a student whose thesis is "this is
sexist tripe" is to ask that student to observe what it is about the form
that might support this assertion. What is the auteur *doing* to evoke
these sensations, and how might mise en scene, sound, shot composition,
camerawork, etc be complicit? And suddenly, before you know it, you're
talking film history and calling for a situated critique.
 
But I think to dismiss the sound bite because it sounds like an
ideological shortcut does a disservice to the individual viewer.
Sometimes turning the channel can feel really satisfying and can be, in
itself, a meaningful act that says, "I know that this is history, I have
seen it before, but I don't have to submit to this imagery anymore than I
already have." I think that part of my job, as a scholar, is to help
others reason through the underpinnings of these sorts of feelings.
 
 
Apologies for long-windedness,
 
Meryem Ersoz
University of Oregon
 
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