Dear Mike: I sympathize some with you, but for the sake of time I'm not going to get into a discussion of theoretical jargon and translating it to those who could benefit from the practical elements of theory. Nor can I speak to the unprepared newly minted Ph.D. job candidate (although, in my experience, sometimes it takes awhile for complex ideas to truly sink in). I think in some ways you are too hard on the list--you have received some suggestions that might work, such as Sue Thornham's anthology, which starts with the easy stuff and then goes to the harder (it is true there is little commentary on them, though), plus other works. Perhaps you are asking too much of your students, bright as they are. I have some bright students, too, who also struggle with the complexities of both film theory and feminist theory, and sometimes it takes some time to gain any understanding. Perhaps there needs to be the equivalent of "The Idiot's Guide to Feminist Film Theory," but, as far as I know, no such book exists. I do suggest that maybe you need to go in another direction altogether, away from film theory. I have some suggestions for readings that my students have found useful--at least in having some understanding of some feminist theory. It is true these are a bit dated now, and won't have up-to-date examples, but maybe they can be a start. 1. The first is from rhetorical theory & criticism: Sonja Foss, "Feminist Criticism," chapter 6 in S. Foss, _Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice_ 2nd ed. Waveland Press, 1996 (with selected examples following her short explanation). 2. E. Ann Kaplan, "Feminist Criticism and Television," Chapter 7 in R. Allen, Ed., _Channels of Discourse Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism_ 2nd Ed. Routledge, 1992. This chapter in particular may be useful for your goals. 3. And for understanding jargon in general, how about Stuart Hall, Ed.._ Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices_ The Open Univ. 1997. Although sometimes dense as a text, there are some parts that aren't so bad, and at least two chapters dealing with gender, including one by Christine Gledhill (again, on TV criticism). 4. Or, if you want to get very basic, see John Storey, _An Introductory Guide to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture_ 2nd Edition, Univ. of Georgia Press, 1998 with a discussion on feminism in chapter 6 (along with numerous other chapters on other concepts of cultural studies). Maybe this provides some help regarding your original question. Barbara L. Baker Professor of Communication Central Missouri State University >>> [log in to unmask] 11/08/04 10:46AM >>> Do we have to talk to each other this way? Do we have to talk to each other this way? This message is a follow up on one I sent last week in which I asked for bibliographical suggestions that could help introduce feminist film criticism and theory to bright but totally uninitiated young undergraduate students. As has happened in the past when I asked similar questions there were very few responses, and of those few most were patently unsuitable [such as asking them to read Camera Obscura]. One of the better suggestions was to use the volume on Feminist Film Studies by Janet McCabe in the Wallflower Press series of introductory texts, and it's true that this volume at least tries to accommodate readers with no previous experience of film theory. But I have to emphasize "tries" because, at least from my point of view, it is only partially successful in this effort. Here, for example, are some phrases chosen from just the first two pages of Janet McCabe's introduction, that part of the book that, presumably, should work hardest at inviting in the uninitiated: "new knowledges concerned with deconstructing representation"; "de Beauvoir genderises transcendence and immanence"; "self-confirming parameters that institute gender hierarchies." It's not at all clear to me how I can expect my students to make any sense at all of these locutions. These pages also seem to take for granted that the reader will have some familiarity with such concepts as post-structuralism, post-colonialism, queer theory, transnationalism, to say nothing of ideology. My students, usually eager to learn, struggle with these terms and concepts, but sooner or later they give up, for without lots of help this stuff ultimately becomes impenetrable to them. This raises three questions for me, and it is these questions that I want to share with the list. First and most immediate, is there anything at all out there that will ease my students into this stuff? Perhaps in a course introducing feminist theory, or even film theory, I could devote lots of class time to talking about this. But my courses are usually much more broadly based and I can barely find the time to explore such things as the studio system, continuity editing, and auteur politics. Film theory, not just feminist theory but theory in general, has to get whatever little time is left over after working on more fundamental matters. So when some students, picking up on the little we can do in class, want to go further in this direction, where can I send them? [To avoid misunderstanding let me be more explicit about the audience I have in mind. Imagine that you're trying to explain your work to someone whom you like and whose intelligence you respect, but who has absolutely no experience of the kind of discourse we take for granted ? including such things as using the term "discourse" to talk about what I'm talking about now. Think of a teen age cousin, or your significant other whose moves in entirely in non-academic circles, or your jogging partner, or your grandfather. Think of someone who has probably heard the term "patriarchy" but isn't sure what it means; someone for whom "intervention" is anything but a discursive act; someone who perhaps, on hearing the word "argument," immediately thinks of an angry dispute and not of a reasoned exposition of an idea. This is the audience I mean to address.] Second, if?as I suspect?there is little out there that systematically introduces these terms, premises, concepts, and arguments, then it would seem most students and scholars in the field [and I suspect this may well mean you] learned this stuff the way I had to, more or less piecemeal, on the fly, improvising as we went along, hoping to get it right but often unsure. The result is?and here let me speak only for myself?that while I can talk the talk I sometimes find that I can't really walk the walk. I can certainly sound as if I know what I'm talking about, but while I usually have a pretty good idea of what's going on in any theoretical discussion, too often I find that my understanding is not as solid, not as comprehensive, not as clear as I want it to be?and, not coincidentally, not as clear as I expect my students' understanding to be when they write papers for me. [And this may well account for a peculiar and ironic pattern I've repeatedly discovered in young scholars over the years: as a member of my department's hiring committee, I often get to interview job candidates with sterling credentials, candidates who?judging from their CVs?seem to have a far more acute understanding of the issues that concern me than I do. Reading the applications I find myself thinking, "wow!!! -- we must have this person here." But then in the interview, when I begin to explore the issues and raise problems that I myself face in the hope that the candidate will be able to address them, I too often find that the candidate understands less than I do, and has merely mastered the sleight of language that counts as a sign of one's being an initiate. ] I wonder to what extent this kind of discourse is necessary, and to what extent we [and here I certainly include myself among the guilty] use it largely as a way of affirming our belonging to a specific scholarly culture and?more perniciously?as a way of excluding those who can't talk the talk. I of course know that some jargon, some terms of art, are not only inevitable but necessary. That's not the problem. The problem?actually a set of interrelated problems?is that no one seems prepared to introduce this discourse from the ground up; that those who use the discourse may have learned it in the most haphazard way; that at least some of these people have a less reliable understanding of this discourse than they should. There's one other aspect to this set of problems that seems to me especially compelling and troubling in the wake of last week's US elections. One midwestern voter was quoted in the NYTimes as saying, in essence "We don't need no east coast elite telling us what's good for us and who to vote for." While it's not likely that the discourse of film theory is the cause of this voter's distrust of an "intellectual elite," the remark?like the election results?has a wider resonance. For it suggests that, despite the importance of contemporary marxist thought in the university, we still have not figured out a way to make our most challenging and important work actually seem important to those whose lives and destinies we are programmatically engaged with. This is obviously a big, messy problem, and I don't suppose this is the place to explore it in detail. But it did seem to me to be worth flagging, and I'd be most eager to hear how others on the list feel about it. And, by the way, if anyone can tell me how to explain "new knowledges concerned with deconstructing representation" to my students, I'd be most grateful. Best Mike -- ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask] ---- To sign off Screen-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF Screen-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]