of the "visual" element in film, Gene Stavis asks of or about me: "Why does Mike consider this to be expendible? From his posts, it appears that he is primarily interested in the literary aspects of the films, e.g. their stories, words, themes, etc." . . . actually i'm not realy sure if this is what i'm interested in . . . one of my purposes in thnking about films is to determine just what's so interesting about them . . . but i DO think that most current discourse about what i have to continue to call cinematic texts concerns what Gene continues to call their "literary" aspects, and what i would prefer to call their signification or meaning or, perhaps better, their ideological posture Gene goes on: "However, I assume that most of us are concerned with the entire aesthetic > experience, in which case the quality of the visuals in their resolution, the > amount of detail revealed and the kinesthetic impression that only a > large-screen image of the proper resolution can give, is extremely important" . . . the only source of disagreement here is in the notion of important . . . i certainly would rather see a film on a big screen with all the perks that come along with that mode or presentation . . . and i'm not uninterested in pleasure . . . but most discourses today talk about films as cognitive objects, and i suppose, to put my own questin differently, i'm asking about the epistemic differences between different modes of delivery > Gene contiunues and uses a wonderful analogy that may, perhaps, help us resolve differences that i think may be more apprarent than real . . . he asks: "Would Mike suggest that a 78rpm lo-fi record of a symphony is the same > experience as a modern stereo CD?" and my answer is certainly not, in fact the modern stereo cd may well be closer to the 78 than to the experience of live music which i take to be the best option here . . . but i say that because i like the experience of music, and i do not think about it or study it . . . but those of us who have invested the ancestral wealth in outrageoulsy expensive stereo equipment in order to aproximate the experience of live music are often amazed to discover that musician friends care very little about such things [cf. the concluding editorial in the June 95 issue of Stereophile Magazine] . . . but the reason is simple: many musicians are not listening to sounds they are listening to the score . . . and ANY music system that can communicate the score is good enough . . . exactly as any book that can give me the words of a keats poem is as good as any other, even if one book sells for hundreds of dollars and the other is being given away by the library . . . Gene must recognize this when he concludes by saying: "Video is handy, yes, but is that any reason to denirgate a far better > representation, which is film?" . . . maybe we have common ground here . . . for i entirely agree that film is a "far better representation" . . . my only concern is whether it is a better representation of THE SAME THING, or whether the thing being represented, the signified itself, is somehow changed in some significant way by the translation to video that is the issue that i believe remains unresolved mike frank ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]