In a recent memo "Richard J. Leskosky" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: In the discussion of DEAD MAN WALKING, I was surprised to see the following statement accepted as completely true. >There are more prisons >than schools and governement is putting whole generation of African >Americans and Latinos to prison. It seems to me that on the face of it the claim that there are more prisons than schools is absurd. Can anyone provide actual figures on this? I found more troubling the phenomenon represented by the following passage: "The image of the murdered couple ....is an expression of the permitation of both of protagonists utter permiation by the elements of the situation that has lead to Penn's recieving a leathal injection from the state. .... As the greatly mourned Giles Deleuze put it "method" acting is centered around the permiation of the actor by the situation of the film. In *Dead Man Walking* that permiation happens untill it is a saturation and the actors emit pure affect instead of actions." Are words such as "permitation" and "permiation" actually new critical terms coined by Deleuze or are they merely examples of sloppy spelling (say, for "permeation" or "permutation")? Since there are other misspellings in the passage, I suspect the latter is the case. I realize that lists such as SCREEN-L are less formal than than a scholarly journal in many ways, but surely if one wishes to be understood one has the obligation to observe some basic rules of spelling and grammar in trying to communicate one's ideas. Even a quick reread before hitting the 'send' button could spare one's readers a lot of confusion and annoyance. --Richard J. Leskosky Richard J. Leskosky office phone: (217) 244-2704 Assistant Director FAX: (217) 244-2223 Unit for Cinema Studies University of Illinois * * * * * * END OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE * * * * * * * * i can't speak for anyone else but i myself was astonished at the claim about the relative number of schools and prisons, and thought it likely to be wrong . . . but the rest of the message--including not only the obvious spelling errors but, even more important because it has implications for the quality of the thinking behind the words, an impossibly gnarled and ultimately unintelligible syntax--suggested that the writer was at best irresponsible and at worst [expletive deleted] and thus hardly work arguing with . . . some rhetorical postures are so blatantly not an expression of anything like real reflection that they are hardly worth taking seriously and one just goes on the the next memo . . . . . . i'm afraid that in their rhetorical stance some of the messages on this and similar lists resemble nothing so much as cartoonish placards annopuncing that the world is coming to an end . . . i hope that few of us take time to debate such claims seriously 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]