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
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