Henry:
I find your "three generations" division of academic film scholars (at
least American ones) dead-on, and I hope your challenge is taken up. One
comment on your description of generation #2, those who were drawn to
theory and away from earlier belletristic approaches. In one important
sense, the turn to high theoretical "jargon" was a strategic political
move, especially on the part of feminist women scholars who saw media
studies as a new field not completely dominated by an old gaurd. The
creation of an insider, special language served the purpose  of creating
a new knowledge-territory, indecipherable by those who had for so long
withheld grants, jobs, tenure, etc. from women scholars. So the current
embrace of a more "public" language is fraught with a more-than-implicit
challenge to a feminist agenda that has found some limited success within
academia (or at least the humanities and social sciences). The currently
emerging style -- a kind of Plain Speech with a Fair Use doctrine for
Jargon-When-Necessary-In-The-Line-Of-Duty --  can be seen by some as a
weakening of the very institutional and discursive safeguards that
feminist scholars worked so hard to construct in the seventies and
eighties. While I don't share this view, I very much sympathize with it,
and try to encourage my students to be open to (and, yes, to even enjoy
and appreciate) so-called jargon. There may be a time when a new jargon
will serve some useful purpose.
James Schamus