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
 
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