Regarding Cal Prylock's posting, first of all, I'd like to ask why so many
people seem to find it compelling, on a general, theoretical level, to assert
that if now differs from then in such-and-such a way, therefor, experiences
now have "nothing to do with" experiences then.
 
The difference in question is supposedly that back then, silent films were
never unaccompanied, whereas now they are unaccompanied.  Never unaccompanied?
   I doubt it.  Surely there must have been presentations of these films which,
for one reason or another, did not offer instrumentalists or narrators.
Moreover, presentations today do offer them.  So whatever differences there
may be between the experiences of viewers now, and viewers then, we can not
necessarily ascribe them simply to the presence or absence of instrumentalists
or narrators.
 
No, the point is that silent films lack the soundtrack.  That lack may
facilitate viewers' hearing other things.  "The sound of your own thoughts"
is not what I had in mind when I made this point; it's an interesting concept,
though.  When, at the cinema today, we immerse ourselves in a movie with
a soundtrack, we are able to immerse ourselves (if we do) in the wash of sound
from the speakers, which may all but drown out our thoughts.  Mainly, I'm
interested not so much in these internal sounds as in external sounds.
 
As Jacques Attali says in _Noise:  the Political Economy of Music_, the shift
from live sounds to recorded sounds is a profound power move.  I'm suggesting
that one of the values of silent films is that they decenter the presentation.
 
 
Though most our end-products for film, t.v., and radio today have soundtracks,
there are ways to undermine the determinacy of the set use of a soundtrack.
I'm thinking, for example, of adaptations of the kind of media use we've heard
from scratch d.j.'s and their descendents.
 
As a final provocation, I'll suggest that it may be interesting, too, to think
about the silent screens we use when we create texts for film, t.v., or
computer.
 
 
--Evan