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July 1995, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Murray Pomerance <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sun, 9 Jul 1995 21:20:55 -0400
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On Fri, 7 Jul 1995, Gene Stavis wrote:
 It was inevitable that this controversy would come to pass when dogmatic
> semiotics became the lingua franca of the academic community.
 
 
I think it needs to be said--beside the fact that Gene Stavis makes a lot
of sense--that he is pointing out a real *linguistic* deficiency of the
"lingua franca" of semiotics when he notes its incapacity to deal with
the non-verbal aspect of filmic constructions.  Some of us, to our pride,
I think, have actually made the things this debate is bringing to the
table.  Gene Stavis has been involved in making films.  I have been
involved in making texts.  As a writer who makes writing, I affirm that I
must concoct substitutions for artifices I see in film, that strike me
powerfully, and that I simply *cannot* use TEXTUALLY.  I cannot use what
Bazin referred to as profondeur du champ (depth of field).  I can surely
*say* that something is behind something else, or that it is in the
background, and so on.  But Stavis and his collaborators could actually
construct a filmic image with retreating planes of focus--or, better,
with that visual construction I can only refer to in words as "an image
with retreating planes of focus."  Film can make the close-up, and I can
only use those same black words on white paper to talk about being
"close."  Film--forgive me, purists--can have color:  Alfred Hitchcock
can dress 'Tippi' Hedren in chartreuse (with Edith Head's great help) but
I can only say, "Alfred Hitchcock can dress . . ." and so on.
 
How on earth is anybody SERIOUSLY talking about films as texts?  I share
Gene's bewilderment, and have to wonder, too, whether those who find
"texts" everywhere love film for what it is or just for what they think
it "tells" them.
 
Murray Pomerance
Toronto
 
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