Hey Everyone;
Although I do love a good debate, which may explain why I
love politics so much, I'm sending only this final e-mail
before unilaterally disarming on this subject... (Which I'm
sure is good news to every one.) So fire away folks, I'll
let others have the last words.
First, Ed is right about one thing. One of my most
important lines *was* wrongly put in parentheses. But it's
not the one Ed points out. The comment I *should* have
offered without brackets went something like this: "But
that's the nice thing about this list-serve. It's good for
people wanting answers to... [technical] questions, too."
In other words, I explicitly wrote that I think it's okay
for people to use this list-serve to ask questions about
aspect ratios, film stocks, anamorphic processes and the
like... I just hoped I'd be excused me for expressing my
personal opinion that I *do*, however, value long debates
about these kind of technical issues *less* than I
value discussions that do move beyond technocratic realms.
(Oh, and Ed... saying I'm "closed minded" for valuing the
work of Baudry and Benjamin more than say, Roger Ebert's
"in praise of letterboxing" articles is a bit punitive,
isn't it?)
Next, to again quote myself:
> I'm thinking now about the typical laser disc fetishist,
> hanging out at the video store all day, working him or
> herself up into a frenzy because IT'S ALWAYS FAIR
> WEATHER--composed for 2.55:1--was letterboxed at 2.35:1.
This is the closest I came to making a statement that I
regret. I almost sound as snotty as William Bennett there,
at least to people who hang out in video stores! But I was
thinking of a real conversation I had in a real laser disc
store, one that cemented my convictions about my priorities
in this micro-realm. The person I mentioned, who I vaguely
knew from other visits to that store, began talking
to me (in *heated* anger, I hasten to add) about the
letterboxing of FAIR WEATHER. I said something like:
"It's too bad they didn't do it right... You know IT'S
ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER is really an unjustly ignored film, I
think... one that says a lot about masculine
disillusionment after World War II." My acquaintance then
scowled at me silently for a moment--as if I had just said
the stupidest thing in the world--and went right back
to talking about all these shots in the film where part of
someone's arm was cut off on the right or someone's
shoulder was cut off on the left...
I guess I don't regret that paragraph *too* much, though,
considering Ed seems to have no problem at all accepting
the label of "fetishist" in his reply. Call me an old
fashioned academic who's read too much Marx, but I always
thought commodity fetishism was a bad thing, especially
when seen in the cinema, which, as Lenin once said, should
be the art form of the masses. Sadly, it seems now that
the vibrant movies in our cinematic heritage are reduced,
for many, to a bunch of DVDs (properly letterboxed of
course), kept on a shelf for yuppies to show off to their
friends, right there with the coffee-table books and
expensive vases.
Later, Ed, wrote: "[P]eople who refuse to acknowledge the
possible value of discussing the Technicolor reds in
VERTIGO seem to me to have failed to learn to play well
with others." I, of course, never said there was "*no*
value" in that kind of discussion (and I certainly have
never thought of this list-serve as some sort of
playground). My most important lines in my earlier
posting remain: "[i]t seems that far too often discussions
of this sort *become ends in and of themselves* rather than
part of a lager [sic. I meant "larger"] discussion of
what... is really exciting about the cinema." This is the
core of my argument, and I will stand by it steadfastly.
Finally, on to Leo's remarks, which tend to betray a
curiously strong animus against film academics. (He refers
to Stephen Heath's rigorous work as "laughable" and to the
great Robin Wood's writings as "pontifications".)
You know, Leo, just because those of us who consider
ourselves academics don't begin every article we write by
mentioning a film's color process and its screen shape,
that doesn't mean we're technically illiterate. I can't
speak for every film professor, but I know that the major
scholars I have had the privilege of working with read the
latest issues of AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER right along with
the writings of Foucault and Deleuze. I myself, before
coming back to get a Ph.D. and teach film, financed my own
former career as an experimental filmmaker by working
(quite successfully) as a projectionist. As a film*maker*,
I carefully chose my film stocks, often lit and shot my own
scenes, cut and glue-spliced my own negatives and filled
out my own lab reports. Obviously those decisions (and the
complex craft of film projection) are important; the
knowledge I learned in these endeavors very much informs my
work in academia.
On the other hand, Robin Wood's--and let's not forget Tania
Modleski's--brilliant analyses of VERTIGO are not in the
least outdated by the recent restoration of the film, nor
are they compromised by any lack of technical understanding
of the negative of the film. Nothing those two scholars
said could be improved upon with a bunch of references to
the newly rich color tones made possible by VistaVision
and/or Technicolor, or any number of behind-the-scenes
stories about the film's production...
Oh, and that reminds me, a propos the Stephen Heath comment
I should add (as has already been pointed out) that ever
since Donald Spoto's disastrous analysis of MARNIE (which
Spoto later apologized for), I don't think anyone I know in
film theory or analysis would be naive enough to speculate
on the conscious "intentions" of a director at the time a
film was shot. Most film theorists, having read Roland
Barthes, prefer to talk about texts as they exist in
interaction with a spectator, independent of unknowable
notions of intentionality on the part of a now-"dead"
author...
Respectfully,
Dan Humphrey
----
Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu
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