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July 2003, Week 3

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Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
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Wed, 16 Jul 2003 00:59:14 +1000
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Leo Enticknap wrote:

>Barry Salt had it just right in his opening chapters to 'Film Style and
Technology: History and Analysis' (one of the most valuable, if not the
most valuable work of film-related scholarship ever produced, IMHO) in
pointing out that a lot of the conclusions that these methodologies
produce
are fundamentally undermined by empirical historical research based on
hard
evidence. OK, history and historiography may be harder work - you
actually
have to go and find things out, rather than sit in an office armchair
dreaming up polysyllabic jargon. But personally I find that our
understanding of cinema is informed more effectively by analysis of hard
information regarding a film's production and reception than speculation
as
to what Freud thinks happened to the director's mother or a pathological
urge to bring down the bourgeois elite.

Quite so. I can't help sending along my comment to a couple of friends
(Bill Krohn of 'Cahiers du Cinema', and Dr Tag Gallagher) when I sent
them a copy of Weddle's article yesterday:

>seriously, for me this confirms schop's point about the difference between percepts (checkable) and concepts (not so, except
against other concepts), and the vital necessity of 'looking to see'

>conceptualisers can just go on and on (like brannigan lecturing), without ever touching base in checkable, verifiable reality

>krohn, of course, [in 'Hitchcock au travail'/'Hitchcock at Work'] exemplifies the checker par excellence

(I don't mind flattering my friends, though that's mainly when, as here,
I believe that what I say is true!)

- Ken Mogg (Ed., 'The MacGuffin').
Website: http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin

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