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June 1995, Week 3

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Subject:
From:
Mike Frank <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 15 Jun 1995 13:18:04 -0400
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Murray Pomerance wants to know WHO is--for list subscribers--a great film
critic today. I want to know if Murray means "critic" or "reviewer" . . .
there's a big dif. I suspect Tania Modleski is a great film critic; Robin
Wood is surely a great film critic; Stanley Cavell is a great film critic;
and there are others. This is a list that can--and given the nature of the
list probably will--grow exponentially.
But REVIEWERS is a whole nother ball game. If a reviewer is someone who a)
writes to very short deadlines; b) has as her main purpose to evaluate a film
and to give readers some idea of whether they too might like it, then it's
almost in the nature of things that great critics are rare if not a total
impossibility. {No, I do not think that Kael was a great critic, not
remotely . . . her judgements are often bizarre and radically
unrepresentative, and she indulges her own cranks and prejudices (I.A.
Richards' term for what the critic ought not do) as if they were tokens of
the divine presence. She was a classy writer, fun to read, and stimulating
to mind and soul . . but NOT a great critic.}
Of course there are those people--mainly journalists writing for non-daily
pubs--who occupy a kinda middle ground and produce think pieces that focus on
or around, but are not centrally concerend with evaluating the success of,
films. Here the writers for the Village Voice --past and present--stand out
but no doubt there are many others.
 
BY THE WAY, on the toally different issue of INTERPELLATION: I've been
folowing the discussion of the term with curiousity and interest, and
learning a lot about etymology. But it's worth poinitng out that when the
term is used in critical discourse today you can bet FACETS catalogues that
it is being used in, and only in, the Althuserrian sense. The term today has
nothing at all to do with calling in the conventional sense [much less
interjecting]. It always speaks to the issue of the construction fo subjects
and subjectivities by texts. Like "diegetic" this is a word that, unless you
already know what it means, you really can hardly find out about. Part, I
suppose, of the brave new world of crit-speak.
 
Mike Frank
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