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July 1995, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Jeremy Butler <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 12 Jul 1995 20:35:54 -0600
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On 12 Jul 95 at 12:03, Gene Stavis commented on "Re: USING VIDEO
FOR FILMS":
 
> I think this is the heart of the matter. When Mike says "most discourses
> today", he is clearly referring to the predominance of "signification" in the
> academic community. That view has so dominated our community that we find
> ourselves in the present contretemps.
>
> A generation has grown up and is now teaching which is under the thrall of
> this, to my mind, extremely limited and literary view of a great and
> all-encompassing art form. It has, in my opinion, had a reductivist effect on
> experiencing film.
 
I think you're entirely right, Gene, that analyzing films as "texts"
can be very reductionist, and that it can ignore film's visual
component, but I'd like to point out that that is not necessarily
so. I offer as modest evidence my own dissertation, "Toward a Theory
of Cinematic Style" (which, as it was completed in 1982, places me
in the "generation" you're referring to, I think).
 
The word "text" sprinkled throughout this work's 348 pages--like
jimmies on a birthday cake--and yet it is *entirely* about visual
style.  It attempts to comprehend how style signifies, how style may
be "read," how style organizes signifiers into a textual system for
the viewer to shape into meaning systems (ideological constructs).
 
For me, a "text" is any system of signifiers.  In film/TV the
materials of those signifiers are images and sounds.
 
> I have no problem with anyone having any view thay please, but to present it
> as the ONLY alternative in looking at film is extraordinarily limited and
> inevitably leads to a situation in which the "textual" elements of the film
> become so central that the VISUAL experience has been denigrated (and even
> dismissed).
 
Agreed!
 
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