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July 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:
Tue, 18 Jul 1995 15:29:06 -0400
Content-Type:
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on the increasingly complex, not to say convoluted, video/film matter,
Don Larsson coments:
 
"> Maybe we need to step back, take a few deep breaths, and check our
>  vocabularies.The following words are getting tossed around (by me included)
 and
>  seem to
> cover a range of meanings:
>
> TEXT--work, object, narrative line, thematic core, visual/aural content,
> perfomance
>
> READ--experience, understand, analyze, interpret, see
>
> To tie this problem of usage to the original question about film and video
> (and address Mike Frank's frustration about the film-as-text), we can say
> the larger problem here is one of emphasis in our approaches to film:
>
> Film is an artistic medium
>
> Film is a social/commercial medium"
 
and adds that:
 
"Certainly, we address non-aesthetic questions fairly well with video,
> and video may serve for certain aesthetic issues, less well for others.
> But then, if we talk about ideological implications of the apparatus or
> placement of the subject, the quality of the image may become more
important."
>
i find his comments very welcome, adding another important axis of
discrimination to the discussion . . . but i'm afraid it won't in itself
resolve the central question because i [in principle if not inevitably in
practice, total purity being as rare here as everywhere else] am absolutely
committed to dealing with film as "an artistic medium" and not as either a
commercial medium or as a technological medium . . .
and i'm convinced that the other regular participants in these exchanges are
equally intent on seeing (that word used quite intentionally) on seeing film
as an artistic medium . . .
 
just maybe a useful notion here is in that apparently simple term: "seeing
film AS" -- for if mitchell and berger and gombrich and sol worth et al are
to be believed, we never see anything in itself . . . we only see it AS . . .
but then again maybe this road is one that should be less taken
 
mike frank
 
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