RE: Part/Whole Films

 

In response to Gene's beautiful diatribe against the "aesthetic loss" I'd put

"aside," and to Janet's suggestion about a "lab," I thank you both for two

extreme answers to my question: one highly idealistic, the other simple and

practical.  I like them both.

 

However, as someone who has taught literature, theater, and film, I'm still

curious about a comparison of these three arts, regarding pedagogy.  Do we help

to create a movie theater-like experience if we show an entire film (even if

merely on video) to an entire class?  Is there a crucial value to that

experience, and a value in discussing it in class, even though many of us seem

to have less and less class time, with shortened semesters and commuter

students?

 

When I teach film, I often pick works that have been adapted from novels or

plays.  So, I ask my students to read the original text, along with some rather

heavy theoretical essays.  It becomes difficult then to also ask them to spend

their "homework" time finding and watching films on video outside of class.

Yet, beyond that practical problem, I'm also torn between two ideals: film

(especially on video) as a "text" like a novel that a student might be assigned

to "read" in an individual way outside class--or film as performance requiring a

communal experience of audience participating in the live, co-creative diegesis,

even if what's onscreen is not "live."

 

Perhaps the "lab" or group viewing and reporting assignments helps to give both

experiences--with small groups of students viewing films on video outside class.

 But it seems to me that holding a video cassette in one's hand and "paging"

through it with fast forward or reverse (once it's in the VCR) is a very

different aesthetic experience than submitting to an active spectatorial

communion with the screen.  Shouldn't film classes give something of both

(though to varying degrees, depending on the course): both the textual,

individualistic reading of film/video and the theatrical, communal watching?

Especially if the latter is being lost more in more in our postmodern era, with

video remote controls and TV channel switching and smaller multiplex cinemas?

(Of course, the reading of texts in the traditional sense is being lost, too,

which is why I try to make that tie in class and out.)

 

Any further suggestions, diatribes, idea(l)s?

 

Mark Pizzato

Univ. of St. Thomas

 

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