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August 1995, Week 2

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Subject:
From:
Gene Stavis <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 5 Aug 1995 07:53:31 -0700
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But, aside from the
aesthetic loss in using video, are students missing the whole (moving)
picture,
when we stress partial analysis?
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(The following is NOT an attack on the perfectly reasonable person who posed
this question, but is a cumulative response to the entire "video/film"
discussion which has regrettably cooled off.)
 
Pardon me, but doesn't this question answer itself?
 
"Aside from the aesthetic loss...???!!!"
 
Once the entire film has been experienced as it was meant to be by its
creators, i.e., on a large screen with the proper resolution, in an audience
setting and as a whole object, then "partial analysis" is perfectly fine and,
indeed, a very good thing.
 
But, are we seriously proposing to drop the aesthetic aspect of a film in
discussing it? Has film been brought to the level of a social science that
its "aesthetic" aspects can be shunted aside in order to provide the student
and the teacher with a more convenient method of "reading" a film?
 
I admit to being shocked (yes, shocked) to discover that such a discussion
can be taken seriously. The sublime art (that's "ART") of film, on the
occasion of its centenary, is being reduced to a vehicle for literary
messages which can only be decoded by a jargon presided over by a priesthood
whose language is so arcane that only initiates can hope to participate? Talk
about elitism! And to think, just a few months ago we had a serious
discussion of the place of a "canon" in film study!
 
At the risk of sounding decidedly uncool, I think it is high time that people
who love film denounce this pervasive cult which wishes to reduce the
powerful film experience to the mere reading of "texts". Because, assuredly
it is a cult, born of expediency and bent on reducing a dynamic art to a tame
academic exercise.
 
If all that is available in film schools is this single, narrow view, then I
am prepared to advise future students to avoid film schools altogether. Let
us simply leave it to the future academics who can be unconcerned about the
practical results of their folly and can continue to examine their navels
without the bother of relating to actual realities.
 
(Whew! I feel better now. :-) )
 
Gene Stavis, School of Visual Arts - NYC
 
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