Don's comment below raises an even more basic problem: what has film studies lost or avoided in focusing on films as "narratives" more than as "dramas"--in the theatrical sense of dramatic script and performance, going back many centuries in a tradition that directly influenced the invention and development of cinema? Probably more films today are made from novels than from plays and there are certain many ways that films are more like novels, in their "editing" and viewing, especially with videos versions that can be skipped through, backward or forward, unlike live performance. But we still go to a movie THEATRE to see cinema (and often watch video in a "home theatre" if we've bought the fancy equipment advertised as such). Film is an art that combines narrative (through the camera/editing control of viewpoint and sometimes with VO), theatre (through its drama and performance), visual art, and music. But theatre itself has a long tradition of combining narrative (with chorus, solioquies, and asides) with the performance of dramatic action and dialogue. Even Aristotle made the distinction between dramatic and epic poetry--showing that they already threatened to overlap originally, which some modern theorists like Benjamin and Brecht have valued as a non-Aristotelian tradition of theatre, from ancient times to ours. Is it the history of academic politics, with many film scholars emerging from English and foreign language departments, which has biased film studies toward narrative and relegated "drama" to being merely a generic subset of film? Or is most film today epic rather than dramatic poetry--and what is at stake in that neoclassical distinction? mp Mark Pizzato Asst. Professor Dept. of Dance and Theatre Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte Charlotte, NC 28223 Phone: (704) 547-4488 FAX: 704-547-3795 > ---------- > In addition, the "conflict and change" that you cite are essential > elements of many narratives, "drama" or otherwise. They are also key > components of the "classic Hollywood narrative." > > ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu