Hey Everyone; Although I do love a good debate, which may explain why I love politics so much, I'm sending only this final e-mail before unilaterally disarming on this subject... (Which I'm sure is good news to every one.) So fire away folks, I'll let others have the last words. First, Ed is right about one thing. One of my most important lines *was* wrongly put in parentheses. But it's not the one Ed points out. The comment I *should* have offered without brackets went something like this: "But that's the nice thing about this list-serve. It's good for people wanting answers to... [technical] questions, too." In other words, I explicitly wrote that I think it's okay for people to use this list-serve to ask questions about aspect ratios, film stocks, anamorphic processes and the like... I just hoped I'd be excused me for expressing my personal opinion that I *do*, however, value long debates about these kind of technical issues *less* than I value discussions that do move beyond technocratic realms. (Oh, and Ed... saying I'm "closed minded" for valuing the work of Baudry and Benjamin more than say, Roger Ebert's "in praise of letterboxing" articles is a bit punitive, isn't it?) Next, to again quote myself: > I'm thinking now about the typical laser disc fetishist, > hanging out at the video store all day, working him or > herself up into a frenzy because IT'S ALWAYS FAIR > WEATHER--composed for 2.55:1--was letterboxed at 2.35:1. This is the closest I came to making a statement that I regret. I almost sound as snotty as William Bennett there, at least to people who hang out in video stores! But I was thinking of a real conversation I had in a real laser disc store, one that cemented my convictions about my priorities in this micro-realm. The person I mentioned, who I vaguely knew from other visits to that store, began talking to me (in *heated* anger, I hasten to add) about the letterboxing of FAIR WEATHER. I said something like: "It's too bad they didn't do it right... You know IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER is really an unjustly ignored film, I think... one that says a lot about masculine disillusionment after World War II." My acquaintance then scowled at me silently for a moment--as if I had just said the stupidest thing in the world--and went right back to talking about all these shots in the film where part of someone's arm was cut off on the right or someone's shoulder was cut off on the left... I guess I don't regret that paragraph *too* much, though, considering Ed seems to have no problem at all accepting the label of "fetishist" in his reply. Call me an old fashioned academic who's read too much Marx, but I always thought commodity fetishism was a bad thing, especially when seen in the cinema, which, as Lenin once said, should be the art form of the masses. Sadly, it seems now that the vibrant movies in our cinematic heritage are reduced, for many, to a bunch of DVDs (properly letterboxed of course), kept on a shelf for yuppies to show off to their friends, right there with the coffee-table books and expensive vases. Later, Ed, wrote: "[P]eople who refuse to acknowledge the possible value of discussing the Technicolor reds in VERTIGO seem to me to have failed to learn to play well with others." I, of course, never said there was "*no* value" in that kind of discussion (and I certainly have never thought of this list-serve as some sort of playground). My most important lines in my earlier posting remain: "[i]t seems that far too often discussions of this sort *become ends in and of themselves* rather than part of a lager [sic. I meant "larger"] discussion of what... is really exciting about the cinema." This is the core of my argument, and I will stand by it steadfastly. Finally, on to Leo's remarks, which tend to betray a curiously strong animus against film academics. (He refers to Stephen Heath's rigorous work as "laughable" and to the great Robin Wood's writings as "pontifications".) You know, Leo, just because those of us who consider ourselves academics don't begin every article we write by mentioning a film's color process and its screen shape, that doesn't mean we're technically illiterate. I can't speak for every film professor, but I know that the major scholars I have had the privilege of working with read the latest issues of AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER right along with the writings of Foucault and Deleuze. I myself, before coming back to get a Ph.D. and teach film, financed my own former career as an experimental filmmaker by working (quite successfully) as a projectionist. As a film*maker*, I carefully chose my film stocks, often lit and shot my own scenes, cut and glue-spliced my own negatives and filled out my own lab reports. Obviously those decisions (and the complex craft of film projection) are important; the knowledge I learned in these endeavors very much informs my work in academia. On the other hand, Robin Wood's--and let's not forget Tania Modleski's--brilliant analyses of VERTIGO are not in the least outdated by the recent restoration of the film, nor are they compromised by any lack of technical understanding of the negative of the film. Nothing those two scholars said could be improved upon with a bunch of references to the newly rich color tones made possible by VistaVision and/or Technicolor, or any number of behind-the-scenes stories about the film's production... Oh, and that reminds me, a propos the Stephen Heath comment I should add (as has already been pointed out) that ever since Donald Spoto's disastrous analysis of MARNIE (which Spoto later apologized for), I don't think anyone I know in film theory or analysis would be naive enough to speculate on the conscious "intentions" of a director at the time a film was shot. Most film theorists, having read Roland Barthes, prefer to talk about texts as they exist in interaction with a spectator, independent of unknowable notions of intentionality on the part of a now-"dead" author... Respectfully, Dan Humphrey ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu