I apologize ahead of time for the cross-posting: A colleague of mine, whose book on film is forthcoming from Duke, has given me permission to cite (in my book on the Blair Witch with J. Weinstock--forthcoming from WSUP) her interesting discussion of a film definition of "ectoplasm." According to the third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, the word "ectoplasm" picks up a third meaning, aside from 1) the substance in a cell and 2) the substance said to emanate from a ghostly presence. The third definition is: "_Informal_. An image projected onto a movie screen." We both would like to pursue this strange appearance of "ectoplasm" which vanishes as soon as you touch it. It's not in the first or (I think) second edition of the AHD, or in the recent fourth edition. Nor is it in Webster or the Oxford English Dictionary, or on Dictionary.com. It appears, of course, in Ralph Ellison's _Invisible Man_ in the first two lines: "I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms." Can this be the AHD's sole source for their definition? Unlike the OED or Samuel Johnson, AHD does not give attributions for use. :-) What she and I would like to know is the amount of circulation this word and its meaning had beyond Ellison in the film world, if it did. The removal of this third definition from the latest edition of AHD is in itself interesting... the invisible man goes back to being invisible. Was it a slang term with a short life, or an eccentric use in Ellison's novel? The connection of ectoplasm to film has strong metaphoric relevance to both our separate works: hoaxes, vanishings, filmic "proof" of the paranormal, etc.; it's a potent connection, and we would of course be interested in knowing if "ectoplasm" had wider circulation in the forties or earlier. For Screen-L: Last summer I asked about "ghost photography" and received some helpful answers. Thanks! The Eastman House Library has a copy of Gettings' _Ghosts in Photographs: The Extraordinary Story of Spirit Photographs_, but this strange lexocographic (perhaps solely literary) association of ectoplasm and film is intriguing and frustrating. Sarah ********************************************************************* Sarah L. Higley [log in to unmask] [log in to unmask] Associate Professor of English office: (585) 275-9261 The University of Rochester fax: (585) 442-5769 Rochester NY, 14627 ********************************************************************* Py dydwc glein / O erddygnawt vein? "What brings a gem from a hard stone?" Book of Taliesin ********************************************************************* ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite