drew perry writes, in part: >>We keep getting told that today's >>generation of non-readers (a generalisation, >>I know, but strikes me as a plausible >>characterisation) are just literate in a new >>way - they're visually literate. >>But then you keep hearing about how >>film or television texts that stretch >>the conventions one iota (convoluted >>narrative styles, profound existential >>subtext, allusive or open closures, symbolic >>imagery etc) are incomprehensible, unfathomable. >>That The Matrix (for e.g.) is just sill sci-fi stuff >>that 'makes no sense' ... just get into the special effects. and though i quite agree with him i think it might be worth making an additonal distinction . . . if visual literacy is the ability to decode the conventional [but rapidly evolving] codes and languages of cinema, then they are indeed very literate . . . . . . but . . . if by visual literacy we mean the ability to move from those codes to a different set of codes that drew names as "convoluted narrative styles, profound existential subtext, allusive or open closures, symbolic imagery etc" in other words conceptual codes that are not specifically cinematic but that we take as a central part of the western intellectual tradition, then they are almost totally illiterate . . . and i take it that one of the main objections in some parts of our culture to this new literacy is precsiely that it seems to interfre with the development of literacy of the more traditional kind -- which had little to do with simnply deciphering words and more to do with being able to frame the results conceptually m ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite