the conversation initiated [provoked?] by the weddle piece has taken the expected turn with lots of outraged voices raised to defend the integrity, validity [and--it at times seems--sanctity] of the theoretical enterprise [not at all surprising since many of us are as deeply committed to theory as priests are to their own sets of beliefs] . . . some of the arguments have amounted to little more than angry finger pointing, but some have been very thoughtful and virtually all have said many valid things but in all of the conversation i detect precious little effort to understand weddle's p.o.v. or to see whether there might not be some validity in it -- and i think that to the extent that theory is [or should be] an effort to examine the foundational principles of some enterprise, reading weddle as seriously as we read jameson [at least for starters] might not be unwise a couple of specific points: yes, of course weddle has almost no understanding of theory--indeed his whole point is that none of it makes any sense to him . . . so accusing him of confusing one kind of theory with another is hardly to the point next, weddle writes as an industry insider, so again to accuse him of being that is not to argue against him but simply to confirm his own point which is that being an industry insider doesn't require theory, and may in fact undermine one's chances of success there in just the same way that being a marxist would likely not help one advance professionally in that branch of the american business world we call government . . . maybe hollywood ought to change [i'm very sympathetic to some versions of that argument] but if weddle's daughter simply wants an education that will help her advance professionally not in academe but in american cinema then it's hard to see how her father is wrong . . . the unnamed "friend with a doctorate in british history" is probably right when he declaims scornfully "Wanta know about film in the real world? Talk to a guy who's been head of Spelling Television!" third, in at least one respect weddle says more than he knows: our same british friend piles onto weddle with the accusation that he has an "obsession with Marxism" and that "It's just ridiculous to contend that all film theory is Marxist, but this is what he does -- it's all, he suggests, a conspiracy rooted in the New Left." . . . no doubt that contention is largely invalid -- if that is in fact what weddle contends . . . still, it's essential to keep in mind as we think through these far from settled matters that the theoretical moment we currently are living in [or perhaps beginning to emerge from] has been very much fueled by leftist politics, or by related versions of the "false consciousness" argument favored by psychoanalytic or feminist critics . . . i would go so far as to say that almost all of the most powerful theoretical work of the past two generations has been part of an effort to uncover the transparent and thus hidden machinery shaping our political, sexual, cinematic, and ultimately linguistic practices now it may well be that this political-social program is much more important than anything one might say about cinema AS cinema -- that it is only by historicizing and contextualizing and [thus] theorizing cinema that it becomes worthy of our careful [academic] attention; i'm actually VERY sympathetic to that claim -- but that does not mean that nothing else is worth doing . . . truth is that though i have no interest in being a movie industry insider, i myself -- as an unreconstructed formalist-- find the [hidden] political agenda of so much theory unnerving . . . what i would really like to see is a theory of cinema grounded in [and growing out of] not a desire for social justice but an attempt to sort out just what sort of thing cinema is and how -- in all its multifarious aspects -- it works is short-- weddle is obviously wrong about lots of things, hardly surprising since his point is that much of what he's talking about makes no sense to him . . . but he's also right about some crucial things -- including [unfortunately] the way in which many students respond to being taught theory . . . more important, he's an example of the way in which a leftist driven body of thought has [once again??] become oblivious to the actual situation of the people for whom it would propose to speak . . . i suppose one could say that most of the attacks on weddle's piece have been versions of the old "false consciousness" argument . . . while i'm not quite sure what "true consciousness" would be like i'm pretty sure that reiterating that perhaps true accusation may make us feel better about what we do but otherwise does little to forward anyone's real agendas mike ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu