In response to brian Taves' thoughtful remarks on b movies, one question: You remark that some b filmmakers were "self-conscious" while others were not. Need we place a greater "value" on works we can ascribe to "self-conscious" filmmakers -- and what, precisely, are such self-conscious filmmakers actually conscious of? It's a question I'm grappling with as I'm in the midst of teaching a course on b movies this semester and am constantly wavering between "auterist" -- even studio-as-auteur -- enthusiasms on the one hand and more clinically cult studs type approaches on the other. I find that much academic work on pop culture falls loosely into one of these two camps -- a "gee whiz I'm slumming and having a great time of it" approach and a "capitalist pig ideologues are trying to brainwash us even though working class/marginalized/etc. audiences are actually oh-so sophisticated and active" approach. I suppose trying to harvest cultural capital out of the fields of pop-kultur has its risks.... --James Schamus