just returned from a brief julyfourth trip to find the following comment from gene stavis on my query relating to video and film: > I think the answer to Mike Frank is that he refers to films as > "cinematic texts". This literary model of looking at films indeed barely > requires the films themselves. If all one is concerned about is the "text" > then a videotape is perfectly sufficient. > > But don't pretend that you are studying "cinema". and i have to admit that i'm baffled . . . a little bloodied at being told that i'm not "studying 'cinema'" . . . but that's ok . . . the real problem for me is the implicit claim that films are not texts . . . i thought a text is anything that you read, understand, respond to . . . perhaps i made a wrong turn somewhere but for years almost everyone who gets into these conversations seems to have agreed that a text is simply the name we give to a set [any set] of signs of signals that we can understand . . . neither i nor anyone else is claiming that cinematic texts are read exactly the same way as verbal [or "literary"--though that word should just go away] texts, but they certainly are read . . . in these terms the question becomes, and i hope this will point the issue in a way that makes it possible to move beyond this sticking point with those who champion cinema: are cinematic texts read the same way as video texts (or, alternatively, are movies read the same way when they are projected off film as when they are projected of a video storage medium?) or maybe the question should be put differently . . . using video sources i find i can follow the arguments and demonstrations of robin wood and e ann kaplan and bordwell & thomson and andre bazin and even rothman's frame by frame readings of hitchcock . . . that is to say almost all of the cinematic discourse that i know of is intelligible to one who knows only video versions of the films . . . does this mean that those critics --and dozens of others-- are also NOT studying cinema? maybe i need to ask what it means to study cinmea . . . maybe i don't yet know mike frank ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]