i'm baffled murray pomerance joins gene stavis in "pointing out a real *linguistic* deficiency of the > "lingua franca" of semiotics . . . its incapacity to deal with > the non-verbal aspect of filmic constructions". . . and then goes on to ask, in his own bafflement, "how on earth is anybody SERIOUSLY talking about films as texts?" . . . but in fact the whole of mp's letter is a discussion of films as texts . . . to illustrate the alleged non-textuality of film he points out that while a writer can "say that something is behind something else" the writer cannot do what the image maker can, viz. "construct a filmic image with retreating planes of focus" . . . to which one can only say, but of course. . . . it is, in fact, an essential part of the characteristic difference between verbal and image texts that the former cannot by its nature or its conventions present two things simultaneously, while it the genius of the second to do that . . . pomerance and stavis are absolutely right about this . . . but this is merely a description of the diffrence between them AS TEXTS; that is one kind of text works one way, and the other kind of text works the other way . . . but to the extent that they both work, and one of the jobs they both do is communicate meaning, they surely can both be called texts . . . . . . and even if one thinks that no verbal text can ever do more than approximate very crudely indeed a visual text, what does the champion of the cinematic lose by allowing that films are texts too? . . . what exactly are they afraid of, what does this eay of conceiving of films threaten? . . . the near violence of the claim strikes me as powerfully as the substance . . . perhaps there's more going on here than meets the e-mail eye 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]