RE: Part/Whole Films In response to Gene's beautiful diatribe against the "aesthetic loss" I'd put "aside," and to Janet's suggestion about a "lab," I thank you both for two extreme answers to my question: one highly idealistic, the other simple and practical. I like them both. However, as someone who has taught literature, theater, and film, I'm still curious about a comparison of these three arts, regarding pedagogy. Do we help to create a movie theater-like experience if we show an entire film (even if merely on video) to an entire class? Is there a crucial value to that experience, and a value in discussing it in class, even though many of us seem to have less and less class time, with shortened semesters and commuter students? When I teach film, I often pick works that have been adapted from novels or plays. So, I ask my students to read the original text, along with some rather heavy theoretical essays. It becomes difficult then to also ask them to spend their "homework" time finding and watching films on video outside of class. Yet, beyond that practical problem, I'm also torn between two ideals: film (especially on video) as a "text" like a novel that a student might be assigned to "read" in an individual way outside class--or film as performance requiring a communal experience of audience participating in the live, co-creative diegesis, even if what's onscreen is not "live." Perhaps the "lab" or group viewing and reporting assignments helps to give both experiences--with small groups of students viewing films on video outside class. But it seems to me that holding a video cassette in one's hand and "paging" through it with fast forward or reverse (once it's in the VCR) is a very different aesthetic experience than submitting to an active spectatorial communion with the screen. Shouldn't film classes give something of both (though to varying degrees, depending on the course): both the textual, individualistic reading of film/video and the theatrical, communal watching? Especially if the latter is being lost more in more in our postmodern era, with video remote controls and TV channel switching and smaller multiplex cinemas? (Of course, the reading of texts in the traditional sense is being lost, too, which is why I try to make that tie in class and out.) Any further suggestions, diatribes, idea(l)s? Mark Pizzato Univ. of St. Thomas ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]