on thinking further about this vexed problem of how to read cinematic violence in kubrick and in others, a problem that just won't go away, it seems that at the core of it [or at one of its cores] is the question of whether some material is itself so powerfully charged with negative [or, less commonly and less probelamatically, positive] meanings that no amount of bracketing can overcome it . . . to put the question simply: is the citation of something objectionable itself objectionable? a classic instance: in "catcher in the rye" holden caulfield goes around erasing obscene graffiti . . . but the words he is devoted to erasing appear in the book . . . they appear there under the clear and explicit sign of erasure, but they do appear there nevertheless . . . with the result that many moralists [a term that for the moment i use purely descriptively] found the book itself obscene . . . and note, to carry the issue one step further, that in this communication i myself am refraining from quoting the term that holden erased for fear that its very appearance on this electronic screen might offend . . . so even here, in an abstract professional discourse at least thrice removed from the discourse of those who, in the novel, wrote the graffiti in the first place . . . i don't think there is--or can be--a definitive answer to this question . . . to some, the material itself can never escape its primary (one almost wants to say primal) charge . . . to others what matters is the kind of bracketing that places the material in a particular discourse with a particular rhetorical and discursive purpose . . . now it's of course true that one of the questions that has shaped this thread on "clockwork orange" is the question of just what kind of bracketing kubrick is doing in the film, i.e., exactly what is he [or the film] saying about the violence that is so manifest in the film? . . . this, at least in principle, is a matter of resolvable fact . . . but even if his rhetoric were less richly ambiguous than it typically is, even if we knew exactly how the movie meant us to take the violence, that information could never help us resolve the question of whether that is a "good" or "bad" thing . . . perhaps the only way to even think about this question is to begin with a set of axioms about the purposes films are supposed to serve, and then to ask whether violence, direct or bracketed, helps to serve those purposes or works to undermine them mike frank <[log in to unmask]> ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]