Murray Pomerance's long and thoughtful posting remind me of a story told by Truffaut in the 60's. It goes more ore less this way. A famous film critic from a journal is called to the editor's office. The editor says to the critic: "In your last review, you praised this film. But, I have to tell you, my mother in law hated it". This story is similar in a way to Pomerance=B4s story at dinner time. There is a difference, although. In thos= e days, there were no film students. But the nature of the problem is the same. In both cases, someone showed disrespect for the cinematic knowledge of somebody. I am not able to tell if the phrase "our society" applies to both decades, but I'm inclined to say that the world of Truffaut and his collegues is very different from ours. What remains the same is the nature of the media. Film always aroused this kind of confusion, liberated the freedom of speech of the ignorant. It=B4s hard to imagine a literature student saying: " This Madame Bovary is sexist bullshit. I abandoned it in page 90." Or the editor informing a prestigious book reviewer about his relatives' taste. But the problem is that you cannot force people to see Blow Up 20 times. You cannot force them either to see it one time with a good disposition. Borges used to say to his students that if they read a book and, in spite of it=B4s prestige, they didn=B4t enjoy it, then they sho= uld leave it because that book was not meant for them. Somebody can argue that film studies were invented precisely to create an environment were these things don't happen. And that a film student should not behave like an outsider. I think this is not so, and the problem has nothing to do with disrespect or with "our society" (at least in terms of posmodernism or so). The problem is film itself. We are educated in film as a popular entertainment. We learn to love and hate films from our early years. Even film students and film teachers are educated this way. Even "art film" lovers behave this way. And film keeps it=B4s double nature as art and entertainment all the way. And analysis wont prevent us from loving or hating films in ways that may be very irrational, but are very important to us. Those who care most about film take this love and hate very seriously. Even they take their prejudices seriously. Maybe to the point of ending up making films or analysing film and teaching about film. (I=B4m afraid of thinking that things go otherwise, that people who teach about cinema don=B4= t love or hate the movies that they see.) There is a moment when we learn that watching a film 25 times, reading about it and listening to those who thought about it is interesting, encreases our knowledge and our pleasure. Economy or law students don=B4t think that their teachers may have nothing t= o say about their subjects, but film students do beacuse people in the streets do, their parents do, their friends do. It=B4s easier to learn a couple of jargon terms, even whole theories than to learn how to learn. And make them learn, or repeat or comment or write analysis won=B4t make them feel this interest, this pleasure. When this happen, when somebody reaches the point of discovery of these new pleasures, it=B4s a miracle if it happen= s truly. But it doesn=B4t happen often. And this is the problem with film, the problem with art, with college, with society and it will keep being the problem, a problem that forced respect doesn=B4t solve. Quintin Buenos Aires ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]