> While I don't have an Ivy League PhD nor a Rolls Royce and while I don't > know if I am just a "regular" person, what I can say is that I am not able > to think at advertising as a form of art, and although studying box office > winners may be of great interest from the cultural or historical point of > view, this falls in an entirely different field from the study of film > aestthetics. Well, advertising _can_ be a form of art or twisted into art. Look at the classic agit-prop posters from WWII or the Vietnam War or the work of Andy Warhol. Popular film in and of itself is not "advertising" -- it's simply entertainment for consumption and, on occaision, does approach the level of art. Does the fact that Sergio Leone's "Spaghetti Westerns" or the "Godfather" series were extremely popular in their day make them any less a work of film art? Or does the fact that a significant director like Martin Scorsese directing a Michael Jackson music video exclude that particular work from being simply worthy of study because of it's origin as advertising? RAND ------------------------------------------------- Randy A. Riddle, Winston-Salem, NC [log in to unmask] -- http://www.infi.net/~rriddle ------------------------------------------------- ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]