i have to preface this query by saying that i?m probably as appalled as most by the AFI list of the ?greatest? one hundred pictures . . . although some of the objections that have appeared are reasonably met by the AFI?s stated intention to deal only with ?american feature length fiction films? the list is still skewed in many problematic ways . . . even by the most generous reading ? offered on NPR this morning ? the list reflects only what the selectors are already familiar with and comfortable with, and thus ignores many films that not only were not selected but almost certainly were never even considered . . . and in doing so the list effectively dismisses many major parts of the heritage of american fiction cinema . . . . . . and yet, and yet . . . my own responses while watching much of the telecast last night, and reflecting on it, suggest that there is at least one nagging question to be asked about these objections . . . it occurs to me that the fundamental objection to the AFI list derives from the idea that it creates a perverse and terribly distorted canon of great films . . . and this premise itself requires the prior, or corollary, notion that there is a more legitimate canon, a body of ?truly? great films that have been overlooked by the AFI list . . . in short that the AFI list, in the interests of commerce, misrepresents our shared history . . . . . . this is a defensible claim, and i think a valid one . . . but it is oddly discordant with the tenor of a time in which canons themselves are always suspect, and a zeitgeist which increasingly leads us to want to historicize value judgments . . . we tend to believe that ?greatness? does not inhere in things in themselves but only in the relationships between things and contexts, that it is a quality that grows out of the way something has been culturally appropriated and situated . . . . . . to put the matter somewhat differently: although last night?s list may not reflect what film scholars or professionals consider the finest work in the field, it surely does reflect what the culture at large has appropriated as part of its collective sensibility, and as touchstones of movie greatness . . . watching the telecast i was surprised ? though i probably should not have been ? by how many of the shots, characters, and spoken lines were immediately recognizable . . . these were snippets that, for better or for worse, in fact have become part of our culture . . . and i can?t help but wonder whether the sorts of objections that we have raised to the list are not suspiciously close to the objections raised to the whole enterprise of taking film seriously raised by those who insist that that as a medium cinema cannot be taken seriously, and that a canon of shakespeare, goethe, tolstoy, and baudelaire has no room for griffith, or hawks . . . in other words, i?m not sure we really want to start fighting the canon wars on that turf . . . i intentionally overstate, if not the case for the AFI list, the case against the case that has been made here against the list . . . though i myself may not agree with everything i?ve said above i think it is an argument that deserves, even demands, our most careful attention mike frank ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama.