I'd tend to agree with you here, Mike. We do have to be careful to try to
understand this criticism, particularly when ranged against
Bordwell/Thompson (Weddle is not exactly incorrect here IMO), although the
immediate feeling I get is to defend film theory. Ultimately, however, the
article is rich pickings for both sides, so perhaps it's not a bad idea that
it's out there. Yet again, the article does read rather like an irate
parents' trip to see the college professor to ask why his daughter didn't
get high grades.

Any article about higher education, regardless of the subject, speaks
volumes if it begins with:

'"I had paid more than $73,000 for her college education, and the most she
could muster on her film theory class final was a C?

"It's not my fault," she protested. "You should have seen the questions. I
couldn't understand them, and nobody else in the class could either. All of
the kids around me got Cs and Ds."'

Apart from all the rant about different theories, approaches etc... Apart
from Weddle clearly not having understood the rich and diverse pathways in
film studies open across the world and outside the Hollywood enclave... This
says more to me about the direction higher education could possibly go. My
job rides on the fortunes of higher education in the future, as do those of
many others, but the article seems to be irresponsible in advocating an HE
system focused upon the needs of the student as a consumer: Weddles daughter
deserves better grades because he paid $73,000 for them.

She probably deserves a job in the industry too.

Finally, in my opinion film studies does need a good dose of introspection
every now and again, but it's a pity that this apparently well-honed article
is in fact a rather blunt instrument underneath. Quite a lot of the
criticism of theory I'd be keen to explore here but, as for Weddle, maybe,
after all, his daughter just wasn't any good in class.



Damian

PS. Assuming Weddle is not on this list, he can't enter the fray himself.
How do we 'engage' him or his ideas in that eventuality?


on 13/7/03 11:28 PM, Mike Frank at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> despite the summer doldrums, i expect [or is it hope] that there
> will be extensive response to david weddle's piece on the place
> of film theory in the UCSB curriculum . . .  i also expect [or is it
> fear] that much of the response will be defensive, hostile, replete
> with self-righteousness and peppered with name calling -- though
> i really hope not . . .
>
> it seems to me that many -- if not all -- of the harsh judgments weddle
> quotes [or himself makes] need to be taken seriously, and not only because
> many fair minded people whose opinions we otherwise value are often
> scornful of our enterprise -- so  . . .
>
> . . . in the interest of initiating a more measured response to the
> article,
> let me raise one question:  as someone who is committed to film
> theory and regularly includes as much of it as i can manage in
> introductory
> classes aimed at non-specialist students, i really wonder about UCSB's
> policy of making film theory central to a curriculum in film production
> . . . braningan argues -- to me convincingly -- that film theory is
> really
> philosophy, and that philosophy is very important   . . . indeed weddle
> himself allows that aristotle makes sense in a cinema curriculum -- though
> his scorn for the question of what cinema essentially *IS* suggests that
> he would be less tolerant of plato . . . but even if philosophy is
> important
> is it necessary for film production? . . . the same question, approached
> from
> the other direction, asks whether the creators of successful artworks have
> to
> be aestheticians . . . practical experience suggests that they do not
>
> of course those who have specific narrowly political agendas may well hope
>
> that a UCSB education, when added to great skill [or luck] in pursuing a
> career in film-making, might lead to a generation of hitchcocks,
> scorseses,
> or spielbergs who make lots of wonderful and wildly popular leftist movies
>
> . . . but i wonder whether that should be the goal -- explicit or implicit
> -- of
> an education in cinema studies
>
> mike