I totally agree with Damian, that film scholars are supposed to study 
any kind of film.

Henry's remark, that everyone should be lobotomized who prefers /Dude 
where is my car /to /Citizen Kane /might have been a bit provocative 
(and no one did actually claim that this comedy was better than the film 
by Welles), but we should be a little more suspicious about the 
discoursive effects of a film such as Citizen Kane - I think that many 
people write and speak about this film because they feel secure doing so 
- it is art, everyone can see that a first sight, its so easy to find 
significant moments and cinematic peculiarities in this film, it so much 
more difficult to find  such thing in a Rohmer film or in other films of 
classical Hollywood cinema, but this isn't a valid criteria for claiming 
that Welles is better than Rohmer or /The Awful Truth/ by Leo McCarey.

Nathan mentioned Kant and aesthetic judgment. Stanley Cavell also based 
his ideas about reading a film on Kant (§7 and 8 of Kritik der 
Urteilskraft), he refers to being compelled to write and make judgments  
about a film and wanting others to agree with you, althoug you know that 
your judgments are based on subjective experience, and he says that the 
reading of a film should extend or translate the experience of the 
film.  But he explicitly refers to popular and entertaining films of 
Hollywood cinema, films which unlike the films of Welles don't offer us 
many possibilities to see their 'art' (no camera movements, no cinematic 
staging, no depth of field photography....). And these films are not 
just interesting as products of a specific culture but as 
(philosophical) expressions of some metaphysic longings for overcoming 
human limitations. Kant comes into play in Cavell's film philosophy as a 
way of tranlating the experience of having been entertained into a 
reading of a film that is compelling and convincing and that proves that 
the film is worth the attention given to it. (Check Cavell's Cities of 
Words, 238f for that).

I don't know if I could offer such a reading to 'Dude, Where is My Car' 
and I would be grateful if I could get an idea of what Damian had 
written about this film. But I once offered such a reading to the 
Farrellys 'Stuck on You', and I still think that this films was worth 
the attention and given it.

I understand Deane that in order to counter the student's populist ideas 
of cinema one has to be elitist for a while. But in my experience of 
teaching film there is also the danger of students turning into snobs 
who are being seduced by the wrong kind of films to find them 
interesting because they offer art that is identifiable as art at first 
sight (The horrible art house cinema notion of art, for example Amélie). 
Being (a little) suspicious of art films and being receptive to popular 
films had always offered me a way to understand both and film in general 
in a better way.



Herbert

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