Dear Mike,
I was objecting to the claim that "Each artform has a distinct
medium." Distinct is ambiguous, but I don't think that it means
merely necessary. It means something closer to unique or perhaps just
distinguishing. It's what distinguishes the artform. It's the kind
of thing that could function as the essence of the artform, if
artforms have essences.
Words are not this for literature. The use of words does not
distinguish literature from other arts. Songs, poetry, films, and
plays all use words.
If saying that words are the medium of literature simply amounts to
the claim that literature uses words, as you suggest, then the claim
says nothing that's not true of a bunch of other artforms too. It's
also true that film uses words. But we don't want to say that words
are the medium of film. There's no distinction there.
Perhaps, given your earlier remarks, you mean that literature
necessarily uses words and that film necessarily uses images. I'm not
sure that this is so, but I'll grant it for now. If it is the case
that to be a film something must present an image, then we still don't
have a distinct medium. To be a painting, most plausibly, something
must use images as well. (And it's not clear that a work of
literature must use more or less images than film. I could modify a
novel by Sebald and a film by Maker and make a work of literature that
had more images than the film.)
So, we wouldn't have identified distinct medium for film. Even if we
could, it's not so clear what the implications would be. Any given
film might make more use of editing or sound. What would it matter if
images were the medium of film in this sense? What implications would
it have? . . .
Cheers,
Aaron
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: "Frank, Michael" <[log in to unmask]>
>
> and while this is a useful question i think it has an answer . . . to say
> that words are the medium of literature is simply to establish a necessary
> but hardly sufficient characteristic of literature; that other kinds of
> things can use words too doesn’t pose any special problem
>
>
>
> by the same token in saying that words are the medium of literature we’re
> not saying that sounds and pitches and rhythms [if we’re dealing with oral
> lit] or print and shapes on a page [if we’re talking print] are the medium
> – though they may be the material which constitutes the medium . . . i think
> we can agree that literature USES words and cinema USES moving images, and
> that these uses constitute an important difference
>
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