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glen norton wrote: What is boredom except the grip of empty > time? What if film allowed us to experience time as somehow "empty"? i'd be careful to separate a 'state' of boredom from a cultural text that is judged to be boring. Paul Corrigan's work entitled "Doing Nothing" is a brief glimpse of the rituals practised by young people in the east side of London circa late 1960s early 1970s to create fun and interesting things to do from a position of relatively little material wealth. He argues that the 'street' is pregnant with potential for things to happen. The assessment that someone is 'bored' is an expression, not of empty time, but of the first stage of potentialising a particular facet of the 'street'. The rituals of 'boredom' are social mechanisms for the production of interest. 'Interest' here is meant in the affective sense of Thompkins, ie 'interest-excitement', there is probably a more complex configuration of affects at play including 'distress', 'anger' and so on. To potentialise the immediate 'street' environment means to accelerate in one's body the manifestation of 'interest' with one's peers along the continuum of interest-excitement. Having a laugh and smashing bottles or having a fight is the result. The signalling of 'boredom' is a trigger ritual. The threat of 'empty time' never actually actualises. At the very minimum discussion of one's boredom is in effect the 'nothing' that is being done. the space of the cinema (here I mean the actual cinema as viewing space, not some abstract entity) could also be a space similar to the 'street' of Corrigan's "smash street kids". My point is that 'boredom' has its own positivity that needs to be addressed. the issue is not whether a given text manifests affects of interest-excitement or whatever, but for who and in what cultural contexts. So rather than a 'politics of taste' there is a 'politics of interest'. being told a text is "good for us" makes a number of assumptions about "us", but it is also an expression what the person making the suggestion is interested in. Such interest based politics are evident in cultural formations that use highly esoteric or technical languages to express subjective formations of interest, or even in those situation involving people who do not express interest through discourse at all. when I have been bored in the cinema, it is when I have found my mind wondering. that is, I have been more interested in my own thoughts than whatever movie I was watching. quitting smoking has made this a less frequent experience. Ciao, glen. (but a different one) -- PhD Candidate Centre for Cultural Research University of Western Sydney Read my rants: http://glenfuller.blogspot.com/ * * Film-Philosophy Email Discussion Salon. After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to. To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon. **