I generally avoid potty talk because of my strong preference for citation and source over gossip. Ditto for ex-cathedra pronouncements of the sort that my own two girls abandoned in their late teens. That’s because their becoming a lawyer and a chemist necessitated a respect for facts—provocative or otherwise.

In this case, my reference to Mulvey’s article is clear; and board readers who are sufficiently versed in the old philosophical polemic between representation and meaning are free to decide for themselves on which side Mulvey’s article falls. Indeed, Sarah’s un-named source saw a rupture between the two modes of discourse, and I do, too.

That certain hidebound semioticians cannot see what others clearly observe on the surface is their problem—which is ostensibly augmented by the necessity that their own intellectual tools dictate. This, of course, has indeed included feminism, which is why I’ve always seen Mulvey's ’75 article as such a welcome break.

On other hand, I personally do not see semiotics as necessarily trivial. Harraway, for example, wonderfully described how sex and power works its way into Biological theory. In (decon)Law, it’s rather clear that certain discursive forms carry more truth than others: white over black, male over female, etc…

Yet it would still seem to me that Mulvey’s article trivializes semiotics in the sense that she explains 95% of what needs to be explained. It’s all super-fically self-evident that moovees are made because guys like to stare at girls and imagine having sex with them. A darkened room with a screen affords them this opportunity because, with the exception of Liz Berkley, the girl doesn't stare back. The rest is dross.

i generally avoid responding to the provocations of bill harris, but when there are such blatant factual misrepresentations as this they need to be pointed out . . . the idea of a “politics of signification” is one that was developed by feminists – including mulvey and her followers – precisely as a way of understanding the mechanisms by which “the simple truth of sexism” gets inscribed into our discourses . . .

its purpose is specifically to expose this simple truth, not to obscure it . . . one may agree or disagree with the goals, and one can find fault with the [admittedly tendentious] methods, but to call the work of two generations of feminists semioticians “trivia . . . to obscure the simple truth of sexism” is simple misrepresentation

From: Film-Philosophy Salon [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of bill harris
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 12:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Screen Theory query

Hi Sarah,

Are you familiar with her "famous" 1975 article, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema?

Women are represented on screen as sex objects; and the intentionality on the part of Hollywood producers is rather clear in this regard.

Therefore, any epi-phenomenal search for a deeper meaning is totally besides the point: all you need to know is what is clearly...represented.

Therefore, searching for hidden signifiers is a form of modern scholastics in which the machine of higher learning generates trivia in order to obscure the simple truth of sexism. This, of course, is part and parcel to the auto-labeling of filmic representors as "artists".

Ciao, Bill

Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2009 20:31:34 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Screen Theory query
To: [log in to unmask]

I recently read an essay on the "Screen Theory" of the 70s and 80s which claimed that Laura Mulvey differed from most of the other Screen critics in that her work pursued "a politics of representation," while many of her fellow critics dealt with a "politics of signification."

I am struggling with the difference, and would appreciate any help that the list would care to give me. Thank you.

Sarah Nichols

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