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it’s christmas eve, and maybe that means that only those of us for whom this is no big deal will be interested in pursuing this issue thoughtfully – if so, so be it but i wanted to raise – without polemic or “poetry” – a question about the “showgirls” conversation: the most recent posts seem to suggest that the attention paid to this film by an “impressive list of film academics” is itself in some [mysterious?] way a vindication of the quality of the film . . . sorry, but i just don’t get this . . . from the POV of academic/theoretical inquiry disasters may well be more interesting than successes [“Successful films are all alike; every unsuccessful film is unsuccessful in its own way”???] . . . so i’m not sure why the attention of burch, williams usw. tells us anything about the value of the film as anything but an object of academic scrutiny . . . remember that williams has for years now been doing a great deal of impressive work on porn, and i suspect that very few among us want to defend the aesthetic or intellectual [as opposed to cultural/sociological] interest of the texts she works on in any case, it seems to me an inescapable [and, to me, lamentable] fact of most contemporary academic criticism that the inherent quality/value of a film [or book, or building, usw.] is of little significance [even if it’s allowed that the concept of inherent value has an meaning at all . . . what’s all the fuss about?? mike From: Film-Philosophy [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chuck Kleinhans Abstract Film Quarterly<http://caliber.ucpress.net/loi/fq> Spring 2003, Vol. 56, No. 3, Pages 32–46 Posted online on December 2, 2003. (doi:10.1525/fq.2003.56.3.32) Round Table: Showgirls Akira Mizuta Lippit, Noël Burch, Chon Noriega, Ara Osterweil, Linda Williams,Eric Shaefer, Jeffrey Sconce As recently as December, 2002, the New York Times' Elvis Mitchell referred to the "wreckage" ofShowgirls (1995). Yet the Film Quarterly editorial board had just been galvanized by a discussion of the same film. Apparently there exists a number of secret and not-so-secret devotees of the film.Showgirls has, perhaps unexpectedly, served to stimulate scholarly thought around issues of camp, satire, class, gender, the fallen woman, showgirl musicals, trash cinema, sexploitation films, hedonistic criticism, and reading and teaching the film. Noël Burch, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Chon Noriega, Ara Osterweil, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, and Linda Williams have contributed to this discussion of the film. Perhaps Showgirls can still be rescued from the wreckage? That's a pretty impressive list of film academics, by anyone's standard -- Film-Philosophy 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] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For technical help email: [log in to unmask], not the list -- Film-Philosophy journal: http://www.film-philosophy.com/ Film-Philosophy Conference (6-8 July 2011): http://www.film-philosophy.com/conference/ Contact: [log in to unmask] --