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- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!uvaarpa!darwin.sura.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU!C47805NF
- Message-ID: <CINEMA-L%93012722274030@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU>
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cinema-l
- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 20:47:46 CST
- Sender: Discussions on all forms of Cinema <CINEMA-L@AUVM.BITNET>
- From: Rick Francis <C47805NF@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU>
- Subject: kjf's elusive target
- Lines: 41
-
- >A sly guy, that Lynch. He knows how to keep us academ-anemics happy --
- >give us crap that we can find some obscure rationale for praising.
-
- >This is, after all, the very essence of PoMo/Camp (not to mention
- >tenure and promotion). Lynch et. al. are crucial components in a
- >critical academic function -- blowing smoke in everyone's face and
- >convincing them it's The Wind of Change.
-
- So says Professor Fisher. Is this an admission of how he got tenure,
- or is he some embittered wanna-be who tells us what he was too noble
- to stoop to in order to get tenure?
-
- It's hard not to notice that this Fisher likes to harp on the emptiness of
- what he designates PostModern (or is it that he designates as PostModern
- what he decides is empty gesture?), but how about a few examples?
- With no other example than one person's reception of one movie by one
- director, Professor Fisher's disdain seems to be directed at a
- boogie-man. Who has been given undeserved tenure and promotion on the
- basis of their publications on PostModernism? Or on the other side
- of the coin: is this PostModern charlatanism on the part of the
- producers like Lynch (as you say), or on the part of some academics
- (as you also say), or necessarily both? Are there any POSITIVE
- examples you could label PostModern? I offered examples from
- architecture, short stories, novels, theories, and films, but Prof.
- Fisher did not deign to respond, preferring the etherial abstractions
- of ... what? A tenured position? With folks like Fisher on
- tenure committees, how could he be right in what he says about how
- people get tenured? Who grants these charlatans tenure?
-
- The whole thing seems too ironic. Here's a guy who makes his living
- teaching film in a university, doing exactly what twenty years ago
- plenty of tenured folks whined was a cheap easy way to get in the
- university without having to do serious scholarly work, a sign of the
- fallen times and failure of the university etc. So what does he do?
- Take a reactionary stance against the changing times, just as did the
- people who denied the validity of film studies. Maybe I'm just too
- dense to get Fisher's postmodern irony, eh?
-
- Nice to have you back, Fisher.
-
- Rick Francis
-