In Lights, Camera, Action. Marxism, Semiotics, Narratology., David Weddle — who has a BS in cinema from USC and who works in the film industry — describes his daughter’s UC Santa Barbara film theory exam:
On the exam, I found the following, from an essay by film theorist Kristin Thompson:“Neoformalism posits that viewers are active — that they perform operations. Contrary to psychoanalytic criticism, I assume that film viewing is composed mostly of nonconscious, preconscious, and conscious activities. Indeed, we may define the viewer as a hypothetical entity who responds actively to cues within the film on the basis of automatic perceptual processes and on the basis of experience. Since historical contexts make the protocols of these responses inter-subjective, we may analyze films without resorting to subjectivity…According to Bordwell, ‘The organism constructs a perceptual judgment on the basis of nonconscious inferences.’ ”
Then came the question itself:
“What kind of pressure would Metz’s description of ‘the imaginary signifier’ or Baudry’s account of the subject in the apparatus put on the ontology and epistemology of film implicit in the above two statements?”
I looked up at my daughter. She smiled triumphantly. “Welcome to film theory,” she chirped.
Welcome to film theory indeed.
I read from my daughter’s study guide to Gary A. Randall, who has served as president of Orion Television, Spelling Television, and as the executive producer of the TV series “Any Day Now.” “That’s what your daughter’s being taught?” he says. “That’s just elitist psychobabble. It sounds like it was written by a professor of malapropism. That has absolutely no bearing on the real world. It sounds like an awfully myopic perspective of what film is really supposed to be about: touching hearts and minds and providing provocative thoughts.”From movie critic Ebert: “Film theory has nothing to do with film. Students presumably hope to find out something about film, and all they will find out is an occult and arcane language designed only for the purpose of excluding those who have not mastered it and giving academic rewards to those who have. No one with any literacy, taste or intelligence would want to teach these courses, so the bona fide definition of people teaching them are people who are incapable of teaching anything else.”