Monday, July 14, 2003
(2:08 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Reverse Snobbishness Alert
From the lovely Andrew Sullivan:
POSEUR ALERT: "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.'" - film theorist Kristin Thompson, quoted in the Los Angeles Times.
Wow, that's so insightful. Since she is talking in academic terms, she must be hiding something (i.e., her utter lack of knowledge). In reality, it's not that difficult to parse out, and even if it were, what's to say it wouldn't be worth it?
Why is it a virtue to prefer the writing style that allows you to be the laziest possible reader? Why is it a virtue to dismiss the entire academic culture due to the use of jargon (mainly in communications meant primarily for other academics, which increases the efficiency of communication among highly elite groups)? Would he "call out" a computer programmer for having written a paragraph that used technical terms from computer science? How about a mathemetician? Or a biologist? Probably not, right? Well why's that? Oh, I know, because he thinks academics are all "irrelevant leftists". He already knew they were poseurs to begin with -- he could quote their grocery list as evidence.
The real intellectuals are those who grapple with the most difficult texts of all: transcripts of Ari Fleischer's daily press briefings. It might be rough going, but there are some real jewels in there, as opposed to, say, the average text by Jacques Derrida or Frederic Jameson.
