This week, I Totally Agree with the hilarious frivolity of Slate’s Oscar coverage. Usually by this point, I can’t wait for the Oscars to be over, so I can hear about something else, but reading Dana Stevens’ and Troy Patterson’s emails to each other about, among other things, an axed Sacha Baron Cohen sketch that “was deemed too potentially hurtful to James Cameron’s feeling-weelings,” sort of makes me wish the season would last forever, so these two could keep lampooning it.
I Totally Disagree with this short essay on Slavoj Zizek (of Pervert’s Guide to Cinema fame) over at the IFC blog. The writer gripes, “It’s just that there’s a real danger when the public face of academic film criticism becomes a guy whose persona is every bit as important as the actual content of his dispatches. Isn’t that the opposite of what academic film criticism should do?”
The answer to his rhetorical question is ‘No.’ It’s more of a danger when academic film criticism is held up as an objective standard and the reader forgets there’s a subjective voice behind it. Forgetting that there’s a person behind theory elevates theory to doctrine, and that’s when the real problems set in.
