Recently I've begun to feel a tad more self-conscious as I write my blog. I worry that perhaps my tangents are too disconnected and too verbose, that perhaps my prose is disintegrating into a realm, hitherto inhabited only by the semioticists and their post-modern brethren, that is best described as turgid and halting, that perhaps my sentences are becoming too long, that they run on and on and on and... .

Today has been a bit of an intellectual journey. I've begun reading "Theory of Film" by Siegfried Kracauer. I spent the better part of my mental effort painstainkingly navigating the introduction to the new edition (Princeton U Press, 1997); turgid and halting may have been hyperbole in reference to my own writing, but it fits the bill for Hansen's "framework for appreciating the signigicance of Film Theory for contemporary film theory". The structure is haphazard, the sentences awkwardly constructed, and, as if her deleterious effect on contempoary prose were not enough, her fanciful addition of morphemes is maddening. I was hopping mad many a time. You know that feeling, a sort jolly anger that has its wrath, but is ostensibly devoid of aggresion. The kind of anger where you make animal noises (I'm fond of the time honoured "gRrrrrrrr") and pound your fist with feigned aspirations of violence, as though the word "anthropocentric" were enough to warrant your curbing an academic whose face you've never seen, and voice you've never heard. Actually I worry that "antropocentric" really is a word (for the most part, wordness is bestowed by inclusion in the OED). Still, I don't like it. I'll gripe about one more of her morphetical constructions, if only because, in the not so humble opinion of Kitty (it was her idea) and Evan, the wrong morpheme was appended. Palimpsest is a perfectly good word with well established wordness. It however has yet to evolve into an adjectival form. My problem is not so much that Miss Hansen chose to hasten this process, simply that she selected "ic" as opposed to "ual". Say it now, "pal - imp - sest - ic". Now try "pal - imp - sest - ual". C'mon, how can you not prefer the latter ? Need I point out that it rhymes with incestual.

Now, having concluded with my necessary whining peregrinations, I'll return to what was my original purpose. Dissatisfied with my own thoughts, I sat down this evening with the intention of transcribing a few pithy observations for all of you. Odly enough, a great many of them come from the aforementioned heinous prosodist, who, to tell it truthfully, has moments of eloquent luminosity peppered throughout her burdensome opus.

"Photographic representation has the perplexing ability not only to resemble the world it depicts but also to render it strange, to destroy habitual fictions of self-identity and familiarity." - Hansen, p.xxv, intro to "Theory of Film"

"Kracauer's insistence on indeterminacy should not be understood as a romantic defense of the irrational nor as an abdication of principles of coherence and intelligibility. What is at stake is the possibility of a "split-second meaninglessness," as the placeholder of an otherness that resists unequivocal understanding and total sumbsumption. What is also at stake is the ability of the particular, the detail, the incident, to take on a life of its own, to precipitate processes in the viewer that may not be entirely controlled by the film. These twin concerns are at the core of Kracauer's critique of the hegemony of the narrative, as of the hegemony of dialogue and vocality in the realm of sound - that is, his critique of any attempt to subordinate the material, sensory qualities of film to a tight and a priori discursive structure." p.xxi, Ibid.

"Why indeed should one say everything at the same time" p.xlviii, Kracauer

Explaining his preference for the first films of a particular style or genre Kracauer says that he prefers "to stick to the prototypes which, more vividly than all that follows, still vibrate with intentions engendering them." p.xlviii, Ibid.

"It is two different things to espouse an idea and to realize, let alone endorse, all that is implied by it." p.xlix, Ibid.

"A great idea is like a phantom ocean beating upon the shores of human life in successive waves of specialization" Whitehead quoted by Kracauer.

Well, that's about it for the evening. If anyone has any thoughts, please send them along.

Goodnight