******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
On 8/21/19 4:01 PM, Jeffrey Masko wrote:
No, you are not stepping on my toes because Cinema and Media Studies is a real thing taught in higher ed, "Film Journalism" - or movie reviewing, is not. You do catch my attention though, like sand in the eyes, when you try to present what you do on your blog as something that connects Marxist theories - of film, media, or anything else - to film, media, or other moments of cultural production. Not sure if you call yourself a Marxist film reviewer, but it's more like a film reviewer that happens to be a Marxist.
I also write about TV shows, novels, music, and other aspects of culture. I wouldn't be at all interested in "theorizing" about any of these things. My theorizing is strictly limited to things like American slavery, the Democratic Party, fascism, etc.
My inspiration for film journalism is Roger Ebert, not any film or communications professor writing for academic journals. I critiqued Eileen Jones because her theorizing about Tarantino was totally absurd. Calling the alternative history of the Sharon Tate story "radical" and likening it to Eisenstein or Vertov was laughable.
I should add that Eileen Jones mostly writes reviews like mine but about commercial junk that I generally avoid. Her take on Tarantino's latest was not the typical jargon-filled baloney you read in a film journal but it certainly reflected film school tendencies.
Finally, I am not that impressed with any Marxism that is based in the academy. From Zizek to Robert Brenner, there's just a kind of failure to engage with the real class relations of capitalist society that makes me think I made the right decision to give up on getting a PhD in philosophy back in 1967 and getting educated by people like George Novack, Farrell Dobbs and Joe Hansen. Their "vanguardism" was a mistake but their analysis of American society was not.
_________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
