First Intro

A different kind of criticism.

What if we view a film, any film as a text?  In other words, what if we paradoxically judge a film based on the quality of its writing?  Is there anything to be learned from thinking about a movie in the same way as you would a book? 

 

The typical response is that books and films are different things.  My response is to wonder whether or not modern criticism suffers from a one-sided point of view.  The whole problem seems to rest on the nature of “appearance” and “understanding”.  Looked at from one point a view, a book, strip of film, or even a DVD are little more than pieces of manufactured technology.  If it is the “functional” appearance that determines the importance between a book and a movie, then of course it will be the differences that people focus on.  A way of understanding either an item based on either function or appearance would have to leave almost no room for thinking about them in any other way.