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Introduction: What Did the Cat Drag In?

1996; Volume: 18; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/wan.1996.0002

1086-3354

R. H. Bradley,

Cinema and Media Studies

Introduction: What Did the Cat Drag In? Ruth Bradley Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Like that special kitty-cat who brings you treats, this issue of Wide Angle brings to you a collection of special, unsolicited presents. Historically, Wide Angle is a “theme” journal, whereby a special topic is discussed throughout a variety of articles. We intend in the future to continue such special topic issues. However, the downside of such theme issues is that a number of remarkable and provocative submissions to the journal have to be turned away, because they do specifically address a proposed topic. Thus, “What the Cat Dragged In” represents a cross-section of such works, articles that, while not pertaining to a specific theme, nevertheless articulate provocative ideas in the realm of motion picture studies. Longtime readers of Wide Angle will note our new design; while the former design was a unique format, the new design, you will find, more easily fits into your bookshelf. Our design may be new, but with it comes a rededication to Wide Angle’s original mission: to consider not only issues of film history and theory, but to also present other types of articles of interest to film scholars. Thus, we include in this issue a little of everything: an interview, a Book Review, a technical article, an article based on film analysis and theory, and even, a first for this journal, an epic poem. Like the dedicated, feline hunter who brings you surprises at each opportunity, this issue presents a wide menu to choose from to sate your reading appetite. First, we have an interview/dialogue with Shu Lea Cheang, a video artist whose works in video, interactive media, and activist art investigate personal and visual boundaries, and possibilities for identities and communities in cyberspace. Cheang is interviewed by Kimberly SaRee Tomes; their dialogue revolves around Cheang’s recent project, Bowling Alley, a cybernetic installation [End Page 1] linking together the Walker Art Center, a community bowling alley, and a Website. Paula Rabinowitz, a film scholar at the University of Minnesota, demonstrates in her epic poem, “Stairmaster Yeats,” how we can respond to films with a variety of written genres. Weaving together images from movies, popular culture, country western music, and women’s histories, Rabinowitz’s poetic imagery simultaneously engages humor and horror. She builds heretofore unrealized conceptual relationships between Crazy Jane, Ida Lupino, Emily Dickinson, and Patsy Cline, to revisualize the poetic possibilities of women’s lives in late twentieth-century America. To better acquaint film scholars with the material bases of motion picture production, we inaugurate a series of articles explaining various technical aspects with John Butler’s “Sound Bits and Bytes: An Introduction to Microphones.” In the first part of a series on sound recording, Butler introduces to the nontechnical reader the rudimentary properties of microphones and their recording patterns. Andrey Tarkovsky’s film The Mirror provides Alan Wright with an opportunity to discuss “picnoleptic moments,” in his article, “A Wrinkle in Time: The Child, Memory, and The Mirror.” Using Paul Virilio’s construction of picnolepsy as a “curious deformation of temporality,” Wright shows how in The Mirror, the child is used as a vessel for the cinematic presentation of memory. And, finally, we reintroduce a Book Review section to Wide Angle with Yvette Biro’s review of Regis Debray’s Vie et Mort de l’Image: une histoire du regard en Occident. In her discussion of Debray’s construction of “mediology,” Biro suggests some fundamental weaknesses in the French philosopher’s logic and reasoning. In Wide Angle’s future, we intend to publish more such “non-theme” issues, although perhaps eclecticism itself can suggest to the careful, creative reader, a web of correspondences that connect together. Copyright © 1996 Ohio University School of Film