Literature vs. Cinema: The Politics of Aesthetic Definition
1976; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3332010
ISSN1543-7809
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoIn a letter published in the September 1974 issue of BFI News, Robin Wood, perhaps the most prolific and distinguished film critic writing in English, points out the danger inherent in allowing the pressures of academic politics to influence, if not determine, the character and direction of critical endeavor. And in so doing he points out as well the practical importance, in terms of what is taught and who gets to teach it, of aesthetic definition, particularly in the area where literature and film overlap. Wood, a Leavisite New Critic, thus finds himself at odds with a group of Marxist oriented semiologists who tend to dominate the BFI Education Department. Generally speaking, this fraternity of film scholars, people like Peter Wollen, Ben Brewster, and Stephen Heath (most of whom are connected with Screen), tends, for ideological reasons, to reject the literary (i.e., bourgeois) approach and criteria typical of critics like Wood, Andrew Sarris, and Victor Perkins. It is beyond the scope of this paper to outline Wood's specific complaints in any great detail (nor do I necessarily assume that Wood is totally in the right in this specific instance). But the mere fact of Wood's warning only reinforces what has long been my impression: that the current and recurrent debate regarding the relationship of cinema to literature, particularly the acrimonious variety of debate occasioned by the current expansion of film studies at the university
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