the case for (film) theory

Music: Sparklehorse: Dreamt For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain (2006)

I've returned to Austin after a loving but obviously sad visit with the family in Georgia. I'm getting back into a teacherly frame of mind, which I need to do and which gives me a sense of strength. One place I feel confident, one place where I think I do a pretty good job, is in the classroom. I've missed that place, and am happy to be back in it today.

This summer I am teaching "Rhetoric and Film," basically a survey of the greatest hits of film theory since Walter Benjamin's work on art in the age of its mechanical reproducibility. I decided this would be a good course to teach in the summer for two reasons: first, both graduate and undergraduate students are obsessed with writing their term papers on films; and second, because the summer term has flexible scheduling that allows me to teach for two-and-a-half hour blocks. This means I can show a film in its entirety if I need to do so. While I was away last week the class watched Vertov's Man and His Movie Camera, and today we will be watching a good hunk of Chaplin's Modern Times.

My lecture today is titled "the case for theory," and revisiting the lecture this morning reminded me of a charge I think that is good to promote. My course is based on a number of classes I took from John Mowitt at the University of Minnesota. John---a brilliant teacher and role model---often began his courses with an apologia for theory, and its one I often begin with too. I start by going back to the ancient Greeks and doing the etymology of "theory," which is, of course, theoresai, "to contemplate" or, more literally, "to see, to observe." So "rhetoric of film" can be read as "observations about film," or, "film theory."

I then trot out that old question: what's the relevance of theory?. In film studies, the answers led to a debate in two important contexts, the "third world cinema" debate about correct politics vis-à-vis developing film industries (e.g., Bollywood) and the North American squabble between Bordwell and others. Bordwell argued for a focus on history, others on the "appreciation of film" model. Of course, theory cannot be extracted from either.

Following Mowitt, I suggest to students that the questioning the relevance of theory really comes down to the corporitization of the academy, and the "downsizing" of courses focused on critical thinking. The push across the university has been either to focus on the sciences or the pragmatic, the latter courses designed to train students for the workforce. As any office drone knows, critical thinking is relatively unhelpful for pushing paper or information.

The case for theory is thus only made from a Marxian or materialist vantage: critical thinking about film is necessary not because it is profitable but because film watching has changed our reality. The study of film tells us about our reality, how we perceive it. Film also reflects larger cultural transformations, changes, and struggles. Film is history, to be certain, but that history is one of both perception and politics. The case for theory is made in the service of thought and understanding, not so much usefulness.

Rhetoricians are familiar with making such a case: criticism and theory go hand-in-hand. Every critical act is a case for theory. But perhaps unlike our forbears, the assault on theory is stronger today than it ever has been. The assault often takes the form of politics: "you liberal professors are brainwashing our children!" Quite the contrary: we're trying to teach critical thinking in a world that, increasingly, needs drones.

Charlie Chaplin knew this in 1936. I'm looking at the cover for the DVD of Modern Times. On the back Pauline Kael is quoted as saying, "One of the happiest and most lighthearted of the Chaplin pictures." Oh brother. Kael obviously didn't get a schooling in film theory, perhaps proof that we need theory now more than ever.