Not to continue to complain about a topic that I chose to write about for my film theory final, but I have to exorcise something:


I chose to write about post-colonial and feminist theory because I think the two have a few obvious similarities, are generally noble in intention, and were essentially the lesser evils for me during the semester. Unfortunately part of the reading that goes along with these topics is this Homi Bhabha gentleman. According to Wikipedia:

Bhabha has been criticized for using indecipherable jargon and dense prose. In 1998 the journal Philosophy and Literature awarded Bhabha second prize in its "Bad Writing Competition,"[5] which "celebrates bad writing from the most stylistically lamentable passages found in scholarly books and articles." Bhabha was awarded the prize for a sentence in his The Location of Culture (Routledge, 1994), which reads:

If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classifications can be seen as the desperate effort to “normalize” formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality.[6]

Emeritus professor of English at Stanford University, Marjorie Perloff, said that her reaction to Bhabha's appointment at Harvard was one of "dismay," telling the New York Times "He doesn't have anything to say." While Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University, commented on the meaning of Bhabha's writing: "One could finally argue that there is no there there, beyond the neologisms and Latinate buzzwords. Most of the time I don't know what he's talking about."

I wonder if Marj and Homi (holy shit, The Simpsons!) ever cross paths at academic conferences and have hot scholarly hate sex? Likely, I'd say. And during this attempt to justify my own confusion with post-structuralism by taking comfort in snippy Wikipedia articles, I came across this amusing tidbit on the Jacques Derrida entry:

Foucault who is often considered as Derrida's contemporary, also revealed his dissatisfaction of Derrida's style of writing in a conversation with Searle. According to Foucault, Derrida practises the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism) [24]. Searle quotes Foucault's explanation of the term as the following:

He writes so obscurely you can't tell what he's saying, that's the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, "You didn't understand me; you're an idiot." That's the terrorism part.

Well said, Foucault. Not that I've ever read Derrida, but he came up the other day in class and if he influenced Bhabha then I say he wasn't worth the trouble.

On the other end of the spectrum we have dear, concise Laura Mulvey, who can write the shit out of an essay. I think "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" might be the most tidily written and easily accessible bits of scholarship I've ever read. And not that I condone overused internet memes, but yes, this does come up on the first page of her Google image search:

(From the LJ community LOLTHEORISTS)

With most everyone out of town for Thanksgiving this past weekend I was left to my own devices, which inevitably led me to a director's commentary track (I am one of those annoying people who like to point out behind-the-scenes facts during movies). I don't know what I was expecting from an Almodóvar commentary; having read plenty of articles about and interviews with him, I knew going in that he was a somehow lovable pompous ass, and yet I was still almost surprised at his tone in the commentary for La mala educación. Every other sequence was "elegante" and he felt the need to patronizingly explain every minute narrative detail just in case you were too stupid to realize what was going on.

And yet...it was almost sweet in a way, kind of like he'd never heard of the concept of modesty and was just genuinely really proud of what he'd done with the film. As he should be. I always look for reasons to second-guess my love of Almodóvar, but every time I watch one of his films my appreciation for his skill only intensifies. And even if you're not so keen on Pedro himself or his movies, La mala educación is worth a look if only for Javier Cámara's hilarious performance as the sidekick tranny.