7. Theresa asks:
When is the signature needed?
Krista adds:
When does it matter?
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8. Foucault:
The Author function is linked to the juridical and
institutional system that encompasses, determines, and
articulates the universe of discourses.
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10. ... As a result of the success of auteurism, the apparatus
that surrounds a film’s reception apparently cannot
support the total omission of a directorial credit, and so
the creation of the fictive director Allen Smithee has
become a necessity.
Braddock & Hock, 7
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11. Seth:
On the other hand, that very assumption about the
demand of filmic authorship, the necessary signature
for a film—an assumption which seems to underlie this
collection of essays—is a bit problematic. There are, of
course, a few rare directors who command some kind
of celebrity ‘signature’ status: Steven Spielberg and
George Lucas come immediately to mind. However,
the reality is that the vast majority of directors do not
have celebrity status, and their ‘signature’ plays
practically no part in the marketing of a film. Why?
Because they aren’t important in the public’s mind.
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12. popular
juridical
economic
(and always rhetorical)
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13. ...the ... Cahiers du cinema critics who pioneered the
concept of auteur could not have foreseen the ease
with which auteurism was to be appropriated as a
marketing strategy by the machinery of corporate
Hollywood (7)
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19. director
as
author-construct
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20. Smithee has thus become Hollywood’s secret shame,
the all-purpose sign that adopts those films that can
claim an embarrassingly plural parentage, a mixed
parentage that would put the lie to the Guild’s official
position that the director is the film’s sole author, or,
since paternity is the central metaphor employed in the
Creative Rights Handbook, a film’s sole and rightful father.
(9-10)
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21. Because “the cinema is an art which is both popular and
industrial,” Bazin stressed, the subject of analysis should
be “not only the talent of this or that film-maker, but
also the genius of the system.”
(13-15)
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32. Lindsey:
How does the concept of an expert bind
authenticity to authorship?
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33. Theresa:
F is for Fake really made me think about how the expert
in some fields needs the author construct, or, to
remove it from their understandings would have them
totally reimagine the work they do.
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34. is the master’s signature
required for a
masterpiece?
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35. Theresa:
(1) what authors have already been erased by the
workings of "civilization" and so can they afford to lose
the empowerment (cultural capital) of an author
construct and then the signature?
(2) Does it matter little who is empowered by the
author construct if, as Welles kind of morbidly puts it, in
the end all is erased? --all authors, whether positioned
in the privilege to erase him/herself from the text
without erasing him/herself from the recognition of
culture, and those non-privileged who might rely on the
cultural capital of authorship for more than the
economical capital that might afford them- -does it
matter who gains cultural capital if culture is erased in
the end?
Wednesday, March 20, 13
