Some shite
*This was supposed to be posted about a week ago, but the computers here in college were fucking about. But it's here now.*
Put your hands in the air if you've ever heard of Michael Renov. Ah, three of you... Well, I hadn't heard of him until the other day and since then I've been wishing I hadn't. Here's a sample of the man's work: "...One component of the spectator's cinematic pleasure involves the play of projection and identification with idealized others who inhabit the filmed world."
WHA-?!
It is this kind of arse that I detest about communications studies. There are other kinds of arse I don't like, but this kind of over-use of language really miffs me! What the bugger is saying there is that people like to be able to watch things about people they can relate to. Human interest stories. Is that so bloody difficult to say? What IS the point in such long-winded blah-de-blah crap?
Just come out and say it! The elitism of it all is disgusting. Dressing up VERY simple concepts and making them all but inaccessible to people doesn't make you SMART it makes you a CUNT. And no, I will not back down from this stance.
While there is a serious problem with dumbing down in the mainstream media, tabloidisation of papers, over-use of MTV techniques (such as the high-speed camera jerks, just in case you get bored!) and so on, there is no need for the academics to raise the bar at the other end!
I notice in communications theory that there are a large number of very simple concepts, blatantly obvious facts for the most part, which are dressed up in the most convoluted, pointless and meaningless language! It's like the semiologists are so insecure in their own discipline that they've had to invent a whole new lexicon (yes, I can use words with xes in too!) to hide the fact that what they are doing is completely pointless! For example, who needs to know what the components of a sign are? It's obvious to anyone with even half a brain that we have the physical thing and a person's understanding of the thing making up what the thing means to them. Fuck all this talk of signifiers and so on. If we made academia a little less difficult for people to understand, maybe they'd know more and wouldn't feel threatened by knowledge, education or people with either of the above.
Good God! Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped raising the intellectual bar at one end we could stop lowering it at the other and in some happy middle ground we'd all understand each other. Entertainment would be something for everyone, rather than something for the lobotomised...
*deep breath* OK, I think that's enough of a rant for now. I'll leave that topic to anyone who might want to comment on it, I think it's worth it. Just because it annoys me so much.
Off to find the wizard, the wonderful wizard of pleasures of non-fiction text...
Put your hands in the air if you've ever heard of Michael Renov. Ah, three of you... Well, I hadn't heard of him until the other day and since then I've been wishing I hadn't. Here's a sample of the man's work: "...One component of the spectator's cinematic pleasure involves the play of projection and identification with idealized others who inhabit the filmed world."
WHA-?!
It is this kind of arse that I detest about communications studies. There are other kinds of arse I don't like, but this kind of over-use of language really miffs me! What the bugger is saying there is that people like to be able to watch things about people they can relate to. Human interest stories. Is that so bloody difficult to say? What IS the point in such long-winded blah-de-blah crap?
Just come out and say it! The elitism of it all is disgusting. Dressing up VERY simple concepts and making them all but inaccessible to people doesn't make you SMART it makes you a CUNT. And no, I will not back down from this stance.
While there is a serious problem with dumbing down in the mainstream media, tabloidisation of papers, over-use of MTV techniques (such as the high-speed camera jerks, just in case you get bored!) and so on, there is no need for the academics to raise the bar at the other end!
I notice in communications theory that there are a large number of very simple concepts, blatantly obvious facts for the most part, which are dressed up in the most convoluted, pointless and meaningless language! It's like the semiologists are so insecure in their own discipline that they've had to invent a whole new lexicon (yes, I can use words with xes in too!) to hide the fact that what they are doing is completely pointless! For example, who needs to know what the components of a sign are? It's obvious to anyone with even half a brain that we have the physical thing and a person's understanding of the thing making up what the thing means to them. Fuck all this talk of signifiers and so on. If we made academia a little less difficult for people to understand, maybe they'd know more and wouldn't feel threatened by knowledge, education or people with either of the above.
Good God! Maybe, just maybe, if we stopped raising the intellectual bar at one end we could stop lowering it at the other and in some happy middle ground we'd all understand each other. Entertainment would be something for everyone, rather than something for the lobotomised...
*deep breath* OK, I think that's enough of a rant for now. I'll leave that topic to anyone who might want to comment on it, I think it's worth it. Just because it annoys me so much.
Off to find the wizard, the wonderful wizard of pleasures of non-fiction text...
posted by Stephen McMullin at 1:02 pm
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