truelove's ramblings

This was my final paper in ENG102. It's not a good paper, really. Well, for an ENG102 paper, it was fine. As an upper division film paper, which is what it was trying to be despite the restrictions imposed on it by being a basic ENG102 paper, it probably would have been a C.

What I'm saying is, it's not brilliant. But it does cover some really damn interesting history in Hollywood, and I learned a hell of a lot more than what even made it into the paper. I should probably write some of that shit out, but in the meantime, here's this.

( Anyway, it's under the cut. )

Well, that's fascinating. I'm watching this hour-long feature on women in film for class, 'Reel Women'; I believe it's about twenty-five years old. Anyway, Susan Seidelman is described as being "one of the rare American women filmmakers today to be accruing a body of work. Now, what you see with a lot of women directors today is that they will make one or two very uniqe and remarkable efforts and then they'll either disappear altogether or they'll go into television."

I recognise that this really is true, even today: television is separate, different, lesser than film. Television isn't anything to take seriously. It's not really art. Film struggles enough to be taken seriously, and so it makes damned certain to make it very clear that television stuff isn't. You have to have *something* to be better than.

To which I say, like hell.

You know what, right here I will own up to being a populist hack; I don't claim to be otherwise. I want to write pulp fiction, science fiction; entertainment for the masses. I don't deny that.

But I'll also tell you that what the populist hacks of television (and literature, and, and, and...) do is damned well art too. I'll defend television as much as I'll defend quilting and other fiber arts as arts. I'll defend it the way I'll defend tagging as art.

That you don't respect something doesn't make it not art.

I find it fascinating that television was not and to a great extent still is not regarded as a body of work to be considered. That it isn't a meaningful aspect of those directors' careers. Really?

You know, I would love to know what women directors made a distinct but short mark in film and then went into television actually did in television. I think it's as important to consider as the films they made.

I really shouldn't be in film studies, I think. I should be in media studies, classes that look at film and television more equally.