Wednesday, November 5, 2008

The "recognition of the photographic surface as a text, as a construct . . . [is] nothing short of an obsession in that locus of the social construction of vision which is contemporary commercial cinema." -Levin, 584

Levin poses this statement in his article, and I don't quite buy it. Cinema, regardless of its place in our culture is still fiction. The indexicality of photographic images do not raise cinema above the realm of fiction, so why would this recognition of "photographic surface as a text" disturb its place? Levin also claims that "films both teach us how to see the world and register a general sense of how our culture is doing exactly that", but aren't we all just sitting back and watching movies?

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