From: email suppressed
Date: Mon Oct 31 2005 - 23:16:49 PST
Jonathan,
I appreciate the content and tone of your post which was far more even-handed
than my post deserved. I was reacting based on my personal experience.
Your post merits a longer and more detailed reply than I have time for. But I’
ll try to make a point or two. Let me being by saying that I find cognitive
science a remarkable field, and that I have learned a great deal from cognitive
science. I have no problem at all with the general idea of examining the
response of film spectators from within a cognitive framework.
Granted to write that film theorist’s use of cognitive research is “
unscientific” will appear as nothing but absurd to many. My personal experience
colors my view of this issue in that I have spent a great deal of time writing on
scientific issues (bio-mechanics, Kinesiology, motor learning, Physiology) for
an audience that is largely made up of non-scientists yet my writing still
must accurately describe the scientific issues I am dealing with as well as the
research that I am drawing from. Its my opinion that if one is going to
claim that one’s writing is informed by science or hopes to ride the coat tails
of scientific credibility that one must play by the same rules that scientists
do. This means being very cautious about the types of claims one makes, how
they are made, and how context is used and explained. Back in the 1990’s I
was frustrated by the way in which so called cognitive film theory was not
willing to exercise such caution, and in addition it was not always clear that
the authors understood the science they were drawing from all that well.
Here is a quick example. James Peterson’s essay “Is a Cognitive Approach
to Avant-garde Cinema Perverse?” in the well-known Post-Theory collection edi
ted by Bordwell and Carroll. I could pick at this essay for hours but, I’ll
just point out one thing I find odd about it. When introducing his heuristics
from the problem solving mode he refers to “theorists of problem solving” and
later he describes spectators as needing to “overlearn” specific heuristics.
To me this language begs a number of questions, first being, why is he
writing about theories of problem solving rather than the stages of information
processing? The choice seems random, especially considering the use of the
term “overlearn” when what he is really describing is most likely what
scientists label as the movement from controlled response selection to automatic
response selection within the individual’s ability to process information. I
would give him more credit or leeway if he didn’t use such a silly term
(overlearn) or if he had explained his decision to use problem solving theory over the
commonly understood stages of information processing, since information
processing is exactly what he is writing about in this part of the essay.
Anyway that’s one quick example among hundreds. Really, I just find it Ironic
that someone like Bordwell was critical of psychoanalytic approaches for
being "abstract" while advocating methodologies that were also rather abstract.
Perhaps it was more difficult to see the abstractions or the lack or rigor in
the cognitive work at the time, in comparison to the ovbious problem with using
Lacan's theory of the so called miror stage of a child's development when
describing an adult's experience of the cinema.
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.