[KineJapan] Rest in Peace, DB

[Markus Nornes]

Aaron writes,

So while I was also a young turk who wanted to combat his elders, and thus
> had my own critiques of Bordwell’s approach to Japanese cinema (and cinema
> in general), the formalist in me still understood how essential his work is
> to studying Japanese film.
>

This hit a little. I was introduced to David's work through CHC, Narration
in the Fiction Film, and his writings on Japanese film. At the time, USC
was a bastion for post-structural theory, and Bordwell was too often used
as a foil. I recall seminars where the professors framed him with something
along the lines of "of course, this is simply wrong." By the time the Ozu
book came out the preponderance of scholars and students working on
neo-formalism led to notions of a Wisconsin School. We grad students were
being taught to be critical, and often took that too far—as grad students
are wont to do. One of my first publications was a book review of the Ozu
book that has some kind of sly comment about "Wisconsin" that I am deeply
embarrassed about today. I'm not going to go back to find an exact quote.
I'm happy I had the chance to apologize to him directly many years later—he
was typically, incredibly, gracious and kind. The outpouring of touching
tributes to him has shown how important he was to so many people of
multiple generations, and both in and outside of academia. Unfortunately, I
don't think the discipline has been so kind to him over the years. People
in our field of Japanese film studies don't talk about him much, but there
is no question he was also a founder and titan of Japanese film studies.

Markus
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