[KineJapan] Rest in Peace, DB

[Jonathan M. Hall]

2+2=7... 3+3=9... I always felt Bordwell enjoyed, no, relished, his
"post-theoretical" stance. Read the stick-it-to-them introductory essay on
the "Vicissitudes of Grand Theory" in his 1996 co-edited volume with Noel
Carroll. He was having fun! And if you have any doubt, just consider the
cover image for that volume from Hal Roach's Laurel & Hardy film, *A Chump
at Oxford. *That's where my math is from. Bordwell et al.'s  attacks on
"grand" or "high theory" felt reactionary to me at the time, and they still
do today. But there's no doubting the wonderful contributions he made to
close reading. I'm glad his work is there for me to admire and disagree
with.

Jonathan M Hall
World Languages & Literatures
California State University San Bernardino

On Sat, Mar 2, 2024 at 7:16 PM Markus Nornes via KineJapan <
kinejapan at mailman.yale.edu> wrote:

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> KineJapan mailing list
> KineJapan at mailman.yale.edu
> https://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/kinejapan
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20240302/55e5c347/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: p3675_v_v9_aa.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 448213 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20240302/55e5c347/attachment-0001.jpg>