Dave shares this interesting article about the world of film theory (which critic Roger Ebert is quoted as calling “the academic equivalent of a New Age cult”). Author David Weddle writes:
Like Dave, I, too, don’t have much personal experience with this sort of thing — I dropped, almost immediately, the only literary theory class for which I ever signed up, and I can’t recall a professor ever discussing semiotics, even in passing — but I am inclined to agree with Ebert’s assessment, however well-intentioned its practitioners and professors, and however important it may actually be “to understand how film exists in relation to our lives.” Rather than teaching their students to understand film and its power as a medium (their professed goal), the film theory classes described in the article, it would seem, prepare their students for little more than reguritation of the same inane elitist psychobabble.
That being said, I think “Fabula and Syuzhet” would make a terrific name for a buddy cop show.