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Letters
Emer and Kevin Rockett respond to Lir Mac
Cárthaigh's review of their book on Neil Jordan. Read
the review in full here.
Mr Tony Keily,
Editor,
Film Ireland,
6 Eustace St,
Dublin 2.
Dear Tony,
We would appreciate it if you would publish
in your next issue the following letter which is a response
to the review of our book. (You should receive a hard copy
of the text in the next few days.):
If the only problem with Lir Mac Carthaigh's
review (issue 92) of our book Neil Jordan: Exploring Boundaries was his display of ignorance with regard to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo then we might have let it pass, but his dismissal
of narrative film analysis as a serious academic discipline
needs to be answered, not least because Film Ireland is one of Ireland's few outlets for film writing.
While the publication's bias in recent years
has been towards film production information and its contexts
(the aspect of the book singled out for special praise), nevertheless,
this should not provide an excuse to denigrate areas of critical
writing which have informed the cultural debates on film in
Ireland. These include, amongst others, postcolonial studies,
identity politics, gender analyses, racial difference, and
representational practices, or, as the reviewer sarcastically
puts it, "this, that and the 'other'". Surely, it
should be the responsibility of a publication such as Film
Ireland to provide a platform for film discussion which rises
beyond the anecdotal, impressionistic, technical, or simply
the prejudiced.
For your reviewer's information, we did not
"re-christen" James Stewart's character in Vertigo.
As he tells Kim Novak, although "acquaintances call me
Scottie", a reference to his ethnic origins, his name
is John Ferguson. It is by this that he is referred to as
well as by the name's variants, Johnny
and Johnny-O. To have called him Scottie in the context of
our book would have been inappropriate.
Your reviewer uses what he incorrectly perceived
as an error along with a few "trivial" (his term)
slips which do not affect the text's narrative or meaning
to cast a shadow over the book's entire critical project.
Despite his faint praise of our professionalism, to give such
slips heightened significance is disappointing. Of course,
when someone has so little sympathy with serious film analysis,
then what can one expect?
Yours sincerely,
Emer and Kevin Rockett.
If you would like to voice an opinion about
any aspect of Irish film culture, please e-mail letters@filmireland.net
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