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Dang NOT!

Posted by Bruce Kahl on July 12, 2003

In Reply to: Literary reference posted by ESC on July 12, 2003

: : : I have searched and searched online for a definition of "literary reference." My question is, can the term be stretched to include not just works of literature but plays, movies, etc.

: : : I was talking about a reference to a movie and used "literary reference." I was corrected (I hate that) and told what I mean "cinematic reference."

: : : I backpedaled/saved face by saying the work in question was literature (a book) before it was a movie. But I am still curious about whether the term can be stretched a bit.

: : : I hate being wrong.

: : Me too. Having looked at a dictionary entry for "literary," I think the word would break if stretched as far as movies.

: Dang.

In another life I worked in the NYC public schools as a teacher of Language Arts.
I once created an advanced placement class entitled "Film as Literature" which was an upper level Language Arts elective.

Leave the Terminators and Matrices for a while and think of plot, characters, setting, themes, style, symbolism and tone in film AND literature.
Think of The world outside Hollywood, of people composing in text and on film: the craft and materials of plain ol' storytelling with film as one of our culture's most recent and influential forms of storytelling.

Tell your buddies who corrected you that film and lit are "cultural documents" and that may just be the stretch you are looking for.

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