In the 1970s, the higher reaches of film criticism were invaded by an insidious virus of

jargon, stemming from the application to the movies of the terminology of largely
French-based literary theories, such as Post-Structuralism and semiotics. This resulted
in such opaque sentences as: A movement from the film-makers observation to the
audiences seeingat once permits a move towards a metalanguage which can engage
with spectator-text relationships and the ways in which documentaries inscribe an
audience in their mode of address. (This is from the summer 1978 issue of the
quarterly Screen, journal of the Society for Education in Film and Television and locus
classicusfor such solemn obfuscation.)
From its subtitle, Edward Tomarkens book might appear to be a belated contribution to
this unlamented trend; but in the event it aims to be something less hermetic and rather
more accessible. Tomarken, an emeritus professor of English literature at Miami
University in Ohio, tells us that his inspiration came from his own students who, finding
literary theory impossibly abstruse, discovered that the ideas of Jacques Lacan, Michel
Foucault, Jacques Derrida et al. made much clearer sense when applied to popular
cinema. Or, as one of his students memorably put it: Dr T, Derrida sucks, you should
see Kill Bill 2!

Popular movies, or blockbuster mainstays, are rarely noted for the profundity
or subtlety of their ideas
Having followed that students brash exhortation, Tomarken now explores the primary
theses of Derrida (deconstruction), Foucault (power-knowledge), Wolfgang Iser
(reception theory), Lacan (post-Freudianism), Fredric Jameson (post-Marxism) and
Hlne Cixous (post-feminism) via a selection of films released over the past 20 years -
among them Quentin Tarantinos Inglourious Basterds and the aforementioned Kill Bill
Vol. 2, Woody Allens Deconstructing Harry and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and a range
of other cinematic works including Shakespeare in Love, Lost in Translation, The Devil
Wears Prada and The Kings Speech. His choices, he assures us, are all blockbuster
mainstays and nothing artsy, although a few subtitled European films do slip through
the net, among them Il Postino, Run Lola Run, Amlie and The Lives of Others.
As Tomarken readily admits in his introduction, hes no expert on cinema, merely using
films as a tool for teaching and learning, so it would be unreasonable to expect any
startling cinematic insights from his book. Some of his comments on cinema, indeed,
betray a surprising naivety about the whole process of film-making. We may be
tempted to believe, he remarks in consideringInglourious Basterds, that a film with
fast-paced action and clipped dialogue is largely improvised. On the contrary, a
moments thought would suggest that a film of that kind must, of practical and financial
necessity, be scripted within an inch of its life. Its the slow-moving, talky, ruminative
movies, like the current US indie mumblecore school, that leave room for
improvisation.
Still, misapprehensions of this kind hardly detract from the main purpose of the book,
which focuses on the teaching of literary theory, not film studies. And if Tomarken finds
that popular movies can make for a serviceable teaching aid, more power to his
PowerPoint. But popular movies, or blockbuster mainstays, are rarely noted for the
profundity or subtlety of their ideas; if they were, they probably wouldnt be so popular.
Of course, it doesnt necessarily follow that ideas drawn from shallow artefacts must
themselves be shallow. But the risk is there; and when deconstruction, which Tomarken
tells us is used as a strategy by all six of his eminent theorists, is defined as nothing
more complex or radical than questioning traditional assumptions, we might begin to
doubt whether were still swimming in the deep end.
At one juncture, the author seems about to address this point, suggesting that the
reader may feel that my interpretation of the movies goes too far, making more of them
than is warranted, particularly considering that they are all commercial ventures, and
adding that his students once raised this same objection. He answered them, he tells us,
by pointing out that Shakespeare also wrote for money. Whether they were satisfied by
this shameless non sequitur he doesnt say.
Film critics sometimes disparagingly refer to mindless crowd-pleasing blockbusters as
popcorn movies. The cover of Filmspeak shows a candy-striped book with a mass of
popcorn bulging out of the top of its pages. It would be unfair to characterise
Tomarkens book in such dismissive terms, of course, but one cant help reflecting that,
like the cinema-going publics favourite in-house snack, it contains rather less
nourishment than might at first appear.