Not surprisingly, there is also an interesting thread regarding this topic on Frameworks (see specifically "Lights, Camera, Action" and "The art world figures it out").

...and, since those threads are not link-able, cut-and-paste the following:

the basic address is
http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/fw23/

add the following suffix to the address above
"Lights, Camera, Action" -- 1006.html
"The art world figures it out" -- 0004.html

reaction 1. gotta trust weddle that the cited exam question's wording was noticeably different from the prof's lectures and the study guide materials, or that the prof was bad at teaching the material, or something. nothing weddle cited seemed totally out of place in a final year, college-level course. disdain for the effectiveness of the teaching strategy is implied but never stated (or indirectly proven), and it's very important to the argument.

2. the words from the study guide are mostly useful and distinctive. i'm hardly a sign person but lately i've come to respect, when talking-about-talking-about-meaning, that even the distinction between semiotics and semiology is kind of useful.

3. TV exec says films are "about ... providing provocative thoughts." providing? hmmmmm. how many provocative thoughts can i get for... [chink, chink]... a buck fifty? gotta love them TV people.

4. huh. in a city whose major export is happy endings, an article on the cover of a bourgeois newspaper insert makes the implication that meanings are to be manipulated, not observed. heh heh. here it comes...

Captain Louis Renault:
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!

[A croupier hands Renault a pile of money]

Croupier:
Your winnings, sir.

Captain Louis Renault:
Oh, thank you very much.

the quoted and maligned exam question mentions david bordwell. actually i think mr. weddle would like a lot of what bordwell has written about narrative.

also, weddle quotes an administrator: I sometimes suspected that professors were trying to ensure their own job security by utilizing an increasingly obfuscating language.

a: sometimes + suspected instead of think.
b: utilizing instead of using.
c: increasingly without an anchor: increasing from what, to what?

the shifty pot calling the kettle obfuscatory.

la dee da. talking to myself.

first thing i wrote i called the LA times magazine "bourgeois." maybe i should have put quotes around that or qualified it somehow. probably... i just thought it was funny to use the word... i mean, the article was ranting against french communists... don't hate me because i talk like a marxist! i'm really very friendly.

Sorry to have given you the impression that you've been talking to yourself, D. Among other things, I've been following the reaction, particularly among those who count themselves on the blunt end of Weddle's criticisms. Besides the list archive pages Jonathan and I have pointed to, we can also follow the conversation on the SCREEN-L list as well.

And I have to say I've been impressed by, first, the sheer range of the reaction, from knee-jerk self-defense (of which there's actually been admirably little) to an enthusiastic pile-on sort of endorsement (also rare). But secondly, most of it has been extraordinarily level-headed and fair, willing to give an honestly open ear to Weddle but just as willing to apply a critical reading of his attack when and where necessary, a fairly broadly accepted admission that 14 units of film theory for a student who wants to end up working on the practical end of the film business is overdoing it, and basically, a gut level "sympathy" (that's the word used here, for example, from a prof, no less) for the general gist of Weddle's complaint.

All that said, Weddle does go overboard with the demonization of film theorists as social parasites with nothing in their heads other than the urge to preserve the positions they've created for themselves, he does hope to set off alarms among a readership he's counting on being as conservative as the current administration by claiming they're all a bunch of Marxists and, in general, his characterizations are grossly unfair (the last 'scene' in the article in particular).

Still, it's interesting that these are all points that have been raised after the initial round of reactions all had to do with... money. And your initial reaction, too, has a lot to do with economics, micro and macro. Very understandably, too, because that's how Weddle opens his piece: I paid $73K and they, who go flitting around to conferences all over the world, are giving me, a freelance writer, a raw deal. Weddle knows that's going to resonate, especially these days.

And frankly, it was one of my initial thoughts as well. It's a sidebar sort of thought, but I couldn't help thinking, Seventy. Three. Thousand. Dollars. All other ideological quibbles aside, all questions of what he and his daughter hoped to be the return on that investment aside, that number alone points to something severely wrong - again - with the state of higher education in the US.

But, ok, enough of that minor sidetrack.

In the end, I hope Weddle will read the letters to the editor of the LAT Magazine that are surely on the way. I hope he catches up with the broad range of theory that's actually bubbling out there, some of it quite fun and readable; and at the same time, I hope UCSB will modestly cut the number of required units in theory for students who don't aim to be writers or directors or critics or even profs themselves, and frankly, I also hope that academics will keep non-academics' frustration with academia's penchant for obscurity in mind, aware that there is an interest and a hunger out there that, for a variety of reasons, they really don't want to frustrate.

Hell hath no fury like a pseudo-intellectual hack who can't understand his daughter's university course work. I'm appalled that a nomally sound journal like the L.A. Times would print the reactionary diatribe of some irate father who can't admit the intellectual mediocrity of his little princess.