A Term That Means Everything, and Nothing Very Specific

When it comes to the hallowed, foundational terms that shape the field of film studies — words like montage or cinephilia or auteur or genre, words that have launched a million books and articles — I have come to believe it is wise to take heed of the warning of Paul Willemen (1944–2012), as voiced in the 1990s (Willemen, 1994, p. 226). For him, such cherished words have rarely defined anything precise in cinema; rather, they mark a confusion, a fumbling attempt to pinpoint some murky confluence of wildly diverse factors. We need such terms, he agreed, but we should not believe or trust in them too fervently. Rather, they present a smokescreen (or, in the psychoanalytic terms used by Willemen, a ‘neurotic knot’ or displacement): for some commentators, tantalising as a mystery that can prompt further work into their meaning and origin; or, for those who obediently trot them out as rote learning, simply asphyxiating. Has anyone ever involved in teaching film not experienced, at some time or other, that horrible, crunching sensation when, once a strict definition of something has been uttered in the classroom — no matter how provisionally, no matter how quickly freighted with numerous qualifications — you know that, all the same, you have just helped to further perpetuate that smokescreen of faux certainty?