Welcome: A Declaration of Principles

Bernstein: You don't want to make any promises, Mr. Kane, that you don't want to keep.

Kane: These will be kept. 'I'll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them...'

Jedediah: That's the second sentence you've started with 'I'.

Kane: People are gonna know who's responsible. Now they're gonna get the truth in the Inquirer, quickly and simply and entertainingly and no special interests are gonna be allowed to interfere with that truth. (Continuing with the Declaration.) 'I will also provide them with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings. Signed, Charles Foster Kane.'

There is a scene in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941) in which the young, optimistic and enthusiastic Nouveau Riche Charles Foster Kane (Welles) buys a newspaper and assures his friend Jed Leland (Joseph Cotten) that their publication will be successful because it will editorially guided by ethics.  In order to embrace this philosophy of full disclosure, Kane and Leland spend the night constructing a "Declaration of Principles" that will run on the front page of the morning edition.  The statement, reprinted in the above quotation, basically states that the content of the paper will not be governed by economic interest (advertisers will not be treated with cotton gloves if Kane views them as stepping out of line with the democratic process) but by the best interests of the readers. 

Of course, and Jed hints at this in his retort to Kane, this begs the question of who determines the best interests of the populace, especially when the philosophy behind Kane's "Declaration of Principles" quickly becomes his means of forcing the paper's readers to "love" him (because he lost his Rosebud, sled or double entendre, I'll allow you to choose your own adventure there).  When Leland resurfaces with the original document after Kane has attempted to use his newspaper for his own political gain, we see how far the publisher has fallen.  Yet, he is a tragic figure despite his arrogance and greed, the cinematic equivalent of Jay Gatsby, 

Thus, it may be a curse to launch this blog, the simultaneously presumptuous - I won't be a "Doctor" in Cinema and Media Studies for a few more months, after my revised dissertation meets the standards of my committee - and facetiously titled The Cinema Doctor (this was dubbed a proper title after our lawyers informed us that Dr. Drew's Cinematic Rehab may draw the legal attention of the first, bespectacled, Dr. Drew), with a post entitled "A Declaration of Principles" and an allusion to what is often cited as the best film ever made.  But, it has been in my decade-long experience as a journalist, writer, and educator that transparency and disclosure are a compelling means of getting someone to listen/read (along with a healthy dose of intellectual rigor and an ability to properly package aforementioned rigor).  So, without further ado, this is what you can expect to find in forthcoming posts at The Cinema Doctor. 

1.  An Ethical Approach.  I trained as a journalist, both in high school and as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where I wrote for the UWM Post and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel while finishing my Bachelor Degrees in Film Studies and English.  That said, and I've spoken at length about this in postings in two other blogs I've been affiliated with (Pajiba and Dr. Mabuse's Kaleido-Scope), I do not believe in set visits, free swag (unless the "free" means the product being reviewed like a film or DVD), and I do not believe in partying with my subjects.  You can read more of my thoughts of ethics at the following link. 

2.  An Educational Approach.  After completing my undergraduate education and having been inspired by my time at UWM, I decided to enter into the field of Cinema and Media Studies as a graduate student at the University of California-Los Angeles so that I could teach people about the popular culture that I care so deeply about.  Now, having taught at UCLA for four years and blown almost ten years of my life buried in film, video games, and comic books (not to mention the hundreds of books about them!), I feel like I can fulfill that goal by placing our media artifacts in a historical and theoretical context and teaching you, the potential reader, something about history, form, and what intellectual questions we can ask ourselves when evaluating a piece of media.  Moreover, I view this blog as an outlet for syllabi, lesson plans, and other pedagogical issues.  In short, you will not find film reviews with star or letter grade evaluations nor will you find the latest casting news and celebrity gossip here; you'll find media criticism.  On the other hand, that does not mean condescending writing and thinking that is inaccessible to the general public; it means deep thinking and analysis.  Moreover, I welcome members of both the film criticism community and the academy to the blog and I hope to see them contribute, either in the comments or hopefully as guest writers. 

3.  A Diverse Approach.  Despite the title of this blog, film is not the sole focus of the material that will appear here.  In my days as an A&E journalist, I covered everything:  music, film, television, and comic books.  Now, as a Candidate in Philosophy at UCLA, I am finishing a dissertation that looks at American comic books and film from cultural, formal, and technological viewpoints.  Eclecticism can be difficult to market but it is much more entertaining and stimulating to write and, in my experiences, read.  Moreover, it gives us a stronger context in which we can place the works we study.  For instance, one of the guiding theories behind my dissertation is the concept of remediation established by Richard Grusin and Jay David Bolter.  Bolter and Grusin, and I'm providing a quick gloss here, argue that no media form exists in a vacuum and that every "new" media form fashions itself off of its historical predecessors.  Thus, the internet draws heavily upon the formal conventions of newspapers and magazines (the graphic design, the interplay between photographs and articles) while video games owe a large debt to both their analog form of the board game (or playground game) and cinema.  In accordance with this theory, which has greatly influenced by interest areas and writing, you'll find musings on the newest blockbuster releases, retrospective reviews of classics and cult films, reviews of the latest foreign fare, think pieces on comic books, and frustrated rants about video games. 

I look forward to the forthcoming months and posts and I welcome you to read, share, and comment freely!  

P.S.  If I follow in the footsteps of Charles Foster Kane, please just send me a JPEG of a sled and a snarky comment.  I don't want to die alone in Xanadu.