Godard and Sontag and what we didn't get to yesterday

LA City Beat has a review on Godard's Made in the USA that you will find interesting. Also, afterward, please read the Sontag essay on The Decay of Cinema. All of this, and the competing notions of film and film celebration we saw in the Godard and Scorsese clips, go together as part of a package. With that said, now think of the Sontag piece as a paper delivered to a room of people. Analyze the text of the essay in terms of purpose and clarity -- think about how it makes one solid point throughout. In some ways, that should be your goal for the Genre Matters conference, i.e. one simple idea, supported by evidence, but an idea that makes the listener think about something even after the presentation is over. Over ten years later, people still reference that flimsy little Sontag essay -- something to aim for in terms of your conference papers.