My biggest objection was that the articles focused too much on the film as a political and cultural breakthrough and not enough about the film's artistry. Not that the political/cultural stuff isn't important, but it's only one piece of what makes BBM a masterpiece.
Think of all we've written here analyzing the subtexts and symbols and mirrors and bookends, etc., that FQ didn't really touch on. They should have gotten one of us to write something!
IMO a lot of readers were expecting this magazine to be somethiing it isn't. The articles are sometimes being referred to as "reviews" and they're not. They're a specifically academic approach.
I could actually recognize some of my college classroom experiences in these articles. The best of the articles were like some of the lectures I heard that I'd rehash with classmates late at night (while we were solving all of the world's problems!
) The Miller piece immediately made me think of a professor I had who was something of a joke with his students; the phrase "you need to get out more" was pretty much made for him. Miller's blatant misogyny and narcissism were distressing but not particularly surprising.
