Re: Digest ending 8-22-92

Thanks to Wes Chapman for his critique of "cut-ups.". The things had been bugging me, but I hadn't understood why until Wes clarified matters. I agree that the "cut-ups" are like one-liners: the humor is in the instant of recognition, not in the story which they coyly fail to produce. Since they are funny only as one-liners, I fail to see the justification for the durn things being so long. Does the sheer length of the cut-ups accomplish anything rhetorically, or does it just allow the cut-uppers to get their jollies fulfilled by lingering over the savaging of others' texts? Don't the cut-ups becomes just a coy substitute for engaged criticism, allowing the progenitors to hide behind an act of textual re-production? (I'm not actually criticizing your work, I'm just giving it a new face - this seems to be the implicit rhetorical context of the cut-uppers work.) I agree with Wes that it would be nice to see the cut-uppers somehow subject a message they've made and cared about to this process . . .

Michael Bruce McDonald

Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 00:04 CDT
From: S1MBM@ISUVAX.BITNET