Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

CHAPTER FOUR:
"SMELLING RIGHT": READER PARTICIPATION AND THE CREATION OF TEXTS
In this chapter I wish to demonstrate bow theomical paradigms, such as
phenomenology and its offspring, reader·response theory, remove the objections of
folklorists to recognize popular film texts as legitimate sites for ethnography that I
outlined in my introduction. I wish to follow this up by discussing how my infonnanls.
my expert practitioners. predicate their understanding ofJewish cinema within the
boundaries oftheir own experience of being Jewish.
Implicit in Robert Georges' definition ofa storytelling situation. as noted in my
introduction. was that lhe leller and audience must be face·to-face for proper
communication to occur, and this was the crux ofthe problematic relationship between
folklore and film. This definition denied the applicability of popular film texlS to the
folklorist's field of discourse. since by lheir very nalUrt. films are not face-ta-face media
of communication. Wilh a film. the narrative is created/performed in one space and time.
and the document oflhal performance is then able to be reconlextualized atemporally and
ahislorically. Although. as film theorist Vivian Sobchack noted: "the direct engagemenl
... between spectator and film in the film experience cannot be considered a monologic
one between a viewing subject and a viewed object. Rather it is .. dialogical and
dialectical ..... (Sobchack. 1992: 23).
Peter Narvaez and Manin Laba also noted that "perfonnance contexts of popular
culture are usually characterized by significanl spatial and social distances between
perfonners and audiences" (Narvaez and Laba: I). In the introduction to their edited
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