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With everyone, it seems, getting ready for the start of the new semester, I'd like to share a position, an attitude really, concerning (film or art) criticism or aesthetics that can be summed up in one adjective: "received."
For the first year and a half studying art history (in the late 70's) at SUNY-Binghamton, we, the graduate students soaked up the following message from our professors: "You missed it. The golden age of art history followed World War II. The humanistic greats like Panofsky and Gombrich drew the broad outlines of the art historical discipline and the most we little guys can do is fill in some details."
But by dipping into current scholarly journals - no Internet, remember - a few of us realised that in places like Princeton and Yale a wave of new stuff - mostly labelled semiotics - was washing through the art history departments of the better universities and we were missing that wave.
Then a new professor arrived who had written a doctoral dissertation on Minoan Art using semiotic techniques. He basically spread the new gospel, and luckily, we were able to graduate without looking like complete idiots with useless degrees from upstate New York.
And here's one of the things he said: "Everything you read, everything you study, and everything those old professors told you is received art history." In other words, it's old, it's done, it's finished. And by implication, our job was to make a new art history.
So that's what I want you to remember when you go to class: take with you the attitude that everything is "received" and you have an obligation to move forward.
PS- And the moral of the story is: send your kids to the best college they can get into, because the quality of the faculty determines which side you're on, the wasting-your-time side, or the moving-forward side.