Lights, Camera, Semiotics!

Here’s an interesting piece from the LA Times about how postmodernists have taken over film schools. I found this particular paragraph revealing, though I’m not quite sure of what:

From Kevin Brownlow, the world’s leading silent movie historian, author of “The Parade’s Gone By . . .,” and co-producer, with David Gill, of acclaimed documentaries: “You would think, from this closed-circuit attitude to teaching, that such academics would be politically right wing. For it is a kind of fascism to force people practicing one discipline to learn the language of another, simply for the convenience of an intellectual elite. It’s like expecting Slavs to learn German in order to comprehend their own inferiority. But they are not right wing. They are, regrettably, usually left wing?quite aggressively Marxist?which makes the whole situation even more alarming.”

I would have liked more elaboration why that was “alarming,” rather than completely unsurprising. Apparently, even some leftists are embarrassed by this stuff.