Film professor addresses honors students

A film scholar from Virginia told honor students of the tension in Hollywood between commercial profit and ideological messages.
Dr. J. Dennis Bounds, film professor at Virginia Beach’s Regent University graduate school, recently spoke to students in Dr. Michael Ray Smith’s Journalists in Film and Fiction class, as part of a grant to advance journalism at Campbell University.
“With the success of message-films such as “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “The Passion of the Christ,” Hollywood may be more open to make message-films, and then the trend will go the other way,” Bounds told the class.
Honors students at Campbell are exploring the role film assigns to journalists as part of Smith’s class.
“Film contributes to the pictures in our heads,” said Smith. “Sometimes the pictures are distortions, yet we tend to treat the roles as ‘normal.’ This class will help students discern the difference between the journalist as caricature and the journalist as a person who can make a difference in culture by faithful reporting.”
 

Bulletin 0022-2/02/05