David Weddle has a superb article: Lights, Camera, Action. Marxism, Semiotics, Narratology. Film school isn't what it used to be, one father discovers. I usually don't seem to agree with Roger Ebert, but it's hard to argue with this:

Film theory has nothing to do with film. Students presumably hope to find out something about film, and all they will find out is an occult and arcane language designed only for the purpose of excluding those who have not mastered it and giving academic rewards to those who have. No one with any literacy, taste or intelligence would want to teach these courses, so the bona fide definition of people teaching them are people who are incapable of teaching anything else.

Unfortunately, an awful lot of literary "scholarship" is like this. (via Arts & Letters Daily).