I’m trying to decide whether I’m going to start adding film “reviews” to the content I create here on JALC. I learned a little bit about film analysis back in grad school: it wasn’t my core field, but I certainly had to have a side specialization in film/video/TV in order to do the lit/cultural studies hybrid work I most enjoyed.

So, even though I’m not even remotely deep enough in hubris to pretend to be the next Roger Ebert or anything like that, I do like to think I’d be able to come up with cogent film posts in a similar way to the posts I’ve been writing each time I finish a book.

But I’m sort of wrestling back and forth with whether this would be a valuable addition to JALC, or a version of mission creep.

Admittedly, to call something “mission creep” would imply that I had a really tight content focus here. Which I don’t.

I’m aware my scatteredness in content and theme is one of the main reasons why JALC isn’t ever likely to become a big, popular blog. Basically, I’m okay with that: I’d rather write about what I want than to do some over-calculated “self-branding” exercise in hopes of becoming the next Bloggess or Dooce.

But of course there’s a part of me that wants people to be reading JALC. If I didn’t have that vain little hope, why wouldn’t I just be scribbling in a journal rather than e-publishing myself here?  And if I have some desire to grow a readership here, would it then be smart to make some small gestures towards defining focus areas for JALC? On the other hand, last night’s post about Rent showed how naturally my instincts move towards thinking about and writing about any and all artistic productions that cross my path, whether it’s a book or a performance. So in that sense, writing about movies would be legitimately “on brand” for me.

I bet, when push comes to shove, I will. After all, this whole line of navel-gazing is prompted by the fact that I finally got around to watching the 2017 remake of It, and I’m kinda dying to pick the film apart a little bit and talk about it.*

Not tonight, though. Writing myself to this decision is enough for tonight. These conference days run long, and momma needs sleep.

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* No pun intended.

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Image credit: Max Pixel, released to public domain.