Issue 141

Winter & Spring 2012

Essay Marilyn Freeman Essay Marilyn Freeman

On the Form of the Video Essay

The essay’s innermost formal law is heresy.

Theodor Adorno

Every time I read that line from “The Essay as Form,” Adorno’s midcentury manifesto, I feel the kind of joy I felt when I accidentally rang the fire alarm instead of the recess bell in seventh grade at St Francis of Assisi in Spokane. I feel guilty, involuntary joy. And I think of the video essay—the brainy, bratty, mixed breed love child of poetry, creative nonfiction, art house indies, documentary, and experimental media art.

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