Reading Response

Week Five
Fuck Content — Michael Rock

This is at least the fourth time that I’ve been assigned to read “Fuck Content”. Each time my reaction to it is a little different, specifically to the critique of the Crystal Goblet metaphor. Rock says that neither group managed to grasp the premise, that it is all about the wine. I think Rock becomes too invested in this analogy, is it not still true that while Paul Rand was making children’s books the content was still good for the form?

• Is there not still a value system of content for non-adult mediums? Is there not still a hierarchy of advertising content or any other medium?



“A director can be the esteemed auteur of a film he didn't write, score, edit or shoot. What makes a Hitchcock film a Hitchcock film is not the story but a consistency of style, which winds intact through different technologies, plots, actors, and time periods like a substance of its own.”

• But doesn't it also follow that Hitchcock chose content that he saw as being "of value"? Hitchcock had a definitive style, yes but a large part of this was in the CHOICE of content.