Fallacious, Fallacious, Fallacious: So Many Questions, So Many Fallacies

I have been looking back at Fischer's fallacies and the readings from our course so far and am back where my last blog posting left off—at Higashi's collection of essays. In Higashi's collection (which is full of fallacious activity) I became especially frustrated with Steven Ross' essay "Jargon and the Crisis of Readability: Methodology, Language, and the Future of Film History." I find myself conflicted between whether or not I actually agree with Ross, but found his questions, "Why are certain images and ideologies included or excluded from films? What are the everyday material forces that shape the ideology of American films? What techniques do filmmakers use to convey their messages? How are cinematic images received by audiences? How should we communicate our findings to readers?" inherently problematic and fallacious. The question that got me the most the most irritated was "Why are certain images and ideologies included or excluded from films?" This question falls
into Fischer's fallacy of multiple questions. As Fischer describes, the fallacy of multiple question is: "framing a question in such a way that two or more questions are asked at once, and a single answer is required" (8). I have a couple problems with it in particular: first, this question assumes that images and ideologies are fundamentally related. Second, this question assumes that there is an inherent connection between what is included and excluded in a film. Although there may be something connected between these in many cases, the connection is not universal. Having worked in production I know that often the images that are included do not represent what is excluded (and vice-versa). To assume such is to over simplify the situation instead of understanding that sometimes what is included or excluded is not linked, but spawns from completely different contexts. This question assumes that both inclusion and exclusion come from the same place. Also, images can (
and do) exists outside of a given ideology, and an ideology can exist without a specific image. By grouping these together, Ross fundamentally links them in a way in which they can be connected (absolutely), but in a way in which that they are not necessarily connected.

Russell Sheaffer