No one is perfect: a dimensional discursive semantic analysis of Rufo Caballero’s film critique

Abstract

Criticizing cinema has always been a historical temptation and not exactly the most encouraging one. Misunderstood by some, admired by others; Rufo Caballero's atypical and controversial opinion speech goes beyond the scope of a strictly academic film critique. The object of study of the following work is the critical evaluating subject of cinema as the modal ilocutive actant of the evaluative speech acts in the discourse on cinematographic criticism. Dimensional analysis has been used as a fundamental methodology to study the content of the value meaning of utterances and their constituents: speech acts. It is based on the semantic value analysis model developed by the group of Semantic and Semiotic Studies of the Foreign Language School of the University of Havana. In particular, this discourse of the evaluating subject Rufo Caballero unfolded as a critical film illocutionary agent is characterized by positive, ambiguous and negative axiological positions always framed in the aesthetic domain. The critical ilocutive subject is modeled in consonance with its functions, generally of aesthetic appreciation, from the relation with the focalized objects: the film, the performance, the dramaturgy, the styles of the filmmakers and also their assumed attitude as a critic.