[Ulmer's] version of "Derrida at the Little Bighorn" is provided as an example of an alphabetic miming of a filmic mode -- the compilation film. Like films made from other films, the compilation text is made from other writings, consisting primarily of citations. The "originality" of the piece rests with the actions of selection and combination, treating the archive of extant works as a vocabulary of a higher order discourse.

It is worth noting that the public mind, or popular culture expressed in the media of everyday life, seems to produce mythology in a similar kind of compilation process, working with historical events the way an editor works with old newsreels (209-210).