New Readings

Congrats on surviving the midterm!

Most of the readings for next week ARE NOT online so please go to reserves and make a photo copy to study. Yes, I know this requires you to pay money, but consider it cheaper than an actual reader.

That said, you can find the fantastically titled “Laura Mulvey Meets Catherine Tramell Meets the She-Man: Counter History, Reclamation, and Incongruity in Lesbian, Gay, Queer Film and Media Criticism” by Julia Erhart by clicking here.

Please come to tutorial. I'm showing fun movies.

Eli

Final Essay

FILM 2400: Film Theory
Final Essay (due May 25, by 12pm) Leave your essays in one of the envelopes on my office door (CFT 215).
7-10 pages (double-spaced, 12pts Times New Roman) + Works Cited Page (following MLA style)

Sources: You are required to use at least 5 print sources in your paper. At least three of the sources MUST be from our syllabus. You cannot use any Internet sources (unless the source is a valid online academic journal: check with me first).
Choose ONE of the following topics:

1. What is queer theory? What are its premises? What are its objectives? What are some of the tensions/contradictions within this theory? What are the advantages of this theory (e.g. how does it contribute to our understanding of film or what can it tell us about film that other theories can’t; what aspects of film that remain ignored in other film theories are illuminated or explained by queer theory)? On the other hand, what are the disadvantages of queer theory (e.g. is it applicable to all films; does it ignore certain important aspects of film that other theories deal with in greater detail or more successfully)? How does Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953) function as a queer text? How does the film reflect, illustrate or perhaps challenge some of the key premises of queer theory?
2. What is ‘postmodern cinema’? What is a ‘postmodern approach to cinema’? Is there such a thing as a ‘postmodern theory’ of film? What are some of the difficulties in defining ‘Post-Structuralism’, ‘Deconstruction’ and ‘Post Modernism’? What are some of the tensions/contradictions within this approach to cinema? What are its advantages (e.g. how does it contribute to our understanding of film or what can it tell us about film that other theories can’t; what aspects of film that remain ignored in other film theories are illuminated or explained by the postmodern approach to film)? On the other hand, what are the disadvantages of post-structuralist and deconstructivist readings of film? How does Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999) function as a postmodern text? How does the film reflect, illustrate or perhaps challenge some of the key premises of postmodernism, post-structuralism and deconstruction?
3. How does cognitive/analytical theory challenge “Grand Theory’? What are the premises of cognitive/analytical theory? What are its objectives? What are some of the tensions/contradictions within this theory? What are the advantages of this theory (e.g. how does it contribute to our understanding of film or what can it tell us about film that other theories can’t; what aspects of film that remain ignored in other film theories are illuminated or explained by cognitive/analytical theory)? On the other hand, what are the disadvantages of this theory (e.g. is it applicable to all films; does it ignore certain important aspects of film that other theories deal with in greater detail or more successfully)? How do films like Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1929) and Following (Christopher Nolan, 1998)—or any other film screened in class— reflect, illustrate or perhaps challenge some of the key premises of cognitive/analytical theory?
4. What is postcolonial theory? What are its premises? What are its objectives? What are some of the tensions/contradictions within this theory? What are the advantages of this theory (e.g. how does it contribute to our understanding of film or what can it tell us about film that other theories can’t; what aspects of film that remain ignored in other film theories are illuminated or explained by postcolonial theory)? On the other hand, what are the disadvantages of this theory (e.g. is it applicable to all films; does it ignore certain important aspects of film that other theories deal with in greater detail or more successfully)? How does How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Nelson Pereira dos Santos, 1971) function as a postcolonial text? How does the film reflect, illustrate or perhaps challenge some of the key premises of postcolonial theory?
5. What does it mean for a film to be ‘philosophical’? What is ‘philosophy of film’? What are its premises? What are its objectives? What are some of the tensions/contradictions within this theory? What are the advantages of this theory (e.g. how does it contribute to our understanding of film or what can it tell us about film that other theories can’t; what aspects of film that remain ignored in other film theories are illuminated or explained by philosophy of film)? On the other hand, what are the disadvantages of this theory (e.g. is it applicable to all films; does it ignore certain important aspects of film that other theories deal with in greater detail or more successfully)? What does it mean to approach Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) as a philosophical text? What are the philosophical limits of Michelangelo’s film? What are the limits of a philosophical approach to his film? (Note the distinction between ‘the philosophical limits of film’ and ‘the limits of a philosophical approach to film’.)
6. What does it mean to talk of ‘avant-garde cinema’, ‘experimental cinema’, ‘visionary cinema’ or ‘underground cinema’? Do these terms refer to the same type of cinema? How do avant-garde filmmakers and theorists like Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage challenge established ideas about the nature of film as an art form? Why do some film theorists argue that avant-garde cinema can be seen as a return to the aesthetics of early cinema? In addition to the films screened in class, you may refer to any other films by Deren and Brakhage.

Reception Theory

Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism

Hunger

The most astonishing film I saw at TIFF last year, and one of the most interesting films from recent memory, is the British artist Steve McQueen's film Hunger. The film is ostensibly about the six week hunger strike of a charismatic and fanatical IRA operative, Bobby Sands, though it touches on many issues in the course of its laconic narrative.

I highly recommend this film and think you will be blown away by its apparent authenticity and intensity. It wont be playing for long so catch it this week if you can...

Eli

Study Guide

Some people from tutorial suggested they would get together and distribute questions for the upcoming exam to make a communal study guide. You are welcome to post these answers in the comments section of this post with your name attached.

I would like to reiterate however, that I WILL NOT be moderating these questions and the correctness of each answer is completely up to the person answering. Furthermore, this is not required of anyone and I am in no way going to grade people. I am not interested in who does and does not contribute--it is entirely up to the tutorial students. Because of the nature of sharing the study guide, I would advise everyone posting answers to be sure they are writing the correct answer. Conversely, the person studying the answer does not relieve themselves of responsibility if they write an incorrect answer because they memorized an incorrect answer. Use these as a beginning point, not an end point to the study guide you create.

In another note, this midterm will be difficult. I would advise you to carry the study guide around with you for the rest of the week and to spend at very least, an hour per day memorizing questions and dead time (like riding public transport or sitting on the can) re-reading answers. Create flashcards for each question and put point form answers on the back. Ask a friend to test you every night.

Good Luck!

Eli

Readings

Be sure to get to the reserves and make copies of the readings from the Oxford Guide to Film Studies. The Benjamin essay is widely available on the net.

Eli

Readings and such

Hi all,

Since the exam was moved to April 23 we need to rearrange the readings for the next two weeks (since the experimental films are considerably shorter than Being John Malkovich).

These are the readings for NEXT week (April 16):

Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction and Post Modernism
Screening:
Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
Reading:
Brunette, Peter. “Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction” in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson, eds. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (reserve)
Hill, John. “Film and Postmodernism” in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson, eds. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies (reserve)
Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. eds., 6th ed. Film Theory and Criticism, 791-812


These are the readings for April 23:

The Cinematic Avant-Garde
Screening:
The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971)
Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, US, 1943)
Readings:
Deren, Maya. “Cinematography: The Creative Use of Reality”, Braudy and Cohen 187-198
Brakhage, Stan. “From Metaphors of Vision”, Braudy and Cohen 199-205
Gunning, Tom. “An Aesthetics of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” Braudy and Cohen 862-877

On April 23 we will start with the exam (2 hours long) and then discuss the readings and see the two short experimental films.

Your answers to the exam questions can be either in point form OR in the regular paragraph format. BOTH are acceptable.

Have a great weekend!

Temenuga

Feminist Film Theory

Exam Date Change and (fewer) Questions

The exam has been pushed back a week to April 23rd and the questions have been reviewed and reduced. Take a look:

FILM 2400
Exam II – April 23 (in class, 8:30am-10:30am)

The following short answer questions have been formulated in a way that presupposes that you have read all articles very carefully and synthesized the main line of argument in each article. 15 of the following questions will appear on the exam. Of those 15 you will choose to answer 10.

Evaluation: 10 questions x 10 points each = 100 points

Cinema and Ideology

1. What is an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and how does it function?

2. What does Althusser mean when he argues that “ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence” (162-165)?

3. What does Althusser mean when he argues that “ideology has a material existence” (165-169)?

4. What does Althusser mean when he argues that ideology works by “interpellating” individuals as subjects (170-175)?

5. In “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism” Jean-Luc Comolli Jean Narboni distinguish seven types of film depending on the films’ relationship to ideology. Identify and briefly explain three of these film types.

Structuralism

6. What does Barthes mean by “the duplicity of the signifier” i.e. what does he mean when he writes that “the signifier can be looked at, in myth, from two points of view: as the final term of the linguistic system, or as the first term of the mythical system” (116-117) and that “the signifier has, so to speak, two aspects: one full, which is the meaning…one empty, which is the form…” (122)?

7. According to Barthes, how does the Paris-Match picture of the young Negro in a French uniform, saluting, function as a myth?

8. What does Barthes mean when he argues that myth “transforms history into nature” (129) and that myth is ‘experienced as innocent speech” (131)?

Semiotics

9. According to Saussure what is the relationship between the signifier and the signified and what are the implications of this for our understanding of language as a system?

10. According to Metz, are syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between signifiers in cinema similar to, or different from, those in language? How?

11. How did Metz transpose Saussure’s distinction between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ into film studies?

12. In what way was classical Hollywood cinema as a codifed cinematic system of signification important in the so-called ‘linguistic turn’ in film theory i.e. the application of Saussure’s ideas to film studies?

13. What does Metz mean when he argues that it is “through its procedures of denotation [that] the cinema is a specific language” (68)?

14. How are cinematic signs motivated on the levels of denotation and connotation?

15. What does Metz mean when he argues that “the cinema as such has nothing corresponding to the double articulation of verbal languages” (75)?

16. Metz distinguishes eight syntagmatic types. Identify and briefly explain two of them.

Spectatorship

17. What does Metz mean when he argues that the cinematic signifier is, paradoxically, both perceptual and imaginary?

18. Metz claims that insofar as the film spectator identifies with himself as look, i.e. as a pure act of perception or an “all-perceiving subject,” he/she inevitably identifies with the camera too (822-824)? What does he mean?

19. Metz calls cinema “unauthorized scopophilia” (831) and claims that it is different from the theater and from more intimate voyeuristic activities. Why does he think so?

20. Why does Metz discuss disavowal and fetishism in order to explain the cinematic signifier (831-834)? For instance, how is the psychoanalytical notion of ‘disavowal’ similar to the ‘structure of belief’ in cinema?

21. Baudry establishes a series of parallels between cinema and dream. Identify and briefly explain two of them.

22. In “Jan-Louis Baudry and ‘The Apparatus’” Noël Carroll challenges Baudry’s claim that “the apparatus of cinema involves regression to primitive narcissism” (231). Identify and briefly explain three of Carroll’s objections to Baudry’s argument.

Cinematic Excess

23. What is ‘cinematic excess’ and in what sense is it “counternarrative” and “counterunity” according to K. Thompson (517)?

24. Thompson identifies four ways in which the material of a particular film exceeds motivation. Identify and briefly explain two of these.

25. Linda Williams discusses ‘structures of perversion’ in the female body genres. How does her analysis challenge traditional readings of these genres?

26. According to Linda Williams, what is the value of tracing the three body genres (horror, pornography and the weepie) back to the original fantasies to which they correspond? Why does she insist that we should not “dismiss them as bad excess whether of explicit sex, violence, or emotion, or as bad perversions, whether of masochism or sadism” (740)?

27. What is ‘paracinema’? What is the purpose of paracinematic culture?

28. According to Sconce, what is the major political distinction between aesthete and paracinematic discourses on cinematic excess?

Stars and Performance

29. According to John Ellis, “the star performance in the fiction [the film] can have three kinds of relation to the star image in subsidiary circulation” (603). What are they?

30. Identify the four ways in which the film historian goes about reconstituting the image of a particular star. Briefly explain two of them as they pertain to Joan Crawford.

Feminist Theory

31. Mulvey claims that “destruction of pleasure is a radical weapon” (838). What does she mean?

32. Mulvey identifies two “contradictory aspects of the pleasurable structures of looking in the conventional cinematic situation” (840). What are they and how do they function in cinema?

33. According to Mulvey, the male unconscious has two ways of dealing with the castration anxiety provoked by the image of woman. What are they?

34. According to Mulvey, there are three different looks associated with cinema. What are they? Which of these looks does mainstream narrative cinema privilege?

35. In “Rethinking Women’s Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist Theory” Teresa de Lauretis identifies a major contradiction specific to the women’s movement. What is it and what problems does it create?

36. Why does de Lauretis challenge Mulvey’s call for the destruction of visual and narrative pleasure? How does de Lauretis propose to rethink the project of women’s cinema?

37. According to Mary Ann Doane, “sexual mobility would seem to be a distinguishing feature of femininity in its cultural construction” (253). She goes on to argue that unlike transvestism, which is fully recuperable, masquerade is not as recuperable “precisely because it constitutes an acknowledgement that it is femininity itself which is constructed as mask” (253). What does she mean by that? How does masquerade challenge the theorization of female specificity in terms of spatial proximity?

Reception Theory

38. Noel King cites three instances of ‘not understanding’ a text we read. How does he account for our inability to understand the text in those cases?

39. How does Staiger challenge the three dominant speculative histories of reception (Gunning, Corrigan and Hansen)?

40. In “The Perversity of Spectators: Expanding the History of the Classical Hollywood Cinema” Staiger lists seven reasons for the failure of normative description of film reception. Identify and briefly explain three of these.

41. In “Spectatorship and Subjectivity” E. Diedre Pribram discusses three concepts of subjectivity (the psychoanalytic, the discursive, and the social). Briefly explain one of them.

Readings for April 9th Online

Thomas Elsaesser, “Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama” in Home is Where the Heart Is (ed. Christine Gledhill) (reserve) can be found here.

Staiger, Janet. “Modes of Reception” and “The Perversity of Spectators: Expanding the History of the Classical Hollywood Cinema” in Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception. This can be found here.

Pribram, E. Diedre. “Spectatorship and Subjectivity” in Toby Miller and Robert Stam, eds. A Companion to Film Theory. This can be found here.

Note that King, Noel. “Hermeneutics, Reception Aesthetics, and Film Interpretation” in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson, eds. The Oxford Guide to Film Studies is not available online and must be found at the reserve desk. If anyone can make a scan of this text and email it to me so I can post it on the blog, I would be grateful.