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
58 comments:
#13. When Metz argues that it is “through its procedures of denotation [that] the cinema is a specific language”, he is referring to the fact that film, unlike photography, has the unique ability to construct denotative meaning through the use of multiple shots. In other words, a single photograph consists only of the denotative meaning that is clearly visible in that individual photograph. Film, however, can construct a larger denotative meaning through the use of several shots organized in a specific way. To give an example, in photography, the only way to denote “house” is to actually photograph an entire house. Meanwhile, film is able to denote “house” by displaying shots of stairs, windows, walls etc. all in succession. While each shot denotes a specific place/object, the succession of these images constructs an entirely new denotative meaning. Film is therefore able to construct denotative meaning in a way that no other art form can, and it is as a result of this process that Metz claimed that it is “through its procedures of denotation [that] the cinema is a specific language”.
Only done one so far, but based on the lack of anything else posted, I don't feel too bad.
Nick Ross
There better be a study guide posted... we all need it. I'll put up 2 questions.
#11. How did Metz transpose Saussure’s distinction between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ into film studies?
Cinema is not a universal language (langue= language system) but an individual language (parole)- he says cinematic language is a lot less arbitrary and more complicated but it’s not as encoded as verbal language, it’s more liberated and freer. Filmmakers have a lot more control over film language because they are conscious of using the way we use language to communicate.
i hope this is correct, i will look more into it and revise it if it's incorrect.
and i really hope everyone participates in this, because this is a very good (easy) way for us to study.
oh and i will post the second question asap.
tara khalili
I will have my two answers (5 and 6) up tomorrow. Sorry I didn't have it done BY today... this week was an absolute shitshow.
#21.
Baudry goes into a few parallels between dreams and cinema and begins quite clearly on page 214 of Braudy and Cohen. One Parallel drawn is the similarity between dreams and the projection of a film. The projection is up on the screen and is a feature of reality that belongs to the perception of an external world. We accept the projection as memories, we think about them later on and they become fragmented, when we dream we are drawn to say "It was like in a movie", the parallel between the two is the fractured use of images. A second parallel Baudry establishes is the contradiction between motions, the combination of the dream screen and the projected image. It's a desire in a dream to unify the images present and not to represent them, which would be closer to an hallucination. The same terms are used for both cinema and dreams even if we can tell the difference of what's in our minds and on the screen. Viewing a film brings us back into the familiar feeling of being asleep because of the similarities to which cinema is presented
#22
Carroll challenges Baudry's claims of the apparatus. three examples of how he challenges Baudry's article are as followed. One of them is that Baudry should explain/clarify that dreams are more intense than films. Dreams and cinema do not carry the same degree of the notion of 'more-than-real'. Which is why in a second argument Carroll goes on to contradict Baudry's statement that sitting in a theater is like being asleep, viewing images projected onto your retina's is like dreaming. However in a theater one can move seats, move our heads, walk out, lack of motoricity is not as severe as Baudry claims, movies are social. Thirdly films are publicly accessible and are (can) be viewed in groups. One viewer may have a different experience watching a film than another and share different opinions, dreams are subjective to one person alone, the one who experienced it, there is no one else but the dreamer who can be accurate as to the events transpired whilst dreaming, not so with the cinema.
Mitchell Corner
Matthew, I've got the same questions (5 and 6). Mistake?
Anyways, I should have them up by tomorrow's class.
31. Laura Mulvey links women as a source of visual pleasure in cinema with a predominantly patriarchal cinematic system. This system encourages the centralization of the male figure, including both male film characters and male spectators. The male figure's act of seeing and looking has established within cinematic language an element of eroticism: a desired woman is represented as an object onto which the male figure may place their gaze in order to obtain pleasure. This has defined the female aesthetic (the visual representation of women) in cinema and in cinematic language as the source of visual pleasure.
From this representative system has sprouted formal styles of mise-en-scène that not only reflect the dominant patriarchal ideology of mainstream Hollywood cinema, but of society. That is, the manner in which women are depicted is based on a social concept of women as sexual objects. In reaction to such ideologies, the purpose of alternative cinema is both politically and aesthetically radical because: a) it reveals the "psychical obsessions" of mainstream cinema and its modes of sexist representation, then b) it challenges them with radical types of filmmaking, as seen in avant-garde cinema.
Mulvey takes her own radical stance against visual pleasure in cinema as she deconstructs it with the intention of negating it. In this way, she hopes that the language of cinema will break from its forefathers and from their objectification of women in cinema.
32. The two "contradictory aspects of the pleasurable structures of looking" which Laura Mulvey refers to are scopophilia and narcissism, in which females play a passive role and males play an active role.
Scopophilia is the attainment of pleasure through the act of looking. In Mulvey's view, scopophilia in the cinematic experience (as in the very nature of cinema) takes the form of a voyeuristic fantasy. The spectator (assumed to be male) is in a dark auditorium and imagines that they are, like a peeping tom, watching the unaware woman in the film. Through imposing his gaze, the woman is turned into an object and may therefore be controlled.
Narcissism in cinema is based on Jacques Lacan's "Mirror Stage" theory, in which a male infant views his mirror image as "perfect." In reality, a baby's actual body is limited in motor skills -- babies cannot even feed themselves. This misrecognition leads to the formation of the ideal ego. In the case of the cinematic experience, the male spectator identifies their ego with male film characters, as if the characters are like the "perfect" image in the mirror. In effect, the male character becomes a surrogate self, "my film self."
This returns us to scopophilia: the spectator not only relates to his film self, but also to the gaze of his film self. When a male character (whether he is on-screen or the camera is acting as his point-of-view) imposes his gaze on a female character and objectifies her with it, because the spectator identifies with this gaze, he may also objectify her.
27. What is ‘paracinema’? What is the purpose of paracinematic culture?
This quote answers the question pretty directly. Plus, I am lazy.
“paracinema is thus less a distinct group of films than a particular reading protocol, a counter-aesthetic turned subcultural sensibility devoted to all manner of cultural detritus. In short, the explicit manifesto of paracinematic culture is to valorize all forms of cinematic ‘trash’, whether such films have been either explicity rejected or simply ignored by legitimate film culture. In doing so, paracinema represents the most developed and dedicated of cinephilic subcultures ever to worship at ‘the temple of schlock” (p. 535)
Paracinema=Junk Cinema
Purpose = develop a countercinema to attack high-brow cinema, to glorify the trash.
Working on 28.
devv, what tutorial are you in? I'm in tutorial 2.
I'll take either one...
28. According to Sconce, what is the major political distinction between aesthete and paracinematic discourses on cinematic excess?
“Excess provides a freedom from constraint, an opportunity to approach a film with a fresh and slightly defamiliarized perspective. As Thompson argues, through excess the work becomes a perceptual field of structures which the viewer is free to study at length, going beyond the strictly functional aspects. What the critical viewer does with this newfound freedom provided by the phenomenon of excess, is I would argue, a political question, and one that lies at the heart of the conflict between the counter-cinema of the academy and that promoted by paracinematic culture.” (p. 551)
trash aesthetic – critique of neoformalist analysis and theories of radical textualization
paracinema – suggests that neoformalist emphasis on art as defamiliarization might be more complicated than the cataloguing of innovative, text-bound ‘devices’
I am still lazy...I will expand on answers later.
8. When Barthes writes about transforming history into nature, it is in reference to the sort of brainwashing all of us undergo with the stories we're told and the ideologies perpetuated around us are made to look self-evident as anything else we perceive.
He then goes on to talk about the picture of the Algerian boy saluting the flag, which we covered in tutorial. At first glance it appears to be deeply patriotic, but looking at the details and the context of the picture, it's in reality extremely ironic. The child has no concept of the conflict that happened in Algiers, and yet he is saluting the (presumably) French flag because of the "history of nature". Failure to question things out of ignorance and naieviety (definitely spelled that wrong but oh well) is because so much of everything we have learned and we know is just accepted as fact and taken for granted.
25)
First and foremost, the female body genres Williams discusses in a traditional sense (as “Sexually saturated … Spectacles of female victimization” in relation to the male viewer or “male gaze”) include: Pornography, the woman has to perform these acts for the man; Horror, the woman is tortured or mutilated; Melodrama, the sad and dramatic woman in a state of domesticity and in need of reconciliation (i.e. by man). Williams subverts this male-oriented point of view by suggesting that, with the increasingly progressive stance of the female viewer, these genres offer a slightly less perfunctory manner in which they are received (Porn: woman are used; Horror: woman are taken; Melodrama: woman are dramatic objects) and are in fact structures that oscillate between perversion (sadism and masochism). For a female viewer, porn can be embarrassing, but pleasurable; the female in danger can and will most likely get the upper hand on the monster chasing her and kill it; and melodramas can offer more for both male and female in their characters, not simply being the helpless housewife, but a thriving matriarch or compassionate husband or father.
Pornography: sadistic in its pleasure
Horror: sadomasochistic in its story arch (the monster vs. the victim; the victim overcoming the monster)
Melodrama: masochistic in that the audience revels in their connection to a rather dramatic (sad or happy or both) cast of characters.
26)
A)
“structural understanding of fantasies as myths of origin which try to cover the discrepancy between two moments in time and the distinctive temporal structure of these particular genres” (738)
“…psychoanalysts.”
“Freud introduced the concept of ‘original fantasies’ to explain the mythic function of fantasies which seem to offer repetitions of and ‘solutions’ to major enigmas confronting the child” (738)
Horror:
Repeats the trauma of castration as if to explain the orginary problem of sexual difference. Too Early!
Pornography:
Repeats the fantasies of primal seduction. On time!
Melodrama:
Repeats our melancholic sense of loss of origins. Too late!
B)
Firstly, by the use of the word “dismiss” Williams is describing an act of watching film dim-wittedly, receiving a film purely on a superficial mind that the film means nothing more but fancy or a severely “fantastic” play on the senses; that we forego any kind of deeper meaning or “myth[ic]” relevance (pawning it off on perversion) to a film is what she intends on revealing as dismissive and ignorant. She suggests that we not dismiss these genres as simply gratuitous and/or indulgent (i.e. nothing more than excessive) because by doing so we ignore the significance of the problems (mentioned in part A) they allude to and solve. Over time, the ways in which these problems are resolved do change (specifically, alongside ideas of gender); however, the problems themselves do not and are, in fact, fantastically plausible because they are embedded in said genres.
“cultural problem solving … Genres thrive, after all, on the persistence of the problems they address; but genres thrive also in their ability to recast the nature of these problems.” (740)
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?
The star performance in a film can have three kinds of relation to the star image in subsidiary circulation. Firstly, a film can strive to illustrate an image of a star that exists outside of cinema. This image would be created by activities that may define the star. This is a rare case as it only happens when the image of a star outside of cinema is stable. A second relation is that a film can exceed the circulated image. A fictional figure can go against the expected traits of the circulated image which creates a tension in the film. It is when a film requires a star image in order to function. The third and more usual relation is when the fictional figure in a film is “to one side” of the star’s image. Certain elements of a star’s public image are used in the film while other elements are rejected and further elements are added.
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.
There are four ways in which a film historian goes about reconstituting the image of a particular star. The first is promotion. The actor or actress’ contract relinquishes the name to the studio. The studio has the power to fashion, change or exploit the actor or actress’s public image and also limited them to only perform for the studio. This pertains to Joan Crawford as her original birth name was changed in order to have a better sounding one. Also, a film historian can reconstitute the image of a star through publicity. These are the articles planted in fanzines. The studio was known for “planting” such articles. Crawford was promoted as a girl with a tough past. The image of a star can also be reconstituted by their films. These films are usually “star vehicles” and have been structured to provide a character or genre associated with its star. The last category is criticism and commentary which are appreciations or interpretations of a star’s performances. These commentaries and criticisms can be found in reviews, books and articles on the star’s films.
Arjan Atwal
I'm in the 1:30 tutorial.
That explains it then - I'm at 12:30.
I haven't read the questions yet. If you don't care, I'll take 5.
Alright cool. I'll do number 4 then.
#4.
When Althusser claims that ideology works by interpolating individuals as subjects, he refers to a concept of direct address between two parties: one being the ideology itself and the other being the subject. In a fictional scenario, Althusser describes a man that hails another man by calling out, “hey, you there!” In doing so, the second man recognizes that he is being called and therefore becomes the subject; the hailing – or addressing – of one man by another is how Althusser claims ideology works. By addressing a second man, the first man forces an individual to become the subject of something – namely, the hail itself. The same works for ideology: by addressing or hailing individuals as subjects, it presupposes that those individuals were “always-already” subjects in the eyes of ideology. Therefore, individuals are “abstract with respect to the subjects which they always-already are”. Ideology can thusly be described as a means to take an individual (idea, theme, concept, person or otherwise) and make it, rather, into a subject. Everything and everyone must therefore be looked at ideologically as a subject; ideology is the hail that makes an individual the subject of discussion.
Sweet Jesus, what a ludicrous notion. And question.
9. According to Saussure the relationship between the signifier and the signified is that the two when combined form a sign. Signifier is the form or material object that we can perceive, like graphic symbols in a language or the physical feeling of someone speaking. Beyond being a material entity there is nothing to it, however. Then there is the signified, which is the idea or the mental state that the material object (let’s say letters) is able to summon through perception (like a word). Sign is born out of the relationship between the two – it is the third meaning that can occur only if the signifier and the signified are combined. It work as reference to the world and lets those perceiving the sign to see (mentally) what it is referring to in the real world (if the word is ‘a tree’ then an image of a tree may be imagined). This theory suggests that perhaps words could be turned into images and that images can function as a language too. Human mind produces images mentally every time it perceives the signifiers and their signified, which means that images can function as signs without the need for the signifiers and the signified. It is possible to develop a language system that consists entirely of images.
10. According to Metz syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between signifiers and signified in cinema are different from those in language because film language is not fixed. It is not governed by a language system. It invents new language for itself. Film language is a transformation of a visual reality into a discourse. In actual language the system is fixed due to syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between signifiers remaining constant. So, for instance, the word ‘tree’ always implies its real-life companion. In film the image of a tree can imply various discourses (it could be an evil omen or something).
By Taras Trofimov
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?
Metz believes cinema is better for this kind of peeping not only because of "the obscurity surrounding the onlooker, the aperture of the screen with its inevitable keyhole affect", but also because of the "spectator's solitude in the cinema: those attending a cinematic projection do not, as in the theatre, constitute a 'true audience'...they are an accumulation of individuals who, despite appearances, more closely resemble the fragmented group of readers of a novel". Another factor is that the people to whom the gaze is directed at are far less aware of the spectator, since they are of course not there. Finally, Metz speaks of the fact that the cinema provides the perfect views as it brings the activity directly to the viewer, as opposed to them having to look for it onstage, and yet is absolutely inaccessible. A spectator is watching something they could not possible interact with.
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?
Metz, in his examination of disavowal, is referring to Freud's concept of the fear of castration. This is the fear that develops once a child realizes their mother does not have a penis. Freud pointed to the fact that children are unable to differentiate the difference between sexes, and the concept of the possession of a penis or a vagina, and thus would interpret the mother’s genitalia as lacking a penis. This “unveiling of a lack” causes the child then assumes that the penis has been castrated, presumably due to misbehavior, and affects both male and female children; the male fears this fate for themselves, and the female fears that it has already happened to them (Metz 831-832). At the moment of discovering, writes Metz evoking Freud, the child will “arrest its look, for all its life, at what will subsequently become the fetish: at a piece of clothing, for example, which masks the frightening discovery, or else precedes it (underwear, stockings, boots, etc.)” (832). The fetish item is that which both acts as a reminder of “the lack”, but also fulfills it, rendering one whole again. Cinema acts a fetish in the same sense as it calls attention to itself through its presentation which clearly positions it as an illusion, a “theatre of shadows”, and yet fulfills completely in its depiction of a false reality. Cinema fetishists are thus those who takes pleasure in cinema’s ability to deceive, and who allow themselves to be enveloped in the illusion (835). They take pleasure in acting out the fantasy.
Not sure if this showed up...
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?
1."the fiction can content itself with performing the image in those rare cases where the star's image outside of cinema is fairly stable" (603) - such as male stars like Errol Flynn.
2. "The second, more usual, relation is that in which the fiction exceeds the circulated image" - more than casting against type, we find films like Suspician to need the star image of Cary Grant in order to function at all.
3. "the fictional figure is 'to one side' of the star's general image, where this can be established" - elements of the star's image are used by the film. Doris Day offers the key example here, with many different films and many different characters, each feeding out of, or off of her star image in many different ways. However, there's always the set division between the fictional role and the star.
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. (609-619)
1.Promotion
2.Publicity
3.Films
4.Criticism and commentary
-These are all ways in which we perceive any star of past and present. Promotion is an element enabled by the studio: methods of 'advertising' their star. Publicity on the other hand, is "publically disseminated material on stars that does not appear to be directly promotional." Films of course, are the films we see, and criticism/commentary is more about what has been written about them.
-In Crawford's case, she was promoted through a changing of name, and studios found that she did not fit the "exotic beauty" archetype, but an "all-american" "modern girl"
-Her publicity reflects on her as a "self-made star" in spite of the studio's control and influence. In the years during which her image was still being constructed, she was seen as a flapper, a Clara Bow "type", eventually suppressing her negative connatations, becoming "self-made", delivered an autobiography, became the wife of Douglas Fairbanks Jr, divorced and became the "regenerating star". Her publicity defines her as a star of phases. Each marraige and event creates a new phase and a new impression on her image.
-"Crawford became associated with a single "look"..." (617)
-She did not gain much critical attention at first: she was even seen as "box office poison" (618), that her roles were not being suplemented by enough ticket-buyers. It was Mildred Pierce that garnished much attention as she was promoted as a sure-win for the Oscars. Again, overcoming her "poison" image, fed into an ultimate image of overcoming all odds, emphasised by her formerly mentioned autobiography, and her recovery after each marriage.
If you feel I missed something, or did something wrong, make mention.
15) What does Metz mean when he argues that “the cinema as such has nothing corresponding to the double articulation of verbal languages” (75)?
Metz is arguing that cinema, or cinematographic language, has no distinctive units of its own. Instead, cinema contains many signifying systems, which causes a problem for certain articulations in regards to the verbal language. These signifying systems can be seen as “blocks of reality” which are then actualized with their total meaning in discourse. The blocks in this case are the “shots”. However, these units identifiable in the filmic discourse are not equivalent to the first articulation of spoken languages. Montage in a sense is an analysis of articulation of reality shown on screen but it is not a true articulation in the linguistic sense. A partial or fragmentary “shot” (close-up) within a montage sequence still presents a segment of reality because the “shot” is only taken closer then other shots.
16) Metz distinguishes eight syntagmatic types. Identify and briefly explain two of them.
1) An autonomous shot (single shot) presents an “episode” of the plot. Therefore, the autonomous shot is the only instance where a single shot constitutes a primary, and not secondary, subdivision of the film. This can be compared to literature, when a paragraph contains only one sentence, the sentence being the autonomous shot. The autonomous shot includes subtypes, one of them being the “sequence shot”, a shot where an entire scene can be treated as a unity of “action”.
2) Chronological syntagmas are relationships between the facts that show us successive images, defined on the level of denotation. These relationships are not necessarily those of consecutiveness but may also be relations of simultaneity. The descriptive syntagma is an example of a syntagmatic type in which the relationships between all of the motifs are presented simultaneously.
1.According to Althusser, what is an Ideological state apparatus (ISA) and how does it function?
The Ideological state apparatus according to Althusser is the presentation of realities or beliefs presented to the observer in the form of specialized institutions like the education system, media and religion.
The ideological state apparatus functions in society quietly since it’s activity in society does not function in the public eye, the institutions of specialty reign above law therefore no ideologies are challenged or questioned. The secondary function, the repressive state where certain morals and beliefs are punished sometimes through the overruling by the upper-class or in extreme cases acts of violence.
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)?
Althusser explains that ideology does not represent “reality”, however represents an imaginary relationship of individuals of the real world . Reality not actually being a representation of of “REAL” existence. But this existence of the ideology ultimately conditioning individuals that the ideologies placed upon them is in fact reality. Or a misrepresenation. A coined term by Althusser that explains this concept is “false consciousness” something that is contrived by those projecting these “realities”
1.According to Althusser, what is an Ideological state apparatus (ISA) and how does it function?
The Ideological state apparatus according to Althusser is the presentation of realities or beliefs presented to the observer in the form of specialized institutions like the education system, media and religion.
The ideological state apparatus functions in society quietly since it’s activity in society does not function in the public eye, the institutions of specialty reign above law therefore no ideologies are challenged or questioned. The secondary function, the repressive state where certain morals and beliefs are punished sometimes through the overruling by the upper-class or in extreme cases acts of violence.
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)?
Althusser explains that ideology does not represent “reality”, however represents an imaginary relationship of individuals of the real world . Reality not actually being a representation of of “REAL” existence. But this existence of the ideology ultimately conditioning individuals that the ideologies placed upon them is in fact reality. Or a misrepresenation. A coined term by Althusser that explains this concept is “false consciousness” something that is contrived by those projecting these “realities”
Part of my answer for #32 (the part on narcissism) can be applied as a basis to #18.
Sorry this took so long guys. I'm a douche, I know... whatever.
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.
1) From pg. 815 of our text: “the first and largest category comprises those films which are imbued through and through with the dominant ideology in pure and unadulterated form, and give no indication that their makers were even aware of the fact.” This group of films goes beyond commercial films; the majority of films are the unconscious instruments of the ideology which produces them. These can be any type of film – art house, blockbuster, etc… everything is included. Audience demand and economic response have been reduced to one and the same thing, this becomes a cyclical relationship (studio produces what audience wants, audience wants what studio produces). What the audience wants is constructed and perpetuated by the ideology. This not only affects the theme of the film, but also the form/style. These reassure audiences that there is no difference between film ideology and everyday ideology.
2) From pg. 816 of our text: “a second category is that of films which attack their ideological assimilation on two fronts. Firstly, by direct political action, on the level of the ‘signified’, that is, they deal with a directly political subject…. This act only becomes politically effective if it is linked with a breaking down of the traditional way of depicting reality.” Not only must a film address a political subject directly in the plot or theme of the film, but it must also not cater to the tastes of mass audiences. Only action on these two fronts, signifiers and signified, can hope to operate against prevailing ideology.
3) From pg. 816 of our text: “3rd category in which the same double action operates but against the grain – the content is not explicitly political, but in some way becomes so through the criticism practiced on it through its form.” This is fairly self explanatory – think of juxtaposition, elements of formalism/realism in practice, etc. The article cites Persona (screened Sept. 25th for our class on REALISM) as one of these films – it is a film about a nurse and the person she is to take care of, but the formal treatment of the subject matter politicizes it.
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)?
For this question, there is an excellent diagram in an article online that illustrates his point. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3517/3458435012_fc89c94d5a_o_d.jpg
In the diagram, the Signifier and the Sign (in language, 1,3) are one and the same in form. But it is that same Signifier (Sign) that becomes the Signifier for the Myth, which is the final Sign. It is almost as though Barthes mixes up his Sign/Signifier/Signifieds, but it does make sense if you think about it the way the diagram illustrates.
Think back to the example he gives of the cover of Paris Match: the Signifier is the black boy soldier. The Signified is a sense of Frenchness and Militariness. The Sign is the presence of the Signified through the Signifier (the whole). In the mythical system, the Signifier is not signifying a sense of Frenchness and Militariness, but rather that “that France is a great Empire, that all her sons, without any color discrimination, faithfully serve under her flag, and that there is no better answer to the detractors of an alleged colonialism than the zeal shown by this Negro in serving his so- called oppressors.” THIS IS THE MYTH.
As for the full/meaning and empty/form part of the question, Barthes explains these again in terms of the Paris Match cover. He says that the FULL aspect is “the history of the Negro soldier” and that the EMPTY aspect is the “soldier-saluting-the-tricolor.” The Empty aspect of the Signifier is a certain formal analogy – and this is what is distorted in order for myth to be created and perpetuated. Myth removes the history from the Signifier, taking a FULL formal analogy to an EMPTY one.
In case some of you haven't made a word doc. yet, here is one, in order, including questions (since some of you posted without the question).
film study.doc
Oh yeah. I'll update it if any of the unanswered questions get posted (THIS WOULD BE GREAT, YEAH)
hi guys i just realized that some people have posted answers under "exam date change and fewer questions" post
here is a copy:
WileyCoyoteFan said...
11. How did Metz transpose Saussure’s distinction between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’ into
film studies?
• Saussure felt that speakers’ and listeners’ shared knowledge of the grammatical RULES that make up a language system (the langue) enables them to develop and understand a virtually unlimited range of individual utterances (the parole). Context provides meaning to the words. (693)
• Metz feels that film des not constitute a ‘langue’ in the strict sense of constituting a language system, but it qualifies a language in a looser sense of its recognized, orderly processes. For Metz the shot = the sentence or statement, not the word (parole). (3-4)
• Metz felt Saussure’s scientific approach in applying linguistic parallels to film studies was too restrictive. Metz felt that as the medium of film is a one-way system of communication, the strict application of the concept of a language is probably inapplicable to film.(94)
• So Metz took Saussure’s idea of using film as a scientific ‘language’ of cinematic ‘word’ shots and transposed the concept to become the view that in film studies the cinematic shot is the ‘langue’ that is the meaning – not tied to specific words (paroles)
12. In what way was classical Hollywood cinema as a codified 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?
• Saussure’s idea that ‘commercial cinema is a codified communication system’ (692) meant that if one recognized the significations (components), one could both understand and group films scientifically.
• Film studies are cues one looks for these structural elements in the same way as narrative is deciphered by examining the language used.
• Grammar in film is manipulated by the speaker to make meaning, which provides a tension between grammar and usage.
• Saussure felt that like language, films & genres were similarly coded, had both deep and surface structures, rules and conventions – which provided the conceptual basis for film study. For him ‘All cinematic meaning is essentially linguistic. Meanings of signifiers are determined by their relation to other signifiers, rather than by their reference to any extra-linguistic reality’. (3-4)
• Saussure’s ideas shaped film studies by making it the analysis of the relative components of which the film was made – using the analogy of deriving meaning from the rigid structure of grammar. As with film studies, Saussure believed that film transmits meanings that are counter to the real-world observations of the spectator. (94)
April 15, 2009 5:40 PM
Megatron said...
Dan Clements
25. Linda Williams discusses ‘structures of perversion’ in the female body genres. How does her analysis challenge traditional readings of these genres?
- As my good friend Linda quotes on page 732, “The categories of fetishism, voyeurism, sadism, and masochism frequently invoked to describe the pleasures of film spectatorship are by definition perversions. Perversions are usually defined as sexual excesses, specifically as excess, which are deflected away from “proper” end goals onto substitute goals or objects - fetishes instead of genital, looking instead of touching”. William’s uses Carol J. Clovers work - the “final girl” theory in 1970’s horror films (the last girl to suffer through the killings until the end) - to express the torture of woman in films for the spectators viewing pleasure. She challenges these genres of horror, melodrama, and porn, to suggest that each one of them is an over exaggerated display of sexually charged/sexually explicit relations (as if we didn’t know that about porn). Such as the innocent “final girl” theory of Clover’s, showing the victims sexual pleasure via domination. In horror genre, the “good girl”, is often the one to suffer throughout the duration of the film, as if she deserves torture, and the pleasure she receives is not her choice. The “bad girl” is sexually active, enjoys pleasure, and endures pain willingly. She continues to explain that even the most hurt, bruised, bleeding, suffering female victim still, at some point, no matter how briefly, achieves a moment of power/pleasure during the innuendo. What appears to be simple genre pleasure by the spectator, as William’s suggests, is in fact sexual pleasure on the part of the viewer, caused by the fetishized torture, domination, and the suffering of women in these body genres. Basically, she challenges traditional readings of these body genres by suggesting that they resemble that of a dominatrix den, in which women are sexually punished and victimized for the pleasure of the punisher, or the spectator. The “good girl” does not ask for this punishment, but receives it anyways. The “bad girl” desires it and gets pleasure out of the pain.
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)?
-Williams believes that these genres should not be dismissed as simple trash, because their very popularity is in fact effecting, or infecting, actually human relations. These genres are changing the way men and women are viewed not just in the film genre, but in the real world too. These genres suggest definitions on what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a woman, and what a relationship between the two mean. These definitions are carried out into social circles and practiced because of their on screen popularity. As long as these body genres are drooled over, the same problems will exist in real life, and should not be passed off as harmless trash. It is not harmless. The smut of these genres are exemplified in real life genders and in real life relations and in real life cultural forms.
April 15, 2009 7:48 PM
Alex said...
21. Baudry establishes a series of parallels between cinema and dream. Identify and briefly explain two of them.
Two major parallels between cinema and dream, as argued by Baudry, are the limiting or inhibition of movement and the absence of reality testing. Because both film and dream force a sort of regression towards a primitive narcissism, where the self does not differentiate itself from the world it perceives, both feature these two qualities. As in the sleep of dreams, film limits an individual’s capacity for movement, as they are reserved to their seat. And also just as in dreams, film lacks a sort of reality testing, because it offers a more-than-real impression of reality, and we can not enter the world we see and validate the truth of what we are seeing.
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.
Firstly, Baudry’s argument is based entirely on analogy, and therefore, it’s conclusions are at best probable. So, too test the validity of his claim, Carrol observes his premises. Baudry speaks at length about the inhibition of movement, but film viewers are barely inhibited at all people stand, move in their seats, go to the washroom, or go get popcorn. It is only a vague notion of social acceptability that keeps a person still in their seats, and it is hardly constrictive. Carroll also challenges the notion that both dream and film are absent reality testing, that the dreamer has no means to test for reality inside the world of a film. The viewer is able to test their experience of the film with repeat viewing, corroborate it with other viewers in order to test the reality of our experience. Dreams, on the other hand, no intrapersonal validation is possible.
Thanks Taravat. The file has been updated (but the link is the same). I'll post it anyway:
film study.doc
Because some doucher's are not goin along with this thing, here's a couple more answers...
23. What is ‘cinematic excess’ and
in what sense is it “counternarrative” and “counterunity” according to K. Thompson (517)?
-The point of excess is that it calls attention to itself.
-It is counterintuity because the forward moving narrative of the film is halted, suddenly, in order to show off information that is redundant, repetitive, and unnescessary to tell the story – hence counter intuitive. Regarding just THE PLOT, these moments in cinematic excess are not needed for forward movement, and so seem counter intuitive to the entire purpose of telling a story in the first place. “Excess implies a gap or lack in motivation” (517).
-“Motivation is the primary tool by which work makes its own devices seem reasonable”, and further more “…where motivation fails, excess begins” (all 517).
-The point is that it’s counterunity because excess does not belong as a part of the over all picture, the over all picture is the story and excess is the untrimmed fat.
-The lack of motivation is talking about the stalling of the forward momentum of the narrative, THUS, the counterintuity of the excess being placed WITHIN the narrative. It’s a contradiction to place anything not helping the narrative, within the narrative.
24. Thompson identifies four ways in which the material of a particular film exceeds motivation. Identify and briefly explain two of these... HOW ABOUT ALL FOUR>>>>>
(1) “first narrative function may justify the presence of a device, but it doesn’t always motivate the specific form that individual element will take. Quite often the device could carry considerably in form and still serve its function adequately.” (517)
-Basically, the form that a function can take can be anything, but with excess they make it outstanding and obvious and distracting and drawn out and counterinfuckintuitive.
(2) “second, the medium of the cinema is such that its devices exist through time. Motivation is insufficient to determine howl ong a device needs to be on the screen in order to serve its purpose” (518)
-So, screen time. Something is on screen way too long, way past the point of you understanding “oh that’s a giant stab wound” … excess will hold on it, watch it pump blood, let it settle. Things only need a brief moment to be registered as understood, but with excess they are on screen past that point. Way past that point.
(3) “Third, a single bit of narrative motivation seems to be capable of functioning almost indefinitely. It may justify many devices which have virtually the same connotation, even though they may vary greatly in form … EXTREMEMLY REDUNDANT EXPRESSION” (518)
-Those last words say it all … it is EXTREMEMLY REDUNDANT EXPRESSION. The film tells you something, then it tells you again, then it tells you again, then it tells you again, then it tells you again, then it tells you again, then it tells you again. Think of the paracinema cult classic The Evil Dead. Does he hit her once with the axe? No … he hits it again and again and again and again and we get it but he still hits her again and again.
(4) “A single motivation may serve to justify a device which is then repeated and carried many times. By this repetition, the device may far outweigh its original motivation and take on an importance great than its narrative or compositional function would seem to warrant” (518)
-I am not going to fully explain this one but ultimately all of these have one thing in common … excess tells you the information way too long and over and over again to the point where you are no longer driving the narrative but just sitting back and watching the trash.
-This point is trying to say that when a motif is used, it is used again and again and again. A motif only need be repeated once, but here it gets ridiculous.
-Anyways, there, it’s better than not having answers to these ones.
fuck wins. Pick up the slack guys - especially if you've answered a Q and just haven't posted it yet.
File is updated, I will post if I update it with any EXTRA questions I answer as I study.
film study.doc
I'll be posting any questions that I write down as I'm studying. That is, if I write any at all. I most likely will. So this thing will probably keep getting updated throughout the night.
14, 17, 18, and 33-41 still need to be answered.
I just answered 3 and 7, and the file is updated again.
film study.doc
Can I just say that Matthew Chaloux (which I hope sounds as fun as it does when I say it out loud) is a fucking champ.
14.
Denotation and connotation motivate cinematic signs through their relation to the individual film in question - namely, their motivations are dependent on genre theory. Connotation (which can be associted with the syntactic and semantic elements) and denotation (which can be associeted with the meanings assigned to those elements) are able to vary the meaning of particular signs depending on the particular expectations of certain films and film types. For instance, a connotative aspect of a Western does not have the same denotative meaning in a Horror film: a gun in a Western is traditional and normal, while a gun in a horror is ominous and foreboding. In this way, the connotative aspects of cinema vary the denotative aspects depending on the particular genre of that film and thus motivate the signs in different ways.
17.
Metz argues that the cinematic signifier is both perceptual and imaginary because, when considering the perceptual aspect of the signifier, the cinematic signifier is one that we perceive, just as we do with any other signifier (albeit, he argues, with more registers of perception than other art forms: i.e. both auditory and visual perception). We perceive the signifier and comprehend the signified. However, the signifier is also imaginary: the spectator is, however lost they are in the film, aware of the imaginary nature of cinema as a construct in a way that we are not aware of the construct of other signifiers (such as particular letters signifying the concept of "tree"). The audience is AWARE of their hand in producing meaning out of the cinematic signifier; the spectator might identify with a specific character and then produce the signification in their own mind depending on their relationship to that signifier. Therefore, although we perceive the signifier, it is also imaginary due to its dependency on individual interpretation by the audience and the fact that they are aware of this interpretation.
Awesome Dev. I also just added some pretty shitty answers to all of the Reception Theory questions (38-41). The remaining unanswered questions are:
18, 33-37
So much for having this done for last Thursday eh? I'm pretty well fucked for studying at this point, but doing the questions myself has probably helped me the most.
File updated:
film study.doc
I think these answers are right (if they even make sense). Hope someone else fills in the answers for 35-37...
Matt- Thanks for putting it all together
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?
Film is like the mirror.
“what makes possible the spectators absence from the screen- or rather the intelligible unfolding of the film despite that absence – is the fact that spectator has already known the experience of the mirror, and is thus able to constitute a world of objects without having first to recognize himself within it.
Spectator identifies with himself, with himself as a pure act of perception (as wakefulness, alertness): as the condition of possibility of the perceived and hene as a kind of transcendental subject, which becomes before every THERE IS.
***when the image rotates, viewer does not turn head! The explanation is that he has no need to turn it really, he has turned it in his all-seeing capacity, his identification with the movement of the camera being that of a transcendental, not an empirical subject.
34. According to Mulvey, there are three different looks associated with cinema. What are they? Which of these looks does mainstream narrative cinema privilege?
Male gaze within mainstream film only. The woman has two functions – as an erotic object for the characters in the story and as an erotic object for the spectators in the auditorium
Films play between the tension of the gaze between spectator and protagonist
1. That of the camera as it records the filmic event
2. That of the audience as it watches the final product
3. That of the characters at each other within the screen illusion.
- Mainstream narrative cinema privileges the 3rd.
- Aim is to eliminate intrusive camera presence and distance itself from audience
- Absence of recording process and spectator reading = achieve reality
Thanks Noah.
The only ones left are 33, 36, and 37. Good luck everyone.
Keep in mind that these are only starting points (especially #41, one of my "answers").
Updated doc:
film study.doc
I'm sorry for being sooo late, but better late than never, most of the questions I was going to answer have been answered anyway.
Here's one simple one but still useful:
7. According to Barthes, how does the Paris-Match picture of the young Negro in a French uniform, saluting, function as a myth?
‘I am therefore again faced with a greater semiological system: there is a signifier, itself already formed with a previous system (a black soldier is giving the French salute); there is a signified (it is here a purposeful mixture of Frenchness and militariness); finally, there is a presence of the signified through the signifier.’
Then you can add that both signifier and signified create a myth which is that France is powerful and all her sons blah blah blah...
Also, I think that question 1 posted here is not fully answered, even though it remains true.
Here is what you can add to the question:
1. What is an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA) and how does it function?
The Ideological state apparatus according to Althusser is an entity which appears to the observer as a distinct specialised institution such as the education system, religious institutions, the political system, or family.
The unity of ISAs together is unnoticeable. ISAs function primarily through ideology by teaching concerned people the ideologies they stand for, even though they use their secondary repressive function to punish and put back on the right track whoever would try to go against their teachings (for example a school teacher punishing a student to discipline him, which distinguishes ISAs from RSAs;
-RSAs primarily repressive, secondarily ideological
-ISAs primarily ideological, secondarily repressive.
Good luck tomorrow...
Thanks Gore.
File updated:
film study.doc
Here's also some extra points you can add for question 5. I only did 3 more, so we have 6/7 points which is fine!
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.
4- Films that are explicitly political, but are not as critical as the first two kinds of movies because they use the depictions and language of the dominant ideology they are attempting to criticise.
5- Films who at first appear to be of the dominant ideology but then appear to be more detached from that ideology.
-Serve at unbalancing dominant ideology and make it fall on its own
-Is itself composed of ideological tensions, what the authors an internal criticism.
6– Cinema directe: Films from political and/or social events and thoughts, however they seem indifferentiable from traditional movies because they do not take a
different, non-traditional form of ‘depiction’. Aims at bringing up reality without artifice.
#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?
1) Voyeurism - preoccupation with the reenactment of the original trauma which is then counterbalanced by the devaluation, punishment or saving of the guilty object.
2)Fetishistic scopophilia which builds up the physical beauty of the object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself. (Turns the represented figure into a fetish so that it becomes reassuring rather than dangerous.)
Thanks for the addition of the extra 3 gore. And thanks Amanda for 33 :)
Could someone update/clarify question 12? I'm not sure if it really answers what the question is specifically asking (bringing Classical Hollywood Cinema into it)...
File updated:
film study.doc
33. Two ways of dealing with castration anxiety
The woman as an icon represents the fact that her "non-penis" needed to be hidden away (disavowaled) in the first place. Therefore woman as an icon threatens to evoke the original anxiety, castration anxietyThe two ways of dealing with this are:
a) To punish the woman (Sadistic voyeurism)
- Femme Fatale
- demystifying her mystery by putting her on trial; investigating her, punishing her
- turning her into a hated demon
b) To save the woman (Fetishistic scopophilia)
- Damsel in Distress
- complete disavowalment, turning woman as represented icon into a fetish so that she is entirely reassuring instead of dangerous
- in needing to save her, the man can reaffirm his masculinity
36. See my answer for #31 on WHY Mulvey calls for "destruction of visual and narrative pleasure."
In terms of how to "properly" represent women, Mulvey prefers an accurate and positive aesthetic representation (no objectification of the woman as an image), as a purely political movement.
De Laurentis favors the representation of women's experiences, thereby considering operations of the cinematic apparatus. She states all women cannot possibly be accurately depicted through images alone because it is impossible to categorize all types (racial, sexual, cultural, etc.) of women under the collective term, "Woman."37. First of all, think of the term "sexual mobility" as the same as gender bending.
Transvestitism is the adornment of male clothing in order to access & reap the benefits (social, economic, what have you) of being a man, and to escape the subordination that women often have to face. It seeks a distance from the image of femininity.
Masquerade is the opposite; it has been called the reaction to transvestitism because it is the deliberate wearing of a superfeminine mask to evoke an über-fem. Through masquerade, a woman (supposedly) may also access masculinity but hides this possession behind a non-threatening female mask. Therefore, masquerade pretends to the close the distance from the image of femininity.
Btw, thank you to Matt for compiling the questions! ^_~*
I'm fairly certain that 12 is talking about semiotics and genre theory, in the sense that the "codified cinematic system..." was a way of differentiating between different genres and the ways in which different semantic and syntactic elements signifiy different things across different genres. If that's the case, than the linguistic approach to film theory woudl clearly have evolved from there, seeing as semiotics is a theory based in language.
Thanks devv, that helps a shit-ton.
And thank you Lychee, wicked answer.
File updated:
film study.doc
Aw Sheiße, #37 got clumped onto the end of #36...
And here I was just thinking you went super in-depth beyond my understanding.
Updated file:
film study.doc
The exam is in the lecture hall, right?
*nod*
My word verification is "nolight." Creepy.
I'd assume so. I haven't heard anything different.
One final update, and it is small. I elaborated a (tiny) bit on #41, and realized that the SPECTATORSHIP title was in the wrong spot.
All is well. I think the ONLY one that wasn't answered was 35. Temenuga, please don't choose 35.
Updated file:
film study.doc
35. The major contradiction in the women's movement is the pull between those who want to participate in the social structure and those who want to attack the social structure because they see it as patriarchal.
The side that wants to participate does so because they want to be social subjects. In cinema, they insist on understanding the cinematic apparatus as a social technology in order to stop women from being aesthetically represented in ideological codes. Think of it as working within the system to break it down.
De Laurentis is an advocate for participation.
The side that wants to attack the social structure does so for a political purpose. They see cinema as a predominantly patriarchal structure and are uncomfortable with working within that structure. Rather, they prefer a radical approach: to raise consciousness on (and then break down) the negative aesthetic representations of women.
Mulvey is an advocate for destruction.
For more information, see answer #31 for Mulvey and #36 for De Laurentis.
Lychee, you are an effing machine.
As always, the Updated file:
film study.doc
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