Fall 2011 FSCP 81000 – Film History II

Home , All About My Mother, Labyrinth of Passion, Leo McCarey, Slice of life

Fall 2011

FSCP 81000 – Film History II, Professor Paula Massood, Wednesday, 2:00-6:00pm, Room C-419, 3 credits [15907] Cross listed with THEA 71600/ART 79500/MALS 76300

This course is devoted to intensive analysis of the international development of cinema as a medium and art form from the early sound years (1930 onward) to the present. We will concentrate on major film tendencies and aesthetic and political developments through a close examination of individual film texts.

Subjects covered will include Hollywood filmmaking during the Depression years, French Poetic Realism, Italian Neorealism, melodrama and other postwar Hollywood genres, the rise of global "new waves" (including French, Latin American, and German filmmaking movements from the late-1950s through the 1970s) and modernist tendencies in international cinema.

We will also examine the rise of American independent filmmaking, recent global cinema trends, and the effects of new digital technologies on visual and narrative aesthetics.

Emphasis will be placed on the major historical currents of each period and on changes in aesthetic, political and industrial context.

Required Texts:

Required: David A. Cook. A History of Narrative Film. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 1996. Available through the GC Virtual Bookshop. Scheduled films and supplemental readings ® are on reserve in the library.

Recommended books and additional films are listed in the syllabus, available in the Certificate Programs office (Room 5110).

Please note: Students are not required to purchase recommended texts or view all the suggested films.

Course Requirements:

Writing Assignments: 1) 8pp. essay on prearranged topic. (40%) 2) 15pp. final essay on topic of choice. (50%)

Discussion Questions: Each week, two students will be required to prepare two questions each to initiate class discussion on the scheduled reading and screening. (10%)

Class sessions will begin promptly at 2:00pm and will last, unless otherwise noted, until 6:00pm. Please be prepared to attend the entire class. FSCP 81000 -- Seminar in Film Theory, Professor Amy Herzog, Monday, 2:00-5:00 pm, Room C-419, 3 credits [15908] Cross listed with THEA 81600 & ART 89400

This class will provide an overview of significant movements, debates, and figures in film theory. Readings will span both classical and contemporary film theory, addressing a range of approaches including realism, structuralism, auteur theory, genre criticism, psychoanalytic film theory, feminist and critical race theories, and third cinema.

The class will examine writings on cinema in their historical and national contexts, looking at the ways in which film theory intersects with political, cultural, and aesthetic trends.

The final sessions of the course will focus on recent developments in film theory, in particular the debates surrounding cognitive approaches to film, the evolution of digital technology, and the writings of philosopher Gilles Deleuze.

In each case, new theoretical work on cinema will be read in relation to the complex history of film criticism.

In addition, the class will examine the field of film theory alongside related fields of aesthetics and representation (e.g. art history and photography, television studies, cultural studies, visual studies, postmodernism), exploring the ways these disciplines have overlapped.

Each seminar meeting will involve close analyses of readings related to a particular topic or theme. We will discuss the contexts within which these writings emerged, and the institutional frameworks that provided for the evolution of the field.

Written texts will be read alongside specific cinematic examples. Students will be required to screen at least one film per week outside class (independently, or preferably in groups).

We will view additional shorts and review clips in class. Ideally, students will also view supplemental films that are suggested, and attend screenings and discussions in venues around the city.

Students will write either three six-page analysis papers, performing close readings of theoretical texts, or one twenty-page research paper on a topic in film theory.

Each student will also present clips throughout the semester that respond to the readings, as a means of facilitating discussion.

A sample syllabus for the class, which includes a list of topics, readings, and screenings will be available in the Certificate Programs Office (Room 5110).

FSCP 81000 – Film and the Invention of the Human, Professor Morris Dickstein, Tuesday, 2:00-5:30pm, Room C-419, 3 credits [15910] Cross listed with ART 89600, THEA 81500 & ENGL 87400. This course takes much of its inspiration from the celebrated line by the director/actor Jean Renoir in The Rules of the Game: "The really terrible thing is that everyone has his reasons.".

Renoir is referring ruefully to the mixed, ambiguous character of human motives and morality, as well as the crucial importance of seeing things from the point of view of the other people, of not demonizing them or blocking off our understanding of them.

In art this quality is often thought of as Shakespearean. Keats called it Negative Capability and Harold Bloom described it hyperbolically as Shakespeare's "invention of the human."

This kind of empathy, with its insight into character and refusal to judge people too harshly or prematurely, is often thought to be the basic gift of the genuine novelist.

Yet one of the great achievements of film is that it developed new techniques for portraying the most intimate and fundamental human experiences: joy and sorrow; love and loss; childhood and maturity; illness, aging, and death.

Close-ups and reaction shots, for example, offered new ways of portraying intense feeling. The human face became a map of the interior life, the actor's voice an instrument different from how it was used in the theater.

This course will trace the development of what might be called a cinema of empathy, using examples from different periods and markedly varied cultural situations.

Despite these disparities, this kind of human-interest film has some typical elements. It tends to avoid the formulaic features of genre and stereotype so common in commercial cinema.

Its slice-of-life aesthetic leans to ordinary rather than extraordinary characters and situations, and is a potent technique for exposing serious social problems. It often deploys at least the appearance of improvisation to bolster a all-important sense of authenticity and verisimilitude.

It de-emphasizes plot and focuses on character, zeroing in on the individual's mixed motives and on complex shadings full of moral ambiguity. But it tends to do so in an understated fashion, making experiences more recognizably human by avoiding melodrama and sentimentality.

These qualities are also typical of great novels, but films have developed their own visual grammar for achieving these effects.

The course will begin with two early masters of cinematic emotion, Jean Vigo (L'Atalante) and Charlie Chaplin (City Lights).

We'll then turn to one of their greatest successors, Renoir, beginning with La Chienne and Boudu Saved from Drowning, along with some parallel Hollywood films, including Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow, a moving story of an aging couple discarded by their grown children.

Other examples of this humanist cinema will come from postwar Italian Neorealism (Rossellini, De Sica), the French New Wave (especially Truffaut), Indian cinema (Satyajit Ray, including the Apu trilogy), Japanese cinema (late Ozu), and American independent cinema (especially Cassavetes).

The course will conclude with some more recent versions of this kind of filmmaking, such as Canadian director Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter and Paul Schrader's Affliction, both based on novels by Russell Banks.

It's crucial that many of these directors knew and admired each other and were directly influenced by each others' example. Ray, for example, worked with Renoir and was inspired by De Sica's Bicycle Thieves. Renoir admired both Chaplin and McCarey, while McCarey's film certainly influenced Ozu's Tokyo Story.

There will also be readings and reports focused on writers whose work is closely related to this film tradition, such as Anton Chekhov.

Requirement for the course will include a term paper, an oral report, and weekly home film- viewing.

FSCP 81000 -- 81000–The American Sitcom, Professor Heather Hendershot, Thursday, 4:15-8:15pm, Room C-419, 3 credits [15909] Cross listed with THEA 81500

According to conventional wisdom, American television comedies were once designed to entertain the widest possible "family" audience, but they now target a younger, edgier demographic. In other words, if Betwitched was a typical show of the 1960s, South Park is more representative of the state of contemporary TV comedy.

Further, in the wake of the rise of cable and the concomitant shift from the "mass audience" to the "niche audience," the contemporary American sitcom has clearly become an increasingly "hybrid" form. Thus, today's programs range from those using the structure of the classic sitcom but lacking a laugh track (30 Rock), to darker programs designed to induce more cringing than laughter (Curb Your Enthusiasm), to the hybrid docu-com, which combines many of the gags and situations of the conventional sitcom with the conventions and structures of reality TV (The Office).

All of this is true, but, on the other hand, if we probe more deeply into the history of the American sitcom we find that it only briefly attained the "pure" or "classic" form that we associate with programs like Leave It to Beaver.

Rather, the sitcom has almost always been a form in flux. Emerging from a live tradition heavily indebted to vaudeville and other kinds of variety performance, the sitcoms of the late 1940s and early 1950s (most of which were carry-overs directly from radio and were not originally envisioned as "TV" shows at all) was already a hybrid form. Programs such as The Jack Benny Show and The Burns and Allen Show included sketches about their eponymous characters, playing "themselves" in the kinds of scenarios that would later be understood as typical sitcom fair. Such sketches were intercut with musical numbers and other interludes, in the case of Benny, and fourth-wall breaking direct addresses by Burns on Burns and Allen.

Famously, it was I Love Lucy that standardized the idea of not breaking the fourth wall, but even this program never fully pretended that it was "really happening" (it the way, say, a TV drama might) and often disrupted the putative narrative to make room for special performances (Ricky singing, Lucy sneaking into his nightclub act disguised as a clown); thus, spectacular moments of performance interrupted the flow of the narrative in virtually every episode. Clearly, both the tradition of live performance and fluid notions of whether or not a fourth-wall was really in place infused even the most "classic" of all sitcoms.

By the 1960s, the style that many would identify as "pure" sitcom—laugh track but no winks and nods to the audience, very rigid formulas, the reestablishment of order at the end of each episode, the impossibility of character development over time, apparent apoliticism—were solidly in place in programs such as Father Knows Best and Green Acres, but by the 1970s this would be challenged by the breakthrough of Norman Lear's highly politicized programs (All in the Family, etc.), while, at the same time, MTM Productions (Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda) would allow for a new depth of character development.

Yet even as the genre seemed to be "evolving" to higher complexity, the old (simulated) live variety comedy format never completely disappeared—The Carol Burnett Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour being prime examples then, and Mr. Show and Chappelle's Show being more recent incarnations of sketch comedy programs that included (and satirized) sitcom elements.

In sum, this course will chart the evolution of the American sitcom from its roots in vaudeville to the present, examining the genre's ever-hybrid, unstable format, its fluctuation between acknowledging and ignoring audience presence, and its shifts in response to recently changing viewing patterns and industrial practices in the wake of the rise of the multi-channel, post- network environment.

Programs viewed will include: All in the Family, Amos 'n' Andy, Arrested Development, The Big Bang Theory, The Burns and Allen Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Chappelle's Show, Community, The Cosby Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras, Family Guy, Father Knows Best, I Love Lucy, The Jack Benny Show, The Larry Sanders Show, Lil' Bush, The Lucy Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, M*A*S*H, Maude, Modern Family, Mr. Show, The Office (US and UK), Parks and Recreation, Roseanne, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Soap, South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants, 30 Rock, That's My Bush!, Two and a Half Men, and WKRP in Cincinnati.

In addition to weekly readings, to prepare for class students will also be required to see additional episodes of TV programs on their own ahead of time (all readily available via Netflix or Hulu). We will also view a number of television episodes in class each week.

Students will complete one major assignment for the class, a 20–25 page research paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the instructor. Each student will meet individually with me to discuss his/her final project, and 5 page proposals for the final papers will be due several weeks before the papers themselves. Papers should involve substantial original research and should display both mastery of issues covered in the class and the ability to apply course concepts to the paper topic.

Readings will include: • Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (excerpts) • Jane Feuer, et al., eds. MTM: "Quality Television" (excerpts) • Jonathan Gray, "Domesticom Parody" • Michele Hilmes, "Who We Are, Who We Are Not: The Emergence of National Narratives" • Lory Landay, I Love Lucy • Elana Levine, Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s Television (excerpts) • David Marc, Comic Visions: Television Comedy and American Culture, 2nd ed. • Amy McWilliams, "Genre Expectation and Narrative Innovation in Seinfeld" • Patricia Mellencamp, "Situation Comedy, Feminism, and Freud: Discourses of Gracie and Lucy" • Susan Murray, Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars: Early Television and Broadcast Stardom (excerpts) • Horace Newcomb, The Producers Medium: Conversations with Creators of American TV (excerpts) • Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch, "Television as a Cultural Forum" • Kathleen Rowe, "Roseanne: Unruly Woman as Domestic Goddess" • Lynn Spigel, "From the Dark Ages to the Golden Age: Women's Memories and Television Reruns" • Janet Staiger, Blockbuster TV: Must See Sitcoms in the Network Era • Ethan Thompson, "Good Demo, Bad Taste: South Park as Carnivalesque Satire" • Ethan Thompson, "Comedy Vérité?" • Lisa Williamson, "Challenging Sitcom Conventions: From The Larry Sanders Show to The Comeback"

The Cinemas of Pedro Almodóvar and Guillermo del Toro, Professor Paul Julian Smith, Wednesday, 4:15-6:15pm, Room TBA, 3 credits [15911] Cross listed with SPAN 87200

This course, which will be taught for the first time in Fall 2011 and requires no knowledge of Spanish, examines the works of contemporary Spain and Mexico's most successful filmmakers, critically and commercially.

These two figures might appear to be very different and, indeed, have formally collaborated only when Almodóvar produced del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, shot and set in Spain. Although he has greater transnational projection than perhaps any other European filmmaker, Almodóvar has filmed all seventeen features in his home country and language; while del Toro, with just seven films, has made for himself a nomadic career in two languages and three countries.

Yet it can be argued that the pair has a great deal in common. For example, both directors have embraced transmedia, going beyond the feature film. Almodóvar's production company has expanded into television and theater; del Toro is a respected creator in the fields of the comic book and novel. Their internet presence is also substantial.

The aims of the course are industrial, critical, and theoretical. First, Almodóvar is placed in the context of audiovisual production in Spain, while del Toro (as director and producer) is contextualized within the 'golden triangle' of Mexico, Europe, and the US.

Second, both cineastes are interrogated for signs of auteurship (a consistent aesthetic and media image), sharing as they do a self-fashioning that takes place, unusually, within the confines of genre cinema (comedy/melodrama and fantasy/horror, respectively).

Finally, the course explores how English-language critics have assimilated these two Spanish- speaking directors to debates in Anglo-American film studies that draw on psychoanalysis, feminism, queer theory, and the transnational.

Recommended, but not required, is the book Desire Unlimited: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar (2nd edition, 2000), written by the instructor. A bibliography in Spanish can also be provided on request.

Grading is by written exam (25%), student oral participation and presentation (25%) and final paper (50%).

Films to be studied (all with English subtitles, where necessary)

Almodóvar: Pepi, Luci, Bom; Labyrinth of Passion; Dark Habits; What Have I Done to Deserve This?; Matador; The Law of Desire; Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!; High Heels; Kika; The Flower of My Secret; Live Flesh; All About My Mother

Del Toro: Cronos; Mimic; Blade II; Hellboy; The Devil's Backbone; Pan's Labyrinth; (as producer) The Orphanage; Julia's Eyes

Specimen critical reading

Almodóvar: general Brad Epps (ed), All About Almodóvar Nuria Triana, Spanish National Cinema

On individual films Paul Julian Smith, 'Lesbian comedy, lesbian tragedy: Pepi, Luci, Bom and Dark Habits' James Mandrell, 'Sense and sensibility, or latent heterosexuality and Labyrinth of Passions' Kathleen M. Vernon, 'Melodrama against itself: What Have I Done to Deserve This?' Peter Evans, 'Matador: Genre, subjectivity, and desire' Ellis Hanson, 'Technology, paranoia, and the queer voice' [on The Law of Desire] Celestino Deleyto, 'Postmodernism and parody in Mujeres al borde [Women on the Verge]' Marsha J. Nandorfy, 'Tie Me Up!: Subverting the glazed gaze of American melodrama and film theory' Lucy Fischer, 'Postmodernity and postmaternity: High Heels and Imitation of Life' Susan Martin Márquez, 'Pedro Almodóvar and the displacement of rape' [on Kika] Paul Julian Smith, 'Resurrecting the art movie? Almodóvar's blue period' [on The Flower of My Secret; Live Flesh; All About My Mother] Marsha Kinder, 'Re-inventing the motherland: Almodóvar's brain-dead trilogy' [on The Flower of My Secret; All About My Mother] del Toro: general Deborah Shaw, Contemporary Transnational Mexican Filmmakers Andrea Noble, Mexican National Cinema

On individual films John Kraniauskas, 'Cronos and the political economy of vampirism: notes on a historical constellation' Ann Davies, 'Guillermo del Toro's Cronos: the vampire as embodied heterotopia' Antonio Lázaro Reboll, 'The transnational reception of El espinazo del diablo [The Devil's Backbone]' Paul Julian Smith, Pan's Labyrinth, Film Quarterly Laura O'Connor, 'The corpse on Hellboy's back: translating a graphic image' Mike Mignola and Guillermo del Toro, Hellboy II: The Art of the Movie María Delgado, 'The young and the damned' [on The Orphanage]

FSCP. 81000 - History and Aesthetics of Film Music GC: M, 2:00-5:00 p.m., Rm. 3491, 3 credits, Professor Royal Brown, [15912] Cross listed with MUS 81502.