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The Road Movie Spring 2005
Professor Karen Beckman Office: Jaffe 209 Office hours: Tuesday 2-4pm Email: [email protected]
Screenings: Wednesday Jaffe 201, 7pm
Course Description
In this course we will study the changing shape of the Road Movie genre over the course of the twentieth century. Though our primary focus will be on international adaptations of the genre since the 1960s, we will historicize the modern permutations of the genre by beginning with a consideration of the simultaneous emergence of moving pictures and high-speed forms of transportation. In addition to considering the limits and possibilities of genre as a category of analysis, we will grapple with a number of questions that will persist throughout the course: What is the relationship between cinema and the automobile? Is the road trip a peculiarly American fantasy, and what happens when non- US filmmakers adopt the genre? How does gender emerge as a concern of this genre? What role do urban and rural spaces play in shaping the journeys attempted within these films? What kinds of border-crossings does this genre enact or prohibit? And finally, do the often-radical fantasies of characters within this genre necessarily translate into films with radical politics?
Required Books (available at Penn Book Center, corner of Walnut and 34th, and on reserve at Rosengarten, Van Pelt Library, with screened movies):
David Laderman, Driving Visions: Exploring the Road Movie (Austin: U of Texas P, 2002)
Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark, eds., The Road Movie Book (London and New York: Routledge, 1997)
Paul Virilio, The Art of the Motor (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995) (recommended)
Lynne Kirby, Parallel Tracks: The Railroad and Silent Cinema (Durham: Duke UP, 1997)
All other readings will be available on electronic reserve on course Blackboard site.
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Course Requirements:
1) Complete reading prior to class. 2) Attend screenings, or, if you have conflicts with other academic events, view films individually prior to Thursday lecture. 3) Full attendance and participation in class discussions, presentations and blackboard exchanges. 4) 1 5-page paper; 1 8-10 page paper; 1 midterm examination with short essay answers.
Grading:
Attendance and participation in Blackboard, presentations and class discussion: 20% Paper #1 (5 pages): 20% Midterm: 20% Paper #2 (8-10 pages): 40%
A Note on Paper Writing:
All papers should be written in accordance with MLA manual of style. Endnotes or footnotes are acceptable, but please use correct citational format. Papers should be in Times 12 font, double-spaced. All sources used in paper writing must be cited, and, if doing research, please avoid over-reliance on internet sources. They are often questionable in quality, and I would prefer to read your own thoughts and arguments about the films in question. Above all, I value critical and original thinking, careful attention to the film texts and scholarly texts under consideration, well-constructed arguments, and polished prose.
I. Predecessors of the Genre
1) The Railroad: Cinema and Modernity
January 11: Introduction: Genre criticism
January 13: Lynne Kirby, Parallel Tracks, 1-74; 241-252 (Introduction, Ch. 1, Conclusion) Screening (in class): The Great Train Robbery (Edison/Porter, 1903)
2) The Western
January 18: Stephanie Watson, “From Riding to Driving: Once Upon A Time in the West,” in Jack Sargeant and Stephanie Watson, Lost Highways: An Illustrated History of Road Movies (PCP International: Creation Books, 3
1999): 22-37 (BB) Rick Altman, “The Western,” in Film/Genre (London: BFI, 1999): 34-38 (BB).
Screening: The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
January 20: Charles Ramiréz Berg, “The Margin as Center: The Multicultural Dynamics of John Ford’s Westerns,” in Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, Resistance (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002): 128-152 (BB).
II. The Not-So-Straight and Narrow Path
3) Outlaws
January 25: Jack Sargeant and Stephanie Watson, “Looking for Maps: Notes on the Road Movie as Genre,” in Sargeant and Watson, 5-20 (BB) David Laderman, “Paving the Way: Sources and Features of the Road Movie,” Laderman, Ch. 1.
Screening: Bonnie and Clyde (USA, Arthur Penn, 1967)
January 27: Laderman, “Blazing the Trail: Visionary Rebellion and the Late 1960s Road Movie,” Ch. 2. Ian Leong, Mike Sell and Kelly Thomas, “Mad Love, Mobile Homes, and Dysfunctional Dicks,” in Cohan, Ch. 3.
4) Women Drivers
February 1: Janet Wolff, “On the Road Again: Metaphors of Travel in Cultural Criticism” (1993) in Hilary Robinson, ed., Feminism-Art-Theory (London: Blackwell, 2001): 184-197 (BB). Laderman, “Remapping Road Movie Rebellion,” 184-204.
Screening: Thelma and Louise (USA, Ridley Scott, 1991)
February 3: Alistair Daniel, “Our Idea of Fun: Thelma and Louise on Trial,” in Sargeant and Watson (BB)
5) Border Crossing: Race, Gender, Genres
February 8: Geoff King, “Genre Benders,” in New Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction (New York: Columbia, 2002): 116-146 (BB) 4
Screening: To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (USA, Beeban Kidron, 1995)
February 10: Sharon Willis, “Race on the Road: Crossover Dreams,” Cohan and Hark, 287-306. Laderman, “The Gay Highway: My Own Private Idaho and The Living End,” Laderman, 204-234.
6) The Bus
February 15: bell hooks, “Reconstructing Black Masculinity,” in Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992): 87-113 (BB). Paul Gilroy, “Driving While Black,” Car Cultures, ed. Daniel Miller (Oxford: Berg, 2001): 81-104.
Screening: Get on the Bus! (USA, Spike Lee, 1996)
February 17: CLASS CANCELLED
III. Speed, Slowness and Stasis
7) The Urban Road Movie: Immobility
February 22: Andrew Hultkrans, “Body Work—Interview with Author J.G. Ballard and Director David Cronenberg,” Artforum, March 1997 (RECOMMENDED, BB)
Screening: Crash (Canada, David Cronenberg, 1996)
February 24: Jean Baudrillard, “Ballard’s Crash,” and Katherine Hayles, “In Response to Jean Baudrillard,” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 18 (1991): 313-32 (BB). Vivian Sobchack, “Beating the Meat/Surviving the Text, or How to Get Out of this Century Alive,” in Paula A. Treichler et. al., The Visible Woman: Imaging Technologies, Gender, and Science (New York: NYU Press, 1998): 310-321 (BB). Paul Virilio, The Art of the Motor (1995): excerpts recommended.
8) Midterms:
March 1: Midterm review. Please come to class with questions for review.
March 3: MIDTERM EXAMINATION (Short answers; in class) 5
March 8 / 10: SPRING BREAK
9) David Lynch and the Road Movie
March 14: Free screening of Mulholland Drive (Lynch, 2001) at The Bridge, 5pm? Check Cinema Studies website for full details)
March 15: Stuart Mitchell, “How Secrets Travel: David Lynch and the Road,” Sargeant and Watson, 242-256 (BB). Laderman, “Returning and Leaving Home: The Straight Story,” 236-246.
Mary Sweeney talks about her co-authorship of The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999). Includes free screening of The Straight Story (attendance mandatory in place of Wednesday screening). Meyerson Hall, Room B1, 210 South 34th Street (corner of Walnut). 5pm. Registration required. http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/04-05/event_sweeney.html
\March 17: Discussion of Sweeney and The Straight Story.
IV. Nations and Borders
10) The End of the Road: France
March 22: Kristin Ross, “Introduction” and “La Belle Américaine,” in Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995): 1-54 (BB). Laderman, “Traveling Other Highways: The European Road Movie,” 247- 259.
Screening: Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
March 24: Peter Rojas, “From the French Revolution to Gaullist Weekends: Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Weekend’ Road Trip,” in Sargeant and Weston, 258-264 (BB). Kaja Silverman and Harun Farocki, “Anal Capitalism,” in Speaking About Godard (New York: NYU Press, 1998): 85-113 (BB).
11) New German Cinema on the Road
March 29: Tim Corrigan, “A History, A Cinema: Audience, Codes, and the New German Cinema” and “Wenders’s Kings of the Road: The Voyage from 6
Desire to Language,” in New German Film: The Displaced Image (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1994): 1-32.
Screening: Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976 )
March 31: Class cancelled.
12) The Mexican Road Movie
April 5: Pat Aufderheide, “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” (film review), Cineaste (Winter 2001): 27.2 (BB) A. Basoli, “Sexual Awakenings and Stark Social Realities: An Interview with Alfonso Cuaron,” Cineaste (Summer 2002): 27.3 (BB)
Screening: Y Tu Mama Tambien (Mexico, Alfonso Cuarón, 2002)
April 7: One-page, single-spaced outline of papers with thesis statement due today.
*Blackboard assignment: post 1-page review of film in which you outline the relationship between the film and the Road Movie genre as we have understood it to date. The review must be posted by Wednesday, 8pm, and will form the basis of class discussion.
13) The Road of Exile
April 12: Paper-writing workshop today—please bring rough drafts of paper to class.
Screening: Time of the Gypsies (Emir Kusturica, 1989)
April 14: Kate Trumpener, “The Time of the Gypsies: A People Without a History in the Narratives of the West,” Critical Inquiry, 18.4 (1992).
14) Experimenting with the Road
April 19: Michael Bull, “Soundscapes of the Car: A Critical Study of Automobile Habitation,” Car Cultures, ed. Daniel Miller (Oxford: Berg, 2001):185- 202. (Evaluations handed out today.)
Screening: Su Friedrich, Rules of the Road (USA, 1993, 31 minutes)
April 21: Last class. Final papers due today