FILM 5900/7900 - Film Theory Fall 2017 Prof. Rielle Navitski [email protected] Class: T/Th 2:00 – 3:15 pm in 53 Fine Arts Screening: Th 3:30 – 6:15 pm in 53 Fine Arts Office hours: T/W 10:00 am – 12:00 pm or by appointment in 260 Fine Arts Course Description: This course explores a range of critics’, scholars’ and filmmakers’ positions on the “big questions” that arise in relation to films considered as artistic objects and the production and consumption of films considered as meaningful individual and social experiences. Beginning with key debates in film theory and working mostly chronologically, we will consider critic André Bazin’s famous question “what is cinema?” Is it more useful to try to define film’s unique characteristics or to chart its overlap – particularly in a digital age – with other audio/visual media and other visual and performing arts? Should more weight be given to film’s capacity to record and play back a recognizable impression of the visible and audible world, or to its formal or aesthetic qualities – arrangements of light, sound, and time – and the way it communicates meanings through stylistic elements like editing, camera movement, and mise-en-scène. How do elements of film style and the institutions surrounding cinema – from the studio to the movie theater to fan culture – impact spectators’ experiences? How do gender, sexuality, race, and nation shape film aesthetics and viewing experiences? Without seeking to definitively resolve these debates, we will consider how they can meaningfully inform our role as consumers and producers of media. The course contains material that you may disagree with or find distasteful. Remaining enrolled in the class indicates a commitment to engage thoughtfully with all course materials. Required texts: Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism, Oxford University Press, 7th Edition. Available at UGA Bookstore. All readings are taken from the textbook except where noted. Supplemental readings available on ELC (marked on syllabus with “ELC”). Course Requirements: Guided in-class reading of a passage 5 percent Mini-presentation - “Film theory today” 5 percent Attendance and Participation: 15 percent Midterm Exam 25 percent Term paper w/required proposal (6-8 pages) 25 percent Final Exam 25 percent Important Dates: Midterm Exam 10/3 Term Paper Proposal Due 10/31 Term Paper Due 11/30 Final Exam 12/7 1 Additional Requirements: Students seeking Honors credit in the course must complete a longer term paper of 15-20 pages. Graduate students enrolled in the course must complete a longer term paper of 15-20 pages and, in consultation with the professor, present a 75-minute guest lecture that accounts for 25 percent of the final grade (substituting for the guided in-class reading of a passage, mini-presentation, and attendance and participation grades. Note that more than six absences from class/screening will still be considered grounds for failure of the course). Graduate students complete exams as take-homes rather than on-site. Course Objectives: 1) To grasp and evaluate the persuasiveness of arguments about key issues in film theory, including claims regarding: - cinema’s uniqueness as a medium (medium specificity), including its aesthetic characteristics - film’s relationship to reality - cinema’s relationship to other arts and audio/visual media - the functioning of film texts and related phenomena like genre and the star system as a meaning- making system or language - cinema’s impact on the spectator, both through a film’s aesthetic aspects and the social context of film viewing - the political implications of cinema’s functioning as a mass medium 2) To place these debates in historical context, evaluating the social factors that contributed to critics’, scholars’ and filmmakers’ interest in particular issues and the way in which they framed these issues in their writings and other work 3) To develop the analytical skills and confidence to effectively approach texts that may be unfamiliar in terms of their style/rhetoric and argumentation, evaluating how the structure of a writer’s text and their choice of words impact its persuasiveness 4) To apply these insights to construct a persuasive written argument (term paper) that stakes out a position within key debates, incorporating analysis of historical context for these debates and compelling evidence drawn from detailed analysis of film style 2 Course Schedule UNIT 1 – KEY CONCEPTS AND DEBATES Week 1 - Realism vs. Formalism 8/15 Welcome 8/17 André Bazin, “The Myth of Total Cinema,” 163-166 Rudolf Arnheim, “The Complete Film,” 167-170 Screening: Sin City, Robert Rodríguez, US, 2005, 124 mins. Week 2 - Medium Specificity vs. Media Convergence 8/22 Rudolf Arnheim, “Film and Reality” and “The Making of a Film,” 282-291 Noël Carroll, “The Specificity Thesis,” 292-298 8/24 Anne Friedberg, “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and Technology Change,” 802-805 Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (excerpt), 1-15 (ELC) Screening: NO SCREENING UNIT 2 – CLASSICAL FILM THEORY Week 3 – Spectatorship from Early to Classical Cinema 8/29 Watch in class: Arrivée d’un train en gare à La Ciotat (The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, Lumière, France, 1895 The Black Diamond Express, Edison, 1900, US Electrocuting an Elephant, Edison, 1903, US Karl Hans Strobl, “The Cinematograph,” 26-28 (ELC) Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” 736- 750 8/31 Watch in class: An Unseen Enemy, D.W. Griffith, US, 1912, 15 mins. Hugo Munsterberg, excerpt from The Film: A Psychological Study, 18-19, 30-41 (ELC) Screening: Coeur fidèle (Faithful Heart, Jean Epstein, France, 1923), 85 mins. 3 Week 4 – Early Theorizations of Cinematic Specificity 9/5 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 665-672, 678-683 9/7 Jean Epstein, “Magnification,” 9-15 and “On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie,” 314-318 (ELC) Screening: October (Oktyabr, Sergei Eisenstein, USSR, 1928), 142 mins. Week 5 - Early Theorizations of Film Language 9/12 Sergei Eisenstein, excerpts from Film Form, 13-23 9/14 Sergei Eisenstein, excerpts from Film Form, 24-40 Screening: Sous les toits de Paris (Under the Rooftops of Paris), René Clair, France, 1930, 92 mins. Week 6 – Film Sound: Historical and Contemporary Theories 9/19 Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevelod Pudovkin, and Grigori Alexandrov, “Statement on Sound,” 315-318 9/21 Mary Ann Doane, “The Voice in the Cinema” (excerpt), 318-325 Screening: Deutschland im Jahre Hull/Germania anno zero (Roberto Rossellini, Italy/Germany, 1948), 78 mins Week 7 – The Post-WWII turn to Realism 9/26 André Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” 159-163 and “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” 41-53 9/28 Siegfried Kracauer, excerpts from Theory of the Film, 147-158, 262-272 recommended NO SCREENING – prepare for midterm 4 UNIT 3 – “HIGH THEORY”: SEMIOTICS, PSYCHOANALYSIS, IDEOLOGY Week 8 – Film Language: Semiotics 10/3 MIDTERM EXAM 10/5 Christian Metz, excerpts from Film Language, 65-77 Screening: Blue Velvet (David Lynch, US, 1986), 120 mins. Week 9 – Spectatorship: Psychoanalysis 10/10 Christian Metz, excerpts from The Imaginary Signifier, 694-710 10/12 Jean-Louis Baudry, “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus,” 286-296 (ELC) Screening: Gilda (King Vidor, US, 1946), 110 mins. Week 10 – Spectatorship: Feminist Film Theory 10/17 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 711-722 10/19 Jackie Stacy, Star Gazing (excerpts), 19-31, 126-137 (ELC) Screening: Sankofa (Haile Gerima, US/Burkina Faso/Ghana/Germany, 1993), 124 mins. Week 11 – Race, Nation, and Resistant Spectatorship 10/24 Manthia Diawara, “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance,” 767-776 10/26 Hamid Naficy, “Theorizing ‘Third-World’ Film Spectatorship” (excerpts), 3-4, 8-16 (ELC) Screening: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (John Ford, US, 1962), 123 mins. 5 UNIT 4 – Considering Categories of Analysis: Auteurs, Stars, Genres, and National Cinemas Week 12 - The Auteur Theory 10/31 TERM PAPER PROPOSAL DUE Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” 451-454 11/2 Peter Wollen, “Signs and Meaning in the Cinema,” 455-470 Screening: The Misfits (John Huston, US, 1961), 124 mins. Week 13 - Genre and Stardom as Meaning-Making Systems 11/7 Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre,” 552-563 11/9 Richard Dyer, excerpt from Stars, 480-485 and Dyer, excerpt, Heavenly Bodies, 1-8 (ELC) Screening: Terra em transe (Land in Anguish, Glauber Rocha, Brazil, 1967), 110 mins. Week 14 - “Third-World” Aesthetics and National Cinemas 11/14 Glauber Rocha, “An Aesthetic of Hunger,” 59-61 (ELC) Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, “Towards a Third Cinema” (excerpt), 41-51 (ELC) 11/16 Stephen Crofts, “Reconceptualizing National Cinema(s),” 853-864 Screening: Ex Machina (Alex Garland, US, 2015, 108 mins.) ***THANKSGIVING BREAK*** Week 15 - The Digital Turn 11/28 Philip Rosen, excerpt from Change Mummified, 814-823 Lev Manovich, “Digital Cinema and the History of a Moving Image,” 794-801 11/30 TERM PAPER DUE ON ELC BY 2 PM - NO CLASS (conference) Optional review session: Monday, Dec. 6, 1-2:30 pm, location TBA FINAL EXAM: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 7, 3:30 – 6:30 PM, 53 FINE ARTS 6 Course Policies The course syllabus is a general plan for the course; deviations announced to the class by the instructor may be necessary. Hardship Notice If you are experiencing challenges—personal, financial, health, or other—resources are available to support your wellbeing and academic achievement. Please see the list of resources compiled by our Student Services Specialist, Ms. Dina Canup, at the end of the syllabus, and speak to the professor if you feel comfortable doing so. Accommodations for Disabilities If you plan to request accommodations for a disability, please register with the Disability Resource Center.