English 7051

Introduction to Film and Media Studies

Fall 2007, Thursday, 6pm-9pm, 326 State Hall
Steven Shaviro (313-577-5475; 5057 Woodward, room 9309; office hours Thursday 2-4pm and by appointment)

Course Description

This class provides an introduction to the graduate study of film and new media. The main focus will be on film and on the various ways that film has been theorized over the course of the past century. We will make some attempt at the end of the semester to consider questions involving newer, post-cinematic media forms (TV, video, digital media). We will watch a number of feature-length films and shorter films and videos in the course of the semester, but the emphasis will be on the readings, and on general questions in film and media theory and history, rather than on the interpretation of individual works.

Textbooks

There are two textbooks required for the class, both available at Marwil Books:

Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (6th ed.) [BC]
Robert Stam and Toby Miller, eds., Film and Theory: An Anthology [SM]

These will be supplemented by additional readings, which will either be linked online, scanned as pdfs available through the Library's electronic reserve, or handed out in photocopy form.
Films will be screened during class time, except where indicated (in which case you should watch the film prior to the class session).

Schedule of Classes

September 6: INTRODUCTION
Guy Maddin, Cowards Bend the Knee (2003)

September 13: MODERNITY, MONTAGE, AND SILENT FILM
Dziga Vertov, Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
Bela Balasz, selections from Theory of the Film (BC 314-321)
Rudolph Arnheim, "The Complete Film" (BC 183-186); "Film and Reality" (BC 322-331)
Erwin Panofsky, "Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures" (BC 289-302)
Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment" (BC 862-876)
Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attraction" (SM 229-235)
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (BC 791-811)
Sergei Eisenstein, selections from Film Form (BC 13-40)
Vsevolod Pudovkin, "On Editing" (BC 7-12)

September 20: BAZIN AND REALISM
Jean Renoir, Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)
Andre Bazin, "Ontology" and "Myth" (BC 166-173)
Andre Bazin, "The Evolution of the Language of Cinema" (BC 41-53)
Andre Bazin, "Theater and Cinema" (BC 418-428)
Siegfried Kracauer, "Basic Concepts" (BC 143-153)
Siegfried Kracauer, "The Establishment of Physical Existence" (BC 303-313)
Roland Barthes, "The Third Meaning" (pdf)
Kristin Thompson, "The Concept of Cinematic Excess" (BC 513-524)

September 27: CLASSICAL FILM AND NORMATIVE THEORY
Edgar Ulmer, Detour (1945)
Noel Carroll, "The Specificity of Media in the Arts" (SM 39-53)
David Bordwell, "Classical Hollywood Cinema" (pdf)
David Bordwell, "A Case for Cognitivism"
David Bordwell, "Anatomy of the Action Picture"
Tom Gunning, "Narrative Discourse and the Narrative System" (BC 470-481)
Daniel Dayan, "The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema" (BC 106-117)
Nick Browne, "The Spectator-in-the-Text" (BC 118-133)

October 4: STRUCTURALISM AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) [watch prior to class]
Christian Metz, from Film Language (BC 65-86)
Christian Metz, from The Imaginary Signifier (SM 408-436 and BC 820-836)
Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects" (BC 355-365)
Jean-Louis Baudry, "The Apparatus" (BC 206-223)
Noel Carroll, "Jean-Louis Baudry and 'The Apparatus'" (BC 224-239)
Joan Copjec, "The Orthopsychic Subject" (SM 437-455)
Slavoj Zizek, "Looking Awry" (SM 524-538)

October 11: FEMINISM AND FILM THEORY
Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958) [watch prior to class]
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (SM 483-494 or BC 837-848)
Mary Ann Doane, "Film and the Masquerade" (SM 495-509)
Tania Modelski, "The Master's Dollhouse" (BC 849-861)
Teresa de Lauretis, "Rethinking Women's Cinema" (SM 317-336)
Constance Penley, "Feminism, Film Theory, and the Bachelor Machines" (SM 456-473)
Gaylyn Studlar, "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema" (pdf)

October 18: GENRE THEORY
Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life (1959) [watch prior to class]
Leo Braudy, "Genre" (BC 663-679)
Steve Neale, "Questions of Genre" (SM 157-178)
Rick Altman, "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" (SM 179-190 or BC 680-690)
Thomas Schatz, "Film Genre and the Genre Film" (BC 691-702)
Thomas Elsaesser, "Tales of Sound and Fury" (pdf)
Stuart Cunningham, "The 'Force-Field' of Melodrama (SM 191-206)
Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess" (SM 207-221 or BC 727-741)
Cynthia A. Freeland, "Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films" (BC 742-763)
Tania Modleski, "The Terror of Pleasure" (BC 764-773)

October 25: AUTEURISM, CINEPHILIA, AND STAR WORSHIP
Howard Hawks, His Girl Friday (1940)
Andrew Sarris, "Notes on the Auteur Theory" (BC 561-564)
Peter Wollen, "The Auteur Theory" (BC 565-580)
Dudley Andrew, "The Unauthorized Auteur Today" (SM 20-29)
Richard Dyer, "Heavenly Bodies" (SM 603-617)
James Naremore, "Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront" (SM 644-660)
Jason Sperb, "Sensing an Intellectual Nemesis"
Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo" (BC 589-591)

November 1: THEORIZING FILM SOUND
Robert Aldrich, Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Michel Chion, "Projections of Sound on Image" (SM 111-124)
Michel Chion, "The Audiovisual Scene" (from Audio-Vision) (pdf)
Mary Ann Doane, "The Voice in the Cinema" (BC 373-385)
John Belton, "Technology and the Aesthetics of Film Sound" (BC 386-394)

[November 8: NO CLASS]

November 15: RACE, CLASS, GENDER, SEXUALITY
Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing (1989) [watch prior to class]
Mark Rappaport, Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992)
Stuart Hall, "Cultural Identity and Cinematic Representation" (SM 704-714)
Jane Gaines, "White Privilege and Looking Relations" (SM 715-732)
Richard Dyer, "White" (SM 733-751)
Manthia Diawara, "Black American Cinema" (SM 236-256)
Chris Straayer, "The She-Man" (SM 618-633)
Ella Shohat, "Gender and Culture of Empire" (SM 669-696)
Jonathan Beller, "Cinema, Capital of the Twentieth Century" (or check Project Muse for a better-formatted text)

Tuesday, November 20: DELEUZE AND FILM THEORY
Abel Ferrara, New Rose Hotel (1998)
Gilles Deleuze, From Cinema 1 & Cinema 2 (BC 240-269)
David Rodowick, "A Short History of Cinema," from Gilles Deleuze's Time-Machine (pdf)
William Gibson, "New Rose Hotel" (short story on which film is based)

November 29: FILM IN THE DIGITAL AGE
David Lynch, Inland Empire (2006) [watch prior to class]
Hal Hartley, The Girl From Monday (2005)
Stephen Prince, "True Lies" (BC 270-282)
John Belton, "Digital Cinema: A False Revolution" (BC 901-913)
Anne Friedberg, "The End of Cinema" (BC 914-926)
Dennis Lim, "David Lynch Goes Digital"

December 6: TELEVISION, VIDEO, NEW MEDIA
John Caldwell, "Modes of Production: The Televisual Apparatus" (SM 125-143)
Robert Stam, "Television News and Its Spectator" (SM 361-380)
Jim Collins, "Television and Postmodernism" (SM 758-773)
Michel Chion, "Television, Video Art, Music Video" (from Audio-Vision) (pdf)
Patrice Petro, "Mass Culture and the Feminine" (SM 577-593)
Henry Jenkins, "In My Weekend-Only World" (SM 791-799)

Class Requirements

Each student must lead discussion once in the course of the semester, participate in class discussions, and write a final paper (approx. 15 pages).