English 7051

Introduction to Film and Media Studies

Fall 2008, Thursday, 6pm-9pm, 326 State Hall
Steven Shaviro (313-577-5475; 5057 Woodward, room 9309; office hours Wednesday 12:00pm-200pm and by appointment)

URL OF THIS PAGE: http://www.shaviro.com/Classes/7051F08.html

Course Description

This class provides an introduction to the graduate study of film and new media. The main focus will be on film and media theory: on the various ways that film has been theorized over the course of the past century, and that newer media (television, video and digital and network-based media) are coming to be theorized. 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 three books required for the class, available at Marwil Books:

Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (6th ed.) [BC]
Newcombe, Horace, ed., Television: The Critical View (7th ed.) [HN]
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form

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 4: 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)
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 11: 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" (handout)
Kristin Thompson, "The Concept of Cinematic Excess" (BC 513-524)

September 18: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM
Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window (1954) [watch prior to class]
Alfred Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958) [watch prior to class]

Christian Metz, from Film Language (BC 65-86)
Christian Metz, from The Imaginary Signifier (BC 820-836)
Jean-Louis Baudry, "Ideological Effects" (BC 355-365)
Jean-Louis Baudry, "The Apparatus" (BC 206-223)
Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" (BC 837-848)
Tania Modelski, "The Master's Dollhouse" (BC 849-861)
Slavoj Zizek, "The Matrix, or Malebranche in Hollywood" (Philosophy Today, 1999. Vol. 43; p. 11; via Proquest)
Slavoj Zizek, "Art: The Talking Heads" (handout)

September 25: GENRE THEORY, AUTEURISM, CINEPHILIA
Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life (1959) [watch prior to class]

Leo Braudy, "Genre" (BC 663-679)
Rick Altman, "A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre" (BC 680-690)
Thomas Schatz, "Film Genre and the Genre Film" (BC 691-702)
Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess" (BC 727-741)
Cynthia A. Freeland, "Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films" (BC 742-763)
Tania Modleski, "The Terror of Pleasure" (BC 764-773)
Andrew Sarris, "Notes on the Auteur Theory" (BC 561-564)
Peter Wollen, "The Auteur Theory" (BC 565-580)
Jason Sperb, "Sensing an Intellectual Nemesis" (Film Criticism 32:1, Fall 2007, via ProQuest)
Roland Barthes, "The Face of Garbo" (BC 589-591)

October 2: THEORIZING FILM SOUND

Michel Chion, "Projections of Sound on Image" (from Audio-Vision) (handout)
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)
Alan Williams, "Is Sound Recording Like a Language?" (Yale French Studies, No. 60, Cinema/Sound (1980), pp. 51-66; via JSTOR)
Rick Altman, "Moving Lips: Cinema as Ventriloquism" (Yale French Studies, No. 60, Cinema/Sound (1980), pp. 67-79; via JSTOR)
Claudia Gorbman, "Narrative Film Music" (Yale French Studies, No. 60, Cinema/Sound (1980), pp. 183-203, via JSTOR)

October 9: THE POLITICS OF FILM (RACE, GENDER, CLASS)
Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing (1989) [watch prior to class]
Mark Rappaport, Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992)

Jonathan Beller, "Cinema, Capital of the Twentieth Century" (Postmodern Culture - Volume 4, Number 3, May 1994, via Project Muse; also available here)
Jonathan Beller, "Dziga Vertov and the Film of Money" (boundary 2 - Volume 26, Number 3, Fall 1999, via Project Muse)
Stuart Hall, "The Emergence of Cultural Studies and the Crisis of the Humanities" (October 53 (1990), 11-23, via JSTOR)
Lois W. Banner, "The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Marilyn Monroe and Whiteness" (Cinema Journal 47:4, Summer 2008; via Project Muse or handout)
Sean Griffin, "The Gang's All Here: Generic versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical" (Cinema Journal 42:1, Fall 2002, via Project Muse)

October 16: PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE BODY OF THE FILM

Vivian Sobchack, "What My Fingers Knew"
Vivian Sobchack, "The Scene of the Screen" (handout)
Laura Marks, "Haptic Visuality"
Laura Marks, from The Skin of the Film (pp. 138-153, 162-193)(handout)
Ann Rutherford, "Cinema and Embodied Affect"

October 23: 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)

October 30: APPROACHING TELEVISION

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (Part 1, chapters 1-7)
Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form

November 6: TELEVISION AND VIDEO (I)

David Thorburn, "Television Melodrama" (HN 438-450)
Ron Lembo, "Components of a Viewing Culture" (HN 455-470)
Horace Newcomb, " 'This is Not Al Dente': The Sopranos and the New Meaning of 'Television' " (HN 561-578)
Deborah L. Jaramillo, "The Family Racket: AOL Time Warner, HBO, The Sopranos, and the Construction of a Quality Brand" (HN 579-594)
John Hartley, "Television as Transmodern Teaching" (HN 595-604)
Annette Hill, "Big Brother: The Real Audience" (HN 471-485)
Greg Siegel, "Double Vision: Large-Screen Video Display and Live Sports Spectacle'' (HN 185-206)

[November 13: NO CLASS]

November 20: TELEVISION AND VIDEO (II)

Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reed, "Ah, Yes, I Remember It Well: Memory and Queer Culture in Will and Grace" (HN 249-271)
Jason Mittell, "Cartoon Realism: Genre Mixing and the Cultural Life of The Simpsons" (HN 272-291)
Trevor Parry-Giles and Shawn J. Parry-Giles, "Prime-Time Presidentiality: Mimesis and Catharsis in a Postmodern Romance" (HN 292-314)
Jane Arthurs, "Sex and the City and Commodity Culture: Remediating Postfeminist Drama" (HN 315-331)
Alison Hearn, "Image Slaves" (Bad Subjects 69, June 2004)
Jeffrey Sconce, "A Specter is Haunting Television Studies" (FlowTV, 9.01, October 2008)

Tuesday, November 25: NEW MEDIA

J. David Bolter and Richard Grusin, "Remediation" (Configurations 4.3 (1996) 311-358, via Project Muse)
Lev Manovich, "Database as a Symbolic Form"
Alexander Galloway, "Protocol" (Theory, Culture, and Society 23:2-3 (2006), 317-320, via SAGE Sociology Full-Text Collection)
Alexander Galloway, "Warcraft and Utopia"
Eugene Thacker, "Networks, Swarms, Multitudes" (Part 1, Part 2)

[December 4: NO CLASS]

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).