Theories of the Moving Image (FI108)

Transcription

1 Theories of the Moving Image (FI108) BA in Film Studies Year 1 Department of Film and Television Studies Autumn 2016 Module Leaders: Dr Owen Weetch and Zoë Shacklock Aims and Learning Outcomes The Autumn term of Theories of the Moving Image introduces key theoretical concepts related to film form, spectatorship, and politics. The module will enable you to read film theory as a written text and a historical document, and to use it as a theoretical tool for interpreting screen media. As a theory course, the module will give you the skills needed to approach theoretical texts, and we will be focusing as much on analysing written arguments as discussing the screenings. By the end of the module you will be familiar with some of the key theoretical frameworks and debates in film scholarship, and their position within broader interdisciplinary contexts. You should be able to read complex critical writing with confidence and precision, and to deploy theoretical arguments in your own writing with similar confidence and rigor. You will be able to apply theoretical frameworks to screen media texts in both oral and written communication. Teaching and Learning Methods The structure of this module will differ from your other Film Studies subjects. Because we are dealing with complex theory, we will focus on exploring the written text in detail, learning how to read difficult critical language and how to apply it to screen examples. It is CRUCIAL that you read the set reading every week, and that you bring an annotated copy to class with you. You should allow time to read the set material twice. The theoretical material can be challenging don t be discouraged if you feel like you are struggling to understand. The aim of this course is to learn how to interpret theory, and much of this work will be undertaken collaboratively in the seminar. We will expect you to come to class prepared to engage in the discussion and to talk productively with one another. We also expect you to question the material you are reading learning to apply theory does not mean taking it as gospel, so please think critically and be prepared to challenge yourself. You will be asked to give a short (10 minute) presentation between weeks 3 to 10 (sign up in week two). This will involve bringing in a brief clip that you think illustrates or challenges the key theoretical framework for the week. You will screen the clip for the class and use the set theory to analyse it. Your presentation should end with a question for the group to discuss. After class, Owen or Zoë will offer some feedback on your grasp of the theory and your analysis skills. The aim of this exercise is to give you the chance to practice using theory to read screen media texts, and the feedback you receive here will be useful for your essay. 1

2 Timetable All teaching for this module occurs on a Monday. Owen will lead the course from weeks Weeks Two to Five, and Zoë will lead from Weeks Seven to Ten. There will be no teaching in Week One (induction day) or Week Six (reading week). Lecture: A am 10 am Screening: A am 12 pm Seminar One: A0.26 1:30 3 pm Seminar Two: A :30 pm Assessment The module will be assessed through essays submitted throughout the year and an unseen end of year examination. The first part of this term s assessment will be one long essay of 2,000 words, worth 25% of the total mark for the module. You will be asked to discuss one particular theoretical approach in relation to one text we have studied in the module. Essay questions will be distributed later in the term. The essay is due on Monday 12 th December (Week 11 of Autumn term). Essays must be submitted both in hard copy form and in electronic form via the e-submission system. Hard copies should be handed in to the Film and Television Studies departmental secretary (Adam Gallimore, in room A0.12), by 12:00 pm on the day of the deadline. Electronic copies should also be submitted by 12:00 pm through the Tabula system. Your essay will not be considered to have been submitted until you have handed in your hard copy AND uploaded your essay online. Failure to do either will mean that your essay is late and subject to penalties. For more information about essay submission, including extension requests and penalties, please refer to the UG Student Handbook. The remaining assessment for this term of the module will take the form of a two-hour unseen examination, which will take place towards the end of Summer term (date to be announced). The exam will have two sections, one for Autumn term and one for Spring term, each of which will be worth 25% of the total mark for the subject (the exam is worth 50% overall). More information about the format of the exam will be given later in the year. Contact Owen s office is A0.15 and Zoë s office is A1.08. We will have hours set aside each week to answer questions and queries, and you can sign up for a time using the sheets outside our office doors. You are welcome to come and see us whenever you need to we are always happy to offer feedback on your progress. We recommend you see us while planning your essays or during revision at exam time. We cannot offer feedback on drafts of your work, but we can discuss ideas and plans. You can also us at O.B.Weetch@warwick.ac.uk and Z.R.Shacklock@warwick.ac.uk. Please be aware that we cannot discuss long questions about assessment over , and we may advise you to make appointment to see one of us in person. 2

3 Additional Reading and Viewing The additional reading and viewing listed in the module outline is optional. We will not expect you to have completed this before the seminar. However, we do encourage you to read and view more broadly if you are interested in a topic, and the additional reading will be particularly useful when thinking about your essays. We know that reading theory can be overwhelming, so we have included some reference books that may help you if you are struggling. These are NOT intended to be used as a substitute for reading the primary text, and should NOT be cited in essays as such. They simply offer a different route into the text, which may help clarify your understanding. Dictionaries Pam Cook, The Cinema Book (London: BFI, 2007). Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2006). Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell, A Dictionary of Film Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Basics of film aesthetics David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010). Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White, The Film Experience: An Introduction (Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012). Edited anthologies (i.e. collections of famous essays) Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj, Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin s, 2011). Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (New York: Routledge, 2010). Philip Rosen, Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Robert Stam and Toby Miller, Film and Theory: An Anthology (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000). 3

4 Unit One Aesthetics and Ideology Week Two: 10 th October Odessa Steps: Theories of Editing and Film as a Plastic Art Screening: Friday Night Lights (dir. Peter Berg, Imagine, USA, 2004). Required Reading: Sergei Eisenstein, The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram and A Dialectical Approach to Film Form, Leo Braudy & Marshall Cohen (eds.), Film Theory and Criticism (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp Recommended Reading: Robert Stam, The Soviet Montage-Theorists, Film Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Styles and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985), pp David Bordwell, Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film, Film Quarterly (55:3, 2002), pp V.F. Perkins, The World and its Image, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (London: Da Capo, 1993), pp Jacques Aumont, Montage (Montreal: Caboose, 2013). H.G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2000). Additional Viewing: Battleship Potemkin (dir. Sergei Eisenstein, Mosfilm, USSR, 1925); The Big Sleep (dir. Howard Hawks, Warner Bros., USA, 1946); À bout de souffle (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, SNC, France, 1960); Rocky IV (dir. Sylvester Stallone, MGM, USA, 1985); The Bourne Ultimatum (dir. Paul Greengrass, Kennedy/Marshall, USA, 2007); Friday Night Lights [TV] (Imagine Television, NBC, USA, ). 4

5 Week Three: 17 th October Towards a Total Cinema: Theories of Cinematic Space Screening: La Règle du jeu (dir. Jean Renoir, Nouvelle Édition Française, France, 1939). Required Reading: André Bazin, The Myth of Total Cinema and The Evolution of the Cinema, What is Cinema? (Berkeley and Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2005), pp Recommended Reading: Robert Stam, The Phenomenology of Realism, Film Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp Jean-Louis Comolli, Machines of the Visible, in Teresa De Lauretis & Stephen Heath (eds.), The Cinematic Apparatus (London: Macmillan, 1980), pp Charles H. Harpole, Ideological and Technological Determinism in Deep-Space Cinema Images, Film Quarterly 33:3 (1980), pp Patrick L. Ogle, Technological and Aesthetic Influences Upon the Development of Deep- Focus Cinematography in the United States, Screen 13:1 (1972), pp Christopher Williams, The Deep-Focus Question: Some Comments on Patrick Ogle s Article, Screen 13:1 (1972), pp André Bazin, The Virtues and Limitations of Montage, What is Cinema? (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 2005), pp V.F Perkins, La Règle du jeu (London: BFI, 2012). David Thomson, Renoir, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies and What They Did to Us (London: Allen Lane, 2012), pp Additional Viewing: Partie de campagne (dir. Jean Renoir, Panthéon Pictures, France, 1936); Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles, RKO, USA, 1941); The Little Foxes (dir. William Wyler, Samuel Goldwyn Company, USA, 1941); The Best Years of Our Lives (dir. William Wyler, Samuel Goldwyn Company, USA, 1946); Yojimbo (dir. Akira Kurosawa, Toho, Japan, 1961). 5

6 Week Four: 24 th October God was Wrong! : Screening Ideology Screening: Bigger Than Life (dir. Nicholas Ray, 20 th Century Fox, USA, 1956). Required Reading: Jean-Luc Comolli and Paul Narboni, Cinema/Ideology/Criticism, Screen 12:1 (1971): pp Recommended Reading: Pam Cook, Auteur Theory and Structuralism, Pam Cook (ed.), The Cinema Book (London: BFI, 2007), p Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation), Essays on Ideology (London: Verso, 1983), pp Thomas Elsaesser, Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama, Bill Nichols (ed.), Movies and Methods II (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp Stella Bruzzi, How mise en scène tells the man s story, Men s Cinema: Masculinity and Mise en Scène in Hollywood (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013), pp Robert Lapsley & Michael Westlake, Politics, Film Theory: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp Robert Stam, The Frankfurt School and 1968 and the Leftist Turn, Film Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp , Additional Viewing: Young Mr. Lincoln (dir. John Ford, 20 th Century Fox, USA, 1939); Rebel Without a Cause (dir. Nicholas Ray, Warner Bros., USA, 1955); All that Heaven Allows (dir. Douglas Sirk, Universal, USA, 1955); The Man from Laramie (dir. Anthony Mann, Columbia, USA, 1955); Written on the Wind (dir. Douglas Sirk, Universal, USA, 1956). 6

7 Week Five: 31 st October I Like to Watch : Psychoanalysis and the Male Gaze Screening: Body Double (dir. Brian De Palma, Columbia, USA, 1984). Required Reading: Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures [2 nd ed.] (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), ix-30. Recommended Reading: Robert Stam, From Linguistics to Psychoanalysis and The Feminist Intervention, Film Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier, Robert Stam & Toby Miller (eds.), Film and Theory: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp Robert Lapsley & Michael Westlake, Psychoanalysis, Film Theory: An Introduction (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), pp Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry, Robert Stam & Toby Miller (eds.), Film and Theory: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp Anneke Smelik, Feminist Film Theory, Pam Cook (ed.), The Cinema Book (London: BFI, 2007), pp Mandy Merck, Mulvey s Manifesto, Camera Obscura 22:3, pp Visual Pleasure at 40 Dossier, Screen 56: 4 (2015), pp Additional Viewing: River of No Return (dir. Otto Preminger, 20 th Century Fox, USA, 1954); Rear Window (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount, USA, 1954); Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, Paramount, USA, 1958); Dressed to Kill (dir. Brian De Palma, Filmways, USA, 1980); Femme Fatale (dir. Brian De Palma, Quinta Communications, France/Switzerland, 2002); Under the Skin (dir. Jonathan Glazer, BFI, UK/USA/Switzerland). 7

8 Unit Two Materiality and Sensation Week Seven: 14 th November 2016 The Cinematic Screening: Samsara (dir. Ron Fricke, Magidson Films, USA, 2011), 99 minutes. Required reading: Siegfried Kracauer, The Establishment of Physical Existence, in Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), pp Recommended reading: Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, translated by J.A. Underwood (London: Penguin, 2008). Jean Epstein, On Certain Characteristics of Photogénie and The Photogenic Element, in Afterimage 10 (1981), pp Jean Epstein, Photogénie and the Imponderable, in Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin s, 2011), pp Miriam Hansen, The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism, in Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Timothy Corrigan and Patricia White (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin s, 2011), pp Siegfried Kracaeur, Inherent Affinities, in Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (Oxford University Press, 1995), pp Additional viewing: The Lumiere Brothers actuality films (1895-); The Bandwagon (Vincente Minelli, 1953); The Gleaners and I (Agnès Varda, 2000); Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916); Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin, 1936); Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983). 8

9 Week Eight: 21 st November 2016 Movement and Space Screening: Tangerine (dir. Sean S. Baker, Duplass Brothers/Through, USA, 2015), 88 minutes. Required reading: Giuliana Bruno, A Geography of the Moving Image, in Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York: Verso, 2007), pp Recommended reading: Iain Borden, Journeys, in Drive: Journeys Through Film, Cities, and Landscapes (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), pp Tom Gunning, Moving Away from the Index: Cinema and the Impression of Reality, in Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 18 (2007), pp Lev Manovich, Navigable Space in The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press), pp Christian Metz, On the Impression of Reality in the Cinema in Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema, translated by Michael Taylor (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp Claire Perkins, Dancing on My Own: Girls and Television of the Body, Critical Studies in Television 9 (2014): Additional viewing: The General (Buster Keaton, 1926); Mad Max Fury Road (George Miller, 2015); 'View from an Engine Front Barnstaple and other early phantom ride films; Smart Money is on the Skinny Bitch [1.3], Sense8 (Netflix 2015-); Snowpiercer (Bong Joon-ho, 2013); What Is This Film Called Love? (Mark Cousins, 2012). 9

10 Week Nine: 28 th November 2016 Affect and Sensation Screening: The Piano (dir. Jane Campion, Jan Chapman/CiBy, New Zealand/Australia/France, 1993), 117 minutes. Required reading: What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh, Senses of Cinema 5 (2000). Available online: Recommended reading: Jennifer Barker, 2009, Introduction: Eye Contact, in The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp Eugenie Brinkema, Ten Points to Begin and Film Theory's Absent Centre, in The Forms of the Affects (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), pp. xi-xvi and pp Laura U. Marks, The Memory of Touch, in The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), pp Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Cinema as Skin and Touch in Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp Additional viewing: Battle of the Bastards [6.9], Game of Thrones (HBO 2010-); Potage [1.3], Hannibal (NBC ); La Belle et la Bête (Jean Cocteau, 1946); Lemonade (Beyoncé, 2016); Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (Tracey Moffatt, 1989). 10

11 Week Ten: 5 th December Ecocriticism Screening: Beasts of the Southern Wild (dir. Benh Zeitlin, Cinereach/Court13/Journeyman USA, 2012), 93 minutes. Required readings: Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway, Intersecting Ecology and Film, in Screening Nature: Cinema Beyond the Human (New York: Berghahn, 2013), pp Sean Cubitt, The Blue Planet: Virtual Nature and Natural Virtue, in EcoMedia (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), pp Recommended reading: Nadia Bozak, The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012). Sean Cubitt, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere: Data Visualisation and Ecocriticism, in Ecocinema Theory and Practice, edited by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani and Sean Cubitt (Routledge: New York, 2013), pp Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003). David Ingram, Green Screen: Environmentalism and Hollywood Cinema (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000). Adrian Ivakhiv, An Ecophilosophy of the Moving Image: Cinema as Anthrobiogeomorphic Machine, in Ecocinema Theory and Practice, edited by Stephen Rust, Salma Monani and Sean Cubitt (Routledge: New York, 2013), pp Additional viewing: Blackfish (Gabriela Cowperthwaite, 2013); The Blue Planet (BBC 2001); Pacific Rim (Guillermo del Toro, 2013); Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, 1972); Upstream Colour (Shane Carruth, 2013); WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008). 11