Both Benjamin and
Hansen are interested in the
relationship between cinema and modernity, and both attempt to describe
and
understand the precise nature of that relationship.
Benjamin,
the “aura” of art, and mechanical reproduction
According to Benjamin, what changes when traditional art is replaced by
mechanically reproducible images? What is the “aura” of art? What
causes it to
“wither” in the age of mechanical reproduction?
Does Benjamin
seem enthusiastic about the decline of
traditional, auratic art in this modern era? What political and
cultural
factors would cause him to welcome the decline of auratic art?
Which film or
films screened this quarter seem to
share Benjamin’s belief in the revolutionary potential of cinema?
Hansen
and vernacular modernism
What does Hansen
mean by “vernacular modernism”? Why
does she need to modify the term “modernism” with “vernacular”? Is all
modernism vernacular? Are all popular films modernist? Which films
belong in
this particular category, and how are they different from the films
more
commonly characterized as modernist?
Cinema can be
considered an art like painting or
sculpture, or a business like auto manufacturing, or a form of
technology like
computers or MRI machines. In what category does Hansen put film? What
other
cultural products is cinema related to? If cinema is primarily a
phenomenon of
urban areas in Hansen’s writing, what is the relationship between
cinema and
cities?
What film most
closely embodies the kind of
vernacular modernism discussed in the Hansen reading? Why?
Eisenstein
and Bazin
Both Eisenstein
and Bazin address the most
fundamental questions about film in their writing, and those questions
can be
summed up in the title of a collection of Bazin’s essays: “What is
cinema?”
Midterm questions on Eisenstein and Bazin will ask you to outline their
answers
to that question and discuss those theories in relation to films we’ve
seen in
class this quarter.
Eisenstein
and montage
What does
Eisenstein consider the basic unit of a
film, and what is the fundamental act of filmmaking? What are the
various kinds
of montage identified by Eisentein? If montage occurs through the
collision of
two shots and the production of a third meaning in the process, is it
possible
for a similar kind of conflict or collision to occur within a single
shot? How?
Outside of film
history and theory, what analogies
does Eisenstein use for the process of montage? What theory of history
underlies and supports Eisenstein’s theory of montage?
Which theorists
does Eisenstein argue against? What
is the Kuleshov effect? Although they worked in different eras, how
would the
Eisenstein who wrote the essays in our course reader have responded to
Bazin’s
writing and Italian neorealism?
Which films or
film clips screened this quarter best
exemplify his theory of montage?
Bazin
and Realist Cinema
How does Bazin define “realism”? What does he believe to be the
fundamental
characteristic of the photographic image? How does Bazinian realism
differ from
other modes of realism (e.g., socialist realism, or the realism of
classical
Hollywood cinema and continuity editing, or the documentary aesthetic
of The Battle of Algiers)? Which filmmaking
techniques does Bazin advocate? What is his basic attitude toward
montage?
Which theorists
does he argue against? Or if he
doesn’t argue with them specifically, which theorists seem like the
most
natural antagonists for Bazin? Why?
Which filmmaking
styles are consistent with his
philosophy of film? Which approaches to filmmaking does he criticize?
Why?
Which films
screened this quarter are most
“Bazinian”? Which aspects of their narratives or formal styles would
seem most
“realist,” according to his definition of the term? Which specific
scenes from
those films would cause Bazin to leap out of his seat?
Does the digital
revolution pose a challenge to a
Bazinian definition of realism? How? What other theorists on the
syllabus
explicitly or implicitly challenge Bazin’s understanding of cinema?
Deleuze
and the Time-Image
What are the main
differences between the
movement-image and the time-image in Deleuze’s theory? Why would
filmmakers in
the early years of cinema be so fascinated with movement captured on
film?
What historical
moment marks the break between these
two conceptions of the image? What is an “any-space-whatever”? Why
would the
habits of perception and action from the first half century of cinema
no longer
apply? Why are so many post-WWII European art films so difficult to
watch, and
how does Deleuze help us understand that difficulty?
Which film or
films seem to exemplify Deleuze’s idea
of either the movement-image or the time-image?
Second Midterm Review
Spectators,
Audiences, Genres
Think about the
categories used in film studies to
differentiate among different spectators and audiences (e.g., the ideal
or
generic spectator, audiences divided by various sociological or
demographic
categories, individual spectators). How do the authors from the reading
in this
unit and the material from lecture approach the difficult problem of
audiences
and their diversity? Focus especially on Mulvey, Baudry, Stewart, and
Gunning.
What are the characteristics of the spectator of classical Hollywood
cinema in
Mulvey’s model? Who has the power of the gaze? Who is the object of the
gaze?
How does gender figure into this equation? What kinds of interaction
does the
spectator have with the object on the screen? What pleasure does the
audience
derive from watching films? What are the psychological foundations of
that
pleasure? Which films best exemplify Mulvey’s model of the cinematic
gaze?
Why would the
destruction of visual pleasure be a
political act, according to Mulvey? If Mulvey is critical of the kind
of
filmmaking associated with Hollywood, what alternative modes of cinema
would
she support? What are the limitations of Mulvey’s conception of
spectatorship?
What other ways
of approaching spectatorship do the
other readings introduce? How does Stewart distinguish between
different
categories of spectator in her essay, and what do those categories
allow her to
discover and understand? What does Tom Gunning mean by the “cinema of
attractions”? In what era did this kind of film and spectatorship
thrive? In
what forms of entertainment and film genres does it survive?
Authors,
Studios, Stars
What are the
basic principles of “auteur theory” as
described by Truffaut or Sarris? How should a critic or viewer approach
and
analyze a film according to the tenets of auteur theory? How would you
perform
an auteurist reading of a film or group of films? Which films or
directors
would be the clearest examples for this kind of analysis?
What challenges
to auteur theory have been raised
since the 1950s and 1960s, when auteur theory was in its heyday? What
other
models of authorship have been proposed, either by film or literary
critics?
How do those models undermine or at least offer an alternative to
auteur
theory?
What are the
basic principles of star discourse in
film studies? How does a star differ from an actor or a character? In
addition
to the films themselves, where is a star persona produced? What are the
social
and cultural functions of the movie star? Which films or stars best
exemplify
this star-based approach to film studies?
Who in your
opinion is the true author of a film? Is
there a true author? If not, how would suggest that audiences and
critics think
about this issue of authorship in film?
New
Directions in Film Studies
Does the digital
revolution pose a challenge to a
Bazinian definition of realism? How?
What do Bolter
and Grusin mean by the term
“remediation”? What is the relationship between the various old and new
media
the late 20th and early 21st centuries? What is
the role
of the author in the process of “remediation”? Does their model imply a
different definition of the artist and the act of creation? How is
their model
of hybrid media different from the idea that artistic media have an
essence and
a nature (e.g., Bazin’s assertion that cinema is a fundamentally
realist medium
or Eisenstein’s position that cinema is montage)?
What does Anne
Friedberg mean by the “end of cinema”?
What forces are bringing about its demise?
What challenges
do newer media like television and
new screen cultures like the cell phone present for approaches to
cinema
studies based on traditional conceptions of film (e.g., on the
photographic
properties of film stock, on the gathering of audiences in a theater,
etc.)?