FAVz006 Theories of Problematic Bodies in Mass Cinema

Faculty of Arts
Autumn 2006
Extent and Intensity
0/0/0. 5 credit(s). Recommended Type of Completion: k (colloquium). Other types of completion: zk (examination).
Teacher(s)
Andreas Robnik, Mgr. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D.
Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: doc. Mgr. Pavel Skopal, Ph.D.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
This course aims at discussing a broad spectrum of theoretical approaches which have mapped out conceptual problems with bodies in cinema. Conceiving of bodies as problems is meant to avoid any foundationalism that might see corporeality or sensoriality as givens. Much rather, the latter topics, and also what cinema makes appear as problematic about them, are to be investigated with respect to their mediatized, socio-cultural constructedness as much as with respect to the limits such constructing activity runs up to. While the course's range of concepts and cinematic references should become clear enough from the syllabus, a short unfolding of the term "mass cinema"in the course's title might offer some additional access: While seeking to avoid the nobilitating value judgements attached to the notion of "popular cinema"; the mass aspect points to the indeterminate, anonymous and whatever quality of the bodies engaged in cinema - which, nevertheless, we should think of as multiplicities. This goes for the embodied quality of the mass consumption of films, as much as for the "bio-masses"which cinema organizes and re-organizes through affects-as-images, be it on screens, in auditoriums or in media communities.
Syllabus
  • Literature: - Jean-Louis Baudry: "Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus" [1970] *Brno source - Walter Benjamin: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" [1936] *Brno source - Gilles Deleuze: The Movement-Image. Cinema 1. [1983] *Brno source - Thomas Elsaesser: "Specularity and engulfment. Francis Ford Coppolas 'Bram Stoker's Dracula'" [1998] *Brno source - Thomas Elsaesser: ""Feminism, Foucault, and Deleuze ('The Silence of the Lambs')" in: Thomas Elsaesser/Warren Buckland: Studying Contemporary American Film. London, New York 2002. *Brno source - Tom Gunning: "The Cinema of Attractions. Early Cinema, Its Audience and the Avantgarde" [1986] *Brno source - Siegfried Kracauer: "The Cult of Distraction" [1927], "Photography" [1927], "The Mass Ornament" [1927] in: Kracauer: The Mass Ornament. Weimar Essays. Cambridge, London 1995 *supplied by Robnik - Allison Landsberg: "Prosthetic Memory: Total Recall and Blade Runner" [1995] *Brno source - Christian Metz: "The Imaginary Signifier" in: Metz: Psychoanalysis and Cinema. The Imaginary Signifier. [1977] London 1982 - Laura Mulvey: "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" [1975] *Brno source - Roddey Reid: "UnSafe at any distance: Todd Haynes visual culture of health and risk", Film Quarterly 51, 3, 1998 www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1070/n3_v51/20563904/p1/article.jhtml - Jacques Rancičre: recent work on cinema, aesthetics, politics *supplied by Robnik - Steven Shaviro: The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis 1993. *Brno source - Vivian Sobchack: "The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic 'Presence'" [1988] - either Brno source or supplied by Robnik - Vivian Sobchack: "The insistent fringe: moving images and the palimpsest of historical consciousness" [1997] http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0499/vsfr6b.htm - Vivian Sobchack: "What My Fingers Knew: The Cinesthetic Subject, or Vision in the Flesh" [2000] http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/5/fingers.html - Williams, Linda: ťFilm Bodies: Gender, Genre, and ExcessŤ [1991] in: Barry Keith Grant (ed.): Film Genre Reader II. Austin 1995 - Slavoj Zizek: "The Matrix: The Two Sides of Perversion" [1999], http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9912/msg00019.html - Slavoj Zizek: The Perverts Guide to Cinema - Pt. 1 (video by Astra Taylor, UK/A 2006) - copy supplied by Robnik
Assessment methods (in Czech)
"Kurs FAVz006: Theories of Problematic Bodies in Mass Cinema se realizuje blokově v termínech 21.- 22. listopadu a 5.-6. prosince, v úterý 10.00 - 13.15 přednáška, 18.30 - 20.45 projekce, ve středu 11.00 - 13.15 a 15.00 - 18.30 přednáška.
Language of instruction
English
Further comments (probably available only in Czech)
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
The course is taught: in blocks.
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