Week 14/15: Final Essay Progress Meetings

Hi Everyone,

Below is a list of time slots that you can sign up for (by simply replying to this post) for your final essay progress meeting (first come, first served basis). Your final essay proposals will serve as the basis for our conversation. (see all details about the proposal, the final essay, and all other assignments, as well as assesment rubricks, suggested films for focus, and student chair powerpoints in the Course Information section of our BB site.) NB: Given hectic schedules and that your proposal should be developed enough to serve as a blueprint for your final essay, I will accept proposals until Sunday 20 May 11:59pm without any grade penalty. Those students who submit their proposals by the official deadline (Sunday 13 May 11:59pm) will receive extra credit and the benefit of feedback 12 days before the final essay is due rather than only 5 days. For those of you who feel overwhelmed rather than liberated by the open assignment, why not work on a film or films from which we’ve seen scenes in the class as illustrative of one or more of the key themes? For example, I would be very interested in reading a paper that looks at the whole of Amour through a cinema as door approach in relation to the film’s challenge to conventional discourses of love and death.

Tuesday 15 May

10:30   Emma

10:50   Gabriele

11:10   Kate

11:30   Mara

11:50   Jasmijn

12:10

12:30   Coralie

12:50   Feyza

BREAK

1:30

1:50

2:10   Jake

2:30   Kiley

BREAK

3:30   Pinarnaz

3:50   Sofie

4:10   Sam Hoogma

4: 30  Merel

Tuesday 22 May

 

1:30   Malindi

1:50   Sophie

2:10   Sam Braun

2:30   Kit (Capstone Supervisee)

2:50

3:10   Spencer

3:30   Rebecca

3:50    Kangli

4:10   Loes

4:30   Jade

 

Week 13: My Life Without Me, Elsaesser and Hagener “Cinema as Skin,” Martin Marquez “From G (the Gaze) to H (the Haptic)”

Cinema as skin continues cinema as ear’s challenge to the hierarchy of the gaze via the haptic (related to or based on touch). The notion of skin as an organ of continuous perception understands cinema as an embodied experience through touch; within this approach, theorists also conceptualize cinema as an encounter with the racially or culturally coded Other (our focus in the beginning weeks of the course, so in a way, we are coming full circle but also that circle is expanding). With that in mind, please reflect on the following questions, and post an answer to one of them (NB: this is the last required REVERB of the term).

1. Elsaesser and Hagener  introduce skin as a liminal space: a boundary between inside and outside, Self and the Other. Building on this notion, how can cinema as skin be compared to cinema as window/door? What does this comparison reveal about the relationship between the screen and the spectator? Choose a scene from My Life Without Me or another film(s) to anchor your arguments. (written by Feyza and Pinarnaz)

2. Elsaesser and Hagener write that “female skin is the canvas on which endless dramas of hiding and revealing, of self-exposure and modesty, of presentation and shame, or veiled allure and absolute vulnerability are played out and staged” (112). How do these dynamics of gender and cinema as skin play out in My Life Without Me? Support your argument with a close reading of one or more scenes from the film. (written by Kangli and Sam Hoogma)

3. Drawing on Laura Marks’ The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment and the Senses, Martin-Marquez argues that haptic (or tactile) visuality “may depend in part on spectator predisposition, but some films also include particularly ‘haptic’ images, which may be created, for example, with extreme close-ups and/or out-of-focus, underexposed or overexposed, or grainy shots; haptic images are often not immediately discernible, prompting the eye to move over or ‘caress’ the surface of the visual field, to be ‘more inclined to graze than to gaze,’ in the author ’s [Marks’] felicitous phrase” (555). Name a film that you feel mobilizes these kinds of haptic/visually tactile techniques (or others), and analyze how it does so.

4.  How does the way the film is shot affect the spectator’s experience of My Life Without Me? Support your answer by drawing on Martin Marquez’s discussion of the haptic to analyze a scene(s) of your choice that the article does not treat.

5. Open question: Analyze a scene(s) of your choice from My Life Without Me which engages with what you consider to be an especially productive concept from the readings, and try to compare the film in this regard to previous films we’ve screened in the course and/or frameworks through which we’ve interpreted them (cinema as window/frame, cinema as door/threshold, cinema as mirror/face, cinema as eye, cinema as ear, and/or cinema as encounter with the racially or culturally coded Other).

Week 12: Slumdog Millionaire; Elsaesser and Hagener “Cinema as Ear” and Banaji “Seduced ‘Outsiders’ vs. Sceptical ‘Insiders: Slumdog Millionaire Through its Re/Viewers”

If the eye has been considered the privileged sense in cinema, with the advent of Dolby and surround sound, a focus on cinema as an acoustic experience has come to challenge the eye’s predominance as the central element of perception, knowledge, and experience. “Because sound fills space with reverberation, its meaning is perceived to reside in the image, even though it may ‘come’ from elsewhere. Thus, sound ‘stands for’ the space implied by the image, since listening pulls one in, while seeing creates distance” (Elsaesser and Hagener, 148). While we must be careful not simply to invert the power paradigm (lest we continue operating under Western discourses of discovery and conquest**), we can highlight a myriad of examples which demonstrates this challenge to the classical hierarchical relationship between image and sound.

With these ideas in mind, please reflect on the following questions, and answer one of them in your blog post.

1. How does Slumdog Millionaire demonstrate this challenge?  In what ways do different recurring sound themes add a third dimension (the original 3D element of the film experience, as explained by Elsaesser and Hagener)? Choose a scene from Slumdog Millionaire to anchor your arguments, addressing film techniques which illuminate the connections.
2. How does Banaji’s research with flesh-and-blood viewers and conclusions about Western- and Indian audience perceptions connect with the theoretical concepts presented by Elsaesser and Hagener? Choose a scene from Slumdog Millionaire to anchor your arguments, addressing film techniques which illuminate the connections.
3. Elsaesser and Hagener state that “if sound and image have become indispensable to each other, as well as equivalent, even to the point that each is as untrustworthy as the other, then their mutual untrustworthiness acts as the new “ground” of representation” (148)  With this in mind, argue if, in your opinion, the “new interdependence” of sound and image gives rise to the “truth” of children in Indian slums or rather if it destablilizes notions of truth (and of Self/Other). You can use the concepts of outsider gaze and insider knowledge discussed in the Banaji article to help you. (written by Rebecca and Sophie)
4. In their chapter on Cinema as Ear, Elsaesser and Hagener describe the “new sound picture” and that one of its features is that it “puts the spectator into free fall, in time as well in space, as many of the formal parameters that ensured the stabilization and orientation of the spectator in classical cinema are subverted, refigured or merely called into question.” (144) How would you say that the sound design in Slumdog Millionaire works/doesn’t work against these formal parameters? (written by Rebecca and Sophie)
5. Considering [surround] sound as an expansion from the two dimensional image projected onto the screen to a three dimensional experience, how could the latter change/develop as a whole in future cinema? (written by Sam Braun and Coralie)
6. Open question: Analyze a scene(s) of your choice from Slumdog Millionaire which engages with what you consider to be an especially productive concept from the readings, and try to compare the film in this regard to previous films we’ve screened in the course and/or frameworks through which we’ve interpreted them (cinema as window/frame, cinema as door/threshold, cinema as mirror/face, cinema as eye, and/or cinema as racial, gendered and classified bodies).

**In reflecting upon the intersections between cinema and society, and how these relate to notions of cinema as eye and ear, it may help to restate the relation between the cinematic eye in its connotation of knowledge and enlightenment, and the power dynamics of object and subject. In the article I was referring to in class by Robert Stam and Ella Shohat, “The Imperial Imaginary,” the authors argue that cinema is tied up with the imperialist/colonialist project. The beginnings of cinema coincided with the apex of imperialism/colonialism, portraying non-western countries as a spectacle and thereby constructing a national (and Western) identity, clearly separating the Other and the Self. This relates to ideas of knowledge and enlightenment in that cinema is regarded as a product of science — which is in turn constructed as distinctly Western. Moreover, the idea that the West holds the truth enables imperialist/ colonialist practices: if the West holds the truth, then their subjugation of the Other is rationally legitimised. In this way, the cinematic eye as enlightened knowledge embodies a self/other construct of power. (for those of you who are interested, I have added the article to our BB course materials–scroll to the end).

Week 11: Blade Runner and Elsaesser and Hagener’s Cinema as Eye (no other reading this week)

According to Elsaesser and Hagener, similar to cinema as mirror, cinema as eye “directly implicates the self in what it sees” (83), however, cinema as eye highlights the relations of power between spectator/screen. “Similar to the approaches discussed under mirror and face, … a certain distance, proper to “seeing” as a pure act of ocular perception, is maintained throughout. Unlike the frame or the window, however, this distance does not facilitate or regulate access to the diegetic world, but highlights the power potential of this arrangement and its promise or threat of mastery or possession” (83).  Thus, the relation between spectator/screen becomes more complicated because it is built upon power relations and dynamics — ones with clear divisions (such as Mulvey’s discussion of active male/passive female and the camera as a prolonged male gaze) as well as ones that are more pervasive (such as Foucault’s discussion of knowledge/power in relation to the gaze and his idea of modern society as carceral, shaped like the Panopticon). With this in mind, reflect on responses to the following questions, and write a response for one of them:

1. How does cinema as eye engage with, extend, and/or challenge cinema as mirror? Name a film that stands out to you as exemplary in this regard, and explain why.
2. Analyze a scene of your choice from Bladerunner that demonstrates how cinema as eye engages with, extends, and/or challenges cinema as mirror.
3. Choose and analyze a scene in Bladerunner in which the eye signifies both stylistically (in form/technique) as well as metaphorically.
4. Choose and analyze a pair/sequence of shots in Blade Runner or one of the films previously seen for this class, in which rupture/suture is at work in conjunction with the cinema as eye (90). (written by Jade)
5. Compare the pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) to the replicants of Blade Runner; how are they similar and how are they different? What kind of anxieties may the replicants from Blade Runner reflect? Analyze scene(s) in support of your argument. (written by Loes)
6. Compare and contrast the dystopian vision of District 9 (2009) with that of Blade Runner.  Analyze scene(s) in support of your argument.
7. Open question: Analyze a scene(s) of your choice from Blade Runner which engages with what you consider to be an especially productive concept from the readings, and try to compare Blade Runner in this regard to the previous films we’ve screened in the course and frameworks through which we’ve interpreted them (cinema as window/frame, cinema as door/threshold, cinema as mirror/face, and/or even race, gender and class discourses).

Week 10: Persona, Elsaesser and Hagener “Cinema as Mirror and Face,” Oliver “Alterity Within Bergman’s Persona”

Hi Everyone,

I had a very productive meeting with Rebecca and Sofie Tuesday after class (the midterm evaluation representatives), and appreciated the points they presented as well as the potential solutions they offered. I’d like to implement some changes after discussing these with you in class next week, but to begin with, I have added more detailed prompts to the critical questions of the Reverb this week, included an open question option, and have provided detailed feedback to each of you who posted a blog last week.

Whereas ‘cinema as window’ and ‘cinema as door’ concern the distance between the spectator and the filmic world (either providing a window and frame onto,  or a door into, the diegetic world, and the ontological and epistemological implications of each–see Gabriele’s post from last week for a detailed account, especially the passages below*), cinema as mirror works through the spectator’s confrontation with the self as the other. This because film has the ability to present the spectator with a look in the mirror (indeed by providing a substitute for the mirror), thereby confronting the spectator with his/her own self from an outside perspective (56). In this way, identification is necessarily accompanied by self-estrangement (57).

With this in mind, reflect on responses to the following questions, and write a response for one of them:

1. According to Elsaesser and Hagener, “there are three paradigms which belong to the semantic field of the mirror and its metaphoric connotation,” (p. 71).  These paradigms include the mirror as a window on the unconscious, the mirror as reflexive-doubling, and the mirror of ‘the Other’. In your response, craft a scene analysis to illustrate how one of these concepts is utilized in Persona.

2. Hagener and Elsaesser argue that Persona belongs to the second paradigm of the semantic field of mirror and its metaphors. Can you think of a scene that employs reflexive doubling, and if so, how do the technical specificities help to achieve it? (written by Gabriele Plukaite and Sofie Keijzer)

3. Oliver’s psychoanalytic reading argues that the main dilemma surrounding the film is motherhood. Can you extend, or perhaps complicate, this reading while using Lacanian analysis? If so, analyse a scene that is relevant to your reading and specify how the technical specificities in the scene support your argument. (written by Gabriele Plukaite and Sofie Keijzer)

4. Hagener and Elsaesser write about how spectators’ identification with what happens on screen works on two levels and, also, is always a misrecognition. How does Persona play with this unavoidable identification? Base your argument on a close scene or narrative analysis and show what techniques the film uses to dispute or reinforce this identification. (written by Gabriele Plukaite and Sofie Keijzer)

5. In Cinema as Mirror and Face, Elsaesser and Hagener ask “what are the implications of the spectator looking into the eyes of a face that is larger than life?”. Respond to this question using either a scene from Persona or a scene from a film of your choice, drawing parallels to the chapter if you can. (written by Kate Mitchell and Malindi Kindrachuk)

6. Open question: Analyze a scene of your choice from Persona which engages with what you consider to be an especially intriguing concept from the readings.

 

*Crucial excerpts from Gabriele’s post last week that articulate the broader context of the shift from Cinema as Window and Frame to Cinema as Door and Threshold (which is also roughly the shift from ontologies to epistemologies): “The most important difference, I think, between the ideas of ‘cinema as window and frame’ and ‘cinema as door’ is that the chapter on ‘cinema as door’ does not disembody the spectator from the filmic experience but puts an emphasis on it [embodiment], and that film is not a neutral and autonomous product but is enveloped by its production and presentation to the public, even including marketing and cinema architectures…I believe that the ideas of thresholds between filmic and non-filmic worlds as entrances, spectator identifications with the characters and other concepts mentioned in this chapter all blur the boundary between supposedly rigid, classical notions of the role of the spectator and the role of film, which eventually resides neither here nor there, or as the chapter mentions, in the liminal space that is neither solely spectator’s mind nor the cinematic screen (38)…[Neoformalist theory] is still ontological and claims that film has a static meaning that is up for the viewers to ‘assemble’, while poststructuralists present the viewers with much more agency to create different meanings, since they claim that “… meaning may be inherently unstable, that the process of signification is unlimited and that differences reproduce themselves indefinitely” (45), thus creating a dialogue between a film (not necessarily the film’s creators) and the spectator. This sort of dialogue happens in a liminal space between the spectator and the screen in which “… energies circulate that implicate the spectator and respond to his/her particular input” (46).”

Week 9: District 9, Elsaesser and Hagener’s “Cinema as Door and Threshold,” and van Veuren’s “Tooth and Nail: Anxious Bodies in Neill Blomkamp’s District 9”

Please reflect on, and write a response to one of, the following questions

1. To what extent does ‘cinema as door’ extend the notions of ‘cinema as window and frame’? Draw on the Elsaesser&Hagener text to explain, and then illustrate your answer with an analysis of a scene/scenes from District 9, or if you prefer, a comparative analysis of one scene from Rear Window and one from District 9.
2. Drawing on the ideas presented in van Veuren’s ”Anxious Bodies,” how does the protagonist Wikus exist as both an example and a parody of a white body in this particular setting and space? What does his transformation tell us or ironically represent? (And can you draw connections with the Dyer pieces about the representation of whiteness that we have previously read?) Support your answer with a scene analysis. (written by Kiley)

Week 8: Rear Window, Elsaesser and Hagener’s Ch 1 “Cinema as Window and Frame,” Stam and Pearson’s “Hitchcock’s Rear Window: Reflexivity and the Critique of Voyeurism”

Does Hitchcock’s approach to cinema in Rear Window — as a means of connecting the film world and the spectator — fit best in a realist or a formalist approach to film as window or frame? The Stam&Pearson article compares Jefferies to a director in the beginning of the movie, while later on, his directorial role is broken down. Within this comparison, is Jefferies’s approach to the ‘objects’ of his ‘film’ a formalist or a realist one? And how is this role broken down? Illustrate with a scene analysis from Rear Window. (written by Jasmijn, Spencer, Jake, Merel)

Week 7: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Elsaesser and Hagener “Introduction” and “Cinema as Brain”

Please reflect on the following, and write a response for one of the two questions:

1. Drawing on the Elsaesser and Hagener text, reflect on the position of film: where does the film take place, on the screen? In your body? In between your body and the screen? How do the body and film relate?

2. From page 151 onwards Elsaesser and Hagener speak of five concepts that will help to clarify the relation between “the cinema as an extension, analogy or substitute of the mind”. What are these five concepts? Can you think of examples (from Eternal Sunshine or other films)?

Week 6: Week 5: Some Like It Hot, West and Zimmerman “Doing Gender,” Connell “Masculinities,” and Dyer “Monroe and Sexuality”

Drawing on the readings by Hendershot and Nolley (respectively), it could be argued that Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and The Searchers (1956) screen (male) sexual fears; in the former, the threat is an asexual alien pod, while in the latter, the principle threat consists of miscegenation* orchestrated by the (Native American) Other. How does the comedy from the same post-war era, Some Like It Hot (1959), fit in? Provide a response to this question by focusing on a close analysis of a scene or scenes while explicitly engaging with the concepts and conceptual frameworks offered in the readings this week (and which build on those we’ve been working with in the first part of the course).

 

* Definition: a mixture of races, especially: marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race.The term miscegenation has been used since the 19th century to refer to interracial sexual relations and marriage, and more generally to the process of genetic admixture. Historically, the term has been used in the context of laws banning interracial marriage and sex, known as anti-miscegenation laws. Because of the term’s historical use in contexts that typically implied disapproval, more unambiguously neutral terms such as interracial, interethnic, or cross-cultural (these last two terms an acknowledgment of race as a social construct) are more common in contemporary usage. (sources: Merriam-Webster dictionary, Wikipedia, and Stuart Hall’s Representation and Signifying Practices)

Week 5: Preference for Chairing of Session

Dear Students, please post an entry this week stating your preference of topic for the Chairing of Session. (First come, first served) For each topic, up to 4 student chairs may sign up, although you will be working in pairs. Please keep in mind that you need to have completed a rough draft of your presentation one week in advance so that I have time to give you feedback and you have time to incorporate my suggestions.

 

Week 8, Cinema as Window and Frame; Rear Window: Spencer, Jasmijn, Jake, Merel

Week 9, Cinema as Door; District 9: Kiley, Emma

Week 10, Cinema as Mirror and Face; Persona: Gabriele, Sofie Keijzer, Malindi, Kate

Week 11, Cinema as Eye; Blade Runner (or another to be chosen by chairs w approval of Prof): Loes, Jade, Eleni, Mara

Week 12, Cinema as Ear; Slumdog Millionaire, Gegen Die Wand: Rebecca, Sophie Smeets, Coralie, Sam Braun 

Week 14, Cinema as Skin; My Life Without Me: Pinarnaz, Sam Hoogma, Kangli, Feyza