Syllabus for English 61b, Philosophical Approaches to Film Theory

Fall 2015

William FleschNoam Schiff

Please note: This is an NC-17 class. By taking this class you are consenting to view NC-17 and unrated movies, some of them containing graphic depictions of sex and/or violence, and many of them about graphic subjects. If you are under 17 you should not take this class.

Meta-trigger warning: As recommended by the American Association of University Professors (for various reasons), I am not putting any trigger warnings in this syllabus, which means that if you are worried about triggers you are individually responsible for anticipating their possibilities (note again that the materials in this class are, many of them, NC-17).

Here’s an outline of the course, in week- or two-to-three-week increments. The bolded film titles are the ones that will be shown week-by-week; the others are films we’ll have occasion to look at clips from and to discuss in class.

Week of August 27th

Introduction, with excerpts from Christian Marclay’sThe Clock, and Hitchcock’s North by Northwest

Week of August 31st: Film, the stranger and the social world

Film: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947) (To be screened August 31)

Clips from 7 Samurai(Kurosawa, 1954)

Georg Simmel: “The Stranger” (Latte)

Walter Benjamin: “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Robert Warshow: “The Gangster as Tragic Hero” (Latte)

Alain Badiou, “On Cinema as a Democratic Emblem” (Badiou, Cinema, pp. 233-241)

Weeks of September 9, 16th, and 21st: Reality as the medium of film

FilmsLa Jetée(Chris Marker, 1962) (to be screened in class); Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954) (to be screened September 10);Boyhood(Richard Linklater, 2014) (to be screened September 21st); scenes from Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)

Readings Plato: Allegory of the Cave, Republic 514a-520a

André Bazin: “The Ontology of the Pbotographic Image” (What is Cinema, pp. 9-16), and Theater and Cinema, part 2, pp. 95-124

Stanley Cavell: “What Becomes of Things on Film?”, (Cavell on Film pp. 1-12)

Badiou: “Cinema as Philosophical Experimentation” (pp. 202-232)

Week of September 29: Space and Time

Films: Inception(Christopher Nolan, 2010); Dark City(Alex Proyas, 1998);

Kant on Space and Time Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, pp. 65-92

Weeks of October 7, 12th and 19th: Continuity and causation

Films: Sherlock Junior (Buster Keaton, 1924) (In class October 7), Films: The Matrix(Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski, 1999) (October 12), Paprika, Avatar, Top Hat,The Stunt Man(Richard Rush, 1980) (October 19), Touch of Evil, Russian Ark, Werckmeister Harmonies

Aristotle, Poetics, Chapters 6 and 7; Kant,pp. 219-222,

Berkeley: Three Dialogues

Thomas Lamarre: “The Multi-planar Image” (Latte)

October 22: Midterm This is a short but mandatory and high value test, meant to help you help yourself pump up your grade by doing the reading and watching the movies.

October 26: First paper due: 1250 words

Weeks of October 26th and November 2: Solipsism and Other Minds

Films: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) (October 16), La Captive(ChantalAkerman, 2000) (November 2), The Philadelphia Story (Cukor, 1940), Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999)

Descartes: Meditations

J.L. Austin: “Other Minds” Philosophical Essays, pp. 76-116.

SlavojZizek: Tarrying With the Negative, pp. 9-44

Cavell: “The Importance of Importance,,” Pursuits of Happiness, pp. 133-160

Kaja Silverman: “Back to the Future,” Camera Obscura 27 (1991) 109-132, through LTS

Week of November 9: Repetition

Film: Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) (November 9), Run, Lola, Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998)

Kierkegaard: Repetition

Week of November 16: Possible Worlds

Films: Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004), The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

D.K. Lewis, “Truth in Fiction,” Philosophical Papers,Vol 1, pp. 261-280

Weeks of November 23 and 30th: Scopophila

Vertigo(Hitchcock, 1958),Rear Windowredux, Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) (April 8) , Strange Days (Kathryn Bigelow, 1995)

Freud, “Infantile Sexuality,” from Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, on Latte

“Instincts and their Vicissitudes,” excerpt on Latte

Otto Fenichel: “The Scoptophilic Instinct and Identification”, in Visual Culture: The Reader, ed Evans and Hall, pp. 327-339

Laura Mulvey: “Visual Pleasure,” in. Evans and Hall, pp. 381-389

Silverman: “The Subject” in Evans and Hall, 340-355

Week of December 7th

Films: The Vanishing(George Sluizer, 1988),Hélas Pour Moi, Prelude to a Kiss

Melanie Klein: “Love Guilt and Reparation” in Love, Guilt and Reparation, pp. 306-43

Sartre: “The For-Itself and the Being of Value,” ten page excerpt from Being and Nothingness, Latte or internet resource

Lacan: “Variations on the Standard Treatment” in Ecrits, pp. 269-303

Take-home final due December 14th

Final paper due December 16th (1250 words)

Don’t plagiarize or cheat. Let me know if you need any accommodations for reasons documented with Brandeis.

This is a four-credit hour course, so you should anticipate having to do an average of 9 hours of work a week, not including attending class, for this course.

Each paper and test will be worth about 25%, but with credit being given for improvement over the course of the course. Paper topics will be announced in class. Makeup tests will be infinitely harder than the originals