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Moderator: Jonathan Kahana (Cinema Studies)
Saturday, 10:00-11:15 in Tisch 006
Miranda Tedholm - The Historical and Contemporary Situation of the Highway Safety Foundation Films
The subject of this paper is the perception of the verité highway safety films of the 1960s, and how this perception has changed over the last 40 years. Specifically, I will focus on the verité films of the Highway Safety Foundation, partly because they pioneered the genre and partly because the institutional history surrounding HSF is so interesting. Specifically, I intend to examine how these films were perceived in the 1960’s, when they were contemporary and genuine educational objects shown in many American classrooms, and how they are perceived and viewed today, often in the framework of ironic consumption or alternative media, and the implications of both situations. Beginning with a historical overview of the institution which put out these films, I will continue with an examination and analysis of this genre’s unique aspects, before examining how the films were perceived both in the 1960s and today, with an emphasis on the structuring absence of these films from contemporaneous educational materials, and their resurgence in alternative media.
Martin Johnson - The Long History of Live Theater: Toward A New Historiography of the CinemaHistories of American cinema have often been narratives of consolidation. From Edison's patent trust to the studio system, the economic consolidation of film production, distribution and exhibition has been connected with the emergence of a dominant film form, as well as a standardization of audience experiences. Miriam Hansen has argued that by the early 1910's, the spectator position identified in film theory was in fact produced by the consolidation of the industry and its condensation into what is identified as Hollywood. More recent studies of film exhibition and so-called "orphan" films have troubled these assumptions. Live, sometimes improvisational music, non-cinema uses of movie theaters and the exhibition of films produced outside Hollywood suggest that watching movies was not a universal, standardized experience, but rather one that was highly differentiated depending on geography, demographics and other factors. These kinds of heterogeneous spaces were most common in small towns where movie theaters were often used for educational, government and civic functions. This paper argues for a new historiography of the cinema that attempts to periodize film history from the perspective of exhibition in small towns. Many of the arguments made about the consolidation of the cinema have been based on research in cities, which enabled specialization and differentiation of spaces in ways that were not economically feasible in small towns. While studies of exhibition and "orphan" films have argued that these practices are marginal, particular or mere footnotes to cinema history, I argue here for a consideration of a long history of what I provisionally call "live theater," in small towns, which begins in the post-Civil War era and ends in the 1960's or later, when many downtown theaters in small towns close. Live theater is marked by an awareness of liveness and particularity by moviegoers. Most universally, the use of musical accompaniment in the silent era allows for moviegoers to distinguish one theater from another on the basis of performance. But, live theater also accompanied itinerant performers, locally-produced contests, plays and minstrel shows, and the exhibition of non-Hollywood film, including local film and other forms of sponsored film. By reconsidering the cinema from the perspective of the small-town movie theater, I argue that we can produce a new historiography of the cinema that places it in more direct dialogue with other theatrical traditions, not just as something that supplants it, but also interfaces with it for fifty years or more.
Landon Palmer - Alternative Approaches to Fiction and Non-Fiction in Orson Welles' F for FakeLandon explores one of Welles’s final projects, F for Fake (1972), as a film that articulates certain ideas prominent in contemporary film theory (and deconstructs traditional ideas of classical film theory) by arguing the apparatus as a powerfully manipulative tool that has potential only to reveal a subjective, ideologically-informed conception of “truth” and “reality.” As Welles uses the narrative mode of non-fiction to deliberately deceive and misinform the viewer (thereby toying with the viewer’s acceptance of non-fiction as “real”), he reveals the entire medium of cinema (whether it be a work of fiction or non-fiction) to be a “fakery” with the potential of portraying nothing more than illusion. By incorporating footage of Welles editing the film while the viewer experiences it, F for Fake calls attention to the apparatus as a construction of perceived reality. Landon will contrast the arguments made in this film with film theorist/filmmaker Dziga Vertov’s similar exercise in making the viewer aware of the apparatus while experiencing the text in the “non-fiction” Man With a Movie Camera (1929). As Welles reexamines Citizen Kane (1942) in F for Fake as part of the filmmaker’s larger career as creator of illusions, Landon contrasts this argument with Andre Bazin’s endorsement of Kane as a work of “realism”. Finally, Landon examines how F for Fake’s stylistic and narrative methods (and how they reveal the real as subjective) are echoed in similar methods used in current trends of mainstream non-fiction cinema, such as Capturing the Friedmans (2003), My Kid Could Paint That (2007), and the films of Michael Moore.
Moderator: Richard Allen (Cinema Studies)
Saturday, 11:30 AM-1:00 PM, Tisch 006
Liz Stephens - Phallic Sublimina? The Masculine Crisis in Postmodernity
Only when analyzed frame-by-frame can one discover the depths of avant-garde animator Robert Breer's subjects and objects, particularly the graphic events involving phalluses. In LMNO (1978), he portrays phalluses in a playful way to call attention to the animation medium, the human body, and sex in order to what Breer indicates as "acknowledgement of human beings and what drives us." In his short film, a policeman becomes involved in several events, including raining phalluses and the discovery of his own body parts. Breer's policeman character discovers his own penis in a rapid close-up, evident by isolating the film frames. David Fincher's Fight Club (1999) shares a similar method of self-reflexivity and flashing frames of phallic images, albeit in a more pornographic way. The graphic images of a penis are interspersed in a narrative about Jack (Edward Norton), who reacts violently to a strictly American, consumerist, and capitalistic society by starting a men-only fight club. The phallic images operate as a disorienting device that his partner-in-crime Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) uses in his job as a film projectionist to "cut cocks" into family flicks. Fight Club is a film centered on a crisis: the capacity to disengage and arbitrarily insert free-standing penises anywhere. Likewise, Breer's figurations have the ability to occur anytime, or anywhere throughout his film while also working to surprise and disorient the viewer through a fragmented filmic method. Thus, a frame-by-frame analysis becomes necessary when looking at a Robert Breer film, as his animation technique is to film index cards one frame at a time. The flashing phallic images that occur in both films are a phenomenon of movement that is specific to the film medium. The combination of the nature of the images and the rapid speed at which they appear to the spectator contributes to the effect of disorientation in both films. Besides a shared reference to the phallus, both LMNO and Fight Club incorporate consumer culture. Furthermore, both films are self-reflective upon the film medium itself, addressing its modes of production and exhibition, and the aspects that make film unique. Both the avant-garde film and the Hollywood narrative share intertextual references to sexuality, masculine identity, and consumer culture. Furthermore, the filmic texts illustrate the historical American discourse of the phallus: one which moved from marginal to mainstream during the last quarter of the twentieth century. In this framework, the films become a critique of the politics of body representation.
Bryce Renninger Fatherhood and the Project of Queer Indian Cinema: The "Genre's" Formative YearsIn the collection of cinema by the Indian diaspora that deals with queer sexualities, the gender stereotypes that are propagated throughout South Asian popular culture persist. Thus, the status of the mother as the bearer of tradition and the father as site of social mobility, cited by Purnima Mankekar, takes effect in films like My Beautiful Launderette (Stephen Frears) and Surviving Sabu (Ian Iqbal Rashid). These films are unique in their depiction of male queerness primarily explored through social interaction with male family members. Whereas films that view queerness primarily through the relationship to the mother often focus on the conflict between tradition and western decadence, these films deal with different social networks. My presentation will explore the unique approaches that these films take on the interaction between queerness and South Asian diasporic identity. Using examples drawn from my larger work, Motherhood and the Political Project of Queer Indian Cinema, I will compare these two films with many others that focus on motherhood rather than male familial networks and fatherhood. The result is that the resultant queerness is one that works to deconstruct traditional notions of queerness, not traditional notions of South Asian identity. Ultimately, the queerness is not seen as alternative due to its non-heterosexual nature; instead, sexuality is dealt with in alternative ways that question the power of the classification of sexual identity, masculinity, and traditional South Asian identity.
Moderator: Priyadarshini Shanker (PhD Candidate, Cinema Studies)
Saturday, 3:00 - 4:30, Tisch 006
Roberto Ang - Looking Beyond the Spectacle of "Otherness": Merging Arts and Science in the Practice of Documentary Movie Making
The emergence of visual anthropology prompted critics to question whether visual media such as documentary films have the ability to conduct and present scientific research in the same way that printed materials can. Some scholars argue that the cinematic media do not have the elements necessary to present scientific studies and that they must be supported by written texts. Others insist that one can find certain interactive possibilities in the moving image that is absent in written ethnographic form. My paper will examine the positions of scholars such as Karl Heider and Peter Fuchs who question the effectiveness of film as a medium of data collection and presentation. In contrast, I will also look into the works and writings of David MacDougall who subscribe to the idea that ethnographic film should be construed as a field independent of traditional anthropology. In studying his position, this paper will be focusing on the concept of “film as text.” A brief examination of two of MacDougall’s works, Photo Wallahs and the Age of Reason, will also be presented. The documentary films of MacDougall, a filmmaker by training from UCLA, incorporate approaches that are similarly applied to traditional research or scholarship. MacDougall encourages an active participation of his film subjects and often observes them for an extended period of time. In the Age of Reason, he follows Abhishek, a Nepalese boy who entered the Doon School, and observes him for months to see how he integrates and adjusts into the life at this prestigious Indian boarding school. This paper will also explore the strengths and limitations of both written anthropological works and ethnographic films to show that while they are both independently effective, they also complement each other. MacDougall recognizes that while cinema, in general, has become progressively more troubled with problems of evidence and methodology, films can never be a substitute for the written word in anthropology. On the other hand, documentary films make anthropologists aware of the limitations that written words impose on them in the presentation of their research.
Makila Meyers - The evolution of African cinema as a means of countering the colonial rationaleThere was a period of African filmmaking when the cinema was used to advocate the rebuilding of the nation post colonial rule. This filmmaking was not cheap, and was funded by Europe, so it was limited in how truly revolutionary it could be. Today, the African economy, having been mortgaged to the World Bank is struggling; with such high need, there is little funding for the arts. However Africans have found ways to make film for cheap--using portable digital equipment, and have ways of distributing and exhibiting them for cheap as well through VHS/DVDs and portable home video equipment. The cinema apparatus is more easily accessible than it has ever been in Africa, yet it is not being used in a way which can best benefit the country; instead it is commercially driven and useful to only a few people. Video cinema must return to the inception of African filmmaking to create and employ an authentic film language. Approach: This paper explores African cinema at specific key points in history, and relates them back to a larger issue--the colonial rationale. The merits of indigenous practices are judged as authentic based on how they have countered the use of colonialism to oppress Africa both in terms of socio-political endeavors and economically. Examples of these are filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s by great African directors such as Ousmane Sembene. Conversely, African video films are discredited as a viable form of African filmmaking because it does contribute to an authentic African film language, but are appropriates of Hindi culture. Implications: Not only are video films cultural misappropriations, but their content and image are polemical. The power of the image in today’s global society ensures that these representations will enter cultures in faraway places, usually without any social context. Given Africa’s long history of savage representation in the West, can the African image really afford to contribute to their own demise.
Carolina Larrain - Third World Film: Conceptual Dialogues on the Construction of Alternative/Peripheral Cinemas Categories such as National Cinema, Queer Cinema and Third World Cinema abound in a need for defining and "placing" non-mainstream cinema and media in cinematographic circuits. The use of these terms many times reflect how the ideological bounding of concepts to peripheral cinemas and aesthetics can give way to polemic and complex practices, giving "alternative" cinemas visibility, while also constraining them to categories which constitute a burden to cinematographic creation and distribution. This presentation focuses on the case of Third World Film, deconstructing its underlying premises and exposing a series of cultural discourses and hegemonies present in it. By doing so, the concept of Third World Film as a somewhat 'forceful' category of "other" is placed under critical revision, opening new realms of discussion on the nature of Third World Film at present.
Moderator: Charles Leary (Adjunct, The New School; PhD, Cinema Studies)
Saturday, 4:30 - 6:00 PM in Tisch 006
Myles Jewell - Transcendental Filmmaking: Autobiography as an essay and the creation of the subjective fantasy in Jonas Mekas’ Lost Lost Lost
The essay film has been contested on many levels, just as the written essay has been accused of lacking “taxonomic certainty” and “thematic consistency” (Renov: 1992, 216).1 Jonas Mekas’ Lost, Lost, Lost, is one such text that can be defined as a film essay despite the accusations against such a filmic practice. In Michael Renov’s article, “Lost, Lost, Lost: Mekas as Essayist,” he argues that Mekas’ film is essayistic, but as a mode and not as a genre. Renov places Lost in what he calls “The Documentary Detour,” to examine the text through a documentary context. To my mind, placing Lost into the very realm it tries to resist is a traditional move, mirroring what Lost does not do. As a practice of transcendental filmmaking, Mekas’ film breaks from a tradition of filmmaking that Renov places Lost back into. Through this argument, Renov deems Lost as ‘essayistic,’ but I believe it is an essay. Mekas’ link to the transcendentalists’ writing parallels through his film diary/journal to their written diary/journal—as well as the common link of autobiographical self-expression—locating Lost as a essay film through its formal attributes. T.W. Adorno, in his essay, “The essay as form,”2 validates the essay’s use of subjectivity through an understanding of the essay as form. It is my intention to locate how the use of autobiography illuminates the transference of the particular to become the universal through the process of subjective fantasy in Mekas’ film practice. Lost embodies this subjective fantasy through the use of historical images (Lithuanian’s protesting Soviet occupation of their land, pre-gentrified Williamsburg), and autobiographical elements, demonstrating the transference of the universal to the particular as a dialectical negotiation. Thus, autobiography, through the subjective fantasy, illuminates how the dialectical negotiation of subject and object—or particular and universal—push against each other through form to create a film essay, such as Mekas’ Lost.
Diego Costa - The Essay and the Queer: Implications and Intersections
The trouble with taxonomy, its limitations and presumptions, affects notions of modes of filmmaking and sexual identity. This work looks for the ways in which the essay as film classification and the queer as a label of identification intersect and relate to each other. The investigation takes into consideration the processes of condensation and reiteration found in language and in the formation of myths. Derrida’s notion of Monolingualism, Freudian theory of dreams, Rey Chow’s The Age of the World Target and Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature are some of the methodologies used to thinking queerness and the essayistic approach to film. An analytical look into their similarities and differences, the way they both communicate, may debunk static notions of already established cultural givens (heterosexuality, fiction film, documentary) as much as battle site categories such as the essay and queer.
Dana Gravesen - That's [Not] Our Rosey:Narrative Exhaustion, New Situations, Reflexivity, and RoseanneAccording to most critical accounts, the final season of Roseanne (1988)—the series' ninth, aired on the ABC network during the 1996-1997 season—was a commercial and creative failure. The season's fantastic narrative of 'working class rags to one hundred and eight million dollar riches' was received, primarily, as a fatigued concept taken to ridiculous extremes. In the opening episode of the season ("Call Waiting"),[1] the Conner family—Roseanne Barr's fictional brood on Roseanne [2]—wins the Illinois State Lottery. The sitcom's style and plot strayed so far from its lauded early seasons that television critic Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune writes contemptuously: "when I heard Roseanne was kaput, I felt sort of like Dorothy Parker [the famous writer] did when told that a particularly boring president had died: How could they tell?"[3] Dan Morris' critique of late season Roseanne in the National Catholic Reporter emphasizes the author's position that the plots of later episodes of Roseanne experienced a "shift from insightful to insipid." [4] Adding industrial insult to considerable critical injury, for the first time in its entire nine year run, the sitcom dropped from the Nielsen top twenty programs; the final season of Roseanne—a program that placed in the Nielsen's top five network shows for its first six seasons, in the top ten for its seventh, and in the top twenty during its eighth—left the airwaves positioned at a lowly number thirty-two. [5] In other words: a premise positioned by entertainment critics (and chastised by longtime viewers) as a root level betrayal of the show's original pledge to blue collar comedy, in addition to absent actors (and by effect familiar characters), narrative inconsistencies (with regard to both season and series), and a shift away from 'realistic' comedy collectively shared the blame for Roseanne's 'failed' late season experiment; the show fell victim to an inability to fulfill its own construction of narrative and representational hegemony. But failure is, by any constructed standard imaginable, highly subjective. It is indeed true that in the ninth season of the show, a point in the series' run I will argue as procedurally linked to the eighth season's turn toward reflexivity, Roseanne's original situation—a working class family fights to survive underemployment, an overcrowded house, and poor education with wit and comedy—immediately shifts focus the moment the Conner family is in possession of great wealth; but in this transformation, a more intriguing question emerges: is this process necessarily and creatively destructive? The eighth and ninth seasons of Roseanne offer up explicit formal and textual signs of classically positioned narrative exhaustion. However, self-reflexive and inter-textual referential moments point toward the creation of both a narrative archive (to be self-reflected) as well as, most importantly, a new situation altogether. Though admittedly narrative exhaustion is a procedural step in the creative process, rather than construct an endpoint 'failure' of Roseanne from the perceived blasphemy of one, singular conceptual framework, I read the events and episodes of the eighth and ninth seasons of the program as functions of an admission that the original concept of the series had—politically, comedically, and commercially—exhausted its dominant resources. Once recognized, this exhaustion is a definitive factor of, but not the inescapable conclusion to, Roseanne's reconstruction and emergence as negotiator of a new narrative situation.
Moderator: Moya Luckett (Cinema Studies)
Sunday, 11:00 - 6:15 in Kimmel 914
Zach Campbell - Roberto Rossellini's Didactic Turn: History, Media, and the Case of Blaise Pascal
Rossellini's 1972 telefilm on Blaise Pascal is an exemplary work of the late, historical, didactic period that ended his career. This style was proclamatory, and presentational rather than immersive. One of its primary goals was to enroll the viewer into the great project of History, and humanity's--particularly the West's--linear string of accomplishments. (Or, in other words, to produce a sense of self-aware historicity in the audience.) I will situate the film in the context of media production in Italy and Europe more broadly at the time, and the role that international coproduction played in both cinema and television. Blaise Pascal is also shaped by certain currents of Italian philosophy and humanism as they were understood and implemented by Rossellini. In trying to enshrine reason and dialogue (and thus to edify the viewer), Rossellini himself subscribed to often contradictory and sometimes naive conceptualizations of the world, of civilization's history, and of ideology. The produced texts are, however, very rich discursive crystallizations. I will read the film and its treatment of history and society as both a definite "author's work" but also as an attempt at the erasure of authorship and aestheticism. In both ways it provides us with much to ponder.
Paul Fileri - Points of Departure Between You and Me, Here and There: Jon Jost’s Speaking Directly and Robert Kramer’s Route One/USA
This paper considers Jon Jost’s Speaking Directly: Some American Notes (1973) and Robert Kramer’s Route One/USA (1989) as two essay- film interventions made by former New Left radical activists that set out to confront the contemporary state of sociopolitical affairs in the United States from standpoints rooted in a sense of extreme alienation from existing dominant society. Though undertaken at two very different historical moments, the two projects remain deeply informed by each filmmaker’s personal reflection on his past participation in the activities of the Newsreel collectives in the late 1960s. Taken together, the two films offer a point of entry into thinking about the underlying tensions at work when an interrogation of subjectivity and an interrogation of the world are brought into intensive relation. My reading of the two works focuses on the way they can be distinguished according to their modes of address to the viewer, their geographic plans and narrative structures working at the border of fiction and non-fiction, and their approaches to representing the filmmaker's subjectivity in constitutive social relation with others. Speaking Directly takes the form of a self-conscious interrogation of the multiple contradictions experienced by Jost, rooted in one location, and it emphasizes the discursive situation established between the filmmaker and the viewer, so as to undertake a political materialist critique of illusionism. Kramer’s film takes the form of an apparently clear documentary account of a journey along the Route 1 highway. However, the central fictional character of Doc, created in collaboration between Kramer and the actor Paul McIsaac who plays him, disrupts the documentary aspect of Route One/USA, and the interplay between the characters of Doc and Kramer becomes key to the film’s layers of self-examination. Speaking Directly builds to a series of complex, counterposed appeals to the viewer, which finally produce the sense of a profound impasse —- even an articulation of despair over the possibility for radical political cinema in the wake of the late 1960s. Route One/USA confronts the implicit question of whether Kramer, as an expatriate, should return to settle permanently in the U.S. and become involved in a community, or whether he should instead move on, seeking a mode of perpetual uprooted transition. The film enacts this conflict structurally, representing both possibilities, split between the character of Doc and the representation of Kramer.
Michael Talbott - That Used To Be Me: Demythologizing Popular Memory of May ’68 in Romain Goupil’s Mourir à trente ans / To Die at 30This paper investigates how alternative film form is used to question popular memory of the historical in Romain Goupil’s Mourir à trente ans / To Die at 30 (1982). Combining diverse materials to construct its hybrid form of documentary, including both newsreel and amateur footage of demonstrations, still photographs, recreations, home movies, both old and new interviews, and his own voiceover narration, Goupil uses the biographical trajectory of himself and his activist-leader friend Michel to narrativize the historical past of the Leftist-activist movement responsible for the events of May ’68. Through excerpts from shorts and never-completed fiction films made by he and his friends both prior to and during their work as activists, Goupil places himself in front of the camera as much as he is behind it. With this multiplicity of speaking positions, Goupil achieves a highly privileged relationship to the history he is writing. His intimacy with the historical reality (we can see that he both lived it and filmed it) endows his point-of-view with heightened legitimacy: we the audience trust what he tells us, for as we watch the film, we both see history through his eyes and see him in history. Ordained as a custodian of the memory of May ‘68, Goupil interrogates the predominant conceptions about that legendary month and those individuals who were key players by recovering the individual history that has been masked by political slogans and iconic images of posters and barricades. By mapping the personal onto the political, the ensuing revelations of the immaturities, shortcomings and failures of the human subjects of the film become equally an interrogation of the historical memory of the Leftist struggle that they led.
Moderator: Moya Luckett (Cinema Studies)
Sunday, 12:30 - 2:00 pm in Tisch 006
Daniel Metz : CyberCelebrity: Celebrity in the Age of the Web
The web, as it is being utilized in the beginning of the twenty-first century, is a revolution from the traditional use of media. Individuals have banded together to form a new sphere of discourse, a sphere in which power is in the hands of the masses. Accordingly, this cyber culture has had a devastating effect on nearly every aspect of modern life; among the most drastic changes are in the exchange of facts and ideas, the production and distribution of entertainment, and the establishment of communities. These aspects of culture, among countless others, are in a state of rapid change, and their traditional counterparts are in crisis. To properly understand this revolution, we must first understand the distinctions between old and new media. The fundamental difference between these two models is output. Old media is a system based on one-way traffic, wherein an entity submits information to an audience. This system, for better or worse, was the dominant mode of media use for the twentieth century as dictated by broadcast and print media. New media, and our focus is on the Internet specifically, is configured in both directions. New media allows, and requires, an individual to simultaneously send and receive information, and thus the individual becomes producer and consumer, actor and audience. One major outcome in this new scheme is the disintegration of mediation. In the traditional model, media is presented to the audience through a mediator. This entity, most often a corporate interest, has the task of curating culture, and this job requires, among other things, selecting, editing, justifying, censoring, ordering, and advertising products for consumption. The executors of this enormous feat claim that their decisions are informed by public opinion, but their methods for gathering opinions (Nielson ratings, box office receipts) are notoriously imperfect. Furthermore, the mediators are responsible for creating the choices given to the public; one-way media requires a process of elimination rather than creation on behalf of the audience. New media destroys this distinction. On the Internet, the mediation can be removed, and the audience/actor creates and chooses its private culture. In the twentieth century, old media thrived with the use of stars and celebrities. Within the field of politics, film/tv, popular music, literature, academics, et cetera, icons were established and fetishized by the public. This practice continues, and in many ways grows more powerful, in the twenty-first century. Yet, just as the underlying culture, the discourse on celebrities is in crisis with new media. This paper intends to examine how the revolution of the web is subverting traditional notions of celebrity and stardom. I will study two related dilemmas in the discourse on celebrity in the wake of cyber culture. The first path of inquiry will explore how old media is struggling with new media and attempting to adapt to the cultural capital the movement has obtained. The second path will explore new notions of celebrity and stardom in cyber culture. Sources: Hearn, Allison. (2006) “John, a 20-year-old Boston Native …” In International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics. Vol. 2, Issue 2. Grossman , Lev. (2006) “Tila Tequila” In Time. 12/16/2007. Marshall, P. David. (2006) “New Media – New Self.” In P. David Marshall (ed) The Celebrity Culture Reader. New York: Routledge.
Timothy Stutts -Cross-Pollination of Appearance and Infrastructure in Mainstream Media Culture
Two weeks ago Paramount Pictures released "Bee Movie." The plot involves a bee student that graduates from college with only one career choice—honey. This typical massively marketed film release—which included huge billboards of the letter "B", flashy web banners on hundreds of sites, and a trailer featuring George Michael's classic tune, "Freedom"—has since grossed $180,000,000 worldwide. "Bee Movie's" professional infrastructure is complimented by its equally professional appearance, a derivative of tried-and-true 3D character animation techniques established by Disney's 1995 hit, "Toy Story." Historically films were either strictly professional or amateur in terms of both infrastructure and their appearance, but nowadays "Bee Movie" stands firmly in just one corner of a broad landscape that accepts new possibilities between professional and amateur—appearance and infrastructure. Last year nearly 500,000 viewers—roughly viewership of a network television program—tuned in to YouTube for a single episode of "LonelyGirl15," in which the main character, Brea, an attractive teenage girl, confessed that her parents were overly religious and controlling her life. Brea, as it turns it, was simply a low-paid actress under the direction of small and secretive crew. This information came out after the illusion could no longer be maintained, after viewers started noticing the production details that suggested professional infrastructure. In the end it was the professional lighting that left certain noticed that really confirmed doubt. Comments outing "LonelyGirl" were left on the YouTube page by the experts, so that other uninformed users were made quickly aware of it being a fake. In spite of the discovery the show continued to generate interest, in part because of the deceptive spell it had cast onto its audience. New episodes of the show still air today. It is a rare case where a seemingly amateur act is discovered to be a professional operation. What drives media creators to go the route of disguise? The media landscape is full of hybrid, deceptive, path-transitioning, and omni-transitional forms that cross-pollinate the amateur with the professional and involve strategic usage of appearance and infrastructure, through user-generated content and it's influence on mainstream culture.
Moderator: Martin Johnson (PhD Candidate, Cinema Studies)
Sunday, 3:30 - 5:00 in Tisch 006
Robyn Citizen- (Mis)Reading the Traveling Text
(Mis)Reading the Traveling Text” is a contextual and historiographic account of the circumstances leading to an episode of Masters of Horror, Showtime's anthology horror series, being banned from cable broadcast for "controversial" imagery. The episode, "Imprint", based on a Japanese short story, was filmmaker Miike Takashi's contribution to the series after being commissioned as a representative of the "J-horror" craze. This work focuses on how the text mediates the complex factors of production, distribution and exhibition resulting from moving the episode's production overseas; Showtime's marketing and commodification of national/cultural difference; and how cultural specificity framed the episode’s reception in its various transnational exhibitions. The transnational reception of “Imprint” can transform the text’s staging of historical moments into allegories on gender dynamics and Western military occupation, depending on the positionality - racial, national, gender, and class identities - of the spectator. In discussing how cultural specificity affects reception this analysis must trace its own evolution from a work that imposed Western theoretical frameworks in its textual analysis, towards one informed by Paul Willeman’s theory of cultural understanding. Ideally, cultural understanding “raises new questions for a foreign culture, ones it did not raise for itself” without either entirely abandoning one’s own signifying practices nor claiming an absolute fusion with the other culture. In addition, the changing industrial landscapes of both America and Japan are explored in order to better understand how “Imprint” as part of a cable anthology series can perform the cultural work of cinema in a world of emerging media technologies and mobile capital flows.
Ben Horner- The Biopolitics of Cruising
Abstract coming soon
Jaap Verheul- Influence of 9/11 on the Apocalyptic Cinema
My presentation addresses the influence of 9/11 on the apocalyptic film. I want to argue that 9/11 and its outcome has changed the apocalyptic film on both the thematic and the stylistic level. Hence, the post-9/11 apocalyptic film poses an alternative to the classical cinematic representation of the Apocalypse. The first part of my presentation will argue that the three films of my corpus – Children of Men (UK: Alfonso Cuaron, 2006), Minority Report (USA: Steven Spielberg, 2002), and War of the Worlds (USA: Steven Spielberg, 2005) – follow an ancient apocalyptic tradition. Jerome F. Shapiro describes this apocalyptic tradition as the “apocalyptic imagination.” Therefore, these three films belong to the genre of the apocalyptic cinema. Furthermore, I will argue that these films secularize the classical apocalyptic narrative in order to keep it relevant for the contemporary society. The second part of my presentation will argue that 9/11 has influenced the apocalyptic cinema on a thematic level. Hence, it is thematically an alternative to the classical apocalyptic cinema. First of all, I will illustrate that Minority Report is a reflection on President Bush’s “Doctrine of Preemption.” Second, I want to argue that War of the Worlds criticizes the war in Iraq. Finally, I will argue that Children of Men is a cinematic representation of Samuel Huntington’s notion of “the clash of civilizations.” Finally, I want to argue that 9/11 has also influenced the apocalyptic film on a stylistic level. I will illustrate that Children of Men, Minority Report, and War of the Worlds remediate famous media-images related to 9/11 (such as images from television and newspapers). Hence, they represent 9/11 also on a stylistic level. In combination with the thematic alteration, these post-9/11 apocalyptic films pose an alternative to the classical apocalyptic imagination.