Why Study Film?

"Film is … an important scientific tool that has opened up new areas of knowledge. It provides the first significant general means of communication since the invention of writing more than seven thousand years ago (Monaco 2009, p.71).

The recording arts (photography, film, and sound recording) have shifted our historical perspective with its ability to recreate a phenomenon. Film that blends these recording arts together (photographic image, movement, sound) provides a more direct communication and/or language than the painting, novel, theatre, music.

Walter Benjamin - "The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)“: film is the most social and communal of the arts. Film addresses the world, pierces through the realities of daily life like a knife, engaging an audience in a social and cultural discourse, a mass engagement of the imagination unlike any other art form (also the potential being an authoritarian representation of the dominant ideology).

Film, Culture and Politics

Political Culture becomes a focus in political science in the early 60s (Almond and Verba 1963).

Film scholar Dyer (2000) suggests that culture "of all kinds produces, reproduces, and/or legitimizes forms of thought society. Who we think we are, how we feel about this, who we believe others to be, how we think society works, all of this is shaped, decisively, perhaps exclusively, by culture." (p.6)

The difficulties in studying film

Abstraction: If poetry is what you can't translate, as Robert Frost once said, art is that which cannot be defined.

Non-individualized creativity: Who is the author? Screenwriter? Director? Producer? Studio executive? Orson Welles's The Magnificent Amberson (1942), was removed from Welles's control before it was edited. RKO reshot portions of it, changed the ending and destroyed the deleted footage. Can there be a message if there isn't an author?

All arts, but perhaps, especially Film (and TV), because it is so expensive, are economic products that sees the audience as a consumer. Does the message get lost in the commercial packaging of the product?

Study of film is the study of the production process, the film itself (final product), and the relationship between the product and the viewer. This is a complex, dynamic process, a process not easily observable.

Mass production means it is no longer just for the elite, but also that producers may try to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Limited time (average screenplay is 125-150 typescript pages, but the novel is 4 times that). Details of incidents are lost in film adaptations. [on exception: War and Peace – 20 part BBC serialization]

What about bad movies? Does being bad mean the movie won't influence an audience because the film "doesn't work" or can a movie be bad in that it influences us in a bad way (i.e. legitimize misogynistic behavior).

Why focus on (mainstream) Hollywood movies?

The Hollywood style was and is the dominant style the world over. Films, movements, directors that contest this style, are generally responding to Hollywood, not ignoring it or inventing an alternative (i.e., Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Fassbinder).

Reaches a larger audience. The larger the audience, the large the impact, influence (potentially).

Most people don't watch avant-garde films or even documentaries (Michael Moore being an exception).

What Type of Hollywood movies will we watch?

Examples of Film Types (Christensen and Haas 2005)

Politically Reflective Films Independence Day

Invasion of the Body Snatchers Many legal, western, gangster films

Pure (Overt) Political Films Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

The Candidate Many Documentaries

Propaganda Films

Socially Reflective Films Pretty Woman

Gone with the Wind Many other genre films

Auteur Political Films The Godfather

Natural Born Killers

Syllabus

• http://faculty.unlv.edu/kfernandez/film.htm