Cinema & Beyond II

We will read key critical texts alongside films and new media in order to delineate their changing social and cultural functions. A medium already indelibly marked by technology, cinemaís technization through digital technologies has altered its very meaning, this transformation reflects the fundamental changes going on in other cultural spheres. In order to understand these aesthetic and technical shifts we will be examining the depiction of technology by cinema and technology's effects upon it.

Specific topics covered will include the concepts and technology that underlie this new active media paradigm, especially the Internet and so called "Peer to Peer technologies." Critical Theory, Post-Fordism, and Post-structural theories of reproduction and information will be addressed. Readings will include texts by Benjamin, Baudrillard, De Lauretis, William Gibson, Jameson , McLuhan, Avital Ronell as well as more recent writings on the technical aesthetic, and political implications of new media. Among the films to be discussed: Metropolis, A Clockwork Orange, 2001, Blade Runner, The Conversation, Videodrome, The Terminator, Robocop.

Students from all disciplines are encouraged to attend; the coursework has implications within a wide variety of discourses, including Computer Science, Anthropology, Law, Rhetoric and Film.

Take-home midterm exam and final paper required.

The first course reader (of two) will be available by Wednesday at University Copy Service, 2425 Channing way--through the second passage.
 
 

Jan 19 : Introduction to the course
 

Jan 26: The Human/Machine Interface, Cyborgs and Technology

Reading:

Donna Haraway: "Cyborg Manifesto" (Chapter 8 of Simians, Cyborgs & Women)
Claudia Springer: " The Pleasure of the Interface" (Screen 32:3, Autumn 1991)

Film:      RoboCop / Verhoeven andportions of Modern Times / Chaplin

Feb 2:  The Notion of Exchange in Technology & civilization:  Marx's "The German Ideology"

Karl Marx:  "The German Ideology" first half  also available at:  http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845-gi/index.htm
an not too bad outline is available at http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/marx.htm

Discussion of Peer to Peer technologies: Napster, Gnutella, etc.
Film:  2001 (portions of)  Please watch beforehand
 

Feb 9: Beyond the Pleasure Principle--Memory, Dreams and the Repetition Compulsion

Reading:

Sigmund Freud:  portions of Beyond the Pleasure Principle (in reader)
Supplemental essay from Scientific American on Dreams (following Freud in reader)
 

Feb 16: Film Showing:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (in Cinemascope)

Begin Reading Benjamin: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Feb 23: The Individual in the age of replication

Reading:

Kaja Silverman: "Back to the Future" (Camera Obscura, 1991 Sep, N27:108-133)
Benjamin: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"

Film:      Blade Runner / Scott

March 2 : Ideology, Fetishization & Commodification

Reading:

Marx: From Capital Vol.1
Benjamin: "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"
Supplemental: Joel Snyder: "Benjamin on Reproducibility and Aura"

March 9: Administration and Rationalization:

Reading: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: "The Culture Industry" in Dialectic of Enlightenment
see also:   http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/
                http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq
 

Film: Clockwork Orange / Kubrick

March 16: **** Take Home Mid-Term **** In Class REVIEW of course thus far.
 

March 23: The Spectacle:

Reading: Society of the Spectacle / Guy Debord

Film:  A Face in the Crowd / Kazan
 

March 30 : ** Spring Break **
 

April 6 : Repetition, Industrialization, Technization of Perception and the Machine Age

Reading:  Walter Benjamin: "Some Motifs on Baudelaire"
Film:      portions of Modern Times / Chaplin, and Eraser Head / Lynch
 

Part II of the semester to be published just before Spring Break (includes Reader and Syllabus)