Philosophy 2300
PHILOSOPHY OF FILM
Spring 2009

In the century since its invention, film (a handy term for moving pictures in whatever medium) has become not only an unexpected new art form but virtually a standard kind of experience for people who spend much of their time watching shows on screens—that is to say, for a very large proportion of people now living. What kind of experience do we have by means of film? What does it mean that film is not only an experience a person might have, but a way of experiencing reality? What is discovered, obscured, presented, repressed, concluded, or confused by means of the camera-editing arts? What can we learn about the character of human experience more broadly from studying film experience? How are the central philosophical questions about reality, knowledge, meaning, and value affected by film?

In this course we will use philosophical methods, forming concepts and theses and arguments with the greatest possible care and freedom in conversation with earlier landmark exercises of thought, to assess the nature of film and its significance in human life. We will explore film experience as a site of philosophy and an important philosophical problem in its own right.

Readings will be assigned in handouts and in these books, available in the bookstore:
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film (6th ed.)
Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism (7th ed.)

The course grade will be determined by:
Class participation 10%
Weekly writings (2-3 p. papers) 35%
Midterm exam 15%
Final exam 15%
Term project 25%

READINGS from A Short Guide to Writing about Film (Corrigan) and Film Theory and Criticism (FTAC) are listed here. There will also be assigned readings in handouts. VIEWINGS are of films on videotape or DVD held by the Millsaps library. Usually it will make the most sense to do the week’s readings before the viewing.

Three Southern Circuit films are being shown at Millsaps this semester. They are listed on their screening dates below. Further information on the films can be found at http://www.millsaps.edu/classics/scfs.shtml. You will attend at least one (see explanation of requirement below).

SCHEDULE

Jan. 13 Introduction to class. The issue of the character of experience; the idea of film experience.

Jan. 20 Film experience, cont.
READ: Corrigan, Chaps. 1-3; Kracauer, “Basic Concepts” (FTAC 147-158)
VIEW: Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Documentary

Jan. 27 Realist theory. The ethnographic film.
READ: Kracauer, “The Establishment of Physical Existence” (FTAC 262-272)
VIEW: Dead Birds (Robert Gardner, 1965) and The Ax Fight (Timothy Asch & Napoleon Chagnon, 1975)

Feb. 3 Montage theory. Appeal films.
READ: Eisenstein, “Beyond the Shot” and “Dramaturgy of Film Form”
(FTAC 13-40)
VIEW: Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)

Feb. 10 Direct cinema.
READ: Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image” (FTAC 159-163); Prince, “The Discourse of Pictures: Iconicity and Film Studies” (FTAC 87-105)
VIEW: Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967)

Feb. 11 SOUTHERN CIRCUIT FILM: TruLoved, directed by Stewart Wade, a fictional film about a high school daughter of a lesbian couple as she deals with adjusting to gay intolerance at a new school.

Feb. 17 The documentary of prominent artifice.
READ: TBA
VIEW: The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris, 1988)

Feb. 24 The documentary of personal polemic.
READ: TBA
VIEW: Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)

Mar. 3 MIDTERM EXAM.
Introduction to fantasy film.

Mar. 9 SOUTHERN CIRCUIT FILM: Random Lunacy: Videos from the Road Less Traveled, directed by Stephanie Silber, a documentary following Poppa Neutrino and his family from the streets of New York to a circus in Mexico to crossing the Atlantic on a homemade raft.

Fantasy

Mar. 10 Film and emotion.
READ: Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess” (FTAC 602-616)
VIEW: King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

Mar. 17 SPRING BREAK

Mar. 24 Film as dream.
READ: Carroll, “Jean-Louis Baudry and ‘The Apparatus’” (FTAC 189-205)
VIEW: Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
DUNBAR LECTURE: Pheng Cheah (U. of California-Berkeley), “Necessary Strangers: Law’s Hospitality in the Age of Global Migration”

Mar. 31 Surrealism.
READ: TBA
VIEW: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)

APR. 2-5 CROSSROADS FILM FESTIVAL
(see crossroadsfilmfest.com for detailed schedule)

Apr. 7 Animation.
READ: Panofksy, “Style and Medium in the Motion Pictures” (FTAC 247-261)
VIEW: Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)

Apr. 14 Protest.
READ: TBA
VIEW: Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

Apr. 21 CLASS FILM FESTIVAL

Apr. 22 SOUTHERN CIRCUIT FILM: ‘Bama Girl, directed by Rachel Goslins, follows a charismatic black woman at the University of Alabama as she runs for Homecoming Queen, going up against a century of ingrained racial segregation, internal black politics and a secret association of all-white fraternities called “The Machine.”

Final exam Tuesday, April 28, 6:30 p.m.

RESOURCES

In the library you will find much of interest in the film journals to which Millsaps subscribes, Film Quarterly and (online only) Film-Philosophy and Film Comment. There are useful general sources in the Reference section like Halliwell’s Film Guide and Film Encyclopedia. We also have numerous books on film theory, film history, particular genres, and particular directors. See Chap. 6 of Corrigan for many more print and online resources.

Two of the most useful books that go deeper than Corrigan into film aesthetics are David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art, and Dennis DeNitto, Film: Form and Feeling.

WEEKLY WRITINGS AND EXAM ESSAYS

The purpose of the assigned writings in the course is to practice noticing features of film experience and thinking about its nature and implications, and about meaningful human experience more broadly. Most assignments will explicitly direct you to relate ideas that are presented in class and readings to specific features of the films that we view. Grades on writing will reflect the degree to which you fulfill these criteria:

(1) Thoughtful grappling with ideas and arguments that have been introduced in the course, with
(2) sensitive perception of actual ingredients of films viewed, and
(3) effective use of English.

Think of each 2-3 page weekly paper as a philosophically oriented version of what Corrigan calls a “critical review”—a “philosophical review,” for short.

[A=excellent, B=good, C=satisfactory, D=unsatisfactory/passing, F=not passing]

QUESTIONS FOR SOUTHERN CIRCUIT FILMMAKERS

Each Southern Circuit film presents a uniquely valuable opportunity to talk to an accomplished filmmaker about his or her work. You will attend at least one of these events this semester, and you will ask the filmmaker a question in the question-and-answer period after the screening. On the Tuesday following the event you will submit along with your normal weekly writing assignment a one-paragraph note reporting the essence of the filmmaker’s answer to your question (if your question did get answered), or (if it didn’t) how you imagine the filmmaker might best respond to it, based on what you saw and heard. (If your schedule makes it impossible to attend a Southern Circuit screening, ask about an alternative way to fulfill this assignment.)

Here are some samples of potentially fruitful questions to ask a filmmaker:

Artistic intent
Good general “fishing expedition” questions include: What was the guiding idea of your project? How did your ideas evolve in the making of the project? What were the hardest creative decisions? Who/what are your greatest filmmaking influences? etc.
More specific questions, linked to actual elements in the film, can be better: How did you decide on that music? How did you design the montage in such-and-such a sequence? What were you going for by shooting that segment in black-and-white? etc.

Interpretation of product
It seems to me the meaning of X (some element in the film, like a scene or image) is ____. Or: I’m not sure what the meaning of X is. What do you think about that?
Your film seems to me to fit into the contemporary film scene in such-and-such a way (with or against a certain trend, e.g.). What do you think about that?
(Using theory resources from our class:) Do you think of a film primarily as a representation of physical reality? As part of social progress? A designed dream? etc.

Technical
How did you achieve a particular visual or sound quality? How did you get an actor to behave in a certain way? etc.

SIX PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS THAT WILL BE IMPORTANT IN THIS COURSE
(AND SOME OF THE PHILOSOPHERS WHO HAVE ADDRESSED THESE QUESTIONS MOST POWERFULLY)

1. The question of essential form. (See Plato’s dialogues in which Socrates tries to find an adequate definition of an item like virtue or justice.) What makes a phenomenon the kind of thing it is? What is the essence of an art work, e.g.? What is the distinctive essence of cinematic art works or cinematic experience? (“Phenomenology” is a sophisticated 20th-century version of this line of investigation pioneered by Edmund Husserl. “Conceptual analysis” is a comparable effort by so-called “analytic” philosophers in the tradition of Bertrand Russell.)

2. The question of evidence. (See René Descartes’ methodical skepticism and discovery of possibilities of certainty in his Meditations on First Philosophy.) How is reality evident to us—what counts, in perception and thought, as revealing or indicating reality? What constitutes trustworthy evidence? On the side of the knower, what sort of mind certifies or rejects evidence? Our more carefully considered judgments of reality sometimes diverge from our spontaneous sense-based convictions.

3. The question of coherence. (See Immanuel Kant’s transcendental arguments in Critique of Pure Reason.) Under what conditions is meaningful experience possible? What rules must be followed for putting experience together? The idea here is that our world is a construct. (There’s a linguistic version of this question that Ludwig Wittgenstein developed: How do we follow rules in order to say meaningful things, or: What is the “grammar” of our “forms of life” that support the things we are able to say?)

4. The question of history. (See G. W. F. Hegel’s historical articulation of reality in Phenomenology of Spirit.) How does our experience of reality depend on real historical developments and conscious participation in such developments? The idea here is that our reality is an evolving work-in-progress.

5. The question of essential deception and/or contestation. (See Marxian, Freudian, feminist, postcolonial, and other critical theories.) How is our experience of reality ordinarily warped, constricted, or dramatically deployed by social and psychological forces like class struggle, repression of desires, male-centered culture, European-centered culture, etc.? Are remedies available?

6. The question of ultimate motivation and the Good. (Almost all major philosophers make claims about this, from Plato extolling eternal form to Gilles Deleuze extolling maximal creativity.) What is the implicit goal of our choices of what to pay attention to and how to synthesize our experience? What is the most powerful kind of importance that can appeal to us in our experience, and how does this appeal occur?

THE TERM PROJECT

Proposals for the term project are welcome, and negotiable. Most term projects will consist either of (1) a 10-12 pp. philosophical study of one or more examples of film, or (2) a film made by the student as a philosophical study, with an accompanying presentation (2-3 pp. in its written form) of rationale and findings. All projects should be discussed in advance with the instructor, with a working plan approved before Spring Break.

THE SECOND DRAFT REQUIREMENT

When a paper is required, do not submit the first draft of your paper. Edit yourself; turn in a second (or later) draft.

Here are some of the unmistakable signs of a first draft:

1. The introduction hasn’t been revised to fit how the paper actually turned out.

2. The flow is ragged and confusing because the paper hasn’t been reorganized according to how its content and argument shaped up.

3. There isn’t a definite conclusion yet.

4. It’s flabby: there are phrases and sentences throughout that could be cut.

5. There are many typos and other mechanical errors and inconsistencies.

6. (In a research paper:) Some works cited in the paper are not included in Works Cited, or vice versa.

Unless you are an exceptionally skilled writer, you cannot write a paper at the last minute that is free of these problems. A paper written at the last minute will look like what it is, a first draft.

SOME COURSE RULES

1. Class attendance. Being in class, being engaged with the work of the class, and behaving courteously are all expected. One discourtesy to avoid is coming into class late. Better late than never, definitely; but lateness counts as half an absence.
One percent of the course grade will be lost for each absence from class for any reason, beginning with the third absence. For these purposes, each week’s 2 ½-hour class meeting is equal to two classes—thus, to miss either the first or second segment of a week’s meeting would equal one absence. To illustrate, someone who totaled 7 absences would thereby lose 5% of the course grade, or half a letter grade. The reason for this: our in class work is a crucial and irreplaceable part of the substance of the course.

2. Hardcopy required. Unless I’ve expressly stated otherwise, or unless I grant you permission in extraordinary circumstances, I expect every out-of-class writing assignment to be submitted by its deadline in a printed-out version rather than electronically. This makes a big difference in the effectiveness and efficiency with which I can respond to your writing performance as well as your ideas. Do, however, save copies of all your work, electronically if possible.

3. Late papers. Written assignments turned in late will lose a letter grade or equivalent. No work of any kind will be accepted after the last day of final examinations. Exceptions to this policy will be granted only to the victims of unforeseeable and uncontrollable circumstances.

4. Academic honor. All members of the Millsaps community are pledged to uphold academic honor, the core of which is refraining from giving or receiving unauthorized aid on any assignment. I particularly caution against plagiarism, that is, using the words or ideas of others without acknowledgement. Plagiarized work means a mandatory referral to the Honor Council and may result in expulsion from the class.

5. Incompletes. An “Incomplete” grade for the course will be given only to students who, due to unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances, find themselves unable to complete course requirements during the term and can reasonably be expected to complete them within a few weeks after the term’s end. The “Incomplete” must be requested and appropriately justified before the end of final examinations.

6. Disabilities. Students with documented disabilities should discuss their needs with the instructor at the beginning of the semester.