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[FALL 2006]
CLEN G6632x Studies in Film & Theory:
The Body, Pain and Cinema
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Prof. Maura Spiegel
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This is a course about film and film theory,
recent work in bio-medical culture-and their intersections.
Films by Almadovar, Egoyan, Frears, Haynes, Kubrick and
Leigh and others. Readings in film theory will track thinking
about the gaze, identification and viewer experience-after
Mulvey and Lacan. Issues in bio-medicine will include
biology as ideology; changing sex; extraordinary bodies;
medical advances vs. social realities, and "the plot
of suffering." Readings in Foucault, Haraway, Latour,
Morris, Sontag, among others.
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TEXTS
Agamben: Homo Sacer
Butler: Giving an Account of Oneself
Elias: The Loneliness of the Dying
Fraser, Greco, eds.: The Body: A Reader
Sontag: Regarding the Pain of Others
(available at Labyrinth)
Course Reader (which will be ready in a week or so)
FILMS
— Safe (dir. Todd Haynes) 1995
— Black Rain (dir. Shohei Imamura) 1989
— Rodan (Sora no daikaiju Radon) (dir. Ishiro
Honda) 1956
— All About My Mother (dir. Pedro Almodovar)
1999
— Dirty Pretty Things (dir. Stephen Frears)
2002
— Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance (dir. Chan-wook
Park) 2002
— 21 Grams (dir. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu)
2003
— Memento (dir. Christopher Nolan) 2000
— Marvin's Room (dir. Jerry Zacks) 1996
— Sound and Fury (dir. Josh Aronson) 2000
— Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan,
Supermasochist (dir. Kirby Dick) 1997
— Ikiru (dir. Akira Kurosawa) 1952
— Gattaca (dir. Andrew Niccol) 1997
— The Son's Room (dir. Nanni Moretti) 2001
— Talk to Her (dir. Pedro Almodovar) 2002
— Vera Drake (dir, Mike Leigh) 2004
RECOMMENDED FILMS (provisional list):
— Murderball (dir. Henry Alex Rubin and
Dana Adam Shapiro) 2005
— Transamerica (dir. Duncan Tucker) 2005
— Palindromes (dir. Todd Solandz) 2004
— Rosemary's Baby (dir. Roman Polanski)
1968
— Carrie (dir. Brian de Palma) 1976
— Invasion of the Body Snatchers (dir. Don
Siegel) 1956
— Panic in the Streets (dir. Elia Kazan)
1950
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SYLLABUS [subject to adjustment]
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| September 14: |
film: Safe
Readings:
David Morris, "About Suffering: Voice, Genre, and
Moral Community;"
Roddy Reid, "Unsafe at Any Distance: Todd Haynes'
Visual Culture of Health and Risk;"
R.C. Lowentin, "Causes and Their Effects" from
Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA;
and Part I, "What is a Body?" in The Body: A
Reader (pp. 43-65).
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| September 21: |
films: Black Rain and (Rodan or tba)
Readings:
Foucault, " from The History of Sexuality, Volume
I;
Kirsten Ostherr, "From Inner to Outer Space: World
Health and the Postwar Alien Invasion Film" from
Cinematic Prophylaxis;
and Part II, "Bodies and Social (Dis)Order"
in The Body: A Reader (pp.67-104).
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| September 28: |
films: All About My Mother
Readings:
Leo Bersani & Ulysse Dutoit: "Almadovar's girls"
from Forms of Being: Cinema, Aesthetics, Subjectivity;
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: How Biologists
Construct Human Sexuality;"
Part III "Bodies and Identities" in Body: A
Reader (pp.105-143).
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| October 5: |
film: Dirty Pretty Things
Readings:
Stephen Wilkinson, from Bodies For Sale: Ethics and Exploitation
in the Human Body Trade;
Vivian Sobchack, from Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and
Moving Image Culture.
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| October 12: |
films: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and 21
Grams
Readings:
Judith Butler, "Violence, Mourning, Politics,"
from Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence;
begin reading Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself.
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| October 19: |
film: Memento
Continue reading Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself
and tba
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| October 26: |
film: Talk to Her (and Vera Drake?)
Readings:
Marsha Kinder, "Reinventing the Motherland: Almodovar's
Brain-Dead Trilogy;"
finish reading Butler, Giving an Account of Oneself;
(Lauren Berlant, "The Subject of True Feelings: Pain,
Privacy, and Politics").
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| November 2: |
films: Ikiru and Marvin's Room
Readings:
Elias: The Loneliness of the Dying and tba
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| November 9: |
film: The Son's Room
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| November 16: |
films: Sound and Fury and Gattaca
Readings:
Rosemarie Garland Thomas, from Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring
Disability in American Culture and Literature, "Disability,
Identity, and Representation: An Introduction" and
excerpts from "Theorizing Disability;"
David A Kirby, "Extrapolating Race in Gattaca: Genetic
Passing, Identity, and the Science of Race."
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| November 23: |
THANKSGIVING
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| November 30: |
film: Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan,
Supermasochist
Readings tba
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| December 7: |
TBA
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