DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION STUDIES FEMINISM AND FILM FALL, 1994 Upper-division undergraduates and masters students Instructor: Professor Joanne Hershfield hershfld@email.unc.edu Univ. of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Office: Bingham Hall #316 962-4961 Office hours: Tues/Thurs 10:00 - 11:00 and by appointment. Course description This seminar will explore theoretical and practical points of contact between feminism and the cinema. We will examine various feminist approaches to the study and production of film including, but not limited to, psychoanalysis, narrative analysis, ideological analysis, and cultural studies. These approaches will be looked at in relation to issues of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, and national identity. In addition to attending all class meetings and weekly screenings and carefully reading assigned materials, students will be required to participate in an in-class group presentation and be responsible for reviewing one article and presenting your findings to the class for discussion. Additionally, a final paper will be due at the end of the semester (8-10 pages for undergraduates; 18-20 pages for graduate students). Course goals There are two major goals of this course: 1. By the end of the course, students will be able to employ various theoretical perspectives in order to analyze how a film, or a group of films, represents categories of gender, race, and class. 2. By the end of the course, students will also be able to critique and evaluate an author's thesis about the relations between feminism and film. Course procedure and requirements The course will operate as a seminar, jointly facilitated by the instructor and the students. 1. Beginning with week #4, each student will be asked to be "in charge" of one of the readings. He or she will present the major questions raised by the article and, using these questions, initiate a discussion. 2. By Week #8 (Oct. 4)), groups of four students will have chosen a film for collective analysis. During weeks #12 through #14 (Nov. 1, 3, 8, 10, 15), each group will share their findings with the class during a twenty-minute presentation. Each member of the group will submit a paper (four page maximum) summarizing the group's findings and articulating individual perspectives on these findings. 3. A 2-page paper proposal and preliminary bibliography related to the work of this seminar and to individual lines of interest and research will be due by Oct. 13th. Students are encouraged to meet with the instructor before this date to discuss their proposal. 4. An essay based on your proposal (8-10 pages for undergraduates, 18-20 pages for graduate students) will be due no later than December 6. This paper should be a concise, tightly reasoned essay which critically examines a film, a group of films, or a theoretical approach to the study of films in relation to course readings and discussions. Students are welcome to present a first draft to the instructor for feedback before submitting the final draft. (This first draft must be turned in by Thurs. Nov. 17th.) There will be no mid-term or final for this course. The percentage breakdown for grades will be as follows: 10% Article presentation 25% group project 15% short paper based on group findings 10% written paper proposal 40% final paper Schedule Videos screenings are tentatively scheduled for Friday afternoons at 3:00 pm. The videos will be held on reserve at the Undergraduate Library in the event you cannot make the screenings. You will need to view the video before the Tuesday class meeting. Readings must also be completed by the Tuesday class period for which they are listed in order to facilitate a lively and informed discussion among all class participants. Week 1. Introduction to course and course requirements. Readings: NO READINGS FOR THIS WEEK Screening: Thelma and Louise (R. Scott, 1992) 2. Feminism and film Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapters 1, 4. 2) Amy Bloom: "The Body Lies" (handout) Screening: Liquid Sky (1982) 3. Defining difference: Sexual difference, "other" differences Readings: 1) Mulvey: "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema;" and "Afterthoughts;" 2. Gledhill in Carson: "Image and Voice: Approaches to Marxist-Feminist Film Criticism." Screening: Imitation of Life (Sirk, 1959) 4. The women in the audience: Spectatorship and Identification Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapter 3. 2) Doane: "Film and the Masquerade;" 3) Gaines in Carson: "White Privilege and Looking Relations." Screening: Christopher Strong (Arzner, 1933) 5. The woman on the screen: Representation Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapter 2. 2) Shari Roberts: "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat." Screening: Duel in the Sun (Vidor, 1946). 6. Narrative and Narration Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapter 5. 2) Bordwell: "Classical Hollywood Cinema." Screening: NO SCREENING FALL RECESS 7. Hollywood cinema I Readings: 1) Cook: "Melodrama and the Women's Picture; 2) Smith in Carson: "The Marrying Kind." Screening: Alien (R. Scott, 1979) 8. Hollywood cinema II Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapters 6, 7; 2) Weiss in Carson: "A Queer Feeling When I Look at You." Screening: She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee) 9. Hollywood cinema III Readings: 1) Modleski: "Some Functions of Feminist Criticism;" 2) Dittmar in Carson: "The Articulating Self" Screening: Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, 1987) 10. Other cinemas, other women I: Race, gender, national identity Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapter 8. 2) Kaplan: "Problematizing Cross-cultural Analysis;" 3) Arora in Carson: "The Production of Third World Subjects" Screening: Hour of the Star (Brazil, Susana Aras) 11. Other cinemas, other women II: Readings: 1) Hershfield: "The Construction of 'Woman' in Distinto amanecer." 2) Yau in Carson: "Is China the End of Hermeneutics?" 3. Desjardins: "Free from the Apron Strings." Screening: Daughters of the Dust 12. Other cinemas, other women III: Readings: 1) Gibson-Hudson in Carson: "Aspects of Black Feminist Cultural Ideology;" 2. Smith in Carson: "Telling Family Secrets." Screening: Desperately Seeking Susan (Seidleman) 13. Feminist filmmaking I Readings: 1) Kuhn: Chapter 9. 2) Johnston: "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema." Screening: Meshes of the Afternoon and Ritual in Transfigured Time (Maya Deren, 1943) 14. Feminist filmmaking II Readings: 1) De Lauretis in Carson: "Rethinking Women's Cinema;" 2) Trinh T. Minh-Ha: " L'Inn=82criture: Un-writing/Inmost Writing." Screening: NO SCREENING - THANKSGIVING 15. Rethinking feminism and film Readings: 1) Rich in Carson: "In the Name of Feminist Film Criticism;" and a reading of your choice. Screening: TBA (Off-campus?) 16. Final class meeting. Papers due by 5:00 pm. Required Texts Kuhn, Annette. Women's Pictures: Feminism and Cinema; London: Verso, 1992. Carson, Diane, Linda Dittmar, and Janice R. Welsch, Editors. Multiple Voices in Feminist Film Criticism; University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis 1994. Required Reading packet Bloom, Amy. "The Body Lies" in The New Yorker, July 18, 1994, pp. 38-49. Bordwell, David. "Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures" in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen, Columbia University Press, New York, 1986, pp. 17-34. Cook, Pam. "Melodrama and the Women's Picture" rptd. in Imitations of Life: A Reader on Film and Television Melodrama, ed. Marcia Landy, Wayne State University Press: Detroit, 1991, pp. 248-262. Desjardins, Mary. "Free from the Apron Strings: Representations of Mothers in the Maternal British State" in Fires Were Started: British Cinema and Thatcherism, ed. Lester Friedman, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1994, pp. 131-144. Doane, Mary Ann. "Film and the Masquerade" in Femme Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis, Routledge: New York, 1991, pp. 17-32. Hershfield, Joanne. "The Construction of 'Woman' in Distinto amanecer." Spectator, Vol. 13, no. 1, Fall, 1992, pp. 42-51. Johnston, Claire. "Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema." rptd. in Movies and Methods, ed. Bill Nichols, University of California Press: Berkeley, 1976, pp. 208-217. Kaplan, E. Ann. "Motherhood and Representation: From Postwar Freudian Figurations to Postmodernism" Psychoanalysis and Cinema, Routledge: New York, 1990, pp. 128-142. ----. "Problematizing Cross-cultural Analysis: The Case of Women in the Recent Chinese Cinema." Deep Focus Fall, 1989, pp. 80-89. Modleski, Tania. "Some Functions of Feminist Criticism; Or, the Scandal of the Mute Body" in Feminism Without Women: Culture and Criticism in a "Postfeminist" Age, Routledge: New York, 1991, pp. 35-58. Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Screen, 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1975), 6-18. ----. "Afterthoughts on 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' inspired by Duel in the Sun" in Psychoanalysis and Cinema, pp. 24-35. Roberts, Shari. "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat: Carmen Miranda, a Spectacle of Ethnicity," in Cinema Journal 32, no. 3, Spring, 1993, pp. 3-23. Trinh T. Minh-Ha: " L'Inn=82criture: Un-writing/Inmost Writing" in When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Routledge: New York, 1991, pp. 119-146. Screenings Alien (R. Scott, 1979) Christopher Strong (Arzner, 1933) Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash, 1992) Desperately Seeking Susan (Seidleman, 1989) Duel in the Sun (Vidor, 1946). Hour of the Star (Susana Aras, Brazil, 1992) Imitation of Life (Sirk, 1959) Liquid Sky (1982) Meshes of the Afternoon and Ritual in Transfigured Time (M. Deren, 1943) Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, China, 1987) She's Gotta Have It (Spike Lee, 198:) Thelma and Louise (R. Scott, 1990)