1. VES 172a. Film & Photography, Image & Narration
Professor David Rodowick
Office hours: Mondays 2-3 pm and Wednesdays 3-4 pm, or by appointment.
M-06 Sever Hall (4th floor)
Phone:
Course website:
Aesthetics and Philosophy of Film:

2. History of film theory and aesthetics
Classical film theory
VES Film and Photography, Ontology and Art.
VES Russian and Soviet Film Theory.
Modern film theory
VES Film & Photography: Image, Meaning, Narration.
Contemporary film theory
VES Contemporary Film Theory.
VES 292r. Film and Philosophy.

3. The history of film theory
Classical film theory ( )
the silent film paradigm
Modern film theory ( )
structuralism, formalism, and semiology
Contemporary film theory (1968 to present)
film and ideology, postmodernism, and cultural studies

4. Classical film theory
Chronology and periodization, broad and flexible.
Eclectic participants.
Various and inconsistent methodologies.
Broad range of questions addressed.
The silent film paradigm.

5. Classical film theory Silent film paradigm (Noël Carroll)
Is cinema an art?
If so, what are its defining characteristics? How is it alike or different from the other arts?
If cinema is an art, what defines its specificity or uniqueness as an artistic medium?
What are cinema’s constitutive forms: the photographic image? framing and movement? editing and rhythm? sound, music, and words?
What is the value or role of cinema, both artistically and socially?
How do spectators perceive, understand, and take pleasure in films?

6. Modern film theory ( )
Work concentrated in academic contexts: universities and film schools.
Search for a consistent and unified methodology
Common philosophical background.
Representation
Signification
Spectatorship

7. Modern film theory ( )
REPRESENTATION. The capacity of the photographic or filmic image to represent something for someone. Representation refers to the perceptible aspect of a sign: how it excites perceptions and invites us to recognize the sign as standing for something.
SIGNIFICATION. The problem of signification refers to how signs become meaningful to individuals and societies. How is it that signs are expressive, that they are perceived to have the quality of meaning, that they provoke the desire to be interpreted? Is there such a thing as film language?
SUBJECTIVITY or spectatorship refers to our mental activity as we watch films, and thus to all psychological aspects of film-going. How do we describe the mental activity, conscious or unconscious, of watching and understanding films?

8. Contemporary film theory (1968- )
1970s. Film and ideology (political modernism)
1980s. Postmodernism
1990s. Cultural Studies

9. Contemporary film theory
Film and ideology: political modernism
what kinds of films should be made to challenge the form and content of Hollywood films?
how should film analysis and criticism change in order to understand how films convey ideologies in their form and content, and to understand how alternative films can challenge a dominant ideology?
Film and ideology: spectatorship
Do film technology and narrative form establish norms of vision and representation, ways of seeing, that support the political status quo?
How are the vision and desire of the spectator drawn in and organized by technology and film form? What mechanisms of identification and visual pleasure account for the appeal of Hollywood films?
Is there a gender hierarchy in how Hollywood films organize point of view?

10. Contemporary film theory
Postmodernism
Emphasis on the activity of the spectator; meanings not determined by films, rather spectators make meanings out of films.
New emphasis on the popular: breakdown of the opposition of realism and modernism as politically charged aesthetic categories.
Rise of media studies as a field: centrality of film displaced by interest in television, video, and the electronic arts.
Critical interest in mass culture as a visual culture driven by the demands of multinational capitalism

11. Contemporary film theory
Cultural studies
Emphasis on the activity of the spectator leads to an interest in the politics of identity. How do sexual orientation, social class, national identity, or ethnic background inform the varieties of spectatorship?
the female spectator
gay and lesbian spectatorship
African-American spectatorship
diaspora culture, hybrid identity, and Third Cinema

12. Modern film theory ( )
REPRESENTATION. The capacity of the photographic or filmic image to represent something for someone. Representation refers to the perceptible aspect of a sign: how it excites perceptions and invites us to recognize the sign as standing for something.
SIGNIFICATION. The problem of signification refers to how signs become meaningful to individuals and societies. How is it that signs are expressive, that they are perceived to have the quality of meaning, that they provoke the desire to be interpreted? Is there such a thing as film language?
SUBJECTIVITY or spectatorship refers to our mental activity as we watch films, and thus to all psychological aspects of film-going. How do we describe the mental activity, conscious or unconscious, of watching and understanding films?