Philosophy and the Movies: The Past on Film
Monday, 7:30-10; Tues:11-12:20
Goldsmith Family Cinema
M.S. Roth 685 3500
mroth@wesleyan.edu
The Past on Film examines how films represent the past and how they can help us understand
crucial questions in the philosophy of history. We begin with a brief consideration of
documentary cinema. How do documentary films make us feel something is “really real” in ways
different from narrative cinema? How is the insinuation of reality onto the screen connected to
the work of a strong author or artist? How can such an author subvert his or her own realism?
We will spend some time in the first section of the course trying to understand the way
documentary films make claims to represent the truth. We then move on to classic narrative
films to examine how tensions among story telling, documentation and saying something true.
After discussions of films that seem to aim explicitly at historical reconstruction (like Night and
Fog and History and Memory) most of the semester will be spent with films whose narratives
and mechanisms of representation help us to engage questions about the depiction of the past,
memory, loss, trauma, love.
The films shown in this class are “good to think with.” That is, we will find that by thinking with
and about these movies we will be able to better understand some fundamental issues in
philosophy, especially the philosophy of history. Some of these questions are: how can you
accurately represent the past? How is story telling related to truth telling? How is memory
related to identity? How is trauma related to identity and representation? How can a person
change and remain the same person? What is multiple identity? When we forget who we are,
who are we?
The films will be shown on Monday nights. We will discuss the films and the readings on
Tuesday during class. Attendance at the screenings and lectures is mandatory. If you find it
helpful to see the films more than once, almost all of them are readily available on DVD or
video. Grades in the course will be based on two mid-term exams (with take-home and in-class
components), and a final. Readings will be on Moodle and Electronic Reserve. Students are
required to post responses to the readings each week to Moodle by Tuesday at 9 am. Your post
should present a quotation from the reading, and then your comment or question about it. The
posts will count for 15% of the final grade. The first take home is worth 20% of the final grade,
the second take home is worth 25%, and the final exam is worth 40%. Due dates are listed
below. Late exams will have their grades reduced. Full references to the readings below can be
found on Moodle under “Reader.” There is a grader for this class, but I am available to look over
(and regrade) any exams or papers.
In addition to the exams, you have the choice of developing a research paper for the course.
This is optional. If you choose to do a research paper, you should plan for it to be about 15
pages long, and you must discuss the topic with me in advance and have it approved.
Proposals for the papers should be submitted before November 15. Research papers will be
due at the end of the semester. For those who write the paper, the posts will count for 10% of
the final grade; the midterms will each count for 15% of the final grade; the final exam will count
for 25% Paper: 35%. Office Hours are usually from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. on Mondays in the
President’s Office. Other times are available. It’s advisable to make an appointment.
Late papers or exams will have their grades reduced by one letter grade for each day they are
late. The only exception is for medical reasons (requested in advance with documentation).
Honor Code: All work handed in for this course must comply with the Wesleyan honor code.
You must take responsibility for your own work and cite the work of others. If you have any
questions about plagiarism or about how the honor code applies to your work, please see Prof.
Roth or consult the Student Handbook.
Students with Disabilities: It is the policy of Wesleyan University to provide reasonable
accommodations to students with documented disabilities. Students, however, are responsible
for registering with Disabilities Services, in addition to making requests known to me in a timely
manner. If you require accommodations in this class, please make an appointment with Prof.
Roth as soon as possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made. The procedures for
registering with Disabilities Services can be found at
http://www.wesleyan.edu/studentaffairs/disabilities/index.html.
Week I: September 7, 8— Impossible Reconstruction
Alain Resnais, Night and Fog (1955)
Rea Tajiri, History and Memory (1991)
Plato, Allegory of the Cave, from Republic (4th cen, BCE)
Emma Wilson, “Material Remains: Night and Fog” October (2005)
Steve Anderson, Technologies of History, 49-59. (2011)
Thomas Wattenberg, “Film as Philosophy” Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film
(2008)
Michael Wood, Film: A Very Short Introduction (2012), chapter 1.
Week II: September 14, 15 — Photography, Memory and History
Errol Morris, The Thin Blue Line (1988)
Kant, “Preface to the Second Edition of the Critique of Pure Reason” (1787)
Linda Williams, “Mirrors without Memories: truth, history, and The Thin Blue Line (1998)
Carl Platigna, “The Philosophy of Errol Morris: 10 Lessons” (2009)
“The Anti-Postmodernist Postmodernist” An Interview with Morris (2003)
David Resha, “The Thin Blue Line” (2015)
Vanessa R. Schwartz, “Film and History” Sage Handbook of Film Studies (2008) [optional]
Week III: September 21, 22 — What is Postmodern Documentary?
Andrew Jarecki, Capturing The Friedmans (2003)
Jean-Francois Lyotard, “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” (1984)
Marnie Hughes_Warrington, chapters 5 and 6 of History Goes to the Movies (2007), 101-143.
Vikki Bell, “The Burden of Sensation and the Ethics of Form: Watching Capturing the
Friedmans” Theory Culture Society (2008) 25:89, 89-101
Paul Arthur, “True Confessions, Sort of: Capturing the Friedmans and the Dilemma of
Theatrical Documentary” (2003)
A.O. Scott, “How Real Does it Feel,” (2010);
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/magazine/12Reality-t.html?ref=aoscott
Week IV: September 28,29 – Beyond the Postmodern:
Representing Murder, Living a fiction
Joshua Oppenheimer, Act of Killing (2012)
Hegel, from the “Introduction” to The Philosophy of History, paragraphs 11-19
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history3.htm#011
(or pp 21-31 in PDF) (1830-1831)
Carl Plantinga, “Documentary” from Routledge Guide to Philosophy and Film (2009)
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/05/act-of-killing-screening-in-indonesia
http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/07/slavoj-zizek-act-killing-and-modern-trendprivatising-public-space
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/07/the_act_of_killing_
essay_how_indonesia_s_mass_killings_could_have_slowed.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/magazine/joshua-oppenheimer-wont-goback-to-indonesia.html
EXAM ONE: ESSAYS DUE BEFORE CLASS (SHORT ANSWER
SECTION TO BE DONE IN CLASS): September 29
Week V: October 5, 6 Coming Back to the Past
Michael Curtis, Casablanca (1942)
Amy Coplan, “Empathy and Character Engagement” from Routledge Guide to Philosophy and
Film (2008).
Gregory Currie, “Narrative Desire” Philosophy of Film: Introductory Texts and Readings (2005)
Paul A. Cantor, “’As Time Goes By:’ Casablanca and the Evolution of a Pop-Culture Classic”
Peter Augustine Lawler, “An American Fantasy? Love, Nobility and Friendship in Casablanca”
Richard Maltby, “Narrative 2” from Hollywood Cinema, 471-490.(2003)
Week VI: Oct 12, 13
Running Away from the Past
Orson Welles, Citizen Kane (1941)
Sigmund Freud, “Lectures Four and Five” from Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1909)
Noel Carroll, “Interpreting Citizen Kane” (1996)
Paul Arthur, “Out of the Depths: Citizen Kane, Modernism and the Avant-garde Impulse” (1996)
Adrienne Rich “Amnesia”
Sherman Alexie, Citizen Kane
Andre Bazin, “The Technique of Citizen Kane” (optional)
Week VII: Oct 19, 20
Losing and Finding Identity through Memory/Forgetting
Melvin LeRoy, Random Harvest (1942)
Oliver Sacks, “The Last Hippie,” from An Anthropologist on Mars, 42-76 (1995)
E. Ann Kaplan, “Introduction and Chapter One” from Trauma Culture (2005)
Ian Hacking, “Making Up People,” (1985) from Historical Ontology (2002)
Sallie Baxendale, “Memories Aren’t Made of This: Amnesia at the movies” (2004)
John Seamon, “Amnesia” from Memory and the Movies (2015)
Oct 26-27—
FALL BREAK
Week VIII: Nov 2, 3—Melodramatic Memory & Maternal Sacrifice
King Vidor, Stella Dallas (1937)
Linda Williams, “Melodrama Revised” from Reconfiguring American Film Genres: History and
Theory (1998)
Carl Plantinga, “The Scene of Empathy and the Human Face on Film” in Passionate Views
(1999)
Cavell, “Stella’s Taste: Reading Stella Dallas” from Contesting Tears: The Hollywood
Melodrama of the Unknown Woman (1996)
Allison Whitney, “Race, Class, and the Pressure to Pass in American Maternal Melodrama: The
Case of Stella Dallas” (2007)
Week IX: Nov 9-10
Forgetting Who You Are and What You Do
Preston Sturgess, Sullivan’s Travels (1941)
Wineapple, Brenda, “Finding an Audience: "Sullivan's Travels", Journal of
Popular Film and Television, 11:4 (1984:Winter)
James Harvey, “Sturges: The McCrea Films,” Romantic Comedy in Hollywood:
From Lubitsch to Sturges (1987)
Kathleeen Moran, Michael Rogin, "'What's the Matter with Capra'? Sullivan's
Travels and the Popular Front." Representations (2000), 106-34.
Sonnet Retman, “Am I Laughing?” Burlesque Incongruities of Genre, Gender and Audience in
Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels (2011)
EXAM TWO: ESSAYS DUE BEFORE CLASS (SHORT ANSWER
SECTION TO BE DONE IN CLASS): Nov 10
Week X: Nov 16, 17 — Becoming Who You Are
Jacques Tourneur, Out of the Past (1947)
Nietzsche, essay one from Genealogy of Morals (1887)
Robert Pippen, “Trapped by Oneself in Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past (2012)
Mark T. Conard, “Nietzsche and the Meaning and Definition of Noir” (2006)
Jans B. Wager, Dames in the Driver’s Seat. 1-35 (2005) (optional)
Hayden White, on Nietzsche from Metahistory, 331-374 (1975) (optional)
Week XI: Nov 23, 24 — No Future, Just Past
John Ford, The Searchers (1956)
Jonathan Lethem, “Defending The Searchers” (2005)
Robert Pippen, “Politics and Self-knowledge in the Searchers” (2010)
Tom Grayson Colonnese, “Native American Reactions to The Searchers” (2004)
Gaylyn Studlar, “What Would Martha Want? Captivity, Purity, and Feminine Values in The
Searchers” (2004)
Glenn Frankel, The Searchers, pp. 1-8; 306-326 (2013)
WEEK XII: Nov 30, Dec 1 — What is Dependence? How is it
Declared? Or, Who is that Woman?
Hitchcock, Vertigo (1958)
Slavoj Zizek, “How the Non-duped Err” (1992)
Zizek, “Hitchcock our Contemporary?” (2010)
Tania Modleski, “Femininity by Design” (1988)
Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, “Vertigo and the Vertiginous History of Film Theory (2011)
WEEK XIII: Dec 8 Dec 9 – What Are We Permitted to Forget?
Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (1993)
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Experience” (1841)
Thomas Wartenberg, “Arguing Against Utilitarianism: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
from Thinking on Screen (2007)
Chirstopher Grau, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the Morality of Memory” from
Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy, 119-133. (2006)
FINAL EXAM: ESSAYS DUE BEFORE FINAL EXAM, Thursday,
December 17 at 7 PM