ENGL 4xx: American Ways: Filming the Seventies
Guide Syllabus
Ken Cooper
REQUIRED TEXTS
Castells, The Rise of the Network Society
Selected readings on myCourses
A weekly film (two screening times, plus availability on Netflix/iTunes/Amazon)
COURSE DESCRIPTION
In his 1998 film The Velvet Goldmine, writer/director Todd Haynes tells us that “Histories, like ancient ruins, are the
fictions of empires. While everything forgotten hangs in dark dreams of the past, ever threatening to return.” It
would be difficult to imagine a decade less threatening than the 1970s but that is precisely the premise of this
cultural studies course, which proposes that its popular iconography—smiley faces, polyester, disco, crappy pop
music, and so on—functions as a sort of historical ellipsis. Aside from a few acknowledged political events like
Watergate or the Iran hostage crisis, it seems to be a decade when nothing happened, defined almost entirely in
terms of its (cheesy) popular culture. With the advantage of hindsight, however, it becomes possible to reinterpret
Seventies cheese in relation to truly revolutionary events: the emergence of a globalized information economy,
arguably the unleashing of our own strange days. And if the manifestation of some New Age requires that we forget
the circumstances of its creation, all those historical roads not taken, then the Seventies will contain many “dark
dreams of the past” worth revisiting. Accordingly, the films to be screened this semester will be approached via a
critical parallax view: as important artistic works of the 1970s, and as a means of reformatting wide swaths of
contemporary culture. What happens when you take the Seventies seriously?
EVALUATION
This course presumes a great degree of intellectual autonomy, creativity, and initiative. It depends upon active and
considerate participation in group discussions, whether of assigned readings or the writing of other participants. Your
final grade will be determined as follows:
—Two formal essays (guidelines explained below)
45%
—A short weekly response paper to the films & readings
20
—Class discussion and critiques of works-in-progress
15
—An open book & notes final exam
20
SYLLABUS
Week 1: Latent History
Readings: Williams, from Marxism and Literature (1977); extracts from DeLillo, Great Jones Street
(1973); Lasch, “The Narcissist Society” (1976); Piercy, Vida (1979); Wolfe, In Our Time (1980);
Pynchon, Vineland (1990); Moody, The Ice Storm (1994); Choi, American Woman (2003);
McCann, Let the Great World Spin (2009)
Week 2: Decadance
Readings: Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (1-215)
Film: Antonioni, Zabriskie Point (1970)
Week 3: The Style of Connectedness
Readings: Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (355-509)
Film: Pakula, The Parallax View (1974)
Week 4: Aliens I: Virtual Realities
Readings: Hayles, from How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and
Informatics (1999); Manovich, “Database as a Symbolic Form” (1998); Turkle, “Can You Hear
Me Now?” (2007)
Film: Roeg, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)
Week 5: Mellow Gold
Paper #1 due
Readings: critical reviews of Borstelmann, The 1970s: A New Global History From Civil Rights to
Economic Inequality (2012); Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s
(1982); Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (2010); Echols,
Shaky Ground: The ‘60s and Its Aftershocks (2002); Edelstein & McDonough, The Seventies:
From Hot Pants to Hot Tubs (1990); Editors of Rolling Stone, The 70s: A Tumultuous Decade
Reconsidered (1998); Friedman, ed., American Cinema of the 1970s: Themes and Variations
(2007); Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s: The Decade That Brought You Modern Life—For
Better or Worse (2000); Gilbey, It Don’t Worry Me: The Revolutionary American Films of the
Seventies (2003); Inness, Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s (2003);
Matthews, Stuck in the Seventies (1995); Miller, The Seventies Now: Culture as Surveillance
(1999); Sandbrook, Mad As Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right
(2011); Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics
(2002); Waldrep, The Seventies: The Age of Glitter in Popular Culture (2000)
Film: Haynes, The Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Week 6: Sex Machine
Readings: Firestone, from The Dialectic of Sex (1970); Dyer, “In Defense of Disco” (1995); Cowie, from
Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (2010)
Film: Badham, Saturday Night Fever (1977)
Week 7: Mondo Cheese
Paper #2 abstracts due
Readings: Newitz, “What Makes Things Cheesy?”; Stanfield, Walking the Streets: Black Gangsters and the
‘Abandoned City’ in the 1970s Blaxploitation Cycle”
Film: Parks, Shaft (1971)
Week 8: Family Matters
Readings: Berliner, “The Pleasures of Disappointment: Sequels and The Godfather, Part II” (2001);
Carnoy, from Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family, and Community in the Information
Age (2000)
Film: Coppola, The Godfather, Part II (1974)
Week 9: Aliens II: The Enemy Within
Readings: Griffin, from Woman and Nature (1978); Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology,
and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century” (1991)
Film: Scott, Alien (1979)
Week 10: ¡Bicentennial!
Readings: Commercials from Coca-Cola and K-Mart (1976); Disney World, “America on Parade” (1976);
Scott-Heron, “Bicentennial Blues” (1976)
Film: Altman, Nashville (1975)
Week 11: Disasters
Workshop: responses to works-in-progress
Readings: Zizek, “Welcome to the Desert of the Real!” (2002); Davis, “The Flames of New York” (2001)
Film: Allen, The Towering Inferno (1974)
Week 12: Pure War
Readings: Virilio, from Bunker Archeology (1975), from War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception
(1989); Lemmey, “Devastation in Meatspace” (2012)
Film: Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979)
Week 13: Slashing & Hacking
Readings: Dawkins, from The Selfish Gene (1976); Barlow, “The Economy of Ideas” (1994); Rushkoff,
from Media Virus (1994)
Film: Romero, Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Week 14: Mindless Pleasures
Paper #2 due
Film: Anderson, Boogie Nights (1997)
Final exam
THE WEEKLY RESPONSE PAPERS
The first class meeting of every week will be entirely given over to free-ranging discussion about the assigned film
and readings. In order to prepare yourself to be a dynamic participant, I would like for you to write a short response
paper upon something that seems particularly important & interesting. For the sake of brevity and my own selfpreservation, these response papers should be no longer than a single sheet of paper. I would prefer word-processed
documents but will accept neatly handwritten ones, as well. They will be assigned a grade (+, √, -) according to
their grasp of the assigned material, originality, succinctness, and quality of writing. Your response papers are due
every Tuesday, with the exception of day when other projects are due. From these 11 response papers, I will drop
the lowest score and assign an overall letter grade at semester’s end.
THE CRITICAL REVIEW ESSAY
In lieu of assigning a single history text about the 1970s, I’ve chosen to draw upon our collective resources and
undertake a more far-reaching survey of critical works upon the subject. On January 31, we will draw lots to
determine assignments for a collaborative 5-6 pp. essay that will accomplish the following tasks: 1) give your reader
a succinct overview of the book’s primary subject matter and major argumentative claims; 2) include, preferably as
a brief appendix, an outline of the book’s chapters (topic and main texts); 3) offer an independent assessment as to
the book’s strengths, limitations, and potential usefulness to research upon the 1970s. The best essays will not
become captive to a given author’s point of view but instead feature their own distinctive vantage points—your
ideas and interpretation are a necessary element of this undertaking! Your will need to upload your essay to a
myCourses folder so the rest of the class may access it.
THE “RESEARCH” PAPER
The word “research” appears in quotation marks because I emphatically do not want you turning in a conventional
research paper: performed half-heartedly, in response to draconian guidelines; bibliographies of works you haven’t read;
little room for creative prose forms or original thought. I do want you to undertake a topic that’s meaningful and then
grow into it, utilizing research so as to minimize unsubstantiated spouting and to break through the tyranny of what you
already know. I don’t see research and creativity as antithetical. A few guidelines as to the overall process, which
should result in an essay of approximately 10-15 pages:
1. Abstract—on March 5 please submit a 1-2 pp. abstract describing, to the extent you’re able, the focus and projected
materials for your endeavor. You’ll respond to the abstracts of two other class members; I’ll read them as well
and return them to you on March 12.
2. Research—to meet the academic expectations of this assignment, you’ll need to undertake substantial original
research (not simply internet or secondary sources, although use of the latter is encouraged). This may involve
screening a number of related films; reading fiction, poetry, or non-fiction not assigned for this course; or the
recovery of other primary materials from the 1970s. The final paper should have a “fairly impressive
bibliography” (interpret that how you will). I encourage you to embark upon your inquiry without a
predetermined thesis and instead remain alert to the “dark dreams of the past” embodied in your historical
sources—it will produce a more innovative piece of writing.
3. Works-in-progress—on April 9, please bring three copies of your work-in-progress with you to class. Two of these
will go to other students, each of whom will write a detailed critique of your work: its strengths, suggested
improvements, ideas for associated research (obviously, you’ll be doing the same for each of their essays). On
April11, the three of you will meet to discuss the works-in-progress and hopefully do a bit of brainstorming.
Meanwhile, I’ll be reading my copy of the various essays and return them to you by April 16.
4. Due Date—final drafts of your paper are due in class on April 30…paper copies only, please.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
After completing this course students should demonstrate:
1. The ability to interpret films beyond a framework of plot summary.
2. The ability to articulate meaningful connections between films and cultural history.
3. The ability to articulate meaningful connections between films and theoretical texts.
4. The ability to draw upon research in primary & secondary sources for critical writing.