CLC 5204
Cultural Studies in Film and Video
Fall 2005
203 Esther Lee Building
Thursday, 6:45 pm to 9:30 pm
Prof. Laikwan Pang
Email: lkpang@cuhk.edu.hk
Office: 414 Hui Yeung Shing Building
Office Tel: 31634153
Office Hours: Thursday 2-6pm (tentative),
or by appt.
DESCRIPTION:
Cinema is one of the most important forms of representations in contemporary culture,
and in this course we study film and video from the perspective of cultural studies.
The course is not aimed at teaching students basic skills of textual and image analysis:
we do not read film as arts, but we read cinema culturally and politically. We want to
examine how the cultural forms of moving images carry meanings and how it can and
cannot be used as ideological apparatus. Through the studies of film and video we
also trace the development of contemporary visual culture and examine how it
defines (post)modern lives and experience. Using cinema and video as examples, this
course provides students a general theoretical landscape to understand and criticize
our contemporary mass representations. Our ultimate aim is to interrogate the
boundaries and to locate new terrains between cinema studies and cultural studies.
CONTENT:
1. Sept 8 Introduction: Between Cinema Studies and Cultural Studies
Section I: Cinema and Space
2.
Sept 15 Cinema as National and Transnational
Reading:

Andrew Higson, “The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema” (in
Cinema and Nation, ed. Hjort & MacKenzie, 2000)

Paul Willemen, looks and frictions, 1994 (pp. 206-19)
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
Stephen Crofts, “Reconceptualizing National Cinema/s” (Quarterly
Review of Film and Video 14.3, 1993)

3.
David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema, 1998 (pp.245-78)
Sept 22 Hollywood Hegemony
Reading:

Toby Miller et. al., Global Hollywood, 2001 (pp. 17-43, 146-170)

Ana M. López, “Facing up to Hollywood” (in Reinventing Film Studies,
ed. Gledhill & Williams, 2000)
4.
Sept 29 Cinema and The Public Sphere
Reading:

Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article” (in
Critical Theory and Society, ed. Bronner & Keller, 1989)

Miriam Hansen, Babel and the Babylon, 1991 (pp. 23-59)

James Donald and Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, “The Publicness of
Cinema” (in Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Gledhill & Williams, 2000)

Kevin J. Corbett, “The Big Picture: Theatrical Moviegoing, Digital
Television, and Beyond the Substitution Effect” (Cinema Journal 40.2,
2001)
Section II: Cinema and Time
5.
Oct 6
Cinema and Modernity
Reading:

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction” (Illuminations, pp. 217-251)

Tom Gunnings, “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and
the Avant-Garde” (Wide Angle 8.3/4, 1986)

6.
Oct 13
Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time, 2002 (pp.140-171)
Cinema and Postmodernity
Reading:

Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism and Consumer Culture” (in Movies
and Mass Culture, ed. John Belton, 1996)

Linda Williams, “Discipline and Fun: Psycho and Postmodern Cinema”
(in Reinventing Film Studies, ed. Gledhill & Williams, 2000)
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
Anne Friedberg, Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern, 1993
(pp. 157-80)
Section III: Representations vs. Spectatorship
7.
Oct 20
Cinema and Body
Reading:

Rey Chow, Primitive Passions, 1995 (pp. 142-72)

Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action
Cinema, 1993 (pp. 91-108)

Ernesto R. Acevedo-Munoz, “The Body and Spain: Pedro Almodóvar’s
All About My Mother” (Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 21.1,
2004)
8.
Oct 27
Spectatorship and Feminist Critiques
Reading:

Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema” (in Issues in
Feminist Film Criticism, ed. Patricia Erens, 1990)

Kaja Silverman, “Historical Trauma and Male Subjectivity” (in
Psychoanalysis and Cinema, ed. Kaplan, 1990)

9.
Nov 3
10. Nov 10
Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship, 1993 (pp. 31-52)
Class Cancel. Lecturer lectures at the UK
Spectatorship and Cultural Studies
Reading:

Kathryn Helgesen Fuller, “Viewing the Viewers: Representations of the
Audience in Early Cinema Advertising” (in American Movie Audiences,
ed. Stokes & Maltby, 1999)

Jackie Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female
Spectatorship, 1993 (pp. 19-48)

E. Deidre Pribram, “Spectatorship and Subjectivity” (in A Companion to
Film Theory, ed. Miller & Stam, 1999)
11. Nov 17
Copyright and Movie Piracy
Reading:

Laikwan Pang, Cultural Control and Globalization in Asia
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Section IV: The End of Cinema?
12. Nov 24
The Video Challenge
Reading:

Ann Friedberg, “The End of Cinema: Multimedia and
Technological Change” (in Reinventing Cinema Studies, ed.
Gledhill & Williams, 2000)

Barbara Klinger, “The Contemporary Cinephile: Film Collecting
in the Post-Video Era” (in Hollywood Spectatorships, ed. Stokes &

Maltby, 2001)
N. Frank Ukadike, “Video Booms and the Manifestations of ‘First’
Cinema in Anglophone Africa” (in Rethinking Third Cinema, ed.
Gunerantne & Dissanayake, 2003)
13. Dec 1
The Digital Challenge
Reading:

Laura Mulvey, “Passing Time: Reflections on Cinema from a New
Technological Age” Screen 45.2, 2004

Michele Pierson, Special Effects, 2002 (pp. 137-158)

Lev Manovich, “Old Media as New Media: Cinema” (in The New
Media Book, ed. Dan Harries, 2002)
ASSESSMENT:
60%
Final Paper (15 pages)
30%
Presentation
10%
Class Participation
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS:
As not all students have solid foundations in the history, culture, and art of cinema,
here is a list of supplementary readings students can read on their own to prepare for
this course. However, a strong background in film studies is not a pre-requisite for
this course. Individual student would be able to pick up some basic knowledge about
cinema as the course goes on.
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For Film Art and Film Language:

Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson 著, 曾偉禛譯. Film Art: An
Introduction. 《電影藝術:形式與風格》. 台北: 美商麥格羅希爾, 2001.


Kasdan, Margo, Christine Saxton, and Susan Tavernetti. The Critical Eye: An
Introduction to Looking at Movies. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1993.
Scarratt, Eliane. Teaching Analysis of Film Language and Production. London:
BFI, 2003.
For Film Culture and Film Studies in general:

Branston, Gill. Cinema and Cultural Modernity. London: Open University, 2000.




Hill, John and Pamela Church Gibson. Film Studies: Critical Approaches. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Lehman, Peter. Defining Cinema. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press,
1997.
Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
Turner, Graeme 著, 林文淇譯. Film as Social Practice 《電影的社會實踐》.
台北:遠流, 1997.
For Film History:

Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film. Third edition. New York, London:

W.W. Norton, 1996.
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed.). The Oxford History of World Cinema. London:
Oxford, 1999.
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