The Film as a Text
and Political Space
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Per-Anders Forstorp
Docent
Skolan för Datavetenskap och kommunikation
KTH, forstorp@kth.se
Research areas:
Knowledge, communication, media –
a cultural studies perspective
Current projects:
Eduscapes: Towards a Critical Anthropology of
Knowledge Society
The Topographies of Knowledge: Cross-Boundary
Learning in Higher Education
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Outline
1. The course. Some practical issues.
2. Film, media and popular culture in the humanities and
social & political science. Article by John O´Connor.
3. The artwork essay by Walter Benjamin.
4. Before we leave…
Language issues…
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1. War, Media, and Culture,
7,5 credits
Instructors:
Jonathan M. Feldman, docent, PhD
Ekonomisk historia, Stockholms universitet
JonathanMFeldman@gmail.com
08-162843
Per-Anders Forstorp, docent, FD
Skolan för Datavetenskap och kommunikation, KTH
forstorp@kth.se
0768-727297
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Web
Webpage:
http://www.ekohist.su.se/?page=scheman/somkurs08#war
On the web page you will find the syllabus for the course
Mail to the course:
warmediaandculture@gmail.com
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Duration of the course
11 weeks
Teaching and screening mainly in August, from 4-22
Readings and preparations mainly in June and July
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Outline of the course
Lectures (6)
The Film as a text and Political Space
Media Power
Crisis Theory and War
The Contested Media Terrain Around War
Terrorism and the Media
Media, Disarmament and Social Change
Films (3)
U-137 by Maj Wechselmann
Film on War and the Media
Film on the War on Terrorism
Discussion seminars (3)
Monday 4/8
Thursday 14/8
Monday 18/8
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Assignments
Individual writing
summarize and analyze the writings in the second class
due: 11/8
Writing in small group
summarize and analyze the writings in the fifth class
due:21/8
Examination (hemtentamen) due 22/8
•
two or three film reviews
•
questions about each film
•
questions about readings
•
questions about the book, Incoherent Empire by
Michael Mann
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Examination and grading
Lectures, films, study circles, discussion seminars, report
writing and final test
Attendance is obligatory to all these events (see the
syllabus for a specification)
Grades: pass with distinction (väl godkänd)
pass (godkänd)
fail (underkänd)
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Literature/Films
Films will be screened according to schedule
Book Mann, Michael (2003) Incoherent Empire. London &
New York: Verso
Additional readings, mostly available on the web, are listed
in the syllabus. A reference copy of all readings will be
available in the library.
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How to prepare for lectures, film
screenings and discussions
For the lectures and screenings: Key questions related to
the readings and the screenings, see syllabus
For the discussion seminars:
Creation of study circles
Preparation in study circles: discussing the questions,
preparing short presentations
Presenting in seminars
Note that the seminars are only 1 hour!
Be brief!
The central creative activity will take place in study
circles.
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Creation of study circles
Sign the attendance list with your name and give an emailaddress where you can be reached
Before we leave today:
Study circle leaders will be identified who will be in charge
of informing their members already today. Set up a first
meeting
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The course – contents for War,
media and culture
Lectures, readings, screenings, study circles
Course objectives:
•
•
•
•
How media is organized as a form of power
Relationship of war and culture with a specific focus on
the media
Uses of media by foreign policy organisations – how the
media influences these organisations
Media and peace organisations – how they influence each
other
Interdisciplinary: International relations (IR), Economic
history, Peace- and conflict research, Political science,
Cultural studies, Media- and communication studies
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2. Film, media and popular culture
in the humanities and social &
political science
”History in Images/Images in History. Reflection on the Importance
of Film and Television Study for an Understanding of the Past”
By John E. O´Connor in The American Historical Review 1988, vol
93, nr. 5, 1200-1209 See also Image as Artifact. The Historical
Analysis of Film and Television and Teaching History with Film
and Television
Addresses the question:
The last two decades or so…
”The visual turn”
Iconography
The uses of various forms of representations (not only texts) for the
study of society and culture
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O´Connors argument
The study of film, TV and popular culture is relevant to
professional historians
Manuscripts as documents; the traditional ignorance of
visuality as lightwight entertainment
Absence of methology for anlyzing visual representations as
historical artifacts
Photography (150 yrs), films (100 yrs) and TV (50 yrs)
1. The contributions of visual evidence to an understanding
of the past
2. Historian filmmakers can offer important assistance;
people are likely to learn history from film and television
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Implications for curriculum
design and students
Critical readings of textbooks and articles should be extended
also
to
Teaching students to be informed, critical viewers of
historical film and television
O´Connors example is history – this can easily be extended
to disciplines social science, political science and cultural
studies and to almost any kind of phenomenon
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Film and TV major factors in politics and culture since the
1930s
”Media events” (Daniel Dayan & Elihu Katz) – important
events take place in front of the camera/screen (John F
Kennedy; Anwar Sadat; Ronald Reagan; The
Hindenburg;The moon-landing, sports, etc.)
Professional or amateur footage
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The Hindenburg zeppelin,
1937
What would be required in a full historical analysis?
German politics of transportation
The log
Design of airship
Economics of fuel
Statistics of the disaster
Experience and fram of mind of the radio commentator
Images of the exploding airship
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Media events as pseudo events?
What can we learn from the orchestration of visual representations?
Media as part of political strategy
How politicians learn to cope with the media and to perform in front
of the camera. Styling and media training is commonplace.
Already in the 1930s UK, Neville Chamberlain
”Peace for our time” – reassuring a British public fearful of war
Pre-television – vaudeville circuits and movie musicals in the 1930s
What does it mean to be a member of a radio or film audience in the
1930s?
The role of advertising in the growth of conusmer society
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Disciplines and theoretical
approaches to the study of film
and television
Disciplines:
Film and cinema studies
Literary studies
Communications theory
Media studies
Cultural studies
Theoretical approaches:
Structuralism
Semiotcs
Feminism
Marxism
&
Post-structuralism
Post-colonial studies
Queer studies
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Historians and methodology
What elements of visual analysis will be needed?
The uses of traditional historical methods in the analysis of
”moving images”?
1. General analysis
2. Specific analysis
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1. General analysis
Content, context and historical influence
Content also includes: camera angle, lighting, composition,
editing, how elements of visual representation add
patterns of interpretation
Visual and aural content
Analytic breakdown into scenes, sequences or shots
Interaction between images and soundtrack
Symbolic images and meaning making
Example?
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The film as an artifact:
Production background (behind-the-scenes)
Collaborative processes
Ideological purposes
The meaning of the film for the historical audience:
Shaping popular perception
An agent of history
Study of audiences and spectators: reception studies
- Based on the assumption that we read images in different
ways
- The historical context of media consumption – how they
make meaning from what they read and see
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2. Specific analysis
The critical analysis/assessment of historical evidence (Sw.
”källkritik”)
Feature films and documentaries are both ”carefully
structured creations that present a particular point of
view”
With what purpose do we study the films?
Not discrete historical data but as indications of social and
cultural values
Shaping social values or just reflecting social values?
Construction or representation?
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Four forms of historical inquiry
of film, TV and popular culture
1. How a film etc. represents or interpret history.
2. To find confirmation of social and cultural values at the
time of production and reception.
3. To acquire factual data otherwise unavailable.
4. To document the history of film, TV and popular culture
Towards a more general ”visual literacy”
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Implications of the visual turn
Increasing visual learning – visual literacy
Challenge students to think analytically about films etc.
• Historical accuracy in film and writing
• What interpretations are presented in films?
• Past and present?
• What alternatives?
• History and fiction?
• Etc.
Relying on historians/filmmakers
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3. The artwork essay by
Walter Benjamin
”The work of art in the age of mechanical
reproduction”
1935-39 (1936)
A ”cause celèbre”, a cult classic
Art, politics and technology
Complex, eclectic, unclassifiable
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Walter Benjamin
1892-1940
Berlin, Paris
A free floating intellectual: collector of books, writer
Suicide at the border to Spain
Co-founder of Critical theory – a school of Marxism and
psychoanalysis at the University of Frankfurt – also Theodor
Adorno and Max Horkheimer (both later in Hollywood)
Critical theory and the culture industry
The new age of mass production will destroy the original work of art
Mass production is mass deception
Suspicions against the advanced technical society and its vision of
progress and liberation
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1930s
A time of mass movements (fascism, socialism)
Rapid technological change
Industrial production and the assembly lines (Fordist
production)
The emergence of the consumer society
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The Artwork essay
Mechanical reproduction and its impact on on the artistic
process, its social and political implications
The ”new age of mechanical reproduction” implies changes in
how industrialized societies can perceive, experience and
reproduce the world around them
The new ”media technology” challenge received aesthetic
and cultural wisdoms and hav a revolutionary potential
(cf. Brecht in theater, Eisenstein in film and film theory) –
more egalitarian and empowering forms of expression
The essay contains analysis, diagnosis and prognosis: ”new
media” has transformed the nature of art
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Fifteen theses
History: Art has always been reproducible, new technologies
brings a new public dimension to art in photography and
film (I)
Aura, perception, tradition: The ”unique” object becomes one
of many and can be placed in new situations; the ”aura”
(the sacred originality) withers away but is replaced by an
ability to detach (II-IV)
”…the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By
making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of
copies for a single existence. And in permitting the
reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own
particular situation, it reactivates the thing reproduced”
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Art and ritual (cult value) but new technology emancipates
the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual –
the break in ritual and the advent of politics (IV)
From ”cult value” (ritualistic) to ”exhibition value” (public
showings): a new relationship between art and its public
and a qualitiative transformation of the nature of art; how
art can be re-empowered under the pressure of unequal
social relations of capitalist accumulation (V-VI)
Camera as performer and mediator: hand-eye coordination
and cognitive and emotional processes are affected by
new technology; acting on stage vs. acting in front of
camera (asynchronous, disembodied, reconstituted by
technical intervention) (VII-X)
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Empowerment or alientation: new conditions of capitalist
exploitation – the cult of the movie star; aura is replaced
by commodity; the need for other changes (ownership,
control (XI-XII)
Consciuous enjoyment and unconscious optics: criticism and
enjoyment, the camera and unconscious optics
(psychoanalysis) (XIII)
Perception and action – on and off-screen: not deciding
between good or bad but art should be evaluated by its
new mode of participation (impact and exhibition value)
(XIV-XV)
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Epilogue: the grand themes of the prologue
•
techniques of mechanical reproduction are
appropriated by the commercial film industry and
the art establishment
•
because of capitalism , commercialisation and
proletarianisation of modern man
•
the Fascist war machine´s use of mass mobilisation
(propaganda and high-tech weapons)
The sad irony: changes in human sense perception have
been coming to serve the needs of war and the needs of
capitalism
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4. Before we leave
The leaders of the study circles are the following persons
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