Body, Language, Technology and Ideology

Who communicates to whom through what on their way to where? We will tease out the implications of this question in a series of films from the mid 1970s to the present. We will trace how the two themes of genetic mutation and cybernetics converge. We will examine how these films represent the nature and legitimacy of social groupings and represent struggles for control of communications media.
Week 1
Screening: Chris Marker, La Jetée, Terry Gillian 12 Monkeys
Reading: Robin Wood, Introduction, The American Nightmare: Essays on the Horror Film 7-29
Week 2
Screening: Ridley Scott Alien
Reading: Kaja Silverman "Body Talk" The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema 42-71
Week 3
Screening: Ridley Scott Bladerunner
Reading: Teresa de Lauretis "Through the Looking-Glass" Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema 12-36
Week 4
Screening: Lizzie Borden Born in Flames
Reading: Teresa de Lauretis "The Technology of Gender" Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction 1-30
Week 5
Screening: David Cronenberg The Brood
Reading: Kaja Silverman "Historie d'O: Construction of a Female Subject" Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality ed. Carole Vance 320-349
Week 6
Screening: David Fincher Seven
Reading: Istvan Csicseray-Ronay "Futuristic Flu, or, The Revenge of the Future" Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative ed. Geogre Slusser and Tom Shippey 26-45
Week 7
Screening: Steve Barron Coneheads
Reading: Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology. amd Socialist- Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature 149-181
Week 8
Screening: Iain Softly Hackers
Reading: Bruce Sterling, Preface to Mirror Shades; Samuel Delany exerpt from "Reading at Work, and Other Activities Frowned on by Authority A reading of Donna Haraway's "Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s" Longer Views 105-108
Week 9
Screening: George Miller (II) and George Ogilvie Mad Max:Beyond Thunderdome
Reading: David Porush "Frothing at the Synaptic Bath" Storming the Reality Studio ed. Larry McCaffery 331-333 and David Porush "Frothing at the Synaptic Bath" Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative ed. Geogre Slusser and Tom Shippey 246-261 (Both Versions)
Week 10
Screening: John Greyson Zero Patience
Reading: Brooks Landon "Not What It Used to Be: The Overloading of Memory in Digital Narrative" Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of Narrative ed. Geogre Slusser and Tom Shippey 153-170
Week 11
Screening: Wim Wenders Until the End of the World
Reading: William Rothman "Against the 'System of Suture'" Movies and Methods I 451- 459
Week 12
Screening: Luc Besson Fifth Element
Reading: Bill Nichols "Style and Grammar, and the Movies" Movies and Methods I 607- 628
Week 13
Screening: Derek Jarman Wittgenstein
Reading: Christian Metz "Story/Discourse: Notes on Two Kinds of Voyeurism" Movies and Methods II 543-549

Assignments:

40% Paper
10% 250 word precis of a reading posted to discussion list
10% Annotated Filmography by auteur, sequel, or star.
10% Participation
30% Exam
The Paper
Choose one of the following.

A. From/to
Analyse the representation of bodily extensions or organic-machine connections in one film. Pay careful attention to its introduction, its evolution and its concluding state.

B. From/to by whom
Examine how two films value intersubjectivity. Your primary concern should be the nature and legitimacy of social groupings depicted in the films as weel as with the authority presenting this nature and legitimacy.

C. From/to by whom for whom
Exploit a contradictory moment in one film. Identify the discursive instances and produce a reading of a given organism or machine and its sign relation (icon, index, or symbol) to the representation of at least two social groupings.
The Exam
Choose one of the above questions for which you did not write your paper.

A. From/to
In one of the following films, analyse the representation of bodily extensions or organic-machine connections in one film. Pay careful attention to its introduction, its evolution and its concluding state.



B. From/to by whom
Examine how two of the following films value intersubjectivity. Your primary concern should be the nature and legitimacy of social groupings depicted in the films as weel as with the authority presenting this nature and legitimacy.

C. From/to by whom for whom
Exploit a contradictory moment in one of the following films. Identify the discursive instances and produce a reading of a given organism or machine and its sign relation (icon, index, or symbol) to the representation of at least two social groupings.

Francois Lachance
lachance@chass.utoronto.ca