The Modern Body and the Cinema
The University of Chicago
Winter, 2008
Visiting Assistant Professor Jennifer Wild
Lecture: Tuesday/Thursday, 1:30-2:50, Cobb 425
Screening: Monday, 7-10 p.m, Cobb 425.
From the late nineteenth-century motion studies of Marey and Muybridge, to the abstract spectacle of Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance, to the slapstick comedies of Chaplin or Jean Durand, to early and later medical films, or the face of Maria Falconetti projected twenty five feet tall in close-up, the early cinema presents a range of technological and aesthetic terms for a history of modern figuration. This class uses the body as a point of entry to an exploration of film aesthetics (from early to contemporary cinema) in order to discuss how cinematographic temporality, spatiality, plasticity, materiality and hapticality underwrite the stakes of modern human figuration, expressivity, and even stardom within the context of modernity, war, modernism, and technical innovation and revolution.
Books to be purchased; all available at the Seminary Co-op:
-James Elkins, Pictures of the Body: Pain and Metamorphosis (U. California Press, 1999). **This book is out of print. Chapters will be on chalk, and the book will be on reserve. You can purchase this book used on-line.
-Henri Bergson, Philosophy of Laughter
-Lisa Cartwright, Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
Recommended Purchase (We will be reading 3 chapters from this book which will also be on reserve.
-Vivian Sobchack, Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (University of California Press, 2004).
Requirements:
Week 1: Introduction; The Geographies of the Film/Body
Screening:
-Edison:
-Annabelle Butterfly Dance, #1, #3
Serpentine Dance By Annabelle
Annabelle Serpentine Dance #1, #4
-1893: Men Boxing: 1894: Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze; Athlete With Wand; Sandow; Carmencita; Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph; the Hornbacker-Murphy fight; Louis Martinetti, Contortionist; the Execution of Mary, queen of Scots 1896: the John c. Rice - May Irwin kiss; Fatima, Muscle Dancer (original and censored versions); 1903: Electrocuting an Elephant;
-Les Joyeux Microbes (Emile Cohl, 1909, 5 min).
-Arthème Avale sa Clarinette (Ernst Servaes, Lobster RETOUR DE FLAMME # 8). (about 8 min).
-De X-Strahlen (X-Rays, Film der Hollandsche Filmuniversiteit [Holfu], 1928) (Length?)
-For Your Health (Alexander Medvedkin 1927-9 (9 min)
-A Venereal Disease Rapid Treatment Center (U.S. Department of Agriculture Motion Picture Service, 10 min)
-They do Come Back (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1966, 17 min)
-Let My People Live (Edgar G. Ulmer, 13 min)
-More Than Meets the Eye (Eastman Kodak, 27 min)
-Image Intensification and Television in Radiological Examination (27 min)
-Geography of the Body (Willard Maas, 1943, 7 min)
-No. 4 aka Bottoms (Yoko Ono, 1966, 6 min).
-Her Heart is Washed in Water and Then Weighed (Sasha Waters, 2005, 13min)
Reading:
-Aristotle, Book II, On the Soul (Chalk, ebook link)
-Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” What is Cinema, Vol. I
-Preface and Introduction, James Elkins, Pictures of the Body
-Introduction and Chapter 1, Cartwright, Screening the Body
Recommended:
-Sobchack, Chapter 6, “The Scene of the Screen”
Week 2: Human Figuration: Fluidity and Time_________
Screening:
-Muybridge Motion Studies 1872-87 (screen with soundtrack voiceover) (30 min)
-Dance number, “Young and Healthy” from 42nd Street, 1933 (about 7 min)
- Study in Choreography for the Camera (Maya Deren, 1945, 4 min)
-Necrology (Roll call of the dead) (Standish Lawder, 1969-1970, 12 min.)
-Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999, 92 min)
Reading:
-Merleau Ponty, “Film and the New Psychology;” “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motility” (Chalk)
-Cartwright, Chapter 2, “ ‘Experiments of Destruction’: Cinematic Inscriptions of Physiology”
-Maryann Doane, “Temporality, Storage, Legibility: Freud, Marey, and the Cinema,” (Chalk)
Week 3: Dynamism and Embodiment
Screening:
-The Maniac Chase (Edwin S. Porter, 1904, 10 min)
-Max Learns to Skate (Max Linder, 5 min)
-The Hazards of Helen (McGowan, 1915, 14 min)
-Coney Island (Arbuckle, 1917, 20 min)
-College (Keaton; dir. James Horne, 1927, 66 min)
-The Rink (Charles Chaplin, 1916, 26 min)
-Deadpan (Steve McQueen, 1997, 4 minutes)
Reading:
-Lauren Rabinovitz, “Coney Island Comedies: Slapstick and Embodiment at the Turn of the Century,” (Chalk).
-Ben Singer, “Modernity, Hyperstimulus, and the Rise of Popular Sensationalism.” (Chalk)
-Bazin, Eisenstein, on Chaplin (Chalk)
- Chapter I of Bergson, Philosophy of Laughter
Recommended:
-Jonathan Crary, “Unbinding Vision: Manet and the Attentive Observer in the Late Nineteenth Century.”
-Jennifer Bean, “Technologies of Stardom” (Chalk)
Week 4: Fragmentation
Screening:
-Georges Méliès:
The conjuror, (1899); The Four Troublesome Heads (1898); The Infernal Cakewalk (1903); The Music Lover (1903); The Infernal Boiling Pot (1903); The Man With a Rubber Head (1901); The Living Playing Cards (1904); The Devilish Tenant (1909); Untamable Whiskers (1904); Imperceptible Transmutations (1904); Fat and Lean Wrestling Match (1900); The One-man Band (1900).
-Excerpt, So This is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926, 4 min).
-Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell, 1936, 19 min)
-The Amputee (David Lynch, 1973, 5 min).
-Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo, 1971, 111 min.
Reading:
-Elkins, Chapter 2, “Cut Flesh”
-Sobchack, Chapter 8, 9
Week 5. The Face in Close-up
Screening:
-Photographing a Female Crook (1904)
-Screen Test: Helmut (Warhol, 1964, 4 min)
-Blow Job (Warhol, 1963, 27 min)
-Selected videos by Sadie Benning
- La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Dreyer, 1927, 82 min.)
Reading:
-Cartwright, Chapter 3, “An Etiology of the Neurological Gaze”
-Elkins, Chapter 2, “Psychomachia”
-Tom Gunning, “Tracing the Individual Body: Photography, Detectives, and Early Cinema” (Chalk)
Recommended:
-Doane, “The Close-Up: Scale and Detail in the Cinema,” (Chalk)
-Simmel (Chalk)
-Alan Sekula, “The Shadow Archive” (Chalk)
Week 6: The Comic Body: Chaplin, Lewis, Tati
-Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936, 87 min)
-Jerry Lewis Oldsmobile Commercial (1958)
-Jour de Fête (Jacques Tati, 1949, 78 min)
Reading:
-Rae Beth Gordon, “From Charcot to Charlot: Unconscious Imitation and Spectatorship in French Cabaret and Early Cinema” (Chalk)
-Bergson, Part II, Philosophy of Laughter
--Arnheim and Benjamin on Chaplin (Chalk)
Week 7: On Bodily Interiors and Exteriors
Screening:
-The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971, 32 min).
-Model (Frederick Wiseman; 1980, 129 min)
Reading:
-Elkins, Chapter 1, “Membranes”
-Laura Marks, The Skin of the Film, Chapters TBA
-Steven Shaviro, The Cinematic Body, Chapters TBA
Recommended:
-Cartwright, Chapter 5, “Decomposing the Body: X-rays and Cinema”
Week 8: The Athletic Body
Screening:
-Olympia, Part II (*note: we will screen about half of Part II) (Leni Riefenstahl, 1939)
-Zidane, un portrait du 21e siecle (Douglas Gordon, Philippe Parreno, 2006, 90 min).
Reading:
-Elkins, Chapter 4, “By Looking Alone”
-Michael Fried, “Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno’s Zidane,” (Chalk)
-Michael Mackenzie, “From Athens to Berlin: The 1936 Olympics and Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia,” (Chalk)
Recommended:
-Elkins, Chapter 6, “Dry Schemata”
Week 9: Video/Figuration
Screening:
Flesh to White to Black to Flesh (Nauman, 1968, 51 min).
I do not know what it is I am like (Bill Viola, 1986, 88 min).
Reading:
Robert R. Riley, “Bruce Nauman's philosophical and material explorations in film and video”
Week 10: The Digitized Body
Internet screening TBA (home screening)
-Mark Hansen, Philosophy for New Media, Chapters TBA (Chalk)
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