"Surfaces of Cinema"

In recent decades, close analysis of films has often focused on interpretation and subtext. Armed with a theory, the critic looks past a text's manifest content to reveal its latent, often pernicious, subtext. This "top down" approach brackets individual response as the starting point for critical reflection, foregrounding instead the "objectivity" of theory. In this seminar we will reverse this trajectory. Starting with individual response, critical investigation in this seminar will focus not on symptomatic interpretation--not on what films mean--but instead on the various ways in which they create meaning, and the ways also in which films create equally important effects that exceed meaning, such as tone, texture, rhythm, and atmosphere. Readings will include works by Roland Barthes, Andre Bazin, Stanley Cavell, Manny Farber, Laura Mulvey, Victor Perkins, Susan Sontag, Peter Wollen, and others.

(Open to Senior FMMC majors and minors or by consent of instructor) 3 hrs. sem./3 hrs. screen.