Month: April 2020

The World Viewed by Stanley Cavell

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Citation: Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The World Viewed. Enlarged Edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.
  • Summary & Implications: What is the author’s project and why is it important now? What’s the narrative about the field that’s emerging from the reading? What narratives are silent? Whose voices are silent?
    • Cavell is undertaking an attempt at defining what film is, ontologically speaking, and exploring the ramifications and implications of that definition. Cavell first writes as the field of Film Studies is beginning to develop in universities (1971), and so this falls into the category of trying to set base terms for discussion and only infrequently addresses other film theorists. The World Viewed remains important in understanding some of the history of the field as well as for having developed a “theory of everything” within the film world. He addresses actors, screens, cameras, directors, sound, color, and more in trying to figure out what film affords its artists as a medium.
  • Context: Who is this author debating with and why? What is the context of the text’s production and distribution? What historical, cultural, etc. factors affect the way it makes meaning? Does the author seem to be in conversation with other scholars and/or paradigms? Where is this piece of writing centered in the field? What is their intervention in the literature/field? What text is this text in conversation with?
    • Cavell’s interlocutors come from two areas of study. First, his film theory predecessors, primarily Andre Bazin and Erwin Panofsky, provide Cavell with at least a few jumping off points, primarily in the areas of film’s relationship with reality. Otherwise, his interlocutors are primarily the continental philosophers that you’re used to seeing in these kinds of things: Hegel and Nietzsche, and so on. These two kinds of interlocutors make sense for his project as they come from different angles to the same question of what film is. I’ve seen Cavell referenced in other works, here and there, so his musings remain at least somewhat relevant for film theorists of today.
    • As a book written just after the collapse of the Hollywood studio system in the 1960s, there’s an interesting thread of Cavell mourning the loss of what was once great in that system while being wary of what the new way of making movies in America was starting to bring. He writes of the loss of stars like Bogart, noting that the actors of his era at the start of the 70s were less memorable or noticeable as those of the past. This historical positioning also, necessarily, limits the text. The most “modern” movie he writes about is 2001: A Space Odyessey, which means that he was writing about the movies that predated the blockbusters that are my particular area of interest.

  • Methodology: What is the methodological framework of this text? What methodological moves or questions does the author engage? What is their object of analysis?
    • Cavell primarily pays attention to Hollywood produced films, with reliable standards like Vertigo, Rosemary’s Baby, and Breathless getting extended analysis and smaller works like The Mortal Storm popping up here and there. These analyses are provided in support of the attempts at writing an exploration of the ontology of film. Occasionally, Cavell will take inspiration from other philosophers of art in order to explain how their theories apply (or not) to film, and in order to distinguish film from other arts.
  • Rhetorical Moves: What are the major rhetorical moves of the author’s arguments?
    • Cavell develops his theories in what seems like fits and starts. Each chapter is relatively short, and what starts as a chapter on, say, color in film might end up as a musing about time and futurity. This makes Cavell’s overall motive and progression of ideas somewhat difficult to parse. Luckily, he provides a pretty solid rundown in his final chapter. Cavell states that film is both of and outside the world, reality, and it is because film presents a viewing of reality (as constructed as it may be) without us in it that we are drawn to it. He claims several times that films waken us from our own subjectivities by showing us something that is outside that subjectivity, and in this way it reveals reality to us, even if that reality is not a full or complete reality because it is necessarily limited by the frame and time.
  • Engagement & Application: How do I engage this text? How does this apply to my work? Does it support or provide a counterargument or model for strong intro or lit review? In other words, why is this piece of writing useful to me and/or how is it limited (bad writing style, problematic, didn’t consider x, y, and z)? Does it intersect with other items on the list?
    • While this text is a little more philosophical than where my usual areas of interest lie in the mechanics and mechanisms of films themselves, I always appreciate reading through another person’s developed perspectives on a medium that I love so much. I found in it many passages that spoke to things I’ve only thought in nascent ways, and that’s often a helpful thing for me. I also appreciate it as a way of understanding “reality” as separate from a naturalistic, Bazinian understanding of filmic “realism.” Here reality doesn’t need to be quotidian or only natural in origin, but is understood as being infinite in its permutations.
    • It is a bit difficult to get through and parse, and Cavell could have been more cognizant of the differences that inflect audience response to films (race, gender, class, so on). He’s got a major case of the universal audience member, one that he pretty directly says is himself. I’m always wary of that.
  • Key Terms: What terms are key to the author’s argument, and are they operationalized explicitly or implicitly?
    • Key terms: realism, automatism, fantasies, subjective, photography, stars
  • Significant Quotations: What key quotations from this work would I want to have quick access to?

So far as photography satisfied a wish, it satisfied a wish not confined to painters, but the human wish, intensifying in the West since the Reformation, to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation–a wish for the power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another. (21)

After The Maltese Falcon we know a new star, only distantly a person. “Bogart” means “the figure created in a given set of films.” His presence in those films is who he is, not merely in the sense in which a photograph of an event is that event; but in the sense that if those films did not exist, Bogart would not exist, the name “Bogart” would not mean what it does. The figure it names is not only in our presence, we are in his, in the only sense we could ever be. That is all the “presence” he has. (28)

Works that do provide me with pleasure or a knowledge of the way things are equally provide me with a sense of the artist’s position toward this revelation – a position, say, of complete conviction, of compassion, of delight or ironic amusement, of longing or scorn or rage or loss. The fact is, an artist, because a human being, does have a position and does have his reasons for calling his events to our attention. What entitles him to our attention is precisely his responsibility to this condition. (98)

Viewing a movie makes this condition automatic, takes the responsibility for it out of our hands. Hence movies seem more natural than reality. Not because they are escapes into fantasy, but because they are reliefs from private fantasy and its responsibilities; from the fact that the world is already drawn by fantasy. And not because they are dreams, but because they permit the self to be wakened, so that we may stop withdrawing our longings further inside ourselves. Movies convince us of the world’s reality in the only way we have to be convinced, without learning to bring the world closer to the heart’s desire (which in practice now means learning to stop altering it illegitimately, against itself): by taking views of it. (102)

Reproducing the world is the only thing film does automatically. (103)

Film takes our very distance and powerlessness over the world as the condition of the world’s natural appearance. It promises the exhibition of the world in itself. This is its promise of candor: that what it reveals is entirely what is revealed to it, that nothing revealed by the world in its presence is lost. (119)

Major and Minor Fields

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As I wrote about a little in the reading list post, your reading list will depend upon what your major and minor fields are. Here at OSU’s English department, you’re required to have one major field and at least one minor field. You can have two minor fields, though it feels like a lot more work for very little additional payoff, so I avoided that. Here at OSU, you’re also required to justify/explain your major and minor fields and what interests you about them, so for the sake of transparency and helping people who might be in the same position, I’m going to put my justifications here as well. Hope they’re useful for you.

Major Field Description: Post-70 U.S. Film and Television

My major field of study is Post-70 Film and Television, with a strong emphasis on blockbuster films and big budget series. These films and shows are not only the primary tentpoles for the industry during this period, but also the types of films and shows that become touchstones within and instigators of broader cultural conversations. They are also examples of storytelling pitched to the largest possible audience through what Hollywood largely considered as the default character and audience identity of the straight white cis-gendered male. Blockbusters highlighted technological filmmaking advancements (surround sound, digital editing, CGI, etc), the combination of which is fascinating in its implications for both how the films are made and why they are received the way they are by audiences. Of course alongside the rise of the blockbuster spectacular, there’s a strong independent tradition that thrives in the 1970s and continues somewhat diminished into the present (and from which some blockbusters like Halloween and The Terminator emerge); these films on my list provide important examples of alternate storytelling and scale-of-production possibilities. Though my focus is primarily on Hollywood film and television, I have included some examples from outside its boundaries in order to capture a range of other filmmaking (and television-making) techniques that often are eventually subsumed into Hollywood’s blockbuster style, like Spike Lee’s expansive scope in Do the Right Thing that gives the supporting cast space to be fuller characters than were previously allowed in Hollywood’s pragmatist cinematic form, not to mention its attention to characters and audiences that Hollywood had largely ignored in its general myopic concentration on whiteness. Although Hollywood is and has been dominated by white male voices, I also tried to be inclusive of films that had strong input by women and people of color where possible. Broadening beyond the auteurist understanding of single authorship of a film or tv show allows movies like Star Wars (with Maria Lucas’ editing) and shows like Veronica Mars (with Kristen Bell’s central performance) to be strong representatives of female voices in filmmaking alongside more traditional examples like Julie Dash’s direction of Daughters of the Dust and Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s showrunning for Fleabag.

My list of secondary sources is populated with a mix of canonical film theory books and essays as well as representative writings on areas of particular interest to my focus on big budget, highly-leveraged film and television in the post-studio era. I consider myself to be, at least partially, a formalist, so Eisenstein, McLuhan, Bordwell, and Bazin (among others) are foundational texts for me. I am also, however, deeply interested in audience studies and spectator theory, an area that Jenkins, Lewis, and Staiger help illuminate. The history of film and film theory is significant to my major field, since I am bracketing a half century defined by the collapse of the classical studio system and the rise of radically new economic structures and film technologies in production, distribution, and exhibition; Carroll, Barnouw, Rodowick, Langford, and Connor will help me better contextualize the way that the current moment has come to be via industrial and technological changes over recent history. Following Richard Dyer, I am also interested in how Hollywood has constructed an overbearing whiteness as the often-understudied default position from which it tells its stories. So many of the movies and shows on my list are about whiteness without acknowledging that fact, and that phenomenon is one I am keen to study more.

via GIPHY

Minor Field Description: Narrative Theory and Seriality Studies

My minor field is in narratology with an emphasis on serialization in film and television. To get as broad an understanding as the field as is possible, I’ve selected some general overviews as well as some standout texts within important subfields (rhetorical narratology, natural and unnatural narratology). With that background, I then focused on serialization in film and television, an until recently underrepresented subfield within narratology. Here I have quite a few studies of television serialization, but, with a few exceptions, little on modern film serialization because not much has yet been written on that subject except for by writers like Locke and Verevis. Writers like Higgins have, however, investigated the world of early film serials. I hope to eventually combine the knowledge from this tv-heavy serialization theory with the more generalized film theory from my major field to create a deeper understanding of how film and tv narratives can operate serially. This will be a crucial part of my dissertation research, as I aim to write primarily about film sequels that were made long after the original films were in theaters. Seriality studies often looks to the way a show balances the serialized/episodic tendencies in relation to the show as a whole, while film studies—when it has analyzed seriality in its medium—usually looks at it primarily as an opportunity to continue a story/world that has been successful (commercially or critically) in the past. I think each of these foci have something to bring to each other, and I think the extreme length of time between films in the movies I’m interested in can call attention to the function gaps play in the aforementioned aspects of serialized filmic/televisual storytelling. To that end, I have populated my primary sources with various kinds of serialized storytelling in film and television. Many of the examples take an original film from my major field list and match it with that franchise’s latest entry, while others have a self-contained serial form, like Moonlight and Boyhood or Russian Doll.

Reading List: What it is, what’s on it

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If you’re coming across this blog in your search for reading lists to help you make your own, chances are you won’t need this explanation of what they are, so feel free to skip right down to the meat of this post. For friends and family members who read this without knowing the ins and outs of getting a PhD in the humanities/English/film/cultural studies, here’s a quick breakdown of what a reading list is and why it is important:

A reading list is, in large part, what it sounds like. You make a list of a whole bunch of books, movies, and tv shows that should combine to give you a solid grounding in the area of focus you’ve decided on (more on that in a different post). This means you’re likely picking the so-called canonical works, the big important things that people have heard of. But you’re also trying to balance what has been considered “important” by previous scholars with what you find important for your future in addition to trying to fill in the gaps of what has largely been left out of your field in the past. For much of the humanities, this means you’re giving some extra attention to aspects of race, gender, and sexuality that have been pushed to the side by the scholars who have come before you. After all, blindly following the mistakes of the past is, you know, bad. To that end, you also need to think about time. I leaned towards newer scholarship when compiling my reading list because my area of interest is something that is still ongoing and it is important to read what people are saying about it right now. That might not be as important to other scholars, so you have to think about your project and what it is important to know.

via GIPHY

Of course, even though it is called a reading list, that doesn’t mean that there’s only books on it. In English PhD programs or other fields where primary sources (works that you’re studying (fiction, films, tv shows), rather than the secondary sources which are usually books about those primary sources, AKA dry academic texts) include filmed media, you’ll want to think about if it is important to include some film or television on your reading list. In my case, where my primary and secondary fields of study are both concentrated on film and television, I don’t have any textual fiction on my “reading” list, it is instead full of fiction (and one documentary!) films and shows. In standard English areas of study where you’d read primarily fiction texts for your primary sources, you’d also have a much higher proportion of those kinds of texts than I do. In the pop culture subfields like mine, there’s still apparently some skepticism about whether we’re as rigorous as the other fields and so we must prove our mettle by reading much more secondary sources than other fields need to. It’s bullshit, basically, but that’s why my reading list is about 50/50 primary and secondary texts.

My primary field is about as narrow as you’re allowed to get, at least here at OSU, so I was able to curate the kinds of movies that ended up on my list a bit more than normal. Often, absurdly, one is required to declare all of film or television studies as their primary field, and are therefore obliged to cram the entire history of filmed media onto a list that, at most, can be about 40 texts long. That’s silly. Looking over others’ example lists in this field shows that there’s a heavy preference towards the older end of film history, with things petering out pretty strongly by the time you get to the 90s and 2000s. Since my area of interest (legacyquels) don’t really appear as such until ~2008, this kind of list would be… detrimental. As such, my list only goes from 1970 to the present and leans towards the large blockbuster productions that the legacyquels have been part of. You’ll notice a fun trick I did where I put the first film of a series that had a legacyquel in my primary field reading list and then the legacyquel in my more specialized secondary field list. 1 for the price of 2! The problem is that there aren’t many films in my area of study that aren’t created by straight cis white guys, so I had to get my share of diverse creators (probably not enough, in fact) around the edges of my reading list. More on that in my next post about my major and minor fields.

I think that’s enough rambling. I’ll also use this post as an index and link every post I do for an individual entry on this list to the corresponding text here. So if you’re interested in what I have to say about one of these texts, just click on the link to it. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to comment on this post and I’ll answer when I can. You can also find me on twitter @beneclasedu, and you can ask me there if you find this list years after the fact and I no longer have access to the OSU login that I’m using to host this site. Without further ado, here’s the list(s):

Major Field: Post-70 Film and Television

Primary Sources (Film)

  1. John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
  2. Chantal Akerman, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels (1975)
  3. Steven Spielberg, Jaws (1975)
  4. John G. Avildsen, Rocky (1976)
  5. Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver (1976)
  6. George Lucas, Star Wars (1977)
  7. John Carpenter, Halloween (1978)
  8. Francis Ford Coppola, Apocalypse Now (1979)
  9. George Miller, Mad Max (1979)
  10. Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
  11. Ridley Scott, Blade Runner (1982)
  12. David Cronenberg, Videodrome (1983)
  13. James Cameron, The Terminator (1984)
  14. Spike Lee, Do the Right Thing (1989)
  15. Julie Dash, Daughters of the Dust (1991)
  16. Jonathan Demme, The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
  17. John Singleton, Boyz n the Hood (1991)
  18. Edward James Olmos, American Me (1992)
  19. Richard Linklater, Before Sunrise (1995)
  20. Wes Craven, Scream (1996)
  21. Lana and Lilly Wachowski, The Matrix (1999)
  22. Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
  23. Jane Campion, In the Cut (2002)
  24. Hayao Miyazaki, Spirited Away (2002)
  25. Brad Bird, The Incredibles (2004)
  26. Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
  27. Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (2007)
  28. Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2009)
  29. Joss Whedon, The Avengers (2012)
  30. Luca Guadagnino, Call Me by Your Name (2017)
  31. Jordan Peele, Get Out (2017)

Primary Sources (Television)

  1. Ingmar Bergman, Fanny and Alexander (1983, 5 episodes)
  2. David Lynch and Mark Frost, Twin Peaks (1990-91, 30 episodes)
  3. David Milch, Deadwood (2004-06, 30 episodes)
  4. Rob Thomas, Veronica Mars (2004-06, 64 episodes)
  5. Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, Lost (2004-10, 121 episodes)
  6. Dave Filoni, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2009-2014, 121 episodes)
  7. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Fleabag (2018-19)

Secondary Sources

  1. Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935)
  2. Andrew Sarris, “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962” (1962)
  3. Stuart Hall & Paddy Whannel, The Popular Arts (2018)
  4. Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Message (1968)
  5. Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (1969)
  6. Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies 3rd Edition (2016)
  7. Manthia Diawara, “Black Spectatorship: Problems of Identification and Resistance” (1975)
  8. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975)
  9. David Bordwell, “The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice” (1979)
  10. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (1979)
  11. Seymour Chatman, “What Novels Can Do that Films Can’t (and Vice Versa)” (1980)
  12. Noël Carroll, “The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (And Beyond)” (1982)
  13. Erik Barnouw, Tube of Plenty: The Evolution of American Television 2nd Edition (1990)
  14. Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992)
  15. Lisa A. Lewis, The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media (1992)
  16. Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (1993)
  17. Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Culture (1997)
  18. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999)
  19. Janet Staiger, Perverse Spectators: The Practices of Film Reception (2000)
  20. Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (2001)
  21. Charles Ramírez Berg, Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance (2002)
  22. Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Its Cultural Forms (2003)
  23. Andre Bazin, What Is Cinema Vol. 1 (2004)
  24. Jason Mittell, Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (2004)
  25. Peter Kramer, “Big Pictures: Studying Contemporary Hollywood Cinema through Its Greatest Hits (2005)
  26. Janet McCabe, Feminist Film Studies: Writing the Woman into Cinema (2005)
  27. Cornel Sandvoss, Fans, the Mirror of Consumption (2005)
  28. Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006)
  29. N. Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (2007)
  30. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2008)
  31. Michel Chion, Film, A Sound Art (2009)
  32. Jason Mittell, Television and American Culture (2009)
  33. Jonathan Gray, Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts (2010)
  34. Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale, Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History (2010)
  35. Barry Langford, Post-Classical Hollywood: Film Industry, Style and Ideology Since 1945 (2010)
  36. Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status (2011)
  37. Amy Holdsworth, Television, Memory, and Nostalgia (2011)
  38. Victoria O’Donnell, Television Criticism (2012)
  39. Caetlin Benson-Allott, Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing (2013)
  40. Ruby Rich, New Queer Cinema: The Director’s Cut (2013)
  41. Gerald Sim, The Subject of Film and Race: Retheorizing Politics, Ideology, and Cinema (2014)
  42. D. Connor, The Studios after the Studios: Neoclassical Hollywood (2015)
  43. Matt Yockey, Make Ours Marvel: Media Convergence and a Comics Universe (2017)
  44. Gilberto Perez, The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film (2019)
  45. Sean Guynes, Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (2020)
  46. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, How to Watch Television (2020)

 

Secondary Field: Narratology (focus on serialization)

Primary Sources (Film)

  1. David Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
  2. Steve Miner, Halloween H20 (1998)
  3. Richard Linklater, Before Sunset (2004)
  4. Wes Craven, Scream 4 (2011)
  5. Richard Linklater, Before Midnight (2013)
  6. Richard Linklater, Boyhood (2014)
  7. George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
  8. Ryan Coogler, Creed (2015)
  9. J. Abrams, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
  10. Barry Jenkins, Moonlight (2016)
  11. Dennis Villeneuve, Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
  12. David Gordon Green, Halloween (2018)
  13. Anthony and Joe Russo, Avengers: Endgame (2019)
  14. Tim Miller, Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

Primary Sources (Television)

  1. The Up Series (1964-2019, 9 episodes/films)
  2. David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return (2017, 18 episodes)
  3. David Milch, Deadwood (2019, 1 movie)
  4. Rob Thomas, Veronica Mars (2019, 8 episodes)
  5. Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland, Russian Doll (2019, 8 episodes)
  6. Dave Filoni, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2020, 12 episodes)

Secondary Sources

  1. Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1983) !
  2. Seymour Chatman, Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative in Fiction and Film (1990)
  3. Lubomír Doležel, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (2000)
  4. Kristen Thompson, Storytelling in Film and Television (2003)
  5. David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It (2006)
  6. Michael Z. Newman, “From Beats to Arcs: Toward a Poetics of Television Narrative” (2006)
  7. Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin, Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives (2009)
  8. Carolyn Jess-Cooke and Constantine Verevis, Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel (2010)
  9. Monika Fludernik, Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology (2010)
  10. Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas, New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age (2011)
  11. David Herman, James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz, Brian Richardson, and Robyn Warhol, Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates (2012)
  12. Kathleen Loock and Constantine Verevis, Film Remakes, Adaptations, and Fan Productions: Remake/Remodel (2012)
  13. Carolyn Jess-Cooke, Film Sequels (2012)
  14. Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (2015)
  15. Lee Goldberg, Television Fast Forward: Sequels & Remakes of Cancelled Series (2015)
  16. Robin Warhol, “Binge Watching: How Netflix Original Programs are Changing Serial Form” (2016)
  17. Scott Higgins, Matinee Melodrama: Playing with Formula in the Sound Serial (2016)
  18. James Phelan, Somebody Telling Somebody Else: A Rhetorical Poetics of Narrative (2017)
  19. Frank Kelleter, Media of Serial Narrative (2017)
  20. Brian Richardson, A Poetics of Plot for the Twenty-First Century: Theorizing Unruly Narratives (2019)
  21. Jan Alber and Brian Richardson, Unnatural Narratology: Extensions, Revisions, and Challenges (2020)