Steven G. Smith
Christian Center 11—office hours posted
Home phone 601-354-2290
Religious Studies 3750-01 RELIGION AND FILM
Also: Philosophy 2250 PHILOSOPHY OF FILM
Fall 2012
In the century since its invention, film (a handy term for moving pictures in whatever medium) has become not only an unexpected new art form but virtually a standard kind of experience for people who spend much of their time watching shows on screens—that is to say, for a large proportion of people now living. What kind of experience do we have by means of film? What does it mean that film is not only an experience a person might have, but a way of experiencing reality? What is discovered, obscured, made special, made ordinary, concluded, or confused by means of the camera-editing arts? What can we learn about the character of human experience more broadly from studying film experience?
Many films diminish us. They cheapen us, masturbate our senses, hammer us with shabby thrills, diminish the value of life. Some few films evoke the wonderment of life’s experience, and those I consider a form of prayer. Not prayer “to” anyone or anything, but prayer “about” everyone and everything. I believe prayer that makes requests is pointless. What will be, will be. But I value the kind of prayer when you stand at the edge of the sea, or beneath a tree, or smell a flower, or love someone, or do a good thing. Those prayers validate existence and snatch it away from meaningless routine.
—Roger Ebert’s Journal 5/17/11 (writing about Malick’s The Tree of Life)
In this course we will use philosophical methods, forming concepts and theses and arguments with the greatest possible care and freedom in conversation with some very valuable earlier exercises of thought, to assess the nature of film and its significance in human life. We will sharpen our critical appreciation of a number of notable film works that deal substantially with religion in a range of ways. Drawing on this evidence and on relevant commentary, we will develop our critical thinking about the nature of religion.
Readings will be assigned in handouts and in these books, available in the bookstore:
Timothy Corrigan, A Short Guide to Writing about Film (any ed.)
Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism (7th ed.)
Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film
The course grade will be determined by:
Class participation 10%
Weekly writings (a 2-3 p. review for each VIEW film) 35%
Midterm exam 15%
Final exam 15%
Term project 25%
SCHEDULE
subject to revision by announcement in class or by e-mail
VIEWINGS are of films on videotape or DVD held on reserve at the Millsaps library. Usually it will make the most sense to do the relevant READ assignment before the VIEW.
Aug. 20 Introduction to class.
Aug. 22 The idea of film experience.
READ: Dorsky, “Devotional Cinema” (handout)
WRITE: Description of a peak film experience of your own (1 p.)
Aug. 27 The photographic character of film and issues of perception
READ: Kracauer, “Basic Concepts,” FTAC 147-158
Bazin, “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” FTAC 159-163
Cavell, “Photograph and Screen,” FTAC 304-305
VIEW: Ron Fricke, Baraka
Aug. 29 The face.
READ: Balasz, “The Close-Up and the Face of Man,” FTAC 273-281
Sept. 3 LABOR DAY HOLIDAY
Sept. 5 Documentary and the responsibility of seeing.
READ: Kracauer, “The Establishment of Physical Existence,” FTAC 262-272
Corrigan, Chaps. 1-3
VIEW: Alain Resnais, Night and Fog
Sept. 10 Soviet montage and the creation of a new social reality.
READ: Eisenstein, “Beyond the Shot” and “The Dramaturgy of Film Form,” FTAC 13-40
VIEW: Sergei Eisenstein, The Battleship Potemkin
Sept. 12 Montage, cont.
READ: Vertov (handout)
VIEW: Dziga Vertov, Man With a Movie Camera
Sept. 17 The filmmaker in supreme control: animation.
READ: Panofsky, “Style and Medium in Motion Pictures,” FTAC 247-261
VIEW: Walt Disney, Fantasia
Sept. 19 Film as dream.
READ: Carroll, “Jean-Louis Baudry and ‘The Apparatus,’” FTAC 189-205
Sept. 24 Heaven and hell.
READ: Selections from Dante’s Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso
VIEW: Adrian Lyne, Jacob’s Ladder
Sept. 26 Film and genre.
READ: Schatz, “Film Genre and the Genre Film,” FTAC 564-575
Wood, “Ideology, Genre, Auteur,” FTAC 592-601
Oct. 1 The religious genre film.
READ: TBA
VIEW: Cecil B. DeMille, The Ten Commandments (1956)
Oct. 3 The transcendental style according to Paul Schrader.
READ: Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, 3-13, 151-169
Oct. 8 Transcendental style, cont.
READ: Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, 59-108
VIEW: Robert Bresson, Diary of a Country Priest
Oct. 10 Comparison of Bresson with Ozu.
READ: Schrader, 17-55
AVAILABLE VIEWING: Yasujirō Ozu, Tokyo Story
FALL BREAK
Oct. 17 Dogme 95 and the issue of truthfulness in cinema.
Oct. 22 Goodness, Take 1.
READ: TBA
VIEW: Lars von Trier, Breaking the Waves
Oct. 24 Saints.
READ: TBA
Oct. 29 Goodness, Take 2
READ: TBA
VIEW: Gabriel Axel, Babette’s Feast
Oct. 31 The gendered structure of film viewing: Mulvey on the gaze.
READ: Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” FTAC 711-722
Nov. 5 The devotional gaze.
VIEW: Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ
READ: Selected reviews
Nov. 7 Gender and horror archetypes.
READ: Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” FTAC 602-616
Nov. 12 Gender and horror, cont.
READ: TBA
VIEW: James Cameron, Aliens
Nov. 14 Horror and the holy.
READ: TBA
Nov. 19 NO CLASS (Instructor at conference)
THANKSGIVING BREAK
Nov. 26 Holiness in different religious traditions.
Nov. 28 Japanese tradition on trial.
READ: TBA
VIEW: Mitsuo Yanagimachi, Himatsuri (Fire Festival)
Dec. 3 Film in a digitized world.
READ: Whissel, “Tales of Upward Mobility: The New Verticality and Digital Special Effects,” FTAC 834-852
VIEW: Larry (now Lana) and Andy Wachowski, The Matrix
Class film festival TBA. Final exam Dec. 6 at 2:00 p.m. Project revisions due Dec. 11.
RESOURCES
The Millsaps library subscribes to a number of interesting film journals, including Film Comment, Film Criticism, Film-Philosophy, and (through 2008) Film Quarterly. There are useful general sources in the Reference section like Halliwell’s Film Guide and Film Encyclopedia. We also have numerous books on film theory, film history, particular genres, and particular directors. Corrigan lists many more print and online resources.
Two of the most useful books that go deeper than Corrigan into film aesthetics are David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art, and Dennis DeNitto, Film: Form and Feeling.
A great religious studies reference work is The Encyclopedia of Religion in the Reference section. Search “religion and film” as keywords in our library catalog or check with instructor for books full of ideas and observations concerning religion and film.
WEEKLY WRITINGS AND EXAM ESSAYS
The purpose of the assigned writings in the course is to practice noticing features of film experience and thinking about its nature and implications, and about meaningful human experience more broadly. Most assignments will explicitly direct you to relate ideas that are presented in class and readings to specific features of the films that we view. Grades on writing will reflect the degree to which you fulfill these criteria:
(1) Thoughtful grappling with ideas and arguments that have been introduced in the course, with
(2) sensitive perception of actual ingredients of films viewed, and
(3) effective use of English.
Think of each 2-3 page weekly paper as a philosophically oriented version of what Corrigan calls a “critical review”—a “philosophical review,” for short.
PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTIONS TO KEEP IN MIND IN THIS COURSE
- The question of essential form. (See Plato’s dialogues in which Socrates tries to find an adequate definition of an item like virtue or justice.) What makes a phenomenon the kind of thing it is? What is the essence of an art work, e.g.? What is the distinctive essence of cinematic art works or cinematic experience? (“Phenomenology” is a sophisticated 20th-century version of this line of investigation pioneered by Edmund Husserl. “Conceptual analysis” is a comparable effort by so-called “analytic” philosophers in the tradition of Bertrand Russell.)
- The question of evidence. (See René Descartes’ methodical skepticism and discovery of possibilities of certainty in his Meditations on First Philosophy.) How is reality evident to us—what counts, in perception and thought, as revealing or indicating reality? What constitutes trustworthy evidence? On the side of the knower, what sort of mind certifies or rejects evidence? Our more carefully considered judgments of reality sometimes diverge from our spontaneous sense-based convictions.
- The question of coherence. (See Immanuel Kant’s transcendental arguments in Critique of Pure Reason.) Under what conditions is meaningful experience possible? What rules must be followed for putting experience together? The idea here is that our world is a construct. (There’s a linguistic version of this question that Ludwig Wittgenstein developed: How do we follow rules in order to say meaningful things, or: What is the “grammar” of our “forms of life” that support the things we are able to say?)
- The question of history. (See G. W. F. Hegel’s historical articulation of reality in Phenomenology of Spirit.) How does our experience of reality depend on real historical developments and conscious participation in such developments? The idea here is that our reality is an evolving work-in-progress. The making and viewing of films is part of the work.
- The question of essential deception and/or contestation. (See Marxian, Freudian, feminist, postcolonial, and other critical theories.) How is our experience of reality ordinarily warped, constricted, or dramatically deployed by social and psychological forces like class struggle, repression of desires, male-centered culture, European-centered culture, religious orthodoxy, etc.? What remedies are available?
- The question of ultimate motivation and the Good. (Almost all major philosophers make claims about this, from Plato extolling eternal form to Gilles Deleuze extolling maximal creativity.) What is the implicit goal of our choices of what to pay attention to and how to synthesize our experience? What is the most powerful kind of importance that can appeal to us in our experience, and how does this appeal occur?
All of these questions overlap with religious concerns.
RELIGIOUS FACTORS TO KEEP IN MIND IN THIS COURSE
Hierophany. How does the intensely meaningful, the extraordinary, the infinitely adorable, the transcendent, the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (in Rudolf Otto’s phrase) come into our experience? How does film stage revelations? In what ways is film a revelation? What are the cinematic forms of effective symbolism?
The archetypal. “Hero,” “villain,” “damsel in distress”—beyond the super-common types of character and situation in stories, what are the types that carry a freight of ultimate significance for our lives? (Consider the guru figures Obi-Wan Kenobi or Morpheus, for example.) In what distinctive ways does film design the archetypal or iconic?
The early history of film is studded with archetypal figures: Theda Bara, Mary Pickford, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, etc. These appeared as personages, not as people or personalities, and the films which were structured around them were like monumental myths which celebrated cosmic truths.
—Maya Deren
Cosmology. How is the world as a whole designed and anchored? What convinces us that there must be certain constraints on everything that exists and happens? What reveals to us the pattern of these constraints? How does evil threaten the world’s order?
Sacred vs. profane. Regardless of which things are specially important, how are the specially important things marked off from the ordinary things? What scheme or system is working to keep sacred and profane things obviously opposed to each other?
Salvation. What can be convincingly presented as a final solution to life’s problems, whether individually or communally? How were the problems shaped so that they could be finally solved?
THE TERM PROJECT
Proposals for the term project are welcome, and negotiable. Most term projects will consist either of (1) a 10-12 pp. philosophical study of one or more examples of religion-related film, or (2) a religion-related film made by the student as a philosophical study, with an accompanying presentation (2-3 pp. in its written form) of rationale and findings. All projects should be discussed in advance with the instructor, with a working plan approved before Fall Break.
THE SECOND DRAFT REQUIREMENT
When a paper is required, do not submit the first draft of your paper. Edit yourself; turn in a second (or later) draft.
Here are some of the unmistakable signs of a first draft:
- The introduction hasn’t been revised to fit how the paper actually turned out.
- The flow is ragged and confusing because the paper hasn’t been reorganized according to how its content and argument shaped up.
- There isn’t a definite conclusion yet.
- It’s flabby: there are phrases and sentences throughout that could be cut.
- There are many typos and other mechanical errors and inconsistencies.
- (In a research paper:) Some works cited in the paper are not included in Works Cited, or vice versa.
Unless you are an exceptionally skilled writer, you cannot write a paper at the last minute that is free of these problems. A paper written at the last minute will look like what it is, a first draft.
THE SPECIFICITY REQUIREMENT
You will be writing about movies all semester. You will make many summary claims about the qualities movies have (beautiful, scary, slow, etc.). You should always try to anchor your characterization of a movie to a specific element—a shot composition, a cut, a sound—in which something significant is realized in a cinematic way. You’ve probably heard it said that the best writing is concrete writing. This is true. A related and even more important point is that many of the most significant discoveries are made by noticing what is actually going on in a movie or, indeed, in any phenomenon. How does this movie hook you?
RELIGION-FILM CONNECTIONS: SOME THEMES AND FILMS WORTH STUDYING
Devotional filmmaking
The Song of Bernadette (King)
The Passion of the Christ (Gibson)
The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pasolini)
The Message [story of Muhammad] (Akkad)
Ramayana video series
Jai Santoshi Maa (Sharma)
Little Buddha (Bertolucci)
Secular replacement for traditional religion
The Battleship Potemkin and October (Eisenstein)
Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
Woodstock (Wadleigh)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
Critique of religion
Viridiana (Buñuel)
The Mission (Joffé)
Destiny (1998) (Chahine)
Religious belief
Sergeant York (Hawks)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson)
Lilies of the Field (Nelson)
Devi (Ray)
The Apostle (Duvall)
The Mission (Joffé)
Therèse (Cavalier)
The Rapture (Tolkin)
Frailty (Paxton)
The Believer (Bean)
Higher Ground (Farmiga)
Absence of meaning, “dark night of the soul”
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Through a Glass Darkly/Winter Light/The Silence (Bergman)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
L’Avventura and Red Desert (Antonioni)
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
Nostalghia (Tarkovsky)
Himatsuri (Yanagimachi)
Mishima (Schrader)
Memento (Nolan)
A Serious Man (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Melancholia (von Trier)
Sacred tradition-secular experience connections
On the Waterfront (Kazan)
Requiem for a Heavyweight (Nelson)
The Ten Commandments—Prologue (DeMille)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky)
Ran (Kurosawa)
Koyaanisqatsi (Reggio)
Baraka (Fricke)
Why Has Bodhi-Dharma Left for the East? (Bae)
Jesus of Montreal (Arcand)
Decalogue II, V (Kieslowski)
This world seen from an otherworldly perspective
It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra)
Wings of Desire (Wenders)
Goodness and sanctity
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson)
Ikiru (Kurosawa)
The Flowers of St. Francis (Rossellini)
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (Zeffirelli)
Babette’s Feast (Axel)
Breaking the Waves (von Trier)
Gandhi (Attenborough)
Well-meaning (studies in film rhetoric)
Intolerance (Griffith)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (Wise)
Dosti (Bose)
Philadelphia (Demme)
Amistad (Spielberg)
Life Is Beautiful (Benigni)
Hotel Rwanda (George)
Avatar (Cameron)
Thrilling (tremendum et fascinans)
Wonder: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
Contact (Zemeckis)
The Tree of Life (Malick)
Horror: The Exorcist (Friedkin)
The Alien films (Scott, Cameron, et al.)
Comedy
Love and Death (Allen)
Dogma (Smith)
Life of Brian (Jones)
An Everlasting Piece (Levinson)
Enlightenment Guaranteed (Dörrie)
An arguably religious style of filmmaking
Diary of a Country Priest and others by Robert Bresson
Stalker and others by Andrei Tarkovsky
The Wind Will Carry Us . . . and others by Abbas Kiarostami
Pilgrimages, journeys of transformation
Easy Rider (Hopper)
Thelma and Louise (Scott)
Parallel Lines [a personal documentary] (Davenport )
Leadership, visionary and community-making or -sustaining
Gandhi (Attenborough)
Whale Rider (Caro)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Forman)
Martyrdom
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
Himatsuri (Yanagimachi)
Braveheart (Gibson)
Personal identity as deeply inscribed by tradition and/or community
Full Metal Jacket (Kubrick)
The Pillow Book (Greenaway)
Quality of personal relationships
Last Tango in Paris (Bertolucci)
The Piano (Campion)
Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
Epiphanies and decisive encounters
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
2001 (Kubrick)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
Contact (Zemeckis)
Mrs. Dalloway (Gorris)
The Hours (Daldry)
Points of contact between the ordinary and the extraordinary
Uplifting:
Like Water for Chocolate (Arau)
Chocolat (Hallström)
Babette’s Feast (Axel)
Disturbing:
Jacob’s Ladder (Lyne)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
Heaven and hell
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)
Jacob’s Ladder (Lyne)
The Rapture (Tolkin)
Deadman (Jarmusch)
What Dreams May Come (Ward)
After Life (Koreeda)
Notre Musique (Godard)
Evil and trauma
Day of Wrath (Dreyer)
Judgment at Nuremberg (Kramer)
Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
The Exorcist (Friedkin)
The Night Porter (Cavani)
Seven Beauties (Wertmuller)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Sophie’s Choice (Pakula)
Ran (Kurosawa)
Schindler’s List (Spielberg)
Hotel Rwanda (George)
Suffering, loss, death
Bobby Deerfield (Pollack)
The Deer Hunter (Cimino)
A Taste of Cherry (Kiarostami)
The Pianist (Polanski)
Sacred history/Zeitgeist
The Battleship Potemkin and October (Eisenstein)
Sergeant York (Hawks)
Gandhi (Attenborough)
Forrest Gump (Zemeckis)
Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg)
Myth
Orpheus (Cocteau)
Medea (Pasolini)
Space is the Place (Coney)
Star Wars (Lucas)
Pocahontas (Gabriel & Goldberg)
The Matrix (Andy & Larry Wachowski)
Opera Jawa (Nugroho)
Providence
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Stuart)
The Truman Show (Weir)
Magnolia (P. T. Anderson)
Maya: appearance is not reality
Dark City (1998) (Proyas)
The Matrix (Andy & Larry Wachowski)
Animation
Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away (Miyazaki)
Fantasia—Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria (Disney & Ferguson)
Fantasia 2000—the whales; the Firebird (Brizzi & Hunt)
Documentary
Night and Fog [the Holocaust] (Resnais)
Shoah [the Holocaust] (Lanzmann)
Parallel Lines [Americans after 9/11] (Davenport)
SOME COURSE RULES
- Class attendance. Being in class, being engaged with the work of the class, and behaving courteously are all expected. One discourtesy to avoid is coming into class late. Better late than never, definitely; but lateness counts as half an absence.
One percent of the course grade will be lost for each absence from class for any reason, beginning with the third absence. To illustrate, someone who totaled 7 absences would thereby lose 5% of the course grade, or half a letter grade. The reason for this: our in‑class work is a crucial and irreplaceable part of the substance of the course.
- Late submissions. Assignments turned in late will lose a letter grade or equivalent. No work of any kind will be accepted after the last day of final examinations. Exceptions to this policy will be granted only to the victims of unforeseeable and uncontrollable circumstances.
- As a general rule, no e-mail submissions. Unless the instructor allows it under specified circumstances, e-mail submissions of assigned writing are not accepted.
- Plagiarism. Using the words or ideas of others without acknowledgment—that is, passing them off as your own—is a fraudulent practice called plagiarism. It also misses one of the main points of being in college, which is to develop your powers of thought and expression. Plagiarized work will receive no credit and will be referred to the college Honor Council.
- Incompletes. An “Incomplete” grade for the course will only be given to students who, due to unforeseen and uncontrollable circumstances, find themselves unable to complete course requirements during the term and can reasonably be expected to complete them within a few weeks after the term’s end. The “Incomplete” must be requested and appropriately justified before the end of final examinations.
- Disabilities. Students with documented disabilities should register with Patrick Cooper (coopeap@millsaps.edu, extension 1228) and then discuss their needs with the instructor at the beginning of the semester.
Steven G. Smith 