| Professor
William
Nericcio July 16, 2001 to Aug. 24, 2001 from 1000 to 1140am Mondays through Thursdays in Storm Hall 346
J-K's
Greek Cafe |
|||
|
|||
| Description
Our grand summer seminar, our adventure in intellectual inquiry, begins with the unspectacular premise that the human animal is a curious species. Evidence for this banal contention will be provided by various human aesthetic artifacts including short stories, novels, sequential art (graphic narrative), documentary films and movies. What becomes clear in these varied media is that the curiosity of Homo Sapiens manifests itself in creative acts of art wherein men and women themselves figure as the focus of these creative exercises. But we can't just leave it at that. Looking closer, we find that the men and women we meet in books, films, art etc. are not exactly like the ones we meet in elevators, bars, churches, street corners and shopping malls. These men and women are more honest, more troubled, less in control and utterly MORE interesting. Veils cast aside, these men and women reveal themselves to be a splendid cast of deranged and intoxicatingly honest informers, revealing the damaged psyches that drive their day to day existence. In these people and in these creative works we come to better understand the hidden and obvious psychological tattoos that permanently mark and determine what the ancients called the soul, what Freud called the "unconscious" and what we usually call the human mind. DISCLAIMER: this GENERAL EDUCATION class will deal with ADULT issues and activities. If you are squeamish about insanity, human sexuality, erotic taboos or if graphic art, literature and film leave you weak, angry, disgusted etc., PLEASE drop this class BEFORE you get the urge to call on your parents and clergy to remove me from my job! This is a university-level course exploring usually hidden elements of the human psyche: you should EXPECT to be disturbed and moved. Requirements Plagiarism Grade Office
Hours |
|||
| Required
Books Available at Aztec Shops and KB books
Van Gogh : The Passionate Eye by Pascal Bonafoux About Yvonne by Donna Masini Women on the Road . . . by Rosina Conde Love and Rockets, Volume 8: The Blood of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez Freud for Beginners by Richard Appignanesi With Oscar Zarate Kreutzer Sonata & Other Short Stories by Leo Tolstoy Aura by Carlos Fuentes Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki Required
Book to be purchased in Class
Required
Films to be screened absolutely free of charge in
class |
|||
| WEB
RESOURCES
|
|||
| IMAGINATION CHALLENGE/ ESSAY 1 DUE this Thursday at the beginning of class or Friday, noon, under my door, AH 4117
1. Psychoanalysis and Cinema: Support or critique the following thesis using Freud for Beginners and Titicut Follies for specific examples (the more specific, the better): Frederick Wiseman is a freudian filmmaker. 2. Textual Women: Specifically contrast the representation of women in the work of Rosina Conde and Luis Buñuel. 3. Twin Analysts: How is that the work of Leo Tolstoy and Frederick Wiseman may be understood to overlap? 4. Psychoanalysis and the Short Story: Use specific elements of Appignanesi and Zarate's book to analyze a portion of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" that Dr. Atterton failed to explore. |
|||
Luis BuñuelBiography from Baseline's Encyclopedia of FilmOccupation: Director Also: screenwriter, producer, actor Born: February 22, 1900, Calanda, Spain Died: July 29, 1983, Mexico City, MexicoEducation: Colegio del Salvador (religion, entomology, zoology); Instituto Nacional de Enseñanza Media; University of Madrid (agricultural engineering, natural sciences, history); Académie du Cinéma, ParisThe founder of surrealist cinema, Luis Buñuel enjoyed a career as diverse and contradictory as his films: he was a master of both silent and sound cinema, of documentaries as well as features; his greatest work was produced in the two decades after his 60th year, a time when most directors have either retired or gone into decline; and although frequently characterized as a surrealist, many of his films were dramas and farces in the realist or neo-realist mode. Yet despite all the innovations and permutations of his work, Buñuel remained suprisingly consistent and limited in the targets of his social satire: the Catholic Church, bourgeois culture, and Fascism. As he once commented, "Religious education and surrealism have marked me for life." Buñuel described his childhood in Calanda, a village in the Spanish province of Aragon, as having "slipped by in an almost medieval atmosphere." Between the ages of six and fifteen he attended Jesuit school, where a strict educational program, unchanged since the 18th century, instilled in him a lifelong rebellion against religion. In 1917 Buñuel enrolled in the University of Madrid and soon became involved in the political and literary peñas, or clubs, that met in the city's cafes. His friends included several of Spain's future great artists and writers, including Salvador Dali, Federico García Lorca and Rafael Albertini. Within a few years the avant-garde movement had reached the peñas and spawned its Spanish variants, creacionismo and ultraísmo. Although influenced by these, Buñuel was often critical of the Spanish avant-garde for its allegiance to traditional forms. In 1925 Buñuel left Madrid for Paris, with no clear idea of what he would do. When he saw Fritz Lang's DESTINY (1921), however, he realized where his vocation lay. He approached the renowned French director, Jean Epstein, who hired him as an assistant. Buñuel began to learn the techniques of filmmaking but was fired when he refused to work with Epstein's own mentor, Abel Gance, whose films he did not like. In a prophetic statement, Epstein warned Buñuel about his "surrealistic tendencies." In 1928, with financial support from his mother, Buñuel collaborated with Dali on UN CHIEN ANDALOU, a "surrealist weapon" designed to shock the bourgeois as well as criticize the avant-garde. As in his earlier book of poems, Un Perro Andaluz, Buñuel rejected the avant-garde's emphasis on form, or camera "tricks," over content. Instead, his influences were commercial neo-realism, horror films and American comedies. Buñuel's three early films established him as a master of surrealist cinema, whose goal was to treat all human experience-dreams, madness or "normal" waking states-on the same level. The critical success of L'AGE D'OR (1930), secured Buñuel a contract with MGM, which he turned down after a visit to Hollywood in 1930. His next film, LAS HURDES: TIERRA SIN PAN (1932) was a documentary financed with money won in a lottery and shot with a camera borrowed from Yves Allégret. Ostensibly an objective study of a remote, impoverished region in western Spain, the film constituted such a militant critique of both church and state that it was banned in Spain. The stage had been set, however, for Buñuel's later work, in which realism-with its preestablished mass appeal-provided an accessible context for his surreal aesthetic and moral code. After LAS HURDES, Buñuel would not direct another film until 1947. Although still critical of commercial cinema, he spent the next 14 years within the industry, learning all aspects of film production. From 1933 to 1935 he dubbed dialogue for Paramount in Paris and then Warner Bros. in Spain; between 1935 and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 he produced popular musical comedies in Spain; during the Civil War he served the Republican government, compiling newsreel material into a documentary about the war, ESPANA LEAL EN ARMAS (1937). In 1938, while he was in Hollywood supervising two other documentaries, the Fascists assumed power at home. Unable to return to Spain, Buñuel went to work for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, reediting and dubbing documentaries for distribution in Latin America. He was forced to resign in 1942, however, because of his suspected communist background-a suspicion which he later claimed had been aroused by Dali. In order to survive, Buñuel narrated documentaries for the Army Corps of Engineers until 1944, when Warner Bros. hired him to produce Spanish versions of their films. In 1946 Buñuel moved to Mexico, where many of Spain's intellectuals and artists had emigrated after the Civil War. He would live there for the rest of his life, becoming a citizen in 1949 and directing 20 films by 1964. This period is often described as an "apprenticeship" in which Buñuel was forced to shoot low-budget commercial films in between a handful of surreal "classics." Indeed, Buñuel's supposed indifference to style-his minimal use of non-diegetic music, close-ups or camera movement-is often judged to be largely the result of the limited resources available to him. Yet his Mexican films can more accurately be seen as a refinement of the unobstrusive aesthetic style that had been evident since UN CHIEN ANDALOU. As Buñuel himself insisted, "I never made a single scene that compromised my convictions or my personal morality." Buñuel's third Mexican film, LOS OLVIDADOS (1950), brought him to international attention once again. Although hailed as a surrealist film, it owes much to postwar neorealism in its unsentimental depiction of Mexico's slum children. As in his other Mexican films before NAZARIN (1958), dream sequences and surreal images are introduced at strategic moments into an otherwise realist narrative. (Contributing to the relative neglect of these films has been their unavailability outside Mexico, and perhaps their proletarian and "ethnic" focus.) In 1955 Buñuel began to direct international (and more openly political) co-productions in Europe. In 1961 he was invited to Spain to film VIRIDIANA. The completed film was a direct assault on Spanish Catholicism and Fascism and was banned by its unwitting patron; a succès de scandale, it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and secured long overdue international acclaim for its director. After VIRIDIANA, Buñuel worked mostly in France. The growth of his new international (and consequently educated and middle-class) audience coincided with his return to a surrealist aesthetic. THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1962), THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISIE (1972) and THE PHANTOM OF LIBERTY (1974) depict a bourgeoisie trapped within their own conventions, if not-in the latter film's metaphorical conceit-their own homes. BELLE DE JOUR (1967), TRISTANA (1970) and THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF DESIRE (1977) explore sexual obsessions and preoccupations. And THE MILKY WAY (1970) launches a frontal assault on the Church, in a summation of Buñuel's lifelong contempt for that institution. In 1980 Buñuel collaborated with Jean-Claude Carrière, his screenwriter sinceDIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (1964), on his autobiography, My Last Sigh. |
|||
| Fritz
Lang The director talks about his life and work in this 1967 BBC interview by Alexander Walker BBC Online Fritz Lang: The director, in my opinion, is the one who keeps everything together. Primarily, the basic element for the film in my opinion is the script, and the director has to be the servant to the script - he shouldn't make too many detours. In the last years, the part of the producer has taken over certain things that I think a director should do. I think a producer could be a very good friend of a director if he keeps away from him things which hamper him in his tasks, but usually, as it is now in most studios, the producer tells him what he must do. In this case I call the director a 'traffic cop' Alexander Walker: Is it correct that you took the story of M from the newspapers about the story of the Dusseldorf murders? So many things have been written about M (1932), it has become so to speak THE motion picture. I made it 37 years ago, and it plays constantly in Switzerland, France and even the States if a film survives so long then there may be a right to call it a piece of art. The story came out of the fact that I originally wanted to make a story about a very, very nasty crime. I was married in these days and my wife, Thea Von Harbou, was the writer. We talked about the most hideous crime and decided that it would be writing anonymous letters and then one day I had an idea and I came home and said 'how would it be if I made a picture about a child murderer?' and so we switched. At the same time in Dusseldorf a series of murders of young and old people happened, but as much as I remember the script was ready and finished before they caught that murderer. I had Peter Lorre in mind when I was writing the script. He was an upcoming actor and, he had played in two or three things in the theatre in Berlin, but never before on the screen. I did not give him a screen test, I was just absolutely convinced that he was right for the part. It was very hard to know how to direct him; I think a good director is not the one who puts his personality on top of the personality of the actor, I think a good director is one who gets the best out of his actor. So we talked it over very, very carefully with him and then we did it. It was my first sound film anyway, so we were experimenting a lot. How did you come to leave Germany at the height of your career and seek refuge outside the country? I had made two Mabuse films and the theatre had asked me if I could make another one because they made so much money. So I made one which was called The Last Will of Dr Mabuse (1932). I have to admit that up to two or three years before the Nazis came I was very apolitical; I was not very much interested and then I became very much interested. I think the London Times wrote about the fact that I used this film as a political weapon against the Nazis - I put Nazi slogans into the mouth of the criminal. I remember very clearly one day, I was in the office and some SA men came in and talked very haughtily that they would confiscate the picture. I said if you think they could confiscate a picture of Fritz Lang in Germany then do it, and they did. I was ordered to go and see Goebbels, and they were not very sympathetic to me, but I had to go, maybe to get the picture freed, so I went. I will never forget it - Goebbels was a very clever man, he was indescribably charming when I entered the room, he never spoke at the beginning of the picture. He told me a lot of things, among other things that the 'Fuhrer' had seen Metropolis (1926)and another film that I had made - Die Niebelungen (1924) - and the 'Fuhrer' had said 'this is the man who will give us THE Nazi film.' I was perspiring very much at this moment, I could see a clock through the window and the hands were moving, and at the moment I heard that I was expected to make the Nazi movie I was wet all over and my only thought was 'how do I get out of here!'. I had my money in the bank and I was immediately thinking 'how do I get it out?' But Goebbels talked and talked and finally it was too late for me to get my money out! I left and told him that I was very honoured and whatever you can say. I then went home and decided the same evening that I would leave Berlin that I loved very much. AW: Mirrors and their reflections are always ominous features of Lang's movies; the mirror image is his dramatic metaphor. In M the criminal underworld is clearly a reverse image of bourgeois society. In his films the individual wages a fight on the side of goodness and order against the very act of forces of evil and chaos as embodied in the diabolical Dr. Mabuse (1922), or the lynch mob in Fury or the gangland boss in The Big Heat (1953). But the fight is psychological too: each Lang hero is a prey to forces inside himself that he cannot control. Forces that may drive him to murder in spite of himself, like Peter Lorre in M (1931), or Edward G Robinson in Woman In the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). The fight is one that is fixed in advance by fate, the director looks literally down on his actors like an ironical Greek god, his characters are like rats in a maze driven along by his set ups, by his camera movements and by the relentless logic of his editing to a destiny which is pre-ordained and from which even Lang can't save them. The theme of theme of man and his destiny and of man trapped in an inimical kind of fate runs right through your work? I am quite sure that this is correct. It would be very interesting if a psycho-analyst could tell me why I am so interested in these things. I think from the beginning, one of my first films, the fight of man against his destiny or how he faces his destiny has interested me very much. I remember that I once said that it is not so much that he reaches a goal, or that he conquers this goal - what is important is his fight against it. It must be very difficult to make films about destiny and God in that sense today, when people don't believe in heaven or hell in the vast majority. Do you substitute violence or pain? Naturally I don't believe in God as the man with a white beard or such a thing, but I believe in something which you can call God in some kind of an eternal law or eternal mathematical conception of the universe. When they said in the States that God is dead, I considered it wrong. I said to them 'God has only changed his address - he is not really dead.' That seems for me to be the crux: naturally we cannot believe in certain things that have been told us over the centuries. When you talk about violence, this has become in my opinion a definite point in the script, it has a dramatogical reason to be there. After the Second World War, the close structure of family started to crumble. It started naturally already with the first one. There is really very, very little in family life today. I don't think people believe anymore in symbols of their country- for example, I remember the flag burning in the States. I definitely don't think they believe in the devil with the horns and the forked tail and therefore they do not believe in punishment after they are dead. So, my question was: what are people feeling? And the answer is physical pain. Physical pain comes from violence and I think today that is the only fact that people really fear and it has become a definite part of life and naturally also of scripts. web source: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/5698/articles/lang.html |
|||
|
|||
In
Class Speculation Rant #1
You have come to class with an enlarged xerox of what you view to be the most provocative, complex, or meaningful image produced by Van Gogh and collected in the Pascal Bonafoux volume. Using your most colorful language--allow the passion and madness of Van Gogh to infuse your own writerly instincts--carefully rant about the most provocative complex and meaningful elements of the image you have selected. Write directly upon the page with the xeroxed Van Gogh reproduction. |
|||
| Imagination
Challenge #2 English 301 The Tattooed Psyche Summer 2001 Borrowing somewhat from the intellectual imagination of Gore Vidal (and one can easily borrow ideas from lesser sources), one’s search into the fabulous history of the word "essay," an etymological foray into the labyrinth of essay’s past, will yield another word one might not have expected to run across. That word is "attempt." You see, most people think of an essay as a finished product?a dull, lifeless, inert textual body with a static introduction, an "A-B-C-D" body, and a clear let’s-tie-up-all-the-pieces conclusion. You will not write this kind of essay, opting instead to produce something that is less product and more process. That’s right, I am asking with no little nostalgia to return to the origins of the essay. Your only task is to make a sincere attempt to produce a set of ordered reflections, a group of carefully arranged tasty words which respond in some way to the novels, films, short critical treatments and lectures you have worked through and will continue to work through in the coming weeks. Are you writing for Bill Nericcio? In a way, of course you are. But in order to do well on this assignment, you must forget about your peculiar if affable intellectual guides and mentors. The only people who really count are the readers you write for: the audience for your paper. Who are they? Well, they are a lot like you. They are impatient and easily bored. They like specific details; they love direct, succinct quotes woven carefully into the fabric of an essay. If you are going to write about an image, they want to see a reproduction of that image. They hate misspellings and passive verbs. They like tangy language which is fresh and not filled with clichés. Like you, they resent having their time wasted. Recall that the title of this challenge is "Imagination Challenge " so USE your imagination; note also that you must consult, cite and interweave material from at least two (2) outside published scholarly sources that relate explicitly to the particular thesis your essay unfolds. Some good starting places for published scholarly approaches to the materials in this class are the Modern Language Association Bibliography and the ProQuest Research Library, available through Love Library's LION SYSTEM. You should take no less than 5 and no more than 7 pages (double-spaced typed, carefully proofread, with a dynamic, suggestive title) to complete your task. No cover sheet or folder-cover is necessary and late papers will NOT be accepted. The completed essay is due under my office door, Adams Humanities 4117 on Thursday August 16 in class or on Friday August 17 at noon, AH 4117. Select ONE of the following challenges: 1.
Psychology
101 2.
The Road to
Aging 3.
The Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man 4.
Sexy Psyches
and the Pacific Rim 5.
Reading Ahead
is Good for You! 6.
Cinema Meets
Sequential Art 7.
Design your
own Thesis. |
