BASC70027 - Viewing “In” and “Fanning” Out: The Self-referential Experience of the Cinematic Universe

Course Description

The history of cinema's attempts to create its own internal models of structural identification and nuanced organization, generated in part by filmmakers' “sense” of what they wish to accomplish and in part by audiences' responses TO these issues forms a dynamic methodology for attempting to discover the “nature” of the “filmic” enterprise. To what degree do genres and “generic expectations” determine which films we choose to watch? And what impacts do these decisions exercise on the creators, producers, and distributors of the films which arrive on a weekly basis at the theaters we characteristically visit?

This summer we will examine eight “parameters” arising from these questions. In each instance, we will be concerned (a) with the individual properties of the films we are examining and (b) with the myriad internal transformations which these film exercise not only in our viewing processes but also in our nuanced changes in ourselves as watchers of film AND as observers of the significance to ourselves of the “meanings” of such watching. Why, we may well ask, is it frequently the case that this season's “fans” become next season's “no-shows”?