Film and Society I: Film, art, as a mirror and vision of society

Subject guarantor:

Radovan HALUZÍK

Name of lecturer(s):

Radovan HALUZÍK

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

This course attempts to approach the students with three subjects at once: First, an introduction to the sociological and social anthropological thought and some of their other pivotal approaches and concepts.

Then, to view it, through it,as this discipline views the recent past and present of Czech society and its culture.

And particular attention will be devoted to the mutual relationships of film, art and society.

Mode of study:

A short lecture followed by a class and discussion. Also, parts of films screened and literature samples and their analysis followed by discussion.

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

No requirements.

Recommended optional programme components:

None

Course contents:

This course attempts to demonstrate the ambitions of art, film in particular, to simply describe, reflect the world around us and intentionally and consciously create and create it. To glimpse below the surface and question, mine and patently deconstruct it. To daringly search for new discourse and aesthetics. To delve into dreams and create new, unknown, worlds. To present new and destroy the old societal dreams and utopias of totalitarian regimes.

Covered topics:

- What is the relationship between art/film and society? Does film copy life or life copy film? How does a melodramtic series creat the world of viewers. Review, ritual, performance? Film and arts as a myth. A little dream about a villa with a pool and a great political utopia. Relations of politics to aesthetics.

To live as a hero? Film vs. real heroism as a stage drama vs the drama of life. How to apply the myth of the film hero, ex: in our everyday lives. American Republican politics and justified war? Examples of post-communist conflicts in Yugoslavia and in the Caucasus as a continuation of national art aesthetics through other means.

- Film and (totalitarian) regimes. The relationship of aesthetics and politics in Nazi Germany, during communism and in post-modern society of consumption and pop-culture. Totalitarian regimes as a creation of a new human and organized modernity. Constructive film and socialist realism showing the light of „a better tomorrow.“ Film, power and its control.

- But this story does not entertain us anymore! Art, film as aesthetic resistance. Film critique of great construction and advancement at any cost. Czechoslovak film from the New Wave to after the Velvet Revolution shows limits and crises of the myth of modern advancement and great goals.

- We set up a mirror! That new socialist man always gets into our privacy, basis of property, lecherous, moonlighters, stealing and selling coupons! Film and literature wish to show life beyond the walls and under the surface. Sociological probes under the surface of socialist constrution of the eyes of socialist „film directly from life“ and communal satire. Are we able to distinguish where filmmakers confirm and where they demask and when they create the real state of things? What do sociologists say about why communism fell so easily?

- How do art, subculture and our dreams transform, etch and undermine political regimes from the inside? Did dissidents or rock-and-roll disrupt communist spending on weapons? The role of foreign popmusic, films, serials and consumer culture and ideas of the West in the meidation of normalization films. What do subversion theory and Bachtinovsky's carneval have to say? Why do some historians speak about the Central European 1989 Carnevals of Revolution?

- Social class in Bohemia in film. Are we an „egalitarian nation“ with a beer at the common table or provincial snobs? Social class in a classless society of real socialism, wild 90s and today.

- How do television serials change the lives of its viewers? Watching Dallas and living your deream. „Soap Operas“ in various periods and regions of the world with a view of the social-anthropology: once as a source of conservative, or provincial values in the third world as an promoter of individualization and modernity and in other places as a tool of revenge and social changes paid for by governmental and developmental agencies and even as resistance to the adult world. To have a home like in a series. Post-communism as a development project?

- New global aesthetics of the last decade. New embodiment, physical and spiritual balance. New Age and Mother Earth. Policies of natural and cultural diversity. Naturalistic film, great wild adventures and their influence. Our planet and its diversity as a great television spectatcle. The protection of nature, living environments. Mowgli, Tarzan and Elsa the lion and their common consequences in the new global ethic. Welcome to Marlboro country!

- Film and art in the online world. Politics, emotion, suffering and human rights in the era of direct broadcast. Political image and political marketing vs the ethics of new global responsibility. What all comes from this for the contemporary filmmaker, documentarist, artist.

Recommended or required reading:

Samples from feature and documentary films.

Literature covered:

-Ang, Ien 1985. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London: Methuen.

-Bakhtin, Mikhail 1968. Rabelais and His World. Cambridge: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (orig. Tvorchestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaia kul´tura srednevekov´ia i Renessansa)

-Bauman, Zygmunt 1976. Socialism/The Active Utopia. London: Holmes and Meier Publishers.

-Berghaus, Günter ed. 1996. Fascism and Theatre: Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925-1945. Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books.

-Buchli, Victor (1999) An Archeology of Socialism. Oxford, Berg.

-Cohen Abner 1993. Masquerade Politics: Explorations in the Structure of Urban Cultural Movements. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press.

-Connerton, Paul 1989. How Society Remember. Cambridge University Press.

-Durkheim, E. 1954/1912. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Free Press, Glencoe.

-Giddens, Anthony 1999. Sociologie. Praha: Argo.

-Halfin, Igal 2000. From Darkness to Light: Class, consciousness, and salvation in revolutionary Russia. Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press.

-Hubatová-Vacková, L. a Říha, C. (2007) Husákovo 3+1/Bytová kultura 70.let. VŠUP, Praha.

-Johnson, Mark and Lakoff, George 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

-Kenney, Padraic 2002. Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989. Princeton University Press. Princeton.

-Kotkin, Steven 1995. Magnetit Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London.

-Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

-Reichel, Peter (2004) Svůdný klam Třetí říše: Fascinující a násilná tvář fašismu. Argo, Praha.

-Schechner Richard 1993. The Sreet is the Stage. Chapter in: The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London and New York: Routledge.

-Schieffelin Edward L. 1985. Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality. In: American Ethnologist, vol. 12 (4), p. 707-724.

-Stites Richard 1989. Revolutionary dreams: Utopian vision and experimental life in the Russian revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.

-Yurchak, Alexei 2006. Everything Was For Ever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

-Todorov, Tzvetan 2000. V mezní situaci. Praha: Mladá fronta. [Orig. Face á l' extréme. Le Seuil, Paris 1994.]

-Turner Victor 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The human seriousness of Play. Baltimore - London: PAJ Publications.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods:

Lecture

Assessment methods and criteria:

Credit is awarded for the results of the final test and attendance. Also considered is the student class participation.

Course web page:

Note:

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Further information:

This course is an elective for all AMU students

Schedule for winter semester 2013/2014:

	06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon	místnost 423 Učebna CAS (Lažanský palác) HALUZÍK R. 09:50–12:15 (přednášková par. 1)
Tue
Fri
Thu
Fri

Date	Day	Time	Tutor	Location	Notes	No. of paralel
	Mon	09:50–12:15	HALUZÍK R.	Učebna CAS Lažanský palác		přednášková par. 1

Schedule for summer semester 2013/2014:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

• Animation - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Documentary Film - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Documentary Film - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Animation - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Scriptwriting and Dramaturgy - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Scriptwriting and Dramaturgy - Master (qualification subject, faculty subject, optional subject)
• Film Directing - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Film Directing - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Cinematography - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Cinematography - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Production - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Production - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Audiovisual Studies - Bachelor (qualification subject, faculty subject, optional subject)
• Editing - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Editing - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Sound Design - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Sound Design - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Photography CZ - Bachelor (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Photography CZ - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Audiovisual Studies - Master (faculty subject, optional subject)
• Restoring of Photogrphy (faculty subject, optional subject)