Hoop Dreams

Well...I was hopeful that one of you would start a discussion thread. But... so...

Rather than talk too much about the story of Hoop Dreams (though that would be interesting in another setting), we will be discussing how it (and other documentaries) make meaning. That is, Sobchack (our author of the week) claims that with documentary we have a "subjective relation to an objective cinematic...text" (pg 1).  What might this mean? Don't merely repeat what she's written but strike out on your own as to how we may have this relationship with Hoop Dreams. How does that film construct itself as an experience? What sorts of strengths and/or weaknesses can you find with the phenomenological model of cinematic identification forwarded in the article? How do our relations differ between fiction and non-fiction films? Don't mere state the obvious here but use advanced vocabulary to understand how these relations differ.

Brazil and Prufrock

I suspect that the poem for next week might present some challenge. That's OK. In class, we will spend some time breaking it down; that is, we will work through much of the poem to discover how it makes meaning (which is similar to the ways we perform cinematic analysis: breaking down scenes in terms of cinematography, editing, etc. to find out how meaning is made). Do be sure to read the poem and try to work through some of it on your own. 

I put it together with Brazil because at some level they both concern the breakdown of society and the individual's attempt to balance his reality and his perceived reality. Whence the (unrealized) expectations in these characters (Prufrock and Sam)? What is it about their societies that prompts such (seemingly disconnected) expectations? Additionally, can you discuss the forces at work on thee characters that prompt such? We know that Brazil is visually rich. Does Gilliam use this texture toward anything more than baroque excess?

Barton Fink and Scanner Darkly

I welcome all the new participants in our class discussions last week. It is always a good thing to reveal your involvement with the material. This doesn't mean that you have to like that material, but that you should show how you are intellectually involved/engaged in it. To that end, we turn to two other texts, Barton Fink and A Scanner Darkly.

These two texts do not at all promote catharsis, that moment when the text comes around in full-circle (regularly with summary, ending/conclusion, bows all wrapped). We leave BF and SD with no real sense of how to "read" them. So, in class, I would like to hear various ways we can receive them. As you can tell from my online notes, I will discuss them in terms of capitalism: how, by working in "Capital Pictures" and a drug culture, these texts explore contemporary capitalism's mass-production, mass-consumption and the forms in which we find such.