1

Political Science 3340: Film and Politics

Dr. Douglas C. Dow
Spring 2011 TR: 2:30-3:45PM CV Seminar Room – GC1.208B
Office Hours: TR 12:30-2:00PM and by appointment (GC 2/206)
Email: dougdow@utdallas.edu Phone: 972-883-4934

“Film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand” – Christian Metz

Course Objectives:
Film is the newest of the art forms, and the most popular style of entertainment of the
past century. Movies are one of the most powerful tools for shaping popular tastes and beliefs,
including perceptions and expectations concerning the government, the workplace, religion, and
the family. The influence of cinema on politics is high; so too is the impact of external political,
social and economic forces on movies and the film industry. This class is designed as an
exploration of the complex dynamics between film and politics.

Our class will be structured around two organizing principles: genre and national film
movements. Genres are identifiable by their shared conventions, iconography, techniques, and
traditions. They allow for certain problems to be worked out, and basic themes expressed. We
will explore the politics of a number of distinct genres, including the romantic comedy, Western,
film noir, and horror film. National movements in film are concentrated within certain times and
spaces, with a collection of film-makers self-consciously sharing similar assumptions or
operating within the same institutional frameworks. Often these moments in world cinema occur
in conjunction with moments of political turmoil. We will explore a number of different
moments in national film history, in France, China, Iran, Italy, the former Soviet Union and the
United States.

Each week, we will explore a single film from a number of different contexts. We will
animate the political and social concerns behind the film’s theme and chart the histories of
government influence upon the fate of each film. We will explore how each film exemplifies a
particular national film movement, or reflects the evolving identity of a specific movie genre.
We will also learn how to “read” a film, in order to better comprehend how its messages are
conveyed through style, editing, shot composition, and other techniques of film making.
 2

Course Requirements
Attendance and Participation: An important requirement for this honors seminar will be active
participation in class discussion, debate and analysis. Regular attendance is required, and the
professor will take attendance for each class. Please bring to class each day the texts under
discussion – we will be referring to particular passages regularly. Each student is expected to
have completed the day’s readings before class, and to have watched the week’s film before
Thursday’s class. Be prepared to talk. Everyone will be expected to demonstrate civility and a
respect for the thoughts, opinions and beliefs of others. Notes or summaries will not be provided
for missed classes. Cell phones and all other electronic noise-makers should be turned off (not
on vibrate) during class. Because of the frequency by which many students using laptops to take
notes also succumb to the temptations to surf the Web, check email, IM, or otherwise disengage
themselves from class discussions, laptop use will not be permitted during class.

Essays: There are no exams or research papers required in this class. Each student will be
responsible for completing six take-home essays. Four of these essays will each cover the films
and readings from one week of the syllabus. Students may choose which weeks they would
prefer to write, with two limitations: All students must submit at least one assignment in the first
four weeks, and one assignment in the last three weeks. For the fifth essay, students will select
one film from the list of recommended films, which can be found at the bottom of this syllabus.
For the sixth essay, students can choose any film they would like to write about, and select one
reading (the length of an article or book chapter) in conjunction with the film. Dr. Dow reserves
the right of veto over the film choice, and will help select appropriate readings.

All of these essays will be approximately 5 pages in length, double spaced with twelve point
font, and will cover both assigned readings, as well as lecture and discussion material. Each of
the first five essays will each be worth 14% of the final grade; taken together they will be worth
70% of the final grade. The sixth essay, of your own choosing, will be worth 15% of the final
grade. Participation and quizzes will make up the remaining 15% of the final grade.

Films: Each week will feature a single film, exemplifying that week’s topic, which students are
expected to have watched outside of class prior to the discussion. We will not be screening any
films during class time, although we will view clips as part of our analysis. Our Thursday class
will be devoted to a roundtable style conversation about this film. The key rule of our film
analyses is that everyone participates – no one merely listens. I will make my personal copy of
each film available for viewing in the CV Lounge at least one week before our discussion, and it
will be the responsibility of each student to watch the film (and complete the readings specific to
each film) before our class discussion. Most of the films will also be placed on reserve in the
McDermott Library, where they may be viewed as well. Of course students may also choose to
rent or purchase the films themselves. If you are not downloading the films directly onto your
computer or using a service like Netflicks, or if you would simply like to browse a well stocked
video store, I would recommend Premiere Video. [5400 E Mockingbird Lane # 104 Dallas, TX
 3

75206-5381, (214) 827-8969, right off of I-75]. It is the largest DVD rental store in Texas, and
has a huge selection of all film styles.

Student Choice Week: Thursday, April 21, I will be out of town, attending an academic
conference. Our class will still meet, at the regular class time, to discuss a film. Rather than pre-
selecting the film to discuss that week, students will vote on what film they would like to
discuss, from a list I will distribute. Once students have selected a film, I will assign relevant
readings to accompany it, which we will discuss as a class on Tuesday, April 19.

Quizzes: Most classes will begin with a brief quiz covering the readings or the film that we will
be discussing that day. These quizzes will test recollection of the reading material and will aid as
a starter for class discussion. The accumulation of quizzes, combined with attendance and the
quality of participation (especially during the roundtables), will account for 15% of the final
grade.

Make-Ups: Make-up exams will be given only in documented emergency situations and at the
discretion of the professor.

Syllabus Changes: The professor reserves the right to amend this syllabus during the semester.
Any changes will be announced in class, and students will be responsible for getting and
following the new information.

Grading Scale: All exams will be graded on a 100-point scale. The following conversion chart
will be used to translate numbers into letter grades:

A: 94-100 B-: 80-83 D+: 67-69

A-: 90-93 C+: 77-79 D: 64-66

B+: 87-89 C: 74-76 D-: 60-63

B: 84-86 C-: 70-73 F: below 60

University Policies
All of the requirements and processes contained in this syllabus and made by the
professor shall comply with university wide policies. For more information on UTD’s academic
policies, including student conduct and discipline, religious holidays, academic integrity, email
use, withdrawal from the class, grievance policies, incomplete grade policies, and disability
services, please go to: http://go.utdallas.edu/syllabus-policies
 4

Course Schedule:
January 11: Introductions

Syllabus

January 13: Firemen’s Ball

Film: The Firemen’s Ball (Czechoslovakia, 1967) dir. Milos Foreman

Milos Foreman. Turnaround: A Memoir (Villard Books, 1994), pp. 159-166

Ed Howard. “Chaotic Bodies: The Firemen’s Ball Beauty Pageant” (July 2008)

Note: No essays will be written on Firemen’s Ball.

January 18: Westerns

Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon. “Six Creeds that Won the West” from The Western
Reader (Limelight Editions, 1998), pp. 59-84.

Doug Williams. “Pilgrims and the Promised Land: A Genealogy of the Western” from The
Western Reader (Limelight Editions, 1998), pp. 93-114.

Edward Buscombe. “The Western” from Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford University
Press, 1996), pp. 286-293.

Concept of the Week: Myth

January 20: The Searchers

Film: The Searchers (USA, 1956) dir. John Ford

Robert B. Pippen. “Politics and Self-Knowledge in The Searchers” from Hollywood Westerns
and American Myth: The Importance of Howard Hawks and John Ford for Political Philosophy
(Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 102-140.

January 25: Film Noir

Paul Schrader. “Notes on Film Noir” (1972) from Film Noir Reader (Limelight Editions, 1996)

Janey Place and Lowell Peterson. “Some Visual Motifs of Film Noir” (1974) from Film Noir
Reader (Limelight Editions, 1996)
 5

Robert Porfirio. “Some Visual Motifs in the Film Noir” (1976) from Film Noir Reader
(Limelight Editions, 1996)

Concept of the Week: Expressionism

January 27: Detour

Film: Detour (USA, 1945) dir. Edgar Ulmer

Andrew Britton. “Detour” from The Book of Film Noir (Continuum, 1993), pp. 174-183.

Due: essay on Westerns and The Searchers

February 1: Documentary Films

Charles Musser. “Extending the Boundaries: Cinema-Verite and the New Documentary”, from
The Oxford University of World Cinema (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp 527-537.

David MacDougall. “Beyond Observational Cinema” from Movies and Methods (University of
California Press, 1985), pp. 274-285.

David Denby. The Real Thing” New York Review of Books (November 8, 1990)

Concept of the Week: Discourse

February 3: Titicut Follies

Film: Titicut Follies (USA, 1967) dir. Frederick, Wiseman

Charles Taylor. “Titicut Follies” from Sight and Sound (Spring 1988)

Dan Armstrong. “Wiseman’s Realm of Transgression: Titicut Follies, the Symbolic Father, and
the Spectacle of Confinement” from Cinema Journal (Fall 1989), pp 20-35.

Carl Plantiga. “Documentary” from The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film
(Routledge, 2009) pp. 494-504.

Due: Essay on Film Noir and Detour

February 8: Italian Neo-Realism

Millicent Marcus. Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism (Princeton University Press, 1986), pp.
3-29.
 6

Andrew Karia. “Realism” from The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film (Routledge,
2009), pp. 237-248.

Concept of the Week: Realism

February 10: Rome, Open City

Film: Rome, Open City (Italy, 1945) dir. Roberto Rossellini

David Forgacs. Rome, Open City (BFI Publishing, 2000), pp. 6-7, 31-34, 42, 60-71

Kristen Thompson and David Bordwell. “The Death of Pina” from Film History: An
Introduction (McGraw Hill, 2003), p. 365.

Christopher Wagstaff. Italian Neorealist Cinema: An Aesthetic Approach (University of Toronto

Press, 2007), pp. 409-416.

Due: Essay on Documentaries and Titicut Follies. All students should have submitted at least one
film essay by this date.

February 15: Cinema and Stalin: Films under Socialist Realism

Sergei Eisenstein. “Ivan the Terrible: A Film About the Sixteenth-century Russian Renaissance”
from Selected Writings, Volume III, (BFI Publishing, 1996), pp. 188-192.

Sergei Eisenstein. “Stalin, Molotov and Zhdanov on Ivan the Terrible, Part II” from Selected
Writings, Volume III, (BFI Publishing, 1996), pp. 299-304.

David Bordwell. “Sergei Eisenstein” from The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film
(Routledge, 2009), pp. 378-386.

Concept of the Week: Montage

February 17: Ivan the Terrible

Film: Ivan the Terrible, Parts I and II (Soviet Union, 1943-45) dir. Sergei Eisenstein

Leonid Kozlov. “The Artist and the Shadow of Ivan” from Stalinism and Soviet Cinema
(Routledge, 1993), pp. 109-130.

Due: Essay on Neo-Realism and Rome, Open City

 7

February 22: Classical Hollywood Narrative

Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry. We’ll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema
During World War II (University Press of Kentucky, 2006), pp. 1-25.

Umberto Eco. “Casablanca or The Cliches are Having a Ball” from Signs of Life in the U.S.A.
(Bedford, 1994)

Concept of the Week: Narrative

February 24: Casablanca

Film: Casablanca (United States, 1942), dir. Michael Curtiz

Robert B. Ray. A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 (Princeton University
Press, 1985), pp. 89-112.

Richard Maltby. “’A Brief Romantic Interlude’: Dick and Jane Go to 3 ½ Seconds of the
Classical Hollywood Cinema” from Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (University of
Wisconsin Press, 1996), pp. 434-459.

Due: Essay on Cinema under Stalin and Ivan the Terrible

March 1: Specters of the Past: Horror Genre

Jo Labanyi. “History and Hauntology, or, What Does One Do with the Ghosts of the Past?:
Reflections on Spanish Film and Fiction of the Post-Franco Period”, from Disremembering the
Dictatorship: the Politics of Memory in the Spanish Transition to Democracy (Rodopi, 2000),
pp. 65–82.

Concept of the Week: Surrealism

March 3: The Devil’s Backbone

Film: The Devil’s Backbone (Spain, 2001) dir. Guillermo del Toro

Kimberly Chun. “What is a Ghost? An Interview with Guillermo Del Toro." from Cineaste:
America's Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema, 27, no. 2, pp. 28-31, April
2002

Ellen Brinks. “’Nobody’s Children’: Gothic Representation and Traumatic History in The
Devil’s Backbone” JAC (2004), pp. 291-312.

Due: Essay on Classical Hollywood and Casablanca

 8

March 8: French New Wave and May ‘68

Kristen Thompson and David Bordwell. “The New Wave” from Film History: An Introduction
(McGraw Hill, 2003), pp. 443-448.

Concept of the week: Mise-en-sc ne

March 10: La Chinoise

Film: La Chinoise (France, 1967) dir. Jean Luc Godard

Richard Brody. Everything is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. (Holt, 2008), pp.
297-311, 323-337

Pauline Kael. “A Minority Movie” from Going Steady (Little, Brown & Co., 1970), pp. 76-84.

Due: Essay on Horror and The Devil’s Backbone

March 14-19 Spring Break

March 22: New Hollywood Reconfigures the Old

Geoff King. New Hollywood Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2002), selections

Concept of the Week: point of view

March 24: Chinatown

Film: Chinatown (USA, 1974) dir. Roman Polanski

John Cawelti. “Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films” in Film
Theory and Criticism (Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 498-511.

Due: Essay on French New Wave and La Chinoise

March 29: Inventing the Couple in Hollywood Romantic Comedies

Kathrina Glitre. “Genre, Cycles, and Critical Traditions” from Hollywood Romantic Comedy:
States of the Union, 1934-1965 (Manchester University Press, 2006), pp. 9-37.

Concept of the Week: Style

 9

March 31: The Awful Truth

Film: The Awful Truth (USA, 1937) dir. Leo McCarey

Stanley Cavell. The Same and Different” from Pursuit of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of
Remarriage (Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 229-264.

Due: essay on New Hollywood and Chinatown

April 5: Post Revolution Iranian Cinema

Azadeh Farahmand. Perspectives on Recent (International Acclaim for) Iranian Cinema, from
New Iranian Cinema : Politics, Representation and Identity (I.B. Tarus, 2002)

“Special Focus on Contemporary Iranian Cinema” Cineaste (Summer 2006), pp. 38-50.

Berys Gaut. “Digital Cinema” from The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film
(Routledge, 2009), pp. 75-85.

Concept of the Week: Auteur

April 7: 10

Film:10 (Iran, 2002) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Saeed Zeydabadi-Nejad. The Politics of Iranian Cinema: Film and Society in the Islamic
Republic (Routledge, 2010), pp. 34-54, 104-137.

Due: Essay on Romantic Comedy and The Awful Truth

April 12: Monsters, Trauma and Memory

Kyoko Hirano. Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation,
1945-1952 (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp. 47-70.

Yoshikuni Igarashi. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945-
1970 (Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 11-17, 104-106, 114-122.

Concept of the Week: Ideology

April 14: Godzilla

Film: Godzilla/Gojira (Japan, 1954) dir. Ishiro Honda

 10

Chon A. Noriega. “Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When Them! Is U.S.” from Cinema
Journal (1987), pp. 63-75.

Due: Essay on Iranian Cinema and 10

April 19: Students’ Choice Week

TBA

Due: Essay Selected from Recommended List

April 21: Students’ Choice Week

TBA.

Due: Essay on Monster Films and Godzilla

April 26: China’s Sixth Generation

Jim Yardley. “Chinese Dam Projects Criticized for Its Human Costs” The New York Times,
November 19, 2007.

Concept of the Week: Spectator

April 28: Still Life

Film: Still Life (China, 2006) dir. Jia Zhang-Ke

Shelly Kraicer. “Chinese Wasteland: Jia Zhangke’s Still Life” from CinemaScope (Issue 29)

Evan Osnos. “The Long Shot” from The New Yorker, May 11, 2009

Due: Essay on Student Choice Film

Due: Essay on Chinese Cinema and Still Life, Thursday, May 5, 5PM

Due: Sixth Essay / Personal Choice, Thursday, May 5, 5PM

 11

Recommended Film List

For one of the six film essays, students will select one film from any on the list below.
Students may select from whichever category interests them, as an opportunity to explore a
single genre or film movement in greater detail. The essay from the recommended list will be
due no later than Tuesday, April 19, 2011.

Westerns

Stagecoach (USA, 1939) dir. John Ford

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (USA, 1962) dir. John Ford

Red River (USA, 1948), dir. Howard Hawks

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Italy/Spain, 1966) dir. Sergio Leone

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (USA, 1971) dir. Robert Altman

There Will Be Blood (USA, 2007) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

Film Noir

Double Indemnity (USA, 1944) dir. Billy Wilder

Out of the Past (USA, 1947) dir. Jacques Tourneur

The Naked City (USA, 1948) dir. Jules Dassin

Pickup on South Street (USA, 1953) dir. Samuel Fuller

The Big Heat (USA, 1953) dir. Fritz Lang

Documentary

Salesman (USA 1969) dir. Albert and David Maysles

Gimme Shelter (USA, 1970), dir. Albert and David Maysles

Harlan County, USA (USA, 1976) dir. Barbra Kopple

The Thin Blue Line (USA, 1988) Errol Morris

Fahrenheit 9/11 (USA, 2004) Michael Moore

Italian Neo-Realism

Paisa (Italy, 1946) dir. Roberto Rossellini

 12

The Bicycle Thief (Italy, (1948) dir. Vittorio De Sica

La Terra Trema (Italy, 1948) dir. Lichino Visconti

Umberto D (Italy, 1952) dir. Vittorio De Sica

Nights of Cabiria (Italy, 1957) dir. Frederico Fellini

Early Soviet Cinema

The Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925) dir. Sergei Eisenstein

October (USSR, 1927) dir. Sergei Eisenstein

The End of St. Petersburg (USSR, 1927) dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin

Man with a Movie Camera (USSR, 1929) dir. Dziga Vertov

Earth (USSR, 1930), dir. Alexander Dovzhenko

Classic Hollywood Takes on Politics

Duck Soup (USA, 1933) dir. Leo McCarey

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (USA, 1939) dir. Frank Capra

Meet John Doe (USA, 1941) dir. Frank Capra

All the King’s Men (USA, 1949), dir. Robert Rossen

A Face in the Crowd (USA, 1957) dir. Elia Kazan

Advise and Consent (USA, 1962) dir. Otto Preminger

Being There (USA, 1979), dir. Hal Ashby

Horror (Ghosts and Hauntings)

Ugetsu (Japan, 1952) dir. Kenji Mizoguchi

The Haunting (United Kingdom, 1963) dir. Robert Wise

The Shining (USA, 1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick

The Changeling (Canada, 1980) dir. Peter Medak

Ringu (Japan, 1998) dir. Hideo Nakata

 13

Films of (and near) the French New Wave

Rules of the Game (France, 1939) dir. Jean Renoir

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (France 1959) dir. Alain Resnais

Ma Vie Sa Via (France, 1963) dir. Jean-Luc Godard

Army of Shadows (France, 1969) dir. Jean-Pierre Melville

A Grin Without a Cat (France, 1978) dir. Chris Marker

New Hollywood

MASH (USA, 1970) dir. Robert Altman

The Godfather I or II (USA, 1972, 1974) dir. Francis Coppola

Parallax View (USA, 1974), dir. Alan Pakula

Dog Day Afternoon (USA, 1975) dir. Sidney Lumet

Taxi Driver (USA, 1976) dir. Martin Scorsese

Romantic Comedy

It Happened One Night (USA, 1934) dir. Frank Capra

Adam’s Rib (USA, 1949) dir. George Cukor

The Apartment (USA, 1960) dir. Billy Wilder

Annie Hall (USA, 1977) dir. Woody Allen

Bridget Jones’s Diary (United Kingdom, 2001), dir. Sharon Maguire

Post-Revolution Iranian Cinema

Close-Up (Iran, 1990) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

Taste of Cherry (Iran, 1997) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

The Apple (Iran, 1998) dir. Samira Makhmalbaf

Kandahar (Iran, 2001) dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Crimson Gold (Iran, 2003) dir. Jafar Panahi

Offside (Iran, 2006) dir. Jafar Panahi

 14

Science Fiction (Monstrous Creatures)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (USA, 1956) dir. Don Siegel

Them! (USA, 1954) dir. Douglas Gordon

Alien (USA, 1979) dir. Ridley Scott

The Fly (USA, 1986), dir. David Cronenberg

District 9 (USA/New Zealand, 2009) dir. Neill Blomkamp

Chinese Cinema

Raise the Red Lantern (China, 1991), dir. Zhang Yimou

Farewell My Concubine (China, 1993), dir. Chen Kaige

Suzhou River (China, 2000) dir. Lou Ye

Beijing Bicycle (China, 2001) dir. Wang Xiaoshuai

Hero (China, 2002) dir. Zhang Yimou

The World (China, 2004) Jia Zhanke