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Japanese Film, Spring 2001
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Course details:
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syllabus
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assignments
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| Japanese Film, Macalester College, Spring 2001 (JAPA 50-03)--REVISED SYLLABUS 4/2/01 Tuesday, Thursday 1:00 - 2:30 (Humanities Building room 110) |
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| Objectives This course is meant as an introduction to Japanese film for students who may or may not have background in either Japan studies or film. A primary question we will consider is, “What’s Japanese about Japanese film?” Film critics in Japan, in the U.S., and elsewhere have often asked that question, and have offered many answers. We will engage with some of the debates that question has inspired, including the argument made by Noël Burch that Japanese film directors mastered but consciously resisted Western modes of representation by making films which avoid the techniques of Hollywood-style realist narrative cinema. We will consider how this argument, made originally in Burch’s 1979 book To the Distant Observer, has continued to spark discussion and even controversy in the fields of Japanese studies and film studies. To aim at some unity in the movies we watch, discuss, and write about, I’ve selected the theme “families” and have chosen films which address the variety of groups within which people find themselves or choose to be in. These groups include “traditional” families, but also gangs, martial associations, and school groups. |
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| Structure of the Course On Tuesdays I will give lectures, and on Thursdays we will have discussion meetings. The textbook is David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s Film Art: An Introduction. Ruminator bookstore is selling the Sixth Edition--look on the shelves under Communication Studies 49. Some of you will have used Film Art before in other film courses, and if you own a previous edition, there is no need to purchase the current one. (Also, if you can find a used copy of a previous edition at a better price, you should feel free to buy that instead.) |
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| Readings, Assignments, Evaluation There will be a substantial amount of reading in the course, but most of it will not be as dense as Burch. Your participation in the Thursday discussion sections will be an important part of your experience in the course and an important part of my evaluation of your performance. However, I recognize that not everyone is equally at home in a class discussion. I hope your ability to leap into a discussion will grow in this course, and in order to give you a base from which to engage with the films and the readings, I will ask you to submit a weekly reaction paper to the readings via e-mail. In these reaction papers, you are to pose a question about what you have read for that week and attempt an answer. The answer is not as important as the question, which should be conceptual rather than factual. You must submit the weekly reaction to me at pradt@macalester.edu by 10 am each Thursday morning. Most of you are completely familiar with e-mail, but if you are not, let me know, and we’ll figure something out. Other assignments will include a film segmentation (an analysis of form which divides a film into its parts), a paper on one technical aspect of one film, and a final paper which can be on the topic of your choice but which should grapple in some way with the central question of the course, “What’s Japanese about Japanese film?” |
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| Assignments as percentage of your course grade: 30%: attendance and e-mail reaction papers (which are due Thursday morning of every week, except week 1) 5%: quiz on terms in B&T, week 2 (2/15) 20%: segmentation of Late Spring, due Tuesday of week 5 (2/27) 20%: analysis of one aspect of Gohatto [or a previous film]: due Thursday of week 8 (3/29) 5%: proposal of final paper due week 11 (4/17) 20%: final paper due week 14 (5/11) |
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