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August 2000, Week 3

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Subject:
From:
Jesse Kalin <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 18 Aug 2000 11:14:05 -0600
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Is this--complaints and objections from students (and parents?)--a problem
more common in public universities and colleges (and also in certain parts
of the country--e.g. the midwest?--remember the action of the Iowa?
legislature 6 or 8 years ago).  I have in fact been surprised that, with
over 20 years of teaching film (at Vassar), no student has yet asked to be
excused from an assignment (or seriously complained afterward versus saying
they didn't like or were disgusted by the film).   In advanced courses I
have used an occasional explicit film ("Caligula"--most found it boring
and/or pretentious; I think it is really about forms of violence) and films
like "Clockwork Orange" and "Natural Born Killers."  In intermediate
courses I have used Makavejev's "WR" and a variety of other things,
including "Love and Anarchy."  "L and A" ends with, to my sense, one of the
most violent scenes in all cinema (the anarchist hero is beaten to a pulp
in a Fascist prison after an abortive attempt to kill Mussolini).  While
the ratings for films are usually included on the syllabus (this would be
an R, presumably), you can't tell people what's going to happen ahead of
time.  Much of the effect--and the point Wertmuller is making--depends on
being shocked and even nauseated, and crushed, when this happens.  There
can only be some general remarks and people have to choose at the beginning
whether to take the course or not.

This latter case raises a more pervasive problem for introductory and film
history classes.  For film history, there are things there that are a
central part of the history that need to be seen, some violent, some
sexual.  For introductory classes I like my students to encounter the films
(never interpretively innocent, of course) with as little
commentary/preinterpretation from me as possible.  Take "Un Chien
Andalou"--can you really warn them about the eyeball without damaging the
effect (horror AND beauty) [and what of one's own temptation to delight in
schocking people]?

However, what does bother me--and there seems little way of dealing with
it--is not offending sensibilities in these kind of cases, but
inadvertently opening wounds, for lack of a beeter term.  This was brought
home a number of years ago in an aesthetics class when a student said she
had been unable to complete the assignment on Peter Greenaway's "The
Draughtman's Contract" because of the rape scene (or what she took to be
such), herself having been raped only a few weeks before.

----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite

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