Topic: Authorship 2000

The film author has been declared dead for almost as many years as
God, the novel, and easel painting. Even so, as David Bordwell recently
observed, film scholars keep holding seances over the author's remains.
Why is this the case? To what degree does it make sense to speak of
authors (or auteurs) in the current cinema? What discursive and industrial
conditions need to exist in order to support the idea of authorship in the
media? Who can function as an author in the present-day mediascape? Does
the practice of author-criticism always involve a certain politics or
ideology? How is the idea of authorship affected by considerations of
race, gender, and social class? What's the difference, if any, between
auteurs in Hollywood, auteurs on TV, and auteurs in the independent or
international cinema? In today's world-wide movie industry, who are the
leading authors, and which ones are especially worth discussing?

This seminar will address all the questions above, and will also
provide students with an opportunity to write about a wide range of
personalities in contemporary movies. In the early weeks of the class, our
readings and discussions will be concentrated on historical auteurism in
France and the US during the 1950s and 60s. We will review some of the
major theoretical and critical statements of that period, in an attempt
discover whether anything should be recuperated from what the French
called the "politique" of authorship. We will also review the major
arguments against the idea of the author. The bulk of the course, however,
will be devoted to the question of authorship in contemporary cinema.
Students will be required to read several books of history and criticism,
together with a packet of essays; they will also be required to write a
seminar paper and give a short oral report. There will be no film series
attached to the course. I hope to structure most of the class as a
workshop for the individual term papers, allowing students to pursue any
topic that interests them, as long as it has something to do with the
problem of authorship or with a critical study of a contemporary name.
(The directors alone who might deserve such criticism would include Pedro
Almodovar, Charles Burnett, Jane Campion, the Cohen brothers, David
Cronenberg, Atom Egoyan, John Frankenheimer, Jim Jarmusch, Amy Heckerling,
Wong Kar-Wai, Abbas Kiarostami, Spike Lee, David Lynch, David Madden,
Terence Malick, David Mamet, Manoel de Oliviera, Raul Ruiz, Nancy Savoca,
Martin Scorsese, Andre Techene, and John Waters. This list is just for
starters. One could also discuss writers, producers, or actors.)