Cinema and Society

All art is social—it is made for an audience, presented to a public—and a popular art such as the movies is perhaps more social than most. In this course, we will deal with the art of film in its nexus with society and in connection with social, cultural, and political issues. We will certainly not neglect the art of film—this is not a course in sociology, cultural studies, or political science—but we will consider the art in relation to the society in which it was made and to which it speaks. We will begin at the beginning of cinema at the turn of the 20th century and cover a wide range of movies from Hollywood and around the world—Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America—up to the present time. This course will offer the student a comprehensive social history of the movies. We will be concerned both with socially conscious and politically engaged films and with films raising social issues less explicitly, maybe even unconsciously, but no less significantly. Melodramas and documentaries, comedies and crime films, national epics and portrayals of everyday life, works of searching realism and fantasies that represent dreams or fears, accounts of the past and allegories of the future, the grand and the subtle, the mainstream and the alternative—these are all within the scope of this course. We will examine not only the content but also the form of films, the techniques of expression, the conventions of representation, the modes of transaction with the audience—and the ways in which these carry social implications.