Introductory description

This module will examine the body in various screen examples and through a multitude of frameworks. Drawing on areas of expertise, and the historical legacy of studying the body, in Film and Television, the module will explore a variety of topics from the co-convenors' research. The body is a central yet often overlooked aspect of mise-en-scene. The centring of the body in this module will establish its significance to textual analysis and discussions of corporeality in cinema. Furthermore, it will engage with questions relating to affect, audiences, abstraction, and the body. This detailed discussion of the body will also enable the exploration of its relation to the politics and language of representation. The module will consider the production, cultural, socio-political, and artistic contexts in order to understand how the body has been represented onscreen. It will also investigate obscene, explicit, and/or censored screened material.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Introduction to the Module; establishing how to critically investigate obscene, explicit, and/or censored screening material
Week 2 and 3: Production contexts and screening of sex
Week 4 and 5: Obscenity and Experimental screen media
Week 7 and 8: The Gendered and Ageing Body on Screen
Week 9 and 10: The Sacred and Non-Human Body

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Identify key scholarship and approaches to analysing the body on screen
• Critically investigate the relationship between the representations of bodies and cultural and production contexts
• Demonstrate an ability to offer detailed analyses of screen texts and engage in debates about the representation of bodies in screen media
• Demonstrate knowledge of the various cultural, technological, social and artistic influences and impacts on the representation of the body on screen
• Understand how to analyse the body on screen using a variety of methods, frameworks and approaches
• Demonstrate an ability to engage with challenging materials and content

Indicative reading list

Feona Attwood, (ed.), porn.com: Making Sense of Online Pornography (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2010).

Jennifer Barker, The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009).

Bergen-Aurand, Brian. "Screened Bodies". Screen Bodies 1.1 (2016): 1-10.

Berridge Susan and Horeck Tanya, 'INTIMACY COORDINATION AND NEW DEPICTIONS OF SEX AND CONSENT IN CONTEMPORARY UK TELEVISION DRAMA BY SUSAN BERRIDGE AND TANYA HORECK', CST online, 16 April 2021, https://cstonline.net/intimacy-coordination-and-new-depictions-of-sex-and-consent-in-contemporary-uk-television-drama-by-susan-berridge-and-tanya-horeck/

Wheeler Winston Dixon, ‘Performativity in 1960s American Experimental Cinema: The Body as a Site of Ritual and Display,’ Film Criticism, vol. 23, no. 1 (1998), pp. 48-60.
Richard Dyer, White (London and New York: Routledge).

Amanda Fiedler and Sarah Casey, ‘“I Played By All the Rules! Why Didn’t You Tell Me There Weren’t Any Rules, It’s Not Fair!” Contradiction, Corporeality, and Conformity in Grace and Frankie,’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 35:6 (2021): 938-954.

Jeremy Geltzer, Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2021).

Gábor Gergely, ‘Sonority, Difference and the Schwarzenegger Star Body’ Film-Philosophy 23.2 (2019): 137-158.

Horeck, T. 2020. Intimacy Coordination and Sexual Consent in Normal People. In Media Res: A Media Commons Project. Available at: https://mediacommons.org/imr/content/intimacy-coordination-and-sexual-consent-normal-people

Su Holmes and Deborah Jermyn, eds. Women, Celebrity and Cultures of Ageing: Freeze Frame (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015).

Christine Holmlund, ‘Visible Difference and Flex Appeal: The Body, Sex, Sexuality, and Race in the Pumping Iron Films,’ Cinema Journal 28:4 (Summer 1989): 38-51.

Krzywinska, Tanya. Sex and the Cinema. Wallflower, London;New York;, 2006

Susan Jeffords, Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Regan Era (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994).

Deborah Jermyn, ‘“Get a Life, Ladies, Your Old One is Not Coming Back”: Ageing, Ageism and the Lifespan of Female Celebrity,’ Celebrity Studies 3:1 (2012): 1-12.

Patricia Mellencamp, Indiscretions: Avant-Garde Film, Video & Feminism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990).

Julian Petley, Film and Video Censorship in Modern Britain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 1993).

Williams, Linda. "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess." Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 1991, pp. 2-13

Williams, Linda. Screening Sex. Duke University Press, Durham, 2008

Young, Damon R. Making Sex Public and Other Cinematic Fantasies. Duke University Press, Durham, 2018

Genevieve Yue, Girl Head: Feminism and Film Materiality (New York City, NY: Fordham University Press, 2020).

Subject specific skills

This module develops skills of audio-visual literacy, through close textual and/or contextual analysis of the moving image and sound. It develops understandings of theoretical, representational, and conceptual frameworks relevant to screen arts and cultures. With a sustained focus on the body, it also opens up ways to examine the corporeal and screen material. Furthermore, as a module that critically investigates obscene, explicit, and/or censored screened material, ethical skills will be developed in seminars in terms of respect and responsibility.

Transferable skills

• critical and analytical thinking
• independent research skills, thought, and enquiry
• clarity and effectiveness of communication, oral and written
• accurate, concise, and persuasive writing
• audio-visual literacy
  group work