F1220 Siege Mentality in National Cinemas (F1220)
Thursday 13.30-15.00
This course deals with films produced in different nations at particular historical periods that evidence in their formal and thematic articulation a mentality of siege. Siege mentality refers to a conception whereby individuals or groups perceive themselves as living in a besieged state facing a hostile world. This self-conception, originating for many nations in tradition, past and present experiences, and inculcated through state ideology, may turn under certain circumstances into a central conception, biasing the approach of individuals or groups within society to different problems faced by the nation.
Siege mentality, arousing under certain geo-political and socio-political circumstances can be seen to inhere particularly in films dealing with issues perceived by many within the nation as threatening their state's existence, namely: films about war, or films addressing issues perceived as threatening or debilitating the nations' internal stability in face of a perceived threatening world, such as acute inter ethnic, class, or gender tensions.
Siege mentality, whose formal and thematic cinematic implementation constructs a threatening reality from which there is no escape, fashions to varying degrees in different nations at different periods the overall structure of cardinal films, including their plot structure, their cinematic visual and aural compositions and the constitution of the characters populating them. The course will follow the embedment of siege mentality through close analysis of such films, while placing the films within the context of their production and the extra-cinematic socio-political and geo-political reality that forges the film's particular cinematic conception.
A look at these films across nations and periods shows the recurrence of compositions and figurations whose interrelations evoke notions of claustrophobia or agoraphobia, violence, threatening encirclement and suspicion. These configurations, often co-existing with other perceptions, formally and thematically embed in these films the notion of the nation as being persecuted, a notion that to varying degrees semantically colours the films' conception of the situation presented as being un-resolvable, dead-ended and threatening.
While there are many examples of the arousal of siege mentality in different nations and periods, the course will focus upon salient examples, namely: German Expressionist films produced in-between the First and Second World Wars, American "Film Noir" films produced during and in the aftermath of the McCarthy era, Cuban films produced in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, Hungarian films produced after the aborted 1956 revolution and the Soviet invasion, and Israeli films produced throughout the State's history.
Learning Outcomes: How to analyze films in respect of worldviews embedded in them, how to relate films to their historical context, siege mentality in films of various historical periods.
Teaching Method
Frontal lectures and student oral presentations.
Screenings: Most screenings will be conducted outside of class. Details will be given at course start.
Evaluation
Readings