Warriors, Gangsters, and Misanthropes: Violence and Sociality in Asian Genre Cinemas

Catalog description

By analyzing films from a variety of popular genres, from war to horror, gangster, action-thriller, and disaster films, we will consider the problem-solving function, visual pleasure, visceral thrills, and ethical stakes of multiple forms of film violence, including state violence, gendered violence, heroic and anti-heroic violence, and spectacular, extreme, or fantasmatic violence. Further, we will ask what forms of sociality or intersubjective relations these differing modes of violence posit or problematize, to gain insight into broader questions concerning the anti-sociality of violence and the prevalence of film violence in the social, cultural, and historical contexts of contemporary East Asia. Prerequisite: MCM 0110 , 0230 , 0240 , 0250 , 0260 , or 1110 . Enrollment limited to 50 sophomores, juniors, and seniors.