Topics in Film and Television Analysis: Media and Violence

Catalog description

This seminar examines several of the issues related to representations of and discourses about violence in film and media. We begin with a consideration of the precursors to and emergence and consolidation of the so-called "ultraviolent" aesthetic (in the mid-to-late 1960s), then we consider a few of the film genres whose most prominent conventions include representations of violence (such as the gangster, horror, war, and boxing genres). In addition, the seminar includes a comparative approach to the issue of violent representations in film and media (especially television) by surveying the terms and themes that characterize both social scientific and humanities discourses.