jasonzuzga.com  · Web viewPhiladelphia Zoo to break down action instants never before seen in isolation. Such details newly available to human attention were what media philosopher

Helen the Baby Fox Jaws (Steven Spielberg 1975)

(Keita Kono 2006) 子ぎつねヘレン

Koko the Gorilla takes a photo (October 1978)

From Happy Feet to March of the Penguins, from “Shark Week” to Sharknado, what desires and needs, what curiousities and anxieties, lie behind our multiple gazing upon the figures and movements of non-speaking animals? Is seeing animals on screen a paltry substitute for person-to-animal contact or in situ encounter? Might a zoo be merely

a more complex kind of screen? Does the ability to see animals at the distance provided by cinema, television, and video bring us

closer to animal lives or more greatly divide? Through the viewing of films and videos and the reading of various film reviews, film theory, philosophy, and writings in animal studies, we will tackle...ourselves. What are we? Talking animals? Conscious animals? Tool-users? Hand openers? Animals not bound to instinct and free to make complex plans ahead in time? Animals free to collect memories and representations and marks of the past to remind us of what has been lost and what might come? Animals of which no two are the same, each given identification and a name? Of course, humans are animals, but why have two words for ourselves? We don’t say “cat animals” or “bird animals” or “earthworm animals.” But we do need to say “human animals” to remind us of our lack of total exceptionalism, evolution’s continuity, the indelible lessons of Darwin. Darwin looked closely, he observed, and in one of his last books he turned to photography’s quick recording to capture fleeting moments of emotional expression, bodily reveal he felt were expressed in common across species.

Cinema traces its roots in part back to the last years of Darwin’s life as two other scientists conducted key inquiries into animal motion, photography and technology. American Eadweard Muybridge used his own invention, the zoopraxiscope, at Stanford University, the University of Pennsylania and the Philadelphia Zoo to break down action instants never before seen in isolation. Such details newly available to human attention were what media philosopher Walter Benjamin would go on to name “the optical unconscious”. Richard Prouty writes: “A

SEEING ANIMALCINE 202.602 / Fall 2015

Prof. Jason ZuzgaWednesday 6-9:00 pmFisher-Bennett room 25

Office Hours: by request & weeklyW 3-6 Fisher-Bennet Lounge – 2nd floor.

Or elsewhere – if you are coming by,let me know a bit in advance.

[email protected] / 267-902-0731

movie camera can be mounted on a speeding locomotive, dropped down a sewer… The camera reveals aspects of reality that register in our senses but never quite get processed consciously. Film changed how we view the least significant minutiae of reality just as surely as Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life changed how we look at incidental phenomenon like slips of the tongue. In other words, film serves as an optical unconscious. Benjamin asserts the film camera ‘introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.’”1 Never would the public see the animal in the same way again – not as a blur of action but as a complex orchestration of precise movement. As Muybridge worked in the United States, in France, Etienne-Jules Marey in France developed his tools of chronophotography, again, to study the motion of animals and humans. His chronophotograph used a gun-like device with an open and closing shutter to capture motion on a single plate. Such was the dawn of cinema, of the capacity to record light reflected from objects in motion. We might consider simply the effect of these pioneer’s projects and the difference in impact and feeling whether recording animals or humans.

From these early innovators, the course will proceed with speed (it is happening now as you read) into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, where a writer we will encounter, John Berger, has argued that the animal has entirely disappeared from human daily life, that we no longer exchange wild looks with animals, we no longer encounter the stranger. We will examine his argument closely – as he distinguishes between lively creatures in contact as opposed to representations, recordings, mere ghostly ephemera.

We will consider his work and other writings from the recently emerging academic field of “animal studies,” such how author Temple Grandin argues that some humans, notably those with autism, might actually have the ability to “think like animals” – to “see from an animal’s point of view.” Does Grandin’s notion of her gift of visual cognition as opposed to our habitual verbally encoded thinking apply to the way animals experience the world? To the way the cinema records and projects the world?

What do we see when we look at an animal versus when we look at a human -- and what does such a look consist of – and how can the hot and cool media of film and video help us better “see” these questions via its audiovisual fusion? Is there a difference in looking at humans for something called “human” versus looking at what is called “animal?” Does the nonhuman animal occupy the space before the camera and upon the screen differently than a human actor? Can we “see” animals or are they blank screens upon which we project our desires, dreams, fears, hopes? What taboos have arisen around the viewing of animals and what animals and we like to do - killing, eating, sex, sleeping, playing?By reading closely and analyzing a number of texts from various fields – literature, cinema, television, video – we will dive into these basic philosophical and psychoanalytic questions. What about films in which people turn into animal: do they cease to be humans or do they become hybrid beings, the hybrid beings we already are and actively disavow? Philosopher Jacques Derrida, in his work “The Animal That Therefore I Am.” calls the way in which we use a simple word to group all living beings into one category separate from ourselves..."the animot" - does film lend human characteristics to the animal or animalize the human? Does film see all animals as part of the group “animal” but fixate on individual human difference within the species Homo sapiens? What kind of eye does the camera have - human or animal – or one completely unlike either and why? Giorgio Agamben sees our self-imposed separation from the animals as both blessing and curse – his book will be the most challenging work we’ll encounter.

More on Muybridge: http://www.wired.com/2009/06/dayintech_0615/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heRuLp7CyTM (Muybridge’s film “moving picture”) 1 On Walter Benjamin’s concept of the “optical unconscious” http://onewaystreet.typepad.com/one_way_street/2009/10/the-optical-unconscious.html

http://www.livescience.com/33725-oldest-cat-video-time.html

1887 Muybridge study of cat locomotion.

More on Marey: http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/25/books/the-scientist-who-took-pictures.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKlNZSnkvsg (Marey’s birds in motion)

Marey study of a pelican’s descent. Ca. 1860.

http://precinemahistory.net/1880.htm

Marey study of a pole vaulter. How might this feel different from the equivalent study of the bird?

[ photo by Eddie Cohen ]

Assignments: 

1) Weekly approx. 250 word “close viewing” or “close reading” responses responding to the questions  provided in the syllabus -- rough only, please - focusing on a particular scene or passage from film or text. Please upload these to the class facebook page. (2 pts. per post for a total of 26 points)

2) Active and enthusiastic class participation with brief, informal in-class presentations on either required or recommended material. These will be assigned at random week to week – but if there’s something you really want to present on, speak up! (2 pts. per presentation – /useful/ analytic, synthetic and fact-filled handouts highly recommended -- for a total of 26 points)

3) Short take-home midterm (15 pts) and take-home final exam (25 pts).4) Participation in discussion on the course facebook page, links to relevant

sites, videos, and so forth. You should also use the facebook page to arrange group viewings of films, general procedural questions, etc.  (1pt per week or more – 1pt per “interesting and relevant” post with some explanation included.)

5) Final Project – a brief animal film – fiction or documentary or experimental - using multiple channels of information. Meaning you can’t just film on your phone and turn that in – you need to use iMovie or preferably Final Cut Pro – available at the Vitale Digital Media Lab --- http://commons.library.upenn.edu/node/34. Note their tight hours -- they are not open all night. You need to record sound, use available sound, music, photographic images (see what is available at the Fine Arts Library as well as online --- no pixelated images allowed), chase squirrels, chase human animals, and so forth. Find friends who have access to animals. In what you turn in, there should be a meaningful, rich interplay of visual and audio tracks that need not be parallel in meaning or tone – see the Honey Badger video for example – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg -- you can use your phone, use voices of people, record insects at night. Use, check out equipment from the Vitale Lab at the Van Pelt Library – you can take equipment out overnight. We will discuss this in class in detail – you will need to find animals to film – this might require trips to the Camden Aquarium or the Philadelphia Zoo – or it might involve filming ants on the pavement – or a combination of all. Your film should include voice-over narration, but if you can present a coherent and compelling rationale for any individual decisions that deviate from these instruction, why, then I’ll be quite happy . Points will be awarded for editing, for concept, for creativity, for actual recording of nonhuman animals with clarity and intention, and for aesthetic decisions. You will present also a 5-10 researched page paper (simply using the material we read an encountered in class) explaining your intentions and the rationale for your decisions as things proceded according to or not whatsoever according to plan. You will submit a brief plan, printed out with schedule and illustration, for your project on October 14. Late plans will lose a point a day until turned in. The total amount of points for the project is 10 for the plan and 30 points for the final version. NOTE: Students who PREFER TO DO A

SCHOLARLY RESEARCH PAPER ARE fully encouraged to do so and to work on it in close consultation with the instructor. You are limited, though, to having as your primary source one of the required or recommended materials from the course.

That equals a sum of 145 points total available for the course plus additional points for clever and provocative facebook postings. I’ll also give additional points for excellent facebook posts about course material (see 1 above) and excellent minipresentations.

Your grade will be determined by dividing your total point score by 140, so it is actually possible to get a grade above 100%.

SYLLABUS: 

The Instructor reserves the right to alter and change the Syllabus as needed --- the MOST UP-TO-DATE syllabus that you should ALWAYS refer to and follow will be the one posted within Canvas.  If and when I make changes, it will be to ease the amount of workload, to address particular emergent student interests. I'll always send an email and post a note on facebook if and when I make changes. 

Note:  You never are expected to do more work than you can possibly do. I know that each of you has other obligations --- THERE IS MORE WORK ASSIGNED PER CLASS THAN ANYONE COULD POSSIBILY DO. I know this. I include so much in order for you to have a dossier of references that you can refer back to throughout your life if you happen to become curious or interested further in one of our topics - as well the material is available for final projects, etc. I expect that you will watch AT LEAST *One Movie* and do the required reading. If you are finding that you are having trouble keeping up, let me know immediately so I can help you triage and figure out study strategies. 

Note: Each student is allowed one absence during the semester, beginning with the second class. Only extreme family or medical emergencies will permit a second absence. Otherwise, any absence beyond one will automatically lower your final grade a half-step. An A will become an A-, an A- will become a B+, and so on. 

Books required: (Available for purchase at Penn Book Center) 

Science Is Fiction by Andy Masaki Bellows, Marina McDougall, and Brigitte Berg

My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley

The Open by Giorgio Agamben

The Birds (BFI Film Classics) Camille Paglia

Reel Nature by Gregg Mitman

***No e-books allowed and no electronic devices to be used during classtime except when explicitly allowed by instructor. Please print out material from Canvas and bring to class. Please write on your documents extensively – take notes in margins, underline important or baffling passages. 

INTRODUCTIONS AND VISIONS OF ANIMALS IN THE MOVING IMAGE 

CLASS ONE - August 26, 2015

Stories of animals from lives of students, 

Explanation of the procedures of the classroom. 

Watch a sampling of short films in class or after class: 

~Le Vampire (Dir. Jean Painleve, 1945)

http://vimeo.com/7614241

~L'hippocampe  (Dir. Jean Painleve,1934) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNrFeL4i19g

~Love Life of the Octopus (Dir. Jean Painleve, 1967) 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzclhRnlC08

Questions: What kind of creature is the cinematic creature, the animal on screen, for Jean Painleve? How does one relate to such an animal? We will be paying close attention throughout the semester to the various ways animal existence is portrayed and how different media framings allow and encourage various modes of attention and imaginative relations - You should be paying close attention at all times to the EFFECT of media have on the way you as a reader and viewer relate to and respond to the animal. Consider the question of language and whether “language” is what separates humans from animals. What kind of distance should we, can we, must we keep from the animals, keeping in mind that we too are animals?

Assignment for next week – read SCIENCE IS FICTION. Respond to the above questions on the course Facebook page. As well, provide a link to an animal video that you find online and compare it to the Painleve films we watch in class.

Sept 2

Class Two - Painleve vs. Disney, or the surreal and strange vs. the familiar. This will lead into next week’s reading on the surreal!

To have completed before class:

SCIENCE IS FICTION by Andy Masaki Bellows, Marina McDougall, and Brigitte Berg

Painleve – Love Life of the Octopus, the Vampire, Acera or the Witches’ Dance.

Disney – Seal Island,  Secrets of Nature, time permitting.

In class we will work through the short essays in SCIENCE IN FICTION. We will compare Painleve’s ideas and techniques to one of Disney’s True Life Adventures. Students will be assigned to present briefly on selected articles and we will renew introductions and review the syllabus.

Sept 9 

Class 3  Humanimal

REQUIRED: WATCH -

CAT PEOPLE (Jacques Tourneur 1942)

http://www.amazon.com/Cat-People-Simone-Simon/dp/B004VFOQ2I/ref=sr_1_2?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1441116258&sr=1-2&keywords=cat+people

Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett 2000)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002PSSNZE/ref=atv_feed_catalog?tag=imdb-amazonvideo-20

Read - 

“The Uncanny” by Sigmund Freud - at the following link: 

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Uncanny.pdf

Excerpts from Genesis and Leviticus.

“What it is like to be a Bat” by Thomas Nagel (IN FILES)  

Recommended:

"The Dreaming and The Dreamt: A Lexicon of Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves" at the following link: 

http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/companyofwolves.html

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=5wCzo9iu_zs&list=PLjT3Z589ba7NNFjruEyYdqquQg6jCn43I&index=1

0

(this movie is in pieces on YouTube, missing the first section... the entire film will be available here on canvas under course reserves in a few days.)

Questions: According to these works, is it possible for a HUMAN to tell a story from the point of view of a non-human animal – or to simply become something in additional to human. Is this actually a repressed part of our everyday lives? Do we Disavow our animality – our very own uncanniess?  Do these works draw any significant line separating those two categories? If so, how? If not, why? What might they, conceptually, have in common?  How is the "uncanny" operative in these works? 

In class – quick final follow-up on Disney and Painleve

Excerpt from Seal Island (James Algar 1948) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIjgugNQMnU

Acera, or The Witches’ Dance

(supplemental Soundtrack https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iblApyypHME)

Sept 9 

Class 4 Talking Animals

Required Reading and Viewing 

***Koko: A Talking Gorilla (Dir. Barbet Schroeder, 1977)  Here's the entire Koko Documentary for free in one file, although w Spanish subtitles!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUnrylLc3xk

*** https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/430-barbet-and-koko-an-equivocal-love-affair

*** Edgar Allen Poe, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (in FILES) 

*** Franz Kafka, “A Report to an Academy” (in FILES) 

*** "26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss" by Kij Johnson (in Files)

***Donna Haraway excerpt from Primate Visions 115-185 (in FILES) 

Recommended:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1963/08/jane-goodall/goodall-text/1  (Pay close attention to the photographs) 

http://www.projetogap.org.br/en/

(read extensively through the Great Ape Project website) 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/profile-irene-pepperberg-alex.html

(I am attempting to locate a documentary about Alex the Parrot called LIFE WITH ALEX - If I can procure it in time, that will be required and other materials will be bumped to optional.) 

excerpt: Rousseau, The Origin of Language (in FILES) 

excerpt from The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals – Charles Darwin (in FILES)  

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/cephalapod-intelligence.html

Gorillas in the Mist (Michael Apted 1988) 

http://www.amazon.com/Gorillas-Mist-HD-Sigourney-Weaver/dp/B00AVRO2TM/ref=tmm_aiv_swatch_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= 

Questions:  How slippery is the division between the human and the animal in these works?  What is the importance and status of language in these works – both in the works themselves and in the content or ideas expressed by these works? And the same for image?  Does the possession of language render any being "human?" 

Sept 16

Class 5 Pet Dogs / Pigs Food

Required:

***My Dog Tulip by J. R. Ackerley  (we will watch excerpts from the film adaptation in class) 

***Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu 2000) 

***http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/amores-perros-2001

***Five Excerpts from The Joy of Pigs: available here

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/the-joy-of-pigs-video-full-episode/5416/

***"Of Pigs and Pets" – James Serpell - available here: 

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam034/96015185.pdf

***The Companion Animal Manifesto – excerpts – Donna Haraway (in FILES) 

Optional / Recommended

Pig Farm Documentaries:

Pig Farm Documentary by OneProduction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HLcrAevfrI

Lucent (2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KArL5YjaL5U

Giant Wild Pigs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thGA2kn93UcPig Farms | An Animal Equality Documentary 

https://vimeo.com/13122374

Question: What changes when the narrator is a more familiar animal, a dog, vs. a wild animal? What is the line between a pet and any other animals? Are domestic animals reliable narrators? Do we “like” a domesticated animal, even one as wild as Tulip, better than a "wild" animal? Why or why not?  Do we advocate putting dogs (or cats, or house-trained rabbits) in costumes, feeding them “human” food? Do we oppose dog fighting, and why so? 

Sept 23

Class 6 Domesticated Beasts of Burden

REQUIRED: 

Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson 1966)  

http://www.hulu.com/watch/225640  (on Hulu Plus) 

The Story of the Weeping Camel  (Byambasuren Davaa, Luigi Falorni 2003) 

http://www.veoh.com/watch/v1131318s9AXnS4T?h1=The+Story+of+the+Weeping+Camel

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-au-hasard-balthazar-1966

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-story-of-the-weeping-camel-2004

http://observer.com/2004/06/a-mother-who-dared-hanif-kureishis-scarlet-m/ (scroll down)

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/370-au-hasard-balthazar

“Why Look at Animals” by John Berger (IN FILES) 

Temple Grandin, “Animals in Translation” Section 1 (IN FILES) 

Greg Mitman, REEL NATURE 1-84

OPTIONAL:  

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (Werner Herzog 2010) 

Temple Grandin, Sections 2, 3  (IN FILES) 

http://www.mid-day.com/articles/we-trace-the-journey-of-animal-roles-in-bollywood-films/15444152

Questions:  Would it be accurate to call what Temple Grandin does a kind of translation?  What do we think about Grandin’s main line of work in designing “humane” slaughter facilities?  Can you put Berger's argument into your own words and agree or disagree with his general thesis? 

Sept 23 

Class 7 Charisma

REQUIRED: 

(March of the Penguins / Cane Toads / Encounters At The End of the World)

http://catalogue-lumiere.com/le-chat-qui-joue/ 

Helena the Baby Fox (Keita Kono 2006)

Prolegomena to the Cat Video:

http://hyperallergic.com/231086/prolegomena-to-any-future-poetics-of-the-cat-video/

 Donna Haraway on the “Crittercam” (IN FILES)

watch Crittercam videos found online 

Ydessa, L’ours etc…. (Agnes Varda 2004)

Greg Mitman, REEL NATURE 85-131

RECOMMENDED: 

http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/pandas/

http://movies.nationalgeographic.com/movies/mysteries-of-the-unseen-world/

Sept 30

Class 8 Looking at the Animal / Estranging the Human

I do not know what it is that I am Like / Kestrel’s Eye / Mothlight

The Open by Giorgio Agamben (first half)

A Foray into the Worlds of Humans and Animals by Jakob von Uexkill (IN FILES) 

“Photogenie” Louis Delluc, Jean Epstein

“The Close Up” Bela Belacz

This is the most challenging of all the weeks.  The films are difficult and the reading difficult.  We will work through the reading in class....on facebook simply share your responses to the films and reading. Ask questions. 

October 7

Class 9 Animal Suffering, Animal Death ---

Le Sang Des Betes (OPTIONAL) / The Rules of the Game [Jean Renoir 1939) (OPTIONAL – we will watch key scene in class) / Equus / Electrocuting an Elephant

“The Death of an Animal” by Akira Mizuta Lippit (in FILES) 

“Inscribing Ethical Space: Ten Theses on Death, Representation, and Documentary” by Vivian Sobchack (in FILES) 

“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” Walter Benjamin:

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Hays Code: http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/02/hollywoods_long_history_of_animal_cruelty/

AHA “Humane Hollywood” Website: http://www.humanehollywood.org/

AHA Guidelines: http://www.americanhumane.org/guidelinesadvisories.pdfhttps://prezi.com/0uoqyygg52zy/copy-of-the-cinematograph-animal-films-act-1937/

http://www.britishpathe.com/workspaces/chloebrown/fGpZvrf4

Primarily, these are videos of (mainly Soviet) animals (mainly dogs and monkeys) in or going into outer space...

http://www.avclub.com/article/yes-animals-emwereem-harmed-21-films-and-tv-shows--72051

 October 14

CLASS 10 Death by Animal -

Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog 2002) / Roar (Noel Marshal 1981) 

Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Bunny Attack Scene 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnOdAT6H94s

Ivakhiv excerpt (in Files)

"Becoming-Animal" excerpt by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (IN FILES) THIS IS HARD TO READ DO YOUR BEST>

Read debate between Anat Pick and Dudley Andrew (IN FILES)

Questions: How can we make any sense of what happened to Timothy Treadwell? Did Treadwell “speak for the bears?” In language? In image? What of the moment when Herzog asks Treadwell’s friend to destroy the particular audio tape? Why do you think that might be the case? 

11 Death by Animal

The Birds / Jaws / Sharknado

The Birds by Camille Paglia

12 Minds in the Water

Blackfish / Day of the Dolphin 

“Cetacean Communication” by Gregory Bateson (in FILES)

"A New Star" (dolphins) by Gregg Mitman 157-220 (in FILES) 

13 Animation  (this array will change shortly) 

Are you my Mother? / Hedgehog in the Fog / The Plague Dogs / Watership Down / Princess Mononoke / Bambi

Along with Kafka, Richard Adams might be the most popular or well-known writer taking the point of view of the animal in language and narrative. Our task is to compare and contrast this work by Richard Adams to the works we have encountered thus far. Are this a book about animals, people, or both? How so, exactly. We will read excerpts from the books in class and compare to passages in the films. What changes in our relationship to the animals?  How does an animated movie change the stakes of the claims made in Lippit's article? What kind of relation to the animal do the other films (short and feature-length) propose? 

14   The Alien

(Alien, Aliens / stories

“Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler

“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang

 Animal Sapiens

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/animal-sapiens/

Bugs that Live on You

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/bugs-that-live-on-you.html

Questions: These are quite different stories. What type of interspecies relations does each imagine? What human-animal relations does each resemble or perhaps comment upon?  

Midterm Exam – compare two of the three King Kongs

Final Exam -- Write about Perri The Squirrel.

Additional Filmography:

Winged Migration

Microcosmos

Zoo

Primate

Born Free

Gorillas in the Mist

The Incredible Journey

Earthlings (Shaun Monson 2005)

The Incredible Journey

Amores Perros

Jane Goodall

beasts of the southern wild

uncle boonmee

whale rider?

White fang

The Call of the Wild

The bear

Cujo

Willard

Ben

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill

Ring of Bright Water

Born Free

Black Beauty

Benji

Smokey and the Bandit II

Anaconda

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachi:_A_Dog%27s_Tale

Lassie Come Home

Kes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma-Mha****

Life of Pi 

The Incredible Journey