Introduction to Film and Television Studies (FTVS)

1. Introduction to Film and Television Studies (FTVS) The scope of the field of study and its major theoretical approaches

2. Completing the course • Either a study diary or two essays • In both cases the minimum total length is 10-12 sheets (sheet = approx. 30 x 60 characters; double spacing), i.e. total 18000-21600 characters • Written work must be submitted two weeks after the last lecture to Henry Bacon’s pigeonhole, Main Building, New Side, 4th floor • List for further reading, PowerPoint presentations and other related material are available on the course homepage, access through Weboodi • Plagiarizing and submitting the same material twice will be penalized

3. Important websites • Course homepage (there is a link in the weboodi course description): http://www.helsinki.fi/elokuvatutkimus/Henry/Intro fo FTVS.htm • Kirjoitusohjeita: http://www.helsinki.fi/elokuvatutkimus/opiskelu/ohjeita/kirjalliset_tyot.htm • Instructions for written work: http://www.helsinki.fi/filmstudies/Studies/Instructions for Written Work.html • Avoimen yliopiston kirjoitusohjeita: http://www.avoin.helsinki.fi/opiskeluntaito/tehtavat.htm

4. Why Film and Television Studies? • Film and television can be studied to a great extent by employing the same concepts and methods • They are increasingly interconnected as regards technology, financing, production, distribution, exhibition, consumption and aesthetics – media convergence • Differences between film and television are likely to get even more blurred because of digitalization • The field of study also covers relevant applications of new media such as audiovisual material distributed through the Internet • Even as the technology changes, certain forms of representation created for film and television are likely to remain an integral part of our culture and society

5. Fundamental questions in FTVS • How do film and television function as forms of artistic representation? • To what needs and desires do they respond? • How do they interact with the way we relate to our environment and the world as a whole? • How do they interact with our other representations of the world? • How do these interactions function in the formation of private and public identities?

6. Principal areas of study • Aesthetics • Historical poetics • Hermeneutics • Production, distribution and exhibition • Social criticism • Ideological criticism • Media education

7. Aesthetics • How do films and television programmes function as aesthetic objects? • How do they appeal to our senses, emotions and reason? • How do their different elements function in the work as a whole? • What is the nature and significance of aesthetic experience – as an individual event and in our lives as a whole?

8. Historical poetics • How have film and television developed in relation to technical, economic and practical factors? • How have various kinds of norms of filmmaking emerged in various historical contexts – and how have they been contested? • How have various styles emerged? • How do various audiovisual elements elicit certain responses in audiences in respect of those historical norms? • How have other arts influenced film and television and how have they in turn influenced other arts?

9. Hermeneutics • How has our audiovisual sensibility developed through the history of film and television? • How have film and television influenced the way people have perceived, understood and related to the real world? • What do films and television programmes tell about their original contexts, about humanity in general and ourselves? • How can they enhance – or restrict – our perception and understanding as conscious and moral beings?

10. Production, distribution and exhibition • The production, distribution and exhibition of audiovisual culture crucially influence media contents and what will actually be seen by a given audience • They are heavily dependent on economic, social, political and ideological factors • Concrete factors which influence media contents: • Media ownership • Interrelationships between media • Media convergence • Global imbalance of distribution

11. Social and ideological criticism • Contextualizing individual films or television programmes as well as genres and trends in terms of historical and social conditions • Contextualizing in terms of ideological and aesthetic currents • How do films and television participate in the formation of personal and collective identities? • How do they condition our attitudes and relation ships to otherness in terms of ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age groups etc.? • Art and entertainment in the service of agitation, integration or emancipation

12. Media education • Conceptual tools for processing audiovisual information and experiences • Ideological criticism • Aesthetic education • Helping to develop capabilities to appreciate, evaluate and criticize audiovisual products on one’s own terms • The enchantment of fictional violence project

13. Other research topics • Auteur research • Studio research • Genre research • Stardom • Fandom • National cinemas • Transnational film studies • Feminism, gender studies • Cultural studies • Reception and audience studies • Study of audiovisual technology

14. Learning on lectures • The aim is to provide not only information but also food for thought and incentive for working out things on your own • The main goal: to learn to think and express ideas and opinions • Avoid making notes excessively • Pause to think about what has been presented • Make comments and questions • Don’t get frustrated if you don’t grasp something straight away • Feedback may be given both in connection with the lectures and by e-mail

15. What is art? • Dissannayake: the birth of art from play • Walton: mimesis as make-believe • Aristotle: tragic mimesis ja catharsis • Kant: art has no immediate purpose • Schiller: aesthetic education as a way of combining the sensuous and rational in man • Goodman: like dogs barking, “just because they cannot stop and because it is such fun!”

16. Juhani Pallasmaa’s thoughts about art • All art … creates images, representations of reality, which expand the horizons of our experience and the realization of our selfhood. • Poetic images are condensations of numerous experiences, percepts and ideas. • Poetic images strengthen our existential sense and sensitize the boundary between ourselves and the world. They are invigorating images which emancipate human imagination. • Art expresses the many aspects and problems of our existence. A work of art combines individual and supraindividual experience and leads us to experience our every day existence with enhanced sensitivity