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CURSO: STRANGE TALES IN NARRATIVE AND FILM
TRADUCCION: CUENTOS RAROS DE LA NARRATIVA Y EN EL CINE
SIGLA: LET018I
CREDITOS: 10
MODULOS: 02
REQUISITOS: SIN REQUISITOS
CARACTER: OPTATIVO
DISCIPLINA: LITERATURA


I. DESCRIPTION

The focus of this course will be the discussion and comparative analysis of English language narrative and film within the domain of the Strange, Fantastic, Sci-fi, Slipstream and New Weird sub-genres. The lectures and discussions will cover the cross-medium experience, adaptation, film theory and literary "readings" of film. An interdisciplinary approach involving literary theory, film theory, philosophy, pop culture and psychoanalysis will be employed in these analyses.


II. OBJECTIVES

Generals:

1. View, discuss and analyze a diverse sample of film, representative of the cinematographic medium?s sub-genres and their relation to the narrative tradition.

2. Study and analyze a selections of narrative texts, providing a parallax between the genre and the film medium as a crossroads of interdisciplinary theory and criticism.


Specific:

1. Maintain a continuous and dynamic dialogue with the texts, film and the theoretical corpus.

2. Apply and achieve nuanced readings and analyses of the mediums.

3. Identify and analyze the points of contact, as well as the points of divergence, in the film and narrative experience.


III. CONTENTS

1. Film Theory: Auteur, Screen, Apparatus, Structuralist, Psychoanalytic, Formalist, Semiotic and Cognitive theories. Semiological intertextuality between
film and narrative. A priori and a posteriori media experience. Cinema as ?text?.

2. Subgenres: Strange, Slipstream, Sci-fi, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Weird and New Weird fiction. What are they?

3. Horror and Expressionistic Anguish: Grant Morrison?s Arkham Asylum / H.P. Lovecraft / Edgar Allan Poe / Thomas Ligotti.
Film: Nosferatu / The Shadow of the Vampire / The Black Cat.
-The nature of horror, expressionism and terror, horror?s place and space, monstrosity, terror fantasies and B movie performance and aesthetics.

4. Metaphysical Angst: China Mieville / Neil Gaiman?s Sandman / Ambrose Bierce's ?An Ocurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?.
Film: Kafka / Pi / Donnie Darko / Jacob's Ladder.
-Parallel realities, temporal anomalies, inescapable fates, insanity, tedium and trauma.

5. Post-Apocalyptic Landscapes: Andreas Duller's Webcomic Post-Nuke / Harlan Ellison's ?I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream? / Isaac Asimov?s ?Nightfall? / H.G. Oesterheld's Eternauta.
Film: Akira / 12 Monkeys / La Jetee / 28 Days Later / Sunshine.
-Anthrotopology, nuclear winters and darkness, apocalypse survival fantasies and cyberpunk reconstructions.

6. Science-Fiction, Speculative Futures and Retro-Futurist Pasts: Phillip K. Dick / Alan Moore?s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen / Ray Bradbury's
The Illustrated Man / Ambrose Bierce's ?Moxon's Master?.
Film: Gattaca / A.I. / The Day the Earth Stood Still / Metropolis (Tezuka) / Blade Runner / The Animatrix / Steamboy / Ghost in the Shell.
-Paranoia, retrofuturism, anachronisms, steampunk, b-movie alien invasions and cyberpunk noir.

7. Dystopian Visions: Kurt Vonnegut?s ?Welcome to the Monkey House?, Rod Serling?s Short Stories.
Films: Children of Men / A Scanner Darkly / Code 46 / THX 1138 / Logan?s Run.
-Totalitarian dystopias, underground civilizations, panopticon paranoia, and clones.

8. Hyperreality and Pop Archetypes: Frank Miller?s The Dark Knight Returns.
Film: 300 / Unbreakable / Sin City / Kill Bill.
-Simulacra, ?more real than real?, superhero fascism, deconstruction of archetypes and pulp violence.

9. Memory, Past and their Reformulations: The Jacket / Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind / Dark City.
-Quasi-memory, mind and memory, personal identity, ?The Garden of Forking Paths?, monism and dualism.


IV. METHODOLOGY

- Lectures.
- Class discussions.
- Film screenings.
- Oral presentations.
- Discussion groups.


V. EVALUATION

- Oral presentation.
- 2 Short papers.
- In-class written evaluations.
- Film Journal.


VI. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Narrative:

Note to student: When securing the following texts, confirm that they are unabridged and unadulterated editions.

Asimov, Isaac. Nightfall.

Bierce, Ambrose. An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Moxon?s Master.

Bradbury, Ray. The Illustrated Man.

Dick, Phillip K. Selected stories.

Duller, Andreas. Post-Nuke.

Ellison, Harlan. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

Gaiman, Neil. Sandman.

Ligotti, Thomas. Selected stories.

Lovecraft, H. P. Selected Stories.

Mieville, China. Selected stories.

Miller, Frank. The Dark Knight Returns.

Moore, Alan. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Morisson, Grant. Arkham Asylum.

Oesterheld, H.G. El Eternauta.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Selected stories.

Serling, Rod. Selected stories.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Welcome to the Monkey House.


Films:

300 Dir. Zack Snyder.

12 Monkeys Dir. Terry Gilliam.

28 Days Later Dir. Danny Boyle.

A Scanner Darkly Dir. Richard Linklater.

A.I. Dir. Steven Spielberg.

Akira Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo.

Blade Runner (Dir. Cut) Dir. Ridley Scott.

Children of Men Dir. Alfonso Cuaron.

Code 46 Dir Michael Winterbottom.

Dark City Dir. Alex Proyas.

Donnie Darko Dir. Richard Kelley.

Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind Dir. Michel Gondry.

Jacob's Ladder Dir. Adrian Lyne.

Gattaca Dir. Andrew Niccol.

Ghost in the Shell Dir. Mamoru Oshii.

Kafka Dir. Steven Soderbergh.

Kill Bill Dir. Quentin Tarantino.

La Jetee Dir. Chris Marker.

Logan's Run Dir. Michael Anderson.

Metropolis Dir. Osamu Tezuka.

Nosferatu Dir. F. W. Murnau.

Pi Dir. Darren Aronofsky.

Sin City Dirs. Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez.

Steamboy Dir. Katsuhiro Otomo.

Sunshine Dir. Danny Boyle.

The Animatrix Dir. Peter Chung.

The Black Cat Dir. Edgar G. Ullmer.

The Day the Earth Stood Still Dir. Robert Wise.

The Jacket Dir. John Maybury.

The Shadow of a Vampire Dir. E. Elias Merhige.

THX 1138 Dir. George Lucas.

Unbreakable Dir. M. Night Shyamalan.


Theory and critical texts:

Baudrillard, Jean. The Evil Demon of Images and The Precession of Simulacra: Postmodernism, A Reader. . Docherty. New York, Columbia University, 1993.

Bergson, Henri. Of the Survival of Images: Memory and Mind: Matter and Memory. New York, Zone Books, 1991.

Bernstein, Gerald S. The Architecture of Repression: The Built Environment of George Orwell's 1984. urnal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 38, No. 2. (Winter,1985): 26-28.

Bukatman, Scott. There's Always Tomorrowland: Disney and the Hypercinematic Experience: MIT Press. October, Vol. 57. (Summer, 1991): 55-78.

Carroll, Noel. The Nature of Horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 46, No. 1. (Autumn, 1987): 51-59.

Cixous, Helene. Fiction and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud's Das Unheimliche: New Literary History, Vol. 7, No. 3, Thinking in the Arts, Sciences, and Literature. (Spring, 1976): 525-548.

Currie, Gregory. Unreliability Refigured: Narrative in Literature and Film: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 53, No. 1. (Winter, 1995): 19-29.

Eco, Umberto. The City of Robots: Postmodernism, A Reader. Ed. Docherty. New York,, Columbia University, 1993.

Foucault, MicheL. Discipline and Punish: Literary Theory: An Anthology, Ed. Rivkin & Ryan. Oxford, Blackwell, 1998.

Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny: Literary Theory: An Anthology, Ed. Rivkin & Ryan. Oxford, Blackwell, 1998.

Nagel, Thomas. What Is It Like to Be a Bat?: The Mind?s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, Ed. Hofstadter & Dennett. New York, Bantam, 1981.

Napier, Susan J. Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2. (Summer, 1993): 327-351.

Platinga, Carl. Film Theory and Aesthetics: Notes on a Schism: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 51, No. 3, Philosophy and the Histories of the Arts. (Summer, 1993): 445-454.

Searl, John R..Breaking the Hold: Silicon Brains, Conscious Robots, and Other Minds: The Rediscovery of the Mind. Cambridge, MIT, 1998.

Skoble, Aeon J. Superhero Revisionism in Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns. Superheroes and Philosophy, Tom Morris and Matt Morris, eds., Open Court, 2005.

Sponsler, Claire. Cyberpunk and the Dilemmas of Postmodern Narrative: The Example of William Gibson: Contemporary Literature, Vol. 33, No. 4. (Winter, 1992): 625-644.

Todorov, Tsvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre: Cornell University Press. Ithaca, New York, 1975.

Williams, Douglas E. Ideology as Dystopia: An Interpretation of Blade Runner: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol. 9, No. 4. (Oct., 1988): 381-394.



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