2023
Film Studies and Popular Culture
Name: Film Studies and Popular Culture
Code: FIL12738L
6 ECTS
Duration: 15 weeks/156 hours
Scientific Area:
Philosophy
Teaching languages: Portuguese
Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese, English
Regime de Frequência: Presencial
Sustainable Development Goals
Learning Goals
This rather philosophical C U has a pivotal role among a group of CUs critically adressing the broad spectrum of
visual studies and media theory, as it explores, philosophically and otherwise, the implications, for the historical
crisis of the human subject and of reality itself, of the increasing technological dimension spanning from early
cybernetic theory to present day VR and post-human conditions.
Drawing upon literary and cinematic popular culture taken as symptoms or as magnifying lenses, this CU
combines a sophisticated theoretical approach to texts and films with a sharp, inquisitive analysis of significant
features and issues among the ongoing reality. Students will thus develop highly relevant skills in understanding
and applying todays crucial reciprocal mediation between image and concept, particularly where this relation
fictionally stages new types of paradoxical and dilemmatic logic within the ontological framework of a
multilayered and eventually undecidable reality.
visual studies and media theory, as it explores, philosophically and otherwise, the implications, for the historical
crisis of the human subject and of reality itself, of the increasing technological dimension spanning from early
cybernetic theory to present day VR and post-human conditions.
Drawing upon literary and cinematic popular culture taken as symptoms or as magnifying lenses, this CU
combines a sophisticated theoretical approach to texts and films with a sharp, inquisitive analysis of significant
features and issues among the ongoing reality. Students will thus develop highly relevant skills in understanding
and applying todays crucial reciprocal mediation between image and concept, particularly where this relation
fictionally stages new types of paradoxical and dilemmatic logic within the ontological framework of a
multilayered and eventually undecidable reality.
Contents
I) Concepts (literature and theory)
1 Between technophobia and technophilia
1.1 Popular culture as psycho-historical symptom (iek)
1.2 Literary culture and its discontents (Dick, Ballard, Burroughs) vs mediological contentment (McLuhan):
Cronenbergs ambivalent cinema
1.3 Kubricks and Adornos pessimism
2 Virtual Reality
2.1 From cybernetics (Turing, Hayles, Manovich, Varda) to cyborg (Fassbinder, Scott, Cameron, Wachowskis)
2.2 From medium (McLuhan) to the loss of mediation (Bragança de Miranda) and to the hyperreal (Baudrillard)
2.3 Terminal Identity (Bukatman)
2.4 Between the collapse of the subject and the (virtual) abysm of reality: the simulacra (Baudrillard) and the
neuro-image (Deleuze/Pisters) heydays in Philip Dick, Cronenberg e Nolan
II)Screenings (films)
1. Monographic survey of the cinematic constellation 2001, A Space Odissey, World on a Wire, Les Créatures,
Crash, Naked Lunch, The Fly, Videodrome, eXistenZ, Matrix, Blade Runner, Terminator, Inception, Artificial
Intelligence
1 Between technophobia and technophilia
1.1 Popular culture as psycho-historical symptom (iek)
1.2 Literary culture and its discontents (Dick, Ballard, Burroughs) vs mediological contentment (McLuhan):
Cronenbergs ambivalent cinema
1.3 Kubricks and Adornos pessimism
2 Virtual Reality
2.1 From cybernetics (Turing, Hayles, Manovich, Varda) to cyborg (Fassbinder, Scott, Cameron, Wachowskis)
2.2 From medium (McLuhan) to the loss of mediation (Bragança de Miranda) and to the hyperreal (Baudrillard)
2.3 Terminal Identity (Bukatman)
2.4 Between the collapse of the subject and the (virtual) abysm of reality: the simulacra (Baudrillard) and the
neuro-image (Deleuze/Pisters) heydays in Philip Dick, Cronenberg e Nolan
II)Screenings (films)
1. Monographic survey of the cinematic constellation 2001, A Space Odissey, World on a Wire, Les Créatures,
Crash, Naked Lunch, The Fly, Videodrome, eXistenZ, Matrix, Blade Runner, Terminator, Inception, Artificial
Intelligence
Teaching Methods
A set of lectures (TP teaching, in Portuguese or English, however required) will comprehensively present to the
students the bulk of the subject-matters in the syllabus, profusely recurring to accurate onscreen illustration,
while theoretical-oriented screenings (TC teaching) will provide their synergetic counterpart, feeding a crisscross
procedure aimed at fostering among the students the ability to physically and mentally circulate between the
entwinned spaces of cinema and theory.
The active commitment of the students will be encouraged and assessed at every stage of their learning-bydoing
path, where selected screenings offer the opportunity to deeply assimilate theory through its very
measuring against the cinematic object. These competences are best developed and shown through continuous
assessment: session reports, brief tests, essays and film commentary (75%), with a final written test in addition
(25%).
Alternatively, the student may prefer to sit a single final exam (100%).
students the bulk of the subject-matters in the syllabus, profusely recurring to accurate onscreen illustration,
while theoretical-oriented screenings (TC teaching) will provide their synergetic counterpart, feeding a crisscross
procedure aimed at fostering among the students the ability to physically and mentally circulate between the
entwinned spaces of cinema and theory.
The active commitment of the students will be encouraged and assessed at every stage of their learning-bydoing
path, where selected screenings offer the opportunity to deeply assimilate theory through its very
measuring against the cinematic object. These competences are best developed and shown through continuous
assessment: session reports, brief tests, essays and film commentary (75%), with a final written test in addition
(25%).
Alternatively, the student may prefer to sit a single final exam (100%).
Teaching Staff
- José Manuel Barrisco Martins [responsible]
