Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser

375 Pages·2008·7.84 MB·English

by  Jaap Kooijman

Mind the
Screen
Media Concepts According to
Thomas Elsaesser
edited by
Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters and Wanda Strauven
Amsterdam University Press
MindtheScreen

Mind the Screen
Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser
Edited byJaapKooijman,Patricia Pisters andWanda Strauven
Coverillustration:ScreenonRembrandtplein
Photo:KatinkaSchreuder
Coverdesign:KokKorpershoek,Amsterdam
Lay-out:japes,Amsterdam
isbn 9789089640253
e-isbn 9789048506460
nur 674
©JaapKooijman,PatriciaPisters,WandaStrauven/AmsterdamUniversity
Press,2008
Allrightsreserved.Withoutlimitingtherightsundercopyrightreservedabove,
nopartofthisbookmaybereproduced,storedinorintroducedintoaretrieval
system,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans(electronic,mechanical,
photocopying,recordingorotherwise)withoutthewrittenpermissionofboththe
copyrightownerandtheauthorofthebook.
Table of Contents
ALooking Glass forOldandNew Screens 9
JaapKooijman,PatriciaPistersandWandaStrauven
ACT I Melodrama, Memory, Mind Game
Cinephilia in Transition 19
MalteHagenerandMarijkedeValck
Theorizing Melodrama: ARationalReconstructionof
“TalesofSoundandFury” 32
WarrenBuckland
OfSurfaces andDepths:TheAfterlives of “Tales ofSound and Fury” 43
SudeepDasguptaandWimStaat
Failed Tragedy andTraumaticLovein Ingmar Bergman’s Shame 60
TarjaLaine
MediatedMemories: ASnapshot ofRememberedExperience 71
JosévanDijck
Running on Failure:Post-Fordism, Post-Politics, Parapraxis,
and Cinema 82
DrehliRobnik
Into theMind and Outto the World: Memory Anxiety in
the Mind-Game Film 96
PepitaHesselberthandLauraSchuster
ACritical Mind: The Game of Permanent Crisis Management 112
JanSimons
Intermezzo “Scholars, Dreams, andMemory Tapes” 125
CatherineM.Lord
6 MindtheScreen
ACT II Europe-Hollywood-Europe
The Cheetah ofCinema 141
FlorisPaalman
Bear Life: Autoscopic RecognitioninWerner Herzog’s Grizzly Man 153
DominicPettman
ConstitutiveContingencies: Fritz Lang,Double Vision, and the
Place of Rupture 166
MichaelWedel
Liliand Rachel: Hollywood, History, and WomeninFassbinderand
Verhoeven 177
PatriciaPisters
AmsterdamnedGlobalVillage: ACinematic SiteofKaraoke
Americanism 188
JaapKooijman
Soundtracks ofDoubleOccupancy: SamplingSounds and Cultures
inFatihAkin’sHeadOn 198
SentaSiewert
Hollywood Face toFacewiththe World: TheGlobalizationof
Hollywood and itsHumanCapital 209
MelisBehlil
ToBeorNot toBePost-Classical 218
EleftheriaThanouli
Bumper Stories: The Framing ofCommercialBlocksonDutch
Public Television 229
CharlesForceville
Intermezzo “WhereWere YouWhen...?” or “IPhone,
Therefore IAm” 243
BruceGray
TableofContents 7
ACT III Archaeology, Avant-Garde, Archive
Reflections ina Laserdisc:Toward aCosmologyof Cinema 267
MichaelPunt
S/M 276
WandaStrauven
Consumer TechnologyafterSurveillance Theory 288
RichardRogers
MigratoryTerrorism 297
MiekeBal
The Echo Chamber of History 310
FrankvanVree
Displacing theColonialArchive: How FionaTan Shows Us
“Things We Don’t Know We Know” 322
JuliaNoordegraaf
FoundFootage, Performance, Reenactment:A Case forRepetition 333
JenniferSteetskamp
DigitalConvergenceTenYears Later: BroadcastYourSelves and
Web Karaoke 345
JeroendeKloetandJanTeurlings
Notes onContributors 361
KeyPublications byThomas Elsaesser 369

A Looking Glass for Old and New Screens
Jaap Kooijman, Patricia Pisters and Wanda Strauven
Perhaps one of the longest videos on YouTube, In a Year with 13 Moons, is
dedicated to a very classic topic of film studies: auteur cinema. The video docu-
ments a 92-minute round table discussion of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
homonymous film at the New York Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary
Study of the Imagination on 13 January 2007.1 One of the panelists is Thomas
Elsaesser, whose knowledge of German cinema in general and of Fassbinder in
particular is widely respected. Although Elsaesser’s performance on this new
medium is a contribution to traditional film studies, that does not necessarily
meanthatElsaesserconsidersYouTubeandotherdevelopmentsofcontemporary
screen culture as mere “remediations” of the film screen. On the contrary, be-
sideshisongoingpassionforclassicalHollywoodand(European)auteurcinema,
Elsaesserhasalwayskeptasharpeyeoutforhistorical,institutional,andtechno-
logicalchangesrelatedtoaudiovisualmedia.InJanuary2008,atanAmsterdam
conferenceonthevideovortexoftheWeb2.0revolution,heproposedtopicture
contemporary image culture as a living organism with cell growth and selection
(YouTube deletes or censors 20,000 videos daily, while 60,000 new ones are
added) which requires a different set of analytical tools than for the study of a
single masterpiece.2 This combination of cinephile passion for the silver screen
with its aesthetic and historical implications on the one hand, and mindfulness
of new developments in screen culture on the other, has always characterized
Elsaesser’sacademicapproach,makinghimoneofthemostimportantfirst-gen-
erationfilmscholarstohavecontributedtotheestablishmentoffilm,television,
andmediastudieswithinacademia.
Twentyyearsago,in1988,theFacultyofHumanitiesattheUniversityofAm-
sterdamtookthefirststepstowardthecreationofachairinFilmandTelevision
Studies.Acommitteewasestablishedtoinvestigatehowthe“newmedia”offilm
and television could be studied as seriously as the written word from a huma-
nitiesperspective.UnliketheUnitedStatesandafewotherEuropeancountries,
Film and Television Studies had never been considered a full-fledged academic
disciplineintheNetherlands,eventhoughpioneerssuchasJanusvanDomburg,
Jan Marie Peters, and Jan Hes had been teaching film since the 1940s, and the
departmentofTheaterStudiesattheUniversityofAmsterdamhadbeenoffering
coursesin film analysisand filmhistorysince themid-1980s. In 1991,the Uni-
versity of Amsterdam appointed Thomas Elsaesser to the first chair of Film and