Visual & Media Arts Faculty

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This course explores theoretical and critical approaches to the study of photography, film, video, audio, and digital culture. Theories and methods in this course will examine issues relating to production and authorship in the media arts, audience reception and effects, political ideology, ethics, aesthetics, cultural diversity, and schools of thought within the liberal arts. Extensive critical writing and reading in media criticism and theory. Prerequisite: VM 101 and VM 120.

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The absorption of "camp" and other related forms of the "good taste of bad taste" occurs in a variety of mainstream media in the mid-1960s: films to begin with, but very rapidly in network television. Primetime shows in many genres invoke references to "Pop," "camp," "cult," and "sick" humor: the sit-coms The Addams Family and Get Smart; the youth-oriented action-adventure show Batman; and the variety show Laugh-In. Highly rated and occasionally celebrated, they all derive comedy from pop culture parodies and questionable tastefulness. The middlebrow, late-night The Dick Cavett Show also embodies a "new sensibility" in its guests and topics, one that questions the divisions between "high" and "low" culture. 1970s programs continue some of these trends, as in the Batman-influenced Wonder Woman, which trades on a camp subtext of both lesbian desire and feminist role-reversals. In the 1980s, the late night movie program Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and Saturday morning children's show Pee-wee's Playhouse each engage in campy retreads of 1950s culture, from low-budget horror and exploitation films to children's shows. The 1990s include the cult/camp phenomenon Xena: Warrior Princess as well as movie adaptations of camp television shows: The Addams Family, The Brady Bunch, and Charlie's Angels. More recently, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy transforms gay camp into a form of self-help for heterosexual men, and Desperate Housewives combines gay camp with the more recent emergence of feminist camp.

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This course is a historical approach to the development of American film comedy. It will explore theories of comedy and their value to the critical interpretation of comic films. It will also consider the varying ways spectators are addressed, and the impact of performers and directors on various comedy styles. Prerequisite: VM 200.