Wohlstetter, Philip on Zero Dark Thirty: "How does a film think? Recall the famous experiment of Lev Kuleshov. Start with the shot of an actor’s face. Vary the shots adjacent to it: a coffin, a plate of soup, a seductive woman lying on a divan. The actor’s expression will be read, alternately, as sadness, hunger, or lust. For the audience, juxtaposition creates meaning. A film is an arrangement of moments, shorter or longer, but every narrative moment is brought into relief by a significant before-moment and a significant after-moment that frames it. Let’s look at the first torture sequence in Zero Dark Thirty to see how this meaning-effect works. Significant before-moment: the powerful opening sequence, dark screen, the terrified voice of a woman trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11, realizing there’s no help coming, she’s going to die. Central narrative moment: a detainee is water-boarded in the next scene, forced to crawl in a dog collar, hung up naked by the arms, etc. After-moment: the face of Maya, wincing as she watches the torture. I’m cheating on this last. Obviously it’s a reaction shot within a scene, but in terms of meaning, it provides a bookend to the torture moment just as surely as the 9/11 sequence bookends it from the other side. To see the truth of this, imagine an opening with the before and after moments removed. We would be watching a brutal torture scene with no comment whatsoever—that is to say, we’d be in a neo-realist film that lets us observe and come to our own conclusions, that avoids (ideally) telling us what to feel. Instead, the torture moment is framed as a reaction to 9/11, an over-reaction maybe but understandable in context and perhaps in the end—we have to entertain this possibility—excusable. Now let’s look at the work of Maya’s reaction shot (remembering that it’s precisely the reaction shot, a way to locate the audience member in the movie by offering him/her a surrogate who reacts to events the way we would given the chance—it’s precisely this key device of classic Hollywood Film that Neo-Realism rejected because it lulled us so easily into unthinking). Maya winces. We would too, humanists and democrats that we are. But she stays in the room, gritting her teeth, going against her nature. Sometimes, the film whispers, you have to make hard choices, to take hard measures—a celluloid lesson in ‘dirty hands’ moral philosophy."
"How do images affect our hearts and minds? How do images influence our everyday lives, our techno-scientific practices, our connections and disconnections, our conscious and unconscious desires and fears? How do images show up in the clothes we wear, in the ways we walk, and the objects we want? How do images influence the foods we eat or don’t eat and the ideas and feelings we have about our selves and others? How do some images enter our flesh, captivate us, fascinate us, or arouse our senses? How is it that other images put us to sleep? How do images inform our habits and fantasies, pleasures and doubts, worries and joys, rituals and rebellions? How do images shape our personal, political, cultural, moral, and religious beliefs about nature and about justice? How do images influence what we imagine to be possible and what’s not? Visual images are today everywhere entangled within a complex and contradictory web of global electronic flows of information. Images are typically racialized, gendered, territorialized, eroticized, militarized, and class-driven. Some of the most powerful images are hooked-up to hi-tech machineries of war, surveillance, and the economic marketplace. Images also lie at the core of global corporate technologies of profit, control and advantage. How might such images be best understood? How might they be critically subverted, transformed, or remade?" -- Stephen Pfohl, "The Power of Images" (2011)
"I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom." -- Ursula K. LeGuin (2014)
Framing/Discourse (Capitalism and its discontents):
Naomi Klein: Journalist Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Occucards
O'Neil, Cathy, Felix Salmon and Jordan Weissmann.
"The Econ 101 Edition." Slate Money (January 2, 2015)
Pariser, Eli.
"Beware Online 'Filter Bubbles.'" TED Talks (May 2, 2011)
"Peter Watkins: Filmmaker and Media Critic." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
"Queensland environmental policy developed by QCoal worker, says report: Activists say the Queensland government was giving ‘keys to the blood bank to Dracula’." The Guardian (May 6, 2014)
Rushkoff, Douglas.
"They Say." (Excerpt from
Coercion: Why We Listen to What 'They' Say.: 1999)
Sacco, Joe.
"On Satire – a response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks." The Guardian (January 9, 2015)
"The STILL unfolding WV Elk River spill tragedy, including ties of company owner to mining company seeking OH permits." Athens County Fracking Action Network (April 9, 2014)
Taibbi, Matt.
"Who Goes to Jail?: On 'The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap.'" Democracy Now (January 1, 2014)
Tatarska, Anna.
"Bringing Justice to the Table: An Eric Schlosser exec-produced food justice documentary puts agricultural workers in the spotlight." Keyframe (November 24, 2014)
Wedler, Carey.
"FBI Report Accidentally Exposes the Severity of the Police State." The Anti-Media (November 28, 2014)
"U.N. Climate Summit in Lima, Peru." Democracy Now (December 8-12, 2014)
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights." United Nations (No Date)
Yglesias, Matthew.
"38 maps that explain the global economy." Vox (August 26, 2014)
Wideman, John Edgar.
"The Color of Terror." Harper's (March 2004)
Social Justice/Resistance Movements:
The Act of Killing (Denmark/Norway/UK/Sweden/Finland: Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Alper, Loretta, et al.
"Stupefying the Group Mind (Managing the Class War with PR and TV)." Unwelcome Guests #301 (April 8, 2006)
Anonymous (Global Decentralized Association of Hacktivists) Dialogic Cinephilia (November 20, 2014)
Apuzzo, Matt.
"Will James Risen Be Jailed?: In Press Freedom Fight, NYT Reporter Tells Court He Won’t Name Source." Democracy Now (January 7, 2015)
Assange, Julian.
"On 'When Google Met WikiLeaks' While He was Under House Arrest.'" Democracy Now (January 2, 2015)
Ayers, Bill, et al.
"A Matter of Conscience." To the Best of Our Knowledge (January 19, 2014) ["Everybody makes choices. Some of them matter for an hour, others for the rest of your life. For thousands of young people forty years ago, the choice was to go to war in Vietnam or accept the consequences of refusing."]
Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution (Website)
Benjamin, Medea.
"10 Good Things About the Year 2014." Common Dreams (December 30, 2014)
Benton, Michael Dean.
"My Understanding of Anarchism 4.0" Dialogic Cinephilia (November 5, 2013)
Chris Hedges: Journalist (Peace and Conflict Studies Archive) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Citizenfour (Germany/USA: Laura Poitras, 2014) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Crow, Scott.
Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011.
"Dear Chelsea Manning: birthday messages from Edward Snowden, Terry Gilliam and more." The Guardian (December 16, 2014) ["The jailed whistleblower turns 27 this week. Supporters including Joe Sacco, Vivienne Westwood, JM Coetzee, Michael Stipe and Slavoj Žižek sent her letters, poems and drawings. Luke Harding introduces their work"]
Edward Snowden (Whistleblower/Former CIA and NSA Employee & Contractor) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Fanon, Frantz.
Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann. Plutop Press, 2008.
Ferguson Protests 2014 Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Flow: For the Love of Water (USA: Irena Salina, 2008: 93 mins)
Germanos, Andrea.
"Protests Stop Drilling & Pipeline In Pennsylvania." Popular Resistance (January 6, 2015)
Gillen, Jay.
"Educating For Insurgency: The Roles Of Young People In Schools Of Poverty." Maryland Morning (September 15, 2014)
"Glenn Greenwald: Constitutional and Civil Rights Lawyer/Journalist (Peace and Conflict Studies Archive)'" Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Hewett, Ben.
"We Don't Need No Education." Outside (August 12, 2014) ["At least not of the traditional, compulsory, watch-the-clock-until-the-bell-rings kind. As a growing movement of unschoolers believe, a steady diet of standardized testing and indoor inactivity is choking the creativity right out of our kids. The alternative: set 'em free."]
Human Rights Watch Daily Brief
Human Rights Reports by Region Human Rights Watch (Ongoing Archive)
Ingraffea, Tony and Sandra Steingraber.
"New York Says No to Fracking: State Bans Drilling Following Grassroots Outcry over Public Health." Democracy Now (December 19, 2014)
Ivereigh, Austin.
""The Great Reformer": Pope Francis Biographer on How Pontiff Became Star Diplomat & Voice for Change." Democracy Now (December 31, 2014)
Johnson, Ragina.
"From Fish-ins to Sit-ins: Native Resistance in the ‘50s and ‘60s." We Are Many (June 26, 2014)
Katsiaficas, George.
The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Social Movements and the Decolonization of Everyday Life. Oakland, CA: A.K. Press, 2006.
Kingsley, Patrick.
"Worse than the dictators: Egypt’s leaders bring pillars of freedom crashing down." The Guardian (December 26, 2014)
Lama, Dalai (14th), Seyyed Hossein Nasir, Jonathan Sacks and Katherine Jefferts Schori.
"Pursuing Happiness." On Being (September 15, 2014) ["The XIV Dalai Lama seems to many to embody happiness — happiness against the odds, a virtue that is acquired and practiced. Before a live audience in Atlanta, Georgia, Krista had a rare opportunity to mull over the meaning of happiness in contemporary life with him and three global spiritual leaders: a Muslim scholar, a chief rabbi, and a presiding bishop. An invigorating and unpredictable discussion exploring the themes of suffering, beauty, and the nature of the body."]
LeGuin, Ursula K.
"We Will Need Writers Who Can Remember Freedom." TruthOut (December 29, 2014)
Laura Poitras: Documentary Filmmaker and Producer. Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Nougayrède, Natalie.
"One thing will never be taken from Charlie Hebdo: courage." Comment is Free (January 7, 2015)
Occupy Movement Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Parker, Emily.
"Can the Internet Defeat Putin? Aleksei Navalny and Russia’s Protesters Face a Tough Battle." The New York Times (December 31, 2014)
Powless, Irving, Jr.
"Who Are These People? (The Onondaga Nation Encounters European Settlers)." Unwelcome Guests #302 (April 16, 2006) ["he collaborative educational project, sponsored by the Onandagas, Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation, and Syracuse University, is bringing together Ononadaga and other Haudenosaunee speakers, academics and community members to understand the history, culture and role that the six nations of Haudensaunee, also known as the Iroquois confederacy, have had on the US, and the effect of the US on the Haudenosaunee and other indigenous nations. This history has been taught to generations of school children in a heavily biased way - unquestioned were the rights of the so-called founding fathers, pilgrims, colonists, pioneers to what they did - wage a genocidal land grab perpetrated against innocent people. Manifest destiny, the doctrine used to justify this, was presented, during my education at least, as a positive development leading to American greatness."
Rape in the Fields The Center for Investigative Reporting (Archive) ["The Rape in the Fields project revealed the persistent sexual abuse and harassment that female farmworkers across the U.S. face. The investigation was a collaboration among CIR, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, KQED-FM, FRONTLINE and Univision. It included a feature-length documentary in both Spanish and English, multiple text pieces and multimedia assets published in June 2013."]
Scott, James C.
"Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play." Princeton University Press, 2012.
Social Movements/Resistance: Peace and Conflict Studies Archive Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Steiner, Claude.
"Radical Psychiatry." (No Date)
Taibbi, Matt.
"The Police in America Are Becoming Illegitimate." Rolling Stone (Posted on Reader Supported News: December 7, 2014)
The Weather Underground (USA: Sam Green and Bill Siegel, 2002: 92 mins)
Wikileaks (Media) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Wolf, Sherry.
"Who Needs Gender?: A Marxist Analysis." We Are Many (June 26, 2014)
"Wounded Knee, 1890 – 1973 in photos." Plog (January 2, 2015)
Ongoing Global War
"2014 deadliest year in Iraq for civilians since 2006-7 bloodshed: U.N." Reuters (January 2, 2015)
Akins, Matthieu.
"The Worst Narco-State in History? After 13-Year War, Afghanistan’s Opium Trade Floods the Globe." Democracy Now (December 29, 2014)
Aikins, Matthieu and Kathy Kelly.
"The Afghan War is Not Over: U.S. Ends 13-Year Combat Mission, But 10,000+ Troops Continue the Fight." Democracy Now (December 29, 2014)
"Andrew J. Bacevich: Political Science/Military History/International Relations." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Balko, Radley.
Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces. NY: Public Affairs, 2013.
Brody, Reed.
"'These Are Crimes': New Calls to Prosecute Bush Admin as Senate Report Reveals Brutal CIA Torture." Democracy Now (December 10, 2014)
Brown, Humberto, Greg Grandin and Lawrence Wilkerson.
""The War to Start All Wars": Did U.S. Invasion of Panama 25 Years Ago Set Stage for Future Wars?" Democracy Now (December 23, 2014)
Connelly, Matthew.
"Open Government in the Age of Total War." The London School of Economics and Political Science (December 2, 2014)
Davidson, Amy.
"The Torture Report: Inhumane Scenes From the C.I.A.’s Prisons." The New Yorker (December 9, 2014)
Donnelly, Thomas.
"Cutting the Pentagon's Budget is a Gift To Our Enemies." FORA TV (Intelligence Squared US Debates: June 19, 2013)
Fagin, Rebel.
"Selling the Wars - Part II." Daily Censored (December 2, 2014)
Fanning, Rory.
"Thank You for Your Valor, Thank You for Your Service, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You…: Still on the Thank-You Tour-of-Duty Circuit, 13 Years Later." TomDispatch (October 26, 2014)
Glennon, Michael J.
"National Security and Double Government." Harvard National Security Journal 5.1 (2014)
Green-Barber, Lindsay.
"3 investigations, 3 new laws: See how The Center for Investigative Reporting’s stories gain macro impact." The Center for Investigative Reporting (October 2, 2014)
Greenwald, Glenn.
"North Korea/Sony Story Shows How Eagerly U.S. Media Still Regurgitate Government Claims." The Intercept (January 1, 2014)
---.
"Release of Six Detainees After Twelve Years Highlights the Historic Evil of Guantánamo." The Intercept (Republished on Reader Supported News: December 8, 2014)
Hart, Peter.
"No Debate: Antiwar Voices Absent from Corporate TV News Ahead of U.S. Attacks on Iraq & Syria." Democracy Now (November 18, 2014)
Hirthler, Jason.
"The Illusion of Debate." Counterpunch (December 2, 2014)
Hong, Christine and Tim Shorrock.
"The Interview Belittles North Korea, But is Film’s Backstory and U.S. Policy the Real Farce?" Democracy Now (December 22, 2014)
Horton, Scott.
"From Drone Strikes to Black Sites, How U.S. Foreign Policy Runs Under a Cloak of Secrecy." Democracy Now (January 5, 2015)
Johnson, Chalmers.
"Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic." Democracy Now (February 27, 2007)
Kebriaei, Pardiss.
"Will Guantánamo Ever Close? U.S. Frees More Prisoners, But Dozens Remain Behind Bars." Democracy Now (December 24, 2014)
Kinzer, Stephen and William Murphy, Jr.
"US Wars and Social Control
(From Regime Change Abroad to the War on Drugs at Home)." Unwelcome Guests #304 (April 30, 2006)
Knefel, John.
"Drone Rules in Afghanistan Go Unchanged, And Other Reasons the War Isn't Really Over: Despite the official end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, our involvement goes on." Rolling Stone (January 7, 2015)
Lazar, Seth.
"On Sparing Civilians in War." Philosophy Bites (July 19, 2014)
Schehl, Matthew.
"VIDEO: The Devastating Legacy Of Unexploded US Ordnance In Iraq." Mint Press News (January 2, 2015)
Schneier, Bruce.
"More Data on Attributing the Sony Attack." Schneier on Security (December 31, 2014)
Senate Torture Report Human Rights Watch (ongoing Archive)
"South Sudan: Joint Letter to President Obama regarding Arms Embargo." Human Rights Watch (January 8, 2015)
Standard Operating Procedure (USA: Errol Morris, 2008) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive) [To watch the documentary:
Taxi to the Dark Side (USA: Alex Gibney, 2007: 106 mins) ["An in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, focusing on an innocent taxi driver in Afghanistan who was tortured and killed in 2002."]
Torture Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
"The Torture Architects [Infographic]." ACLU (December 8, 2014)
"War/Conflicts (Peace and Conflict Studies Archive)." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
Zero Dark Thirty (USA: Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)
15 Class Presentations:
1)
The End of Poverty
2)
a] Greenwald, Glenn.
"Why Privacy Matters." TED Talks (October 2014) ["Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see — and write about — the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States' extensive surveillance of private citizens. In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why you need to care about privacy, even if you’re 'not doing anything you need to hide.'"]
b] Chomsky, Noam.
"On the Propagandized Media." The Big Idea (February 1996)
c]
3) Framing/Eugenics lecture (Michael Benton)
4) Rebecca Glasscock Lecture
5)
a) Beckert, Sven and Craig Steven Wilder.
"Capitalism and Chains." Radio Open Source (November 20, 2014) ["A new wave of historians say that the “peculiar institution” of slavery explains more about the present than we’d care to admit: not just how the West got wealthy, but the way that global capitalism evolved in the first place."]
b) Srinivasan, Amia.
"On Genealogy." Philosophy Bites (August 2, 2014)
6)
Hearts and Minds
7) Ellsberg, Daniel, Mike Gravel and Robert West.
"How the Pentagon Papers Came to be Published By the Beacon Press Told by Daniel Ellsberg & Others." Democracy Now (July 24, 2013)
8)
a) McCoy, Alfred and Steven Reisner.
"After Duo Created CIA Torture Methods, Did World’s Largest Group of Psychologists Enable Abuses?" Democracy Now (December 16, 2014)
b) McCoy, Alfred and Steven Reisner.
"'Psychological Torture is Enshrined in U.S. Law': Complicity in Abuses Began Long Before Bush." Democracy Now (December 16, 2014)
10)
Citizenfour
11) Sauter, Molly.
"The Coming Swarm." Berkman Center for Internet & Society (October 29, 2014) ["In her new book, The Coming Swarm: DDoS, Hacktivism, and Civil Disobedience on the Internet, Molly Sauter examines the history, development, theory, and practice of distributed denial of service actions as a tactic of political activism. Together in conversation with journalist and activist Laurie Penny, Molly will discuss the use of disruptive tactics like DDoS, online civil disobedience, and the role of the internet as a zone of political activism and speech."]
12) Crow, Scott.
"Black Flags and Windmills." Portland Community College (Posted on Youtube: December 4, 2012)
13) Importance of social movements and What I Learned at the 2009 G20 Protests (Michael Benton)
14) Fergusoon and #blacklivesmatter protests:
a) Barnes, Mandela.
"Ferguson, NYC, Milwaukee: Protests Erupt as Officer Cleared in Killing of Unarmed Dontre Hamilton." Democracy Now (December 24, 2014)
15) Kolk, Bessel van der.
"Restoring the Body: Yoga, EMDR, and Treating Trauma." On Being (October 30, 2014) ["Human memory is a sensory experience, says psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk. Through his longtime research and innovation in trauma treatment, he shares what he's learning about how bodywork like yoga or eye movement therapy can restore a sense of goodness and safety. What he’s learning speaks to a resilience we can all cultivate in the face of the overwhelming events — which, after all, make up the drama of culture, of news, and of life."]
