A Cinematic World? On Jean Baudrillard and Film Studies

Image from Stop-Loss (Kimberly Peirce, 2008). Read Kim Toffoletti and Victoria Grace, 'Terminal Indifference: The Hollywood War Film Post-September 11', which treats this and other contemporary war films.

We are no longer the actors of the real but the double agents of the virtual.

Jean Baudrillard, Fragments: Cool Memories III (New York: Verso, 1997):125

On the occasion of an excellent new issue of online journal Film-Philosophy on "Baudrillard and Film-Philosophy" (Vol 14, No 2, 2010), Film Studies For Free is proud to present a long list of links to openly accessible Baudrillardian film studies. These are set out below the embedded video of the late Baudrillard in action himself. This list incorporates links to the FP articles.

It's so nice to have things in a simulacrum of one tidy place, FSFF thinks. And it hopes you will agree.

Jean Baudrillard thinking and talking about the violence of the image, the violence to the image, aggression, oppression, transgression, regression, effects and causes of violence, violence of the virtual, 3d, virtual reality, transparency, psychological and imaginary. Open Lecture given by Jean Baudrillard after his seminar for the students at the European Graduate School, EGS Media and Communication Program Studies Department, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, in 2004

By Jean Baudrillard

• Jean Baudrillard, 'Virtuality and Events: The Hell of Power', [Translated by Chris Turner], International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 3, Number 2 (July 2006)

• Jean Baudrillard, 'Violence of the Virtual and Integral Reality', [Translated by Dr. Marilyn Lambert-Drache], International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)

• Jean Baudrillard, 'The Matrix Decoded:  Le Nouvel Observateur Interview With Jean Baudrillard', [Translated by: Dr. Gary Genosko and Adam Bryx], International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 1, Number 2 (July 2004) 

• Jean Baudrillard video lectures at EGS 

Engaging with Baudrillard's work:

• Stuart C. Aitken and Deborah P. Dixon, 'Imagining Geographies of Film', Erdkunde, Band 60/2006

• Chiara Armentano, '"The Image-Interface": New Forms of Narrative Visualization, Space and Time in Postmodern Cinema', Reconstruction, 8.3 (2008)

• Jon Baldwin, 'Introduction - White Magic: Baudrillard and Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Melanie Chan, 'Virtually Real and Really Virtual: Baudrillard’s Procession of Simulacrum and The Matrix', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies,Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008)

• Alan Cholodenko, The ‘ABCs’ of B, Or: To Be and Not to Be B', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Alan Cholodenko, 'The Nutty Universe of Animation, The “Discipline” of All “Disciplines”, And That’s Not All, Folks!', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 3, Number 1 (January 2006)

• Alan Cholodenko, '“OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR”: The Virtual Reality of Jurassic Park and Jean Baudrillard', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2005) 

• Alan Cholodenko, '“The Borders of Our Lives”: Frederick Wiseman, Jean Baudrillard, And The Question of The Documentary', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 1, Number 2 (July 2004) 

• Alan Cholodenko, '(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix - Part II: A Difficulty in the Path of Animation Studies', Animation Studies – Vol.2, 2007

• Alan Cholodenko, 'The Spectre in the Screen', Animation Studies – Vol.3, 2008

• David B. Clarke, Dreams Rise in Darkness: The White Magic of Cinema', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Gerry Coulter, 'Jean Baudrillard and Cinema: The Problems of Technology, Realism and History', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Anton Escher, 'The Geography of Cinema - A Cinematic World', Erdkunde, Band 60/2006

• Scott Forsyth, 'Marxist Film Theory: From the Barricades to Postmodernism' , The Socialist Register, 1997

• Anne Friedberg, 'Urban mobility and cinematic visuality: the screens of Los Angeles – endless cinema or private telematics', Journal of Visual Culture, Vol 1(2), 2002: 183-204

• John Frow, 'Australian Cultural Studies: Theory Story, History', Australian Humanities Review, Issue 37, December 2005

• Michael Hemmingson, 'Auto/Ethnography and Tinsel Town: Nathaniel Kohn's Pursuing Hollywood and How it Relates to My Own Experiences Chasing the Dream of Creating Culture Through Cinema', Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research,  Vol 9, No 3 (2008)

• Mark Hobart, 'Just Talk? Anthropological Reflections on the Object of Media Studies in Indonesia', A.J.S.S. 34:3 (492–519)

• Mark Hobart, 'The Subject of the Subject: Philosophical background to a critical reconsideration of the problems in studying non-Western media', Position Paper to the Workshop on The Subject of the Subject in Media Studies, Media Research Group SOAS, 2nd. December 1997

• Russell J.A. Kilbourn, 'Re-Writing "Reality": Reading The Matrix', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 9.2, Fall 2000, pp 43-54

• Marc J. LaFountain, 'Obscene Ethics: A Baudrillardian View of Spurlock’s Super Size Me', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008) 

• Jon Lindblom, 'Toward an Ontology of the Image: Deleuze and the Aura of Simulation', Movement Editions, 2010

• Scott A. Lukas, 'Fragments of The World Thinking Me, Or How The Digital Facilitates Human Separation', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 3, Number 2 (July 2006)

• Chris Lukinbeal, 'The map that precedes the territory: An introduction to essays in cinematic geography', GeoJournal 59: 247–251, 2004

• Christopher Macallister, 'The Changing British Sensibility Towards War and the Reimagining of World War Two in the Cinema', War, Virtual War and the Challenges to Communities Oxford 16th – 18th July 2002

• Russell Manning, 'Taking Baudrillard to the Movies (To Talk About Death)', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 7, Number 1 (January, 2010)

• Erik Marshall, 'Fatal Strategies and Film Studies', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 44, November 2002

• William Merrin, 'Speculating to the Death: Machinic Integration and Transformation Within A Virtualized Reality', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 2 (July, 2007)

• William Merrin, 'Total Screen: 9/11 and the Gulf War Reloaded',International Journal of Baudrillard Studies,  Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)

• Paula Murphy, 'The Simulacra of Global Conflict', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008)

• Pamela Nilan, 'Applying Semiotic Analysis to Social Data in Media Studies', Jurnal Komunikasi Massa Vol. 1, No. 1, Juli 2007, 60-74

• Benjamin Noys, 'Crimes of the Near Future: Baudrillard / Ballard', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 1 (January, 2008) 

• William Pawlett and Meena Dhanda, 'The Shared Destiny of the Radically Other: A Reading of  The Wizard of Oz', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Richard Pope, 'Baudrillard’s Simulacrum:  Of War, Terror, and Obituaries', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 3 (October, 2007)

• James Rovira, 'Subverting the Mechanisms of Control: Baudrillard, The Matrix Trilogy, and the Future of Religion', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)

• Kenneth Rufo, 'Obscenity with a View: Baudrillard's  Revenge of the Crystal and Film Studies', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 6 No. 43, November 2002

• Marita Ryan, 'Answering the Question: “What is Intermission?” – An Exploration of Intermission as a Postmodern Film', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 1 (January, 2008) 

• Alan N. Shapiro, 'Baudrillard and Trek-nology (Or Everything I Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek and Reading Jean Baudrillard)', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005) 

• Mark Shiel, 'Cinema and the City in History and Theory', Cinema and the City (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001)

• Jonathan Smith, Jean Baudrillard’s Philosophy of Magic', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 2 (July, 2007)

• Richard G. Smith, 'Lights, Camera, Action: Baudrillard and the Performance of Representations', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 2, Number 1 (January 2005)

• Paul Taylor, 'Baudrillard's Resistance To the Ob-Scene As the Mis-en-scene (Or, Refusing to Think Like a Lap-Dancer’s Client)', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 5, Number 2 (July, 2008)

• Paul A. Taylor, 'The Pornographic Barbarism of the Self-Reflecting Sign', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 4, Number 1 (January 2007)

• Kim Toffoletti and Victoria Grace, 'Terminal Indifference: The Hollywood War Film Post-September 11', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

• Hunter Vaughan, 'The Paradox of Film: An Industry of Sex, a Form of Seduction (Notes on JeanBaudrillard’s  Seduction  and the Cinema)', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)

Scott Kirsner's 'Inventing the Movies': free online video

Scott Kirsner at Google HQ

Film Studies For Free has already waxed lyrical about CinemaTech, the great blog by Scott Kirsner. Today CinemaTech offered up a link to a video posted on YouTube by Google of a hugely informative 46 minute-long talk on the history of Hollywood film technological innovations given by Kirsner when he visited the company. The presentation is wonderfully delivered and festooned with great clips.

Here's the blurb for the talk, with hyperlinks added by Film Studies For Free for further information:

Scott Kirsner visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book "Inventing the Movies: Hollywood's Epic Battle Between Innovation and the Status Quo, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs." This event took place on October 16, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series.From Edison to the iPod, from the Warner Brothers to George Lucas, the story of how the movies became America's favorite form of escapist entertainment--and retained their hold on our imaginations for more than a century--is a story of innovators prevailing again and again over skeptics who prefer to preserve the status quo. Inventing the Movies unspools the never-before-told story of the innovators who shaped Hollywood: how a chance meeting at the Saratoga Race Track led to the end of black-and-white movies ... how Bing Crosby brought you the VCR ... how Walt Disney tamed television ... how a shotgun blast signaled the end of hand-made models and the beginning of digital special effects ... and how even the almighty Morgan Freeman had trouble persuading theater-owners that the Internet wasn't their mortal enemy. Inventing the Movies is an important read not just for fans of Hollywood's history, but for innovators trying to make change happen in any industry.

This is obviously a very 'technology-positive', not to say 'technologically-triumphalist', take on Hollywood/California history; for much more nuanced views readers should take a look at Henry Jenkins's work, including his blog. But Film Studies For Free thinks that this free video is well worth a watch and certainly serves as a particularly good and lively introduction to film technology history for those who are fairly new to the topic.

P.S. Film Studies For Free was stunned yesterday to hear the news that the aforementioned Henry Jenkins is to depart from the MIT Comparative Media Studies program that he co-founded to take up a new position at the University of Southern California. Truly, the end of an era, but hopefully the beginning of another one for work on participatory culture.