SoSe 18: S-Culture-Gender-Media II: The Medieval Motion Picture
Andrew James Johnston
Comments
Within the last three decades or so, medieval studies has been invigorated by the rise of a new scholarly subject, ?medievalism'. Medievalism deals with the representation of the Middle Ages in later periods, and this refers to both scholarly and popular representations. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, film has undoubtedly been the most influential genre offering popular representations of the Middle Ages. But even as films about the Middle Ages – nowadays termed ?medieval film', odd as that may sound – claim to portray a period in the distant past, they inevitably derive their imaginative potential from problems and preoccupations of the present. Medieval film thus tends to display a hybrid sense of temporality as it looks to the past through the lens of the present. Increasingly, medieval film has become aware of this problem and seeks to creatively address this question. The films we will discuss in this class have all been chosen for their self-conscious aesthetic fascination with the ways in which the medieval and the modern intersect through an artistic medium which seems to embody the spirit of modernity like few others.
The following films will be discussed in class:
John McTiernan, The Thirteenth Warrior (1999)
Robert Zemeckis, Beowulf (2007)
Jerry Zucker, First Knight (1995)
Richard Donner, Timeline (2003)
Brian Helgeland, A Knight's Tale (2001)
David Fincher, Seven (1995)
M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense (1999)
Students are expected to have seen all the films before the class starts.
close13 Class schedule
Regular appointments