[ecrea] CFP SERCIA workshop Dijon 2013 Naming, Labelling, Addressing in English-speaking Films

CFP Atelier Études Filmiques / Film Studies workshop:

Appellation(s) dans le cinÉma anglophone

Naming, Labelling, Addressing in English-speaking Films


This year’s SERCIA workshop invites proposals from a broad range of 
perspectives (film history, film economics, star studies, film genre 
theory, film narratology, spectatorship and reception studies) that will 
investigate the pragmatics of naming, labeling and addressing, conceived 
as processes, in English-speaking films.

One line of investigation concerns the nature and function of titles 
both as a component of the paratext and as a marketing device: the 
relationship between the title of the source work and that of the film 
(e.g. The Birth of a Nation (Griffith, 1915) adapted from Thomas Dixon’s 
Clansman), the title and its iconography, the title and its poster, the 
English title and its French translation (e.g. Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 
1978) ® Zombie), and ultimately the title and the genre, i.e. its 
(in)coherence and hence readability.

The naming of stars (e.g. Marilyn Monroe, Bugs Bunny) can also be 
considered. Likewise, the perception or marketing of a work as a 
television or cinema production is likely to influence its 
interpretation, and individual directors are labeled differently 
according to whether they have worked mostly for the cinema or for 
television—think of Peter Watkins, Alan Clarke and Peter Kosminsky. The 
history of cinema also includes dramatic moments when “naming names” 
referred to specific political contexts—such as MacCarthyism—which have 
provided subetexts or indeed open texts for particular films.

Talks can also pursue Rick Altman’s pragmatic approach to film genre by 
considering the naming and labeling process that genrification entails 
(e.g. according to Altman, “musical” was first used as an adjective in 
1929-1930, while “a musical” was only used in 1933); the role played by 
producers and critics in the construction of a genre and the labeling of 
films—Charles O’Brien’s study of film noir is a case in point—as well as 
the modes of address involved, namely the use value of the construction 
of the genre (e.g. the “woman’s film” by feminist film critics in the 
1980s).

Finally, talks can explore the pragmatics of naming, labeling and 
addressing as they are represented within the diegesis—e.g. the names of 
characters, name-calling or the labeling process, for instance, the 
discrepancy between text and image when the bird constructs Alice as “a 
serpent” in Alice in Wonderland (1951) or when Dolores Driscoll 
constructs her neighbors the Ottos as “hippies” in The Sweet Hereafter 
(Egoyan, 1997)—and especially insomuch as they potentially reflect the 
film’s address to a real or an implied spectator (through the use of 
subtitles, the voiceover or more implicit modes of address). 
Psychoanalytical, cognitive and phenomenological approaches to 
spectatorship will be considered and studies of television films and 
series are welcome.

250-300-word abstracts, including a brief bibliography, in English or 
French can be sent to Jean-François Baillon ((jfbaillon /at/ sfr.fr)), Gilles 
Menegaldo ((gilles.menegaldo /at/ wanadoo.fr)) and David Roche 
((mudrock /at/ neuf.fr)), along with a short biography.



Selected Bibliography

Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI, 1999.

Chion, Michel. La Voix au cinéma. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 1984 [1982].

Derrida, Jacques. Otobiographies. L’enseignement de Nietzsche et la 
politique du nom propre. Paris: Galilée, 1984-2005

---. Sauf le nom. Paris: Galilée, 1993 / 2006.

Mayne, Judith. Cinema and Spectatorship. London & New York: Routledge, 1993.

Moine, Raphaëlle. Les Genres du cinéma. Paris: Armand Colin, 2002.

O’Brien, Charles. “Film Noir in France: Before the Liberation.” Iris 21 
(1996): 7-20.

Rouxel-Cubberly, Noëlle. Les Titres de films. Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2011.

Russell, Jesse and Ronald Cohn, ed. Intertitle. Book on Demand, 2012.

Sobchack, Vivian. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film 
Experience. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1992.



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