[Commlist] CfP Corruption and Cinema

*CfP 27th SERCIA Conference*

*Corruption and Cinema*

*Organized by Christophe Gelly and Caroline Lardy*

*Université Clermont Auvergne, Clermont Ferrand, France*

*September 7-9, 2022*


Keynote speakers: Martine Beugnet (Université Paris Diderot), Tricia 
Jenkins (Bob Schieffer College of Communication)

The theme of corruption is central to the art of filmmaking. As an art 
of reality, in direct contact with the profilmic, fictional film is also 
built on the desire to achieve artistic status through a certain 
detachment from a discourse directly linked to reality. The topic of 
corruption immediately suggests a question as to the definition of 
cinema as a medium with or without a privileged relationship to reality. 
This relationship could be understood as that which could call into 
question and corrupt the identity of cinema as a medium susceptible of 
an aesthetic approach. Beyond the relationship to reality, the 
cinematographic medium can appear as particularly “subject” to 
degradation in its material incarnation. We know that many early films 
were lost or irretrievably deteriorated, which places a whole part of 
the medium's history beyond our reach. This fragile nature of the film 
medium is certainly not an exception among the arts as a whole, but it 
places cinema at the crossroads between a purely “auratic” art, 
according to Walter Benjamin's theory, and an art conceived with an 
entirely reproducible medium. At least in the early days of cinema, this 
corruption of the medium led to the fragility of the works. These 
damaged works (which have not all disappeared) have been reintegrated by 
some filmmakers into their films constructed from incomplete or 
deteriorated film stock, as in Bill Morrison's short film /Who By 
Water/(2007). The advent of digital technology seems to have detached 
cinema from this threat of corruption, but it has also opened up another 
equally problematic avenue, that of the falsification of the work used 
for purposes contrary to those intended by the original. The notion of 
corruption of a primary discourse should also be considered more 
broadly, following the work of Gaudreault and Marion, in the context of 
the inflections that the transition to digital technology is causing the 
medium to undergo by further obscuring the relationship to the profilmic.

Corruption is also a notion that naturally invokes its antonym, purity. 
We know that the question of purity is at the heart of Bazin's 
discussion on the ontology of cinematographic art in the 1950s. Although 
it is not our intention to take up this debate literally, we can 
introduce a variation of this question on the identity of cinema through 
the approach of what “corrupts” cinema considered as pure art: the 
presence of other arts, the influence of source texts in the case of 
filmic adaptations, or the forms of discourse inherited from other media 
(as in the case of filmed theatre). These examples, in turn, question 
what would make cinema an uncorrupted or pure art, detached from modes 
of representation inherited from the artistic and media “heritage”. This 
reading of the hybridity of the medium does not presuppose a 
hierarchical approach to modes of representation, but rather a 
diachronic reading of the relationship between cinema and that which is 
not cinema and which has threatened, or still threatens, to “corrupt” an 
immanent cinematographic quality that is perhaps theoretical. In any 
case, these questions are certainly topical at a time when the film 
medium is constantly confronted with other media or other modes of 
communication and dissemination (since the digital revolution) with 
which it competes at least in part.

Thematically, the subject of corruption first conjures up perspectives 
related to the political role of the medium. Whether in fictional 
cinema, which sometimes treats corruption as the main issue, as in F.F. 
Coppola's /Godfather/trilogy (1972-1990) or in the /House of 
Cards/series (Beau Willimon, 2013-2018), or in documentary cinema, with 
the example of Michael Moore's films, the relevance of cinematic 
representation often lies in the way in which the processes of 
prevarication are dissected. The elaboration of scenarios directly or 
implicitly linked to historical events (one thinks of /All the 
President's Men/, Alan J. Pakula, 1976, inspired by the Watergate 
scandal) can be analysed as a commentary on the role of the media but 
also, in a reflexive way, as a discourse on the role of cinema in 
contemporary democracies. This understanding of the issue can be 
extended beyond politics to “social” cinema dealing with issues of 
acceptance or resistance to social segregation, as in the work of Ken 
Loach. It is the corruption of an ideal of the human community that is 
at issue here. The theme of corruption also refers, in a second 
approach, to the question of cinema as an art linked to the body, and as 
working on the image of bodies. Thus, the corruption of the human body 
can be the subject of cinematographic work, in a sort of development of 
the technique of chronophotography, which in the nineteenth century 
consisted of reproducing the image of a movement by a series of shots 
taken during the different stages of this movement. Certain filmmakers 
such as David Cronenberg (notably in /The Fly/, 1986) can be 
particularly sensitive to this problem of the body and its degradation, 
but this is of course also the case for a whole film genre, that of 
horror. Time is also an entry point into this subject since it is 
directly linked to the degradation of bodies which is implied in the 
concept of corruption. We can then examine the relationship between the 
corruption of bodies as represented on screen and the treatment of time 
as a vector of degradation of bodies. Once again, it is the relationship 
of the medium to reality that is at stake here. Finally, a third 
variation of this theme could focus on the treatment of the moral theme 
in cinema. This is of course too broad a theme to be addressed in its 
entirety, and the analysis needs to refocus on a body of works that 
allows us to highlight the ambiguity of moral standards. A film like 
/Taxi Driver/(Martin Scorsese, 1976) could serve as an example of this 
reading of moral corruption, in the sense that it depicts the 
intransigence of the main character, Travis Bickle, as the reflection of 
a paranoid personality grappling with a society that seems to have lost 
all moral reference points and has turned into a world where debauchery 
rules. But it is the difficulty of distinguishing between good and evil 
that predominates in this treatment of corruption and invalidates any 
simplistic interpretation, so that the subject of moral corruption is 
here related to a more general reading of the degradation of human 
relationships. These variations of the subject, although not 
comprehensive, reveal the formal and thematic variety of corruption and 
suggest an open and multiple approach to the notion proposed.

Main topics in relation to the general theme

* Corruption linked to the medium: due to the quality of the first tapes 
that deteriorated with time, early cinema is partly lost. Does this 
issue totally disappear with the transition to digital?

* Cinema and elitist culture. In a postmodern framework, can we consider 
cinema as the embodiment of a de-hierarchisation between popular culture 
and elitist culture? How have discourses on corruption 
integrated/deconstructed this question?

* The question of cinema as an “impure” art, from a Bazinian 
perspective, is also that of the relationship of cinema with other arts 
and other media. The possibility or impossibility of treating cinema 
“alone” without addressing its relationship with the other arts brings 
us back to the question of the hybridity or “mongrelization” of the medium

* Corruption as a theme. This relates to the relationship between 
politics and cinema, and denunciations of situations of political 
corruption. The role of documentary versus fiction film matters in this 
context, like the role of committed cinema. See the examples of Ken 
Loach, or documentary filmmakers like Peter Kosminsky.

* The link between certain film genres and the theme of corruption

* The relationship to the body as an inscription of a dimension specific 
to corruption.

Proposals should be sent to the following address by March 31, 2022: 
(serciaconference2022 /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(serciaconference2022 /at/ gmail.com)>


*Bibliography*

Bazin André, “Pour un cinéma impur”, /Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ?/, Paris, 
Cerf, 1987, pp. 80-106

Benjamin Walter, /L'Œuvre d'art à l'époque de sa reproductibilité 
technique/, Paris, Allia, [1936] 2003

Desmet Maud, /Confessions du cadavre, autopsie et figure du mort dans 
les séries et films policiers,/ Aix-En-Provence, Rouge Profond, 2016

Game Jérôme (dir.), /Images des Corps / Corps/ 
<https://books.openedition.org/enseditions/12813>/des Images au Cinéma, 
/Lyon, ENS Editions, 2010

Gaudreault, André and Philippe Marion. /The End of Cinema? A Medium in 
Crisis in the Digital Age/. Columbia University Press, 2015.

Lefait Sébastien and Philippe Ortoli, /In Praise of Cinematic Bastardy/, 
Newcastle Upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012

Staiger Janet, “Hybrid or Inbred: The Purity Hypothesis and Hollywood 
Genre History,” /Film Criticism /Vol. 22, No. 1, Special Issue on Genre 
(Fall, 1997), pp. 5-20

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------