- Instructor
- Walton Muyumba
- Course Description
- Considering recent popular American movies we will study the concepts of revenge and pleasure. With the help of film criticism from writers like James Baldwin and Carina Chocano, we will question why so many American films explain American life as a drama driven by revenge? We will also interrogate why American audiences repeatedly consume and find pleasure in movies about vengeance? We will also think about the messages that filmmakers might be communicating about 21st century life in relationship to the major socio-political problems of American life:
-- the 9/11 attacks
-- the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
-- definitions of terrorism
-- comic book heroes and the problem of evil
-- warfare and womanhood
-- the Mexican borderlands and the “drug war”
-- Climate change
-- American history and blackness
-- computer technology, social media, and our discontent
Can these revenge movies help us understand the consequences of climate change, the drug war, the war on terror, the marginalization of people of color and women, and the ubiquity and controlling force of social media on our imaginations and our conceptions of pleasure? Our close readings of both the filmmakers’ aesthetic choices and their cultural/political arguments will drive our discussions.
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The full details of this course are available on the Office of the Registrar website.
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The College of Arts