First-Year Seminar:

3 units

This course will explore the complex relationship between moving images and ideas of the real in both movies and television. It will explore theories of representation, surveillance, authenticity, truth, and realism in this context. From the earliest actuality films to the recent phenomenon of reality television programming, it will ask if screen images capture what is really happening in front of the camera or if conventions of representation, genre, and narrative mediate the reality of these images. More significantly, it will inquire into why such questions matter. At issue is the role that moving images on both the big and the small screen have in our understanding of the world as it is and ourselves as we experience it.