In general, the field of cinema studies presumes a binary division of labor: filmmakers create a spectacle and critics analyze them. There are vivid examples of a redistribution of that labor on the production side, however. Several major Japanese directors are also accomplished writers of film theory and the texts they have produced help us discern the critical impetus within their films as well. There are other directors who create scenes and sequences that either analyze themselves or foreground the ways in which the films compose the apparent reality as presented. Examples of both will be presented, as well as spectacles whose symptomatic qualities constitute potential meta-cinematic messages independent of their ideological intentions.
This presentation will highlight the explicit relation between theory and practice through the work of Yoshida Kiju and Masumura Yasuzo, but will begin by contrasting two cabaret films, one from 1936 that is decidedly in the symptomatic category, and another from 1950 whose display advances remarkable interventions in the gender politics of the spectacle as well as a sophisticated endorsement of consciously engaged fantasy. Time permitting, this presentation will also draw on excerpts from films by Okamoto Kihachi, Kurahara Koreyoshi, and Kawashima Yuzo as examples of self-theorizing mise-en-scène.
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