SCRN 291 - Capstone Course - Variable topics

Fall 2015 TopicTheorizing Punk Media: Power, Petulance and the Impossible

In this capstone seminar, students will perform close readings of key structuralist and poststructuralist theoretical works (by Lacan, Barthes, Debord, de Certeau, Zizek) and employ these theories as a means of understanding the aesthetic, political, and historical evolution of Punk subculture.  Week by week, we will explore and write about different aspects of Punk via an examination of documentary films on the subject (e.g., Rude Boy, The Decline of Western Civilization and Filmage), as well as fiction films that represent Punk in Britain, America and elsewhere (e.g., Jubilee, Repo Man and Wild Zero).  A crucial question will concern the seeming absence of Punk in contemporary culture beyond the most superficial pastiche.  In the contemporary era of digitally lubricated do-it-yourself nerdism, and internet-fueled bourgeois hipster connoisseurship, is the culture-rupturing “fuck you” of Punk categorically impossible?  Was it ever possible?  Through collaborative research, two serious examinations, and a hardcore final written project, this seminar will help you to find out. 

Fall 2015 Enrollment is limited to senior Screen Studies majors; others by permission.    

 

Prerequisites: SCRN 101  or Permission.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically.