FMST 330A - Unfinished Business: Trauma on the Haunted Screen.

Credits: (3)
College Curriculum: COLL 200
Domain (Anchored): ALV
Domain (Reaching Out): CSI

We will read internationally popular late 20th and early 21st Century haunting and ghost films as reflections of political and cultural traumas that have long ‘haunted’ both society and cinema in the United States and abroad. Cinematic ghost stories such as The Conjuring, Shutter Island and The Orphanage are powerful tools for raising questions about history precisely because ghosts can be thought of as place-holders for, or symbols of, memory and unfinished trauma. As Thomas Elsaesser and others have suggested, film itself is a place-holder for memory; film captures the past for us to see years later. There is an undeniable relationship between the ghosts and wraiths we see on the screen and the insubstantial qualities of film itself. Like spirits, film is brittle, flimsy and transparent. Cinematic images, too, appear made up of light and shadows; they are flickering things, like shades or ghosts. And like ghosts, 20th Century films such as Rosemary’s Baby continue to be in dialogue with or to haunt 21st Century films such asThe Conjuring, forcing us to re-evaluate history and its representation in film texts.