Architectures of the Moving Image

SOCIETY FOR CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES CONFERENCE

PHILADELPHIA

MARCH 6-9, 2008

Befitting its theme, "Architectures of the Moving Image," the recent Society for Cinema and Media Studies (SGMS) annual conference was held at Philadelphia's Loews Hotel, a sleekly modernist skyscraper designed in 1932. Appropriately, the event featured plenary addresses on the intersection of architecture, global culture, and cinema by Ackbar Abbas and Anthony Vidler. The conference was the largest in the organizations's history, with well over 1,200 attendees, and the wide scope of panels, workshops, film screenings, and meetings proved yet again that SGMS is dedicated to expanding the definition of media studies to accommodate whatever relentless and innumerable new forms it takes. With topics ranging from mumblecore to mash-ups to massive multi-player on-line games, there were as many as twenty sessions scheduled during most time slots. Deciding which one to attend when so many were simultaneously occurring was both exciting and enervating.

Despite what the popular media and even cinema might have one believe, feminism appears to be neither dead nor irrelevant. Everything from Man Ray to Hannah Montana seemed rightful fodder for feminist criticism and it was encouraging to see both well-established and up-and-coming female scholars illustrate that there are not only rampant historical ellipses to be filled but a great deal of contemporary terrain that is ripe for contestation. The former was most eloquently illustrated by what can only be termed a tender and phenomenal talk by Kathleen McHugh, in which she reconsidered an entire generation of female film workers. As she lucidly proposed, in the 1970s and '80s, academic feminism largely marginalized the issue of women as producers. However, when one scrutinizes women directors born around the globe between the years 1945 60, it becomes apparent that Jane Campion, Claire Denis, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Mira Nair, Euzhan Palcy, Sally Potter, and many, many others share a global, transnational, and feminist point of view. Continuing in this vein, as part of the same panel, Patricia White argued for a cinema without borders, one in which we recognize that the type of listing and categorizing evidenced in Senses of Cinema's "World Poll," is simply a way to neutralize and thus marginalize such filmmakers as Campion, whose 2007 short The Lady Bug is a droll but tragic metaphor for the treatment of women in the film world (in sum, a dancing lady bug gets squashed by a big man's shoe). The latter was supported by the fact that two young scholars were both presenting on architecture in the work of coyly (post?) feminist director Sophia Coppola. The first, Nicole Richter, cogently argued that Coppola's interiors are little but glamorously atmospheric prisons, suffocating and claustrophobic. The second, Samiha Matin, followed Coppola's example, and hedged her bets, suggesting that at least in Marie Antoinette (2006), architecture can be both limiting, as in the Palace of Versailles, and liberating, as in the case of Le Petit Trianon. With respect to screenings, Giovanna Chesler's powerful Period: The End of Menstruation (2006), which explores the cultural and medical ramifications of suppressing menstruation, further affirmed the limitless spectrum of women's positions on such issues.

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To appease the locals, there were two panels celebrating Philly's favorite son, the Italian Stallion known as Rocky. The first explored aspects of Sylvester Stallone's continually morphing body and its possible interpretive meanings; the second considered class and sexual politics. In the first panel, Paul McDonald skillfully illustrated how Stallone's flabby stomach in Cop Land (2007) can be viewed as a symbol of the star's attempt to change his own meaning in the film; the lack of tautness mixed with high action and an exorbitant salary were greatly and purposely at odds with his usual roles in a conscious effort to prove he could actually act. On the second panel, Andy Willis also noted some of the anomalies in Stallone's generally working-class persona.

The SCMS conference has always seemed a bit ambivalent toward the topic of teaching so it was encouraging to see a number of sessions addressing pedagogy. The most well-attended appeared to be the session chaired by Karl Schoonover and Angela Dalle Vacche on Film and the Other Arts, although given the challenging jargon stereotypically associated with film and media studies overall, the workshop titled "Writing for Students: Textbook Publishing" may have proved more useful. One of the more forward-thinking of these was the panel "Designing Our Web 3.0 Lives," which illustrated myriad ways that contemporary academies are envisioning and using interactive technology in the classroom.

The panel I found most intellectually exceptional was one in which this western nation's most politically pressing and presumably superficial concerns--nationhood and vanity, power and body, medicine and makeover seemed to collide. "Architectures of the Flesh," chaired by Sophia Harvey and Michael Dillon, somehow managed to examine and connect Michael Jackson, the rising youth populations of India and China, Walter Freeman's chilling lobotomy obsession, and the atrocities of Abu Ghraib, without seeming incoherent in the least. Perhaps more telling was that just like a mash-up, together they made far more sense.