EA 40 Week 1a Outline:
I. What are ghosts? How do you recognize them?
A. How do
you become a ghost?
1.
2.
3.
4.
eg. Ringu (1998, director Hideo Nakata)
B. What do ghosts look like? If you met one how would
you know it's a ghost?
C. Have
ghosts always looked the same?
D. What
causes the visual appearance of ghosts to change?
1. Genre (fiction, non-fiction, play, painting, film
etc.)
2. Historical context
a.
b.
c.
Point of the Course:
E. Ghosts as barometers of social
problems
1. When we see a ghost or other supernatural being we should wonder: what is going wrong in society?
II. Seven
main questions to ask in analyzing any ghost text (historical, fictional,
visual):
A. Who was it written/created by?
1.
2.
3.
B. Is there a patron (individual or institutional)? Or is it there a paying audiencec?
1.
2.
3.
C. Who is the intended audience?
1.
2.
3.
D. How is
the story or image supposed to affect that audience; i.e. what is the
purpose/goal of the story?
1.
2.
3.
D. What is the historical context? Are there any
political and economic issues at stake? Who might benefit from this version of
the story?
E. How might the genre affect the representation of the ghost?
1. fiction or non-fiction?
2. written, performed, image?
a. historical, non-fiction (diary, dream-vision, oracle)
b. fiction (novel, short story, didactic story)
c. theatrical (noh, kyogen, kabuki)
d. 2-D image (painting of dream vision, woodblock print)
F. Narrative issues:
1. How do narrative conventions affect representation?
2. How do narrative constraints affect representation?
a. eg. The Sixth Sense
III. How are
ghosts related to contemporaneous fears/anxieties?
A.
Contemporary American examples
a. alien abduction
1)
what cultural anxiety is this addressing?
2)
differences between America and Mexico