The Film Experience: An Introduction

pressive qualities of the formal and narrative elements of film, which the authors address in the next two parts of the text.

In Part Two, “Formal Compositions: Film Scenes, Shots, Cuts, and Sounds,” Corrigan and White examine the formal elements of film in detail, dedicating a chapter each to mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound. They clearly define and explain technical terms, using numerous examples and images from a range of national and historical films and film genres, including detailed discussions of mise-en-scène in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) and the animated Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), editing in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Battle Potemkin (1925), and the relationship between image and sound in Singin’ in the Rain (1952). In the “Concepts at Work” section that ends the chapter on film sound, the authors again prompt students to think critically about the relationship between sound and other formal and narrative elements of the film. As a suggested “Activity,” they ask students to “select a scene or sequence from a film that uses orchestral music” and then substitute another type of music or a song and reflect on ways in which “the changes redirect our understanding of the scene and its meaning” (209).

Part Three, “Organizational Structures: From Stories to Genres,” dedicates one chapter, “Narrative Films: Telling Stories,” to discussing the narrative elements of film. Other chapters follow, focusing on documentary films and “Experimental Film and New Media.” The authors effectively outline each area of film. However, for instructors teaching a one quarter/semester class, it may be enough to discuss narrative film; documentary film has its own history and formal elements, and analyzing experimental film requires a strong knowledge of narrative film that the students are still developing. An important element of narrative film that the authors do not discuss is how stories, whether original or adapted, become screenplays, which are then turned into films. Screenwriters are only mentioned in a paragraph in Chapter One, and some instructors may feel that more attention should be paid to how the written word shapes the narrative and non-narrative elements of a film. The final chapter of Part Three addresses the history and elements of genre, and briefly outlines the features of six important genres: comedies, westerns, melodramas, musicals, horror films, and crime films. This is an effective choice, as the variety of genres will give students and instructors the opportunity to explore one or more of these genres in more detail. In discussing each genre, Corrigan and White describe key features and themes, as well as subgenres, such as Psychological versus Physical Horror films. They also challenge students to think more critically about what attracts viewers to a particular genre. They explain that “[c]omedies celebrate the harmony and resiliency of social life. Although many viewers associate comedies with laughs and humor, comedy is more fundamentally about social reconciliation and the triumph of the physical over the intellectual” (322). They describe the appeal of horror films as rooted in social and psychological catharsis: “horror films dramatize our personal and social terrors in their different forms, in effect allowing us to admit them and attempt to deal with them in an imaginary way and as part of a communal experience” (332). The authors provide an effective description of each genre, but also ask students to reflect on how films can cross between genres or can challenge genre conventions.

Part Four, “Critical Perspectives: History, Methods, Writing,” will force instructors to make content and pedagogical choices based on the amount of content they think they can effectively ask student to engage with, and on the level of critical thinking skills their students possess. Chapter Ten, “History and Historiography: Hollywood and Beyond,” is a valiant attempt to cover, in forty pages,

the history of Hollywood cinema, International cinema, Independent cinema, and cinema by women, African Americans, and the LGBTQ communities. This broad approach stands in contrast to the choice made by John Belton in American Cinema/ American Culture, 4th edition (2012); taking a cultural studies approach, Belton provides a more detailed exploration of how post-World War Two American cinema reflects the cultural and political changes in American society. Corrigan and White have clearly emphasized inclusivity, and instructors can choose to provide more detail regarding one or more of these areas of film history. In the next chapter, Corrigan and White explore film theory, which many instructors may decide is simply too much to ask of students in a firstyear film class—most instructors will introduce a particular theoretical approach simply by emphasizing political or social issues, such as representations of race or gender, but most universities leave a more detailed exploration of film theory for a second- or third-year course.

The last chapter of this section, and the final chapter of the book, “Writing a Film Essay: Observations, Arguments, Research, and Analysis,” is one of the highlights of the book, and one of the best chapters on writing about film that I have encountered. The authors discuss the importance of students moving from personal opinion to critical objectivity, and provide an excellent model of the writing process, by which students work from critically watching a film to establishing a topic to developing a thesis. To help students distinguish between different common writing assignments related to film, the authors provide a sample of a critical film review of Minority Report (2002), and then a sample essay presenting of a more objective analysis of Rashomon (1950). Corrigan and White clearly explain the need for primary and secondary sources, and discuss how to effectively incorporate and correctly cite sources in the unfortunately now-outdated seventh edition of Modern Language Association (MLA) style. To further assist students in their research, the authors provide a good list of Internet sources related to film studies. They also provide a full-length sample research essay that explores the connection between historical context and violence in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Furthermore, after an extensive Glossary, the authors include a final section entitled “The Next Level: Additional Sources,” which provides a list of secondary sources related to each specific chapter, some of which are mentioned in the particular chapter.

Corrigan and White have provided instructors and students with a text that effectively covers most aspects of film studies, and provides an expansive range of examples, both in the text and through the accompanying website. Teaching the text cover to cover may be more appropriate for a course divided over two quarters/semesters, but instructors can choose particular areas of genre, film history, and film theory to suit their needs. The structure of the text is easy to follow, and the outlining of “Key Objectives” at the beginning of each chapter allows students to focus their attention on specific learning outcomes for that chapter. Again, the “Concepts at Work” section that ends each chapter does not focus on summarizing the main concepts addressed in the chapter; instead, it provides questions and activities that help students analyze how the ideas presented inform our understanding of the film experience. The greatest strengths of The Film Experience: An Introduction are the more detailed analyses of films that can be viewed on the LaunchPad Solo website, a valuable resource for students and instructors, and the last chapter, which provides students with all the tools necessary to move from active viewing to critical thinking to organizing their ideas into a clearlystructured and effectively-supported film analysis. This book effectively provides the tools necessary to develop a student’s skills in analyzing, researching, and writing about all aspects of film.

TransformingGender

Director: Marc de Guerre Country/Year: Canada, 2015 Production: Canada Broadcasting Corporation Runtime: 43:12

Review by Gerald Walton Kwantlen Polytechnic University and Lakehead University

As I watched Transforming Gender (2015), one of the documentaries featured in the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) documentary series that is evocatively called Firsthand, I was reminded of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s 2009 TED Talk called “The Danger of a Single Story. ” In it, she details how people have a strong tendency, guided by mass media in the form of books, magazines, television, and movies, to perceive people who are not like themselves as representing a single-story, what might otherwise be called a stereotype. She focuses on single-stories that many Westerners hold of Africa, perceived as a homogenous continent despite inter-continental diversity and stories that counter the dominant narrative disseminated through media of poverty and catastrophe.

Directed by Marc de Guerre, also responsible for the 2013 documentary, How We Got Gay, Transforming Gender aims to confront the single-story of what it means to be trans, which is that those who identify as trans have had a sense of not fitting in with their gender since early childhood, and that they are suffering and victimized. As Toronto psychotherapist and trans activist Hershel Russell notes in the film, trans stories are multiple, varied, and much more complex than a single-story or, as he puts it, a “simple story,” would suggest. Although not noted in the film, some, but certainly, not all, trans activists and their supporters add an asterisk after “trans” to signify the very diversity among trans* people that defies the single-story. Although a matter of debate (see Diamond and Erlick, for instance), I have opted to use the asterisk in this review, even though I suspect that the use of it will disappear in the near future.

Approximately three-quarters of an hour in length, the film features a wide spectrum of trans* people, from young children to a woman in her late 80s, although most are white. The diverse occupations of those interviewed, including a former prostitute, a model, a psychotherapist, and a university professor, show the broad reach of the trans* community. Vancouver’s Stephanie Castle makes a notable appearance in the film. She transitioned at the age of 66 and founded the ground-breaking trans* organization, the Zenith Foundation, in 1992 and its publication, the Zenith Digest, which operated until 2002. The interviews mix personal narratives, or stories that build connections between those in the film and the viewers, with what I would call gender theory-lite. Simplified for a mass viewing audience, the director breaks down broad social presumptions about what gender supposedly is, and highlights grey areas instead of reinscribing black and white as separate entities. In other words, the film makes efforts to assail the prevailing notion of gender as a simple, mutually-exclusive binary.

Even so, not everyone featured in the film has the background in theory by which to challenge the binary. Instead, they end up reinforcing it, though unwittingly, by depicting themselves, or being depicted as, the ‘opposite’ of their assigned gender. In this way, the film does not shy away from the contradiction that perhaps a preservation of the gender binary does not transcend gender at all, as implied in the term “transgender.” One of the more complex issues that is discussed in the film, but not explored in depth, is the notion of passing, which is to achieve a level of success in gender presentation that does not draw undue attention in public. Passing in the trans* context reinforces the gender binary, the false

but tenacious idea that only two genders exist, and that one must acknowledge that they are one or the other. Not both. Not neither. Film participant Aaron Devor, a professor, scholar, and Founder and Academic Director of the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria, argues that it is high time to move beyond the belief that gender is limited to two mutually-exclusive categories. Historically and crossculturally, gender schemas of more than two varieties have flourished, such as the Hijra people in south Asian countries, and Two Spirit people in some Indigenous North American societies. According to Devor, we need to draw from these histories and societies and learn to count higher than two.

Devor also notes that cisgender people tend to be unable to talk to or interact with anyone whose gender is not definitively boy or girl, man or woman. According to Devor, the gender binary is so prevalent and normalized that other people take notice when a person does not definitely appear to be one or the other. In other words, passing in the transgender context involves gender expressions and gender cues that communicate being a normative boy or girl, man or woman. This idea comes across in the treatment of the film title in the opening credits. When they first appear, the word “TRANSFORMING” is pink, out of which emerges the word “GENDER,” which is blue. Each word eventually loses its gendered colour signification and turns white, perhaps representing the shift from restriction to possibility.

For some of the trans* people featured in the film, passing as their actual gender is a crucial aspect of their day-to-day lives. The reason is simple: to avoid harassment from passers-by. Who can blame them? Gays and lesbians have known about passing for years as a strategy to avoid harassment but which reinforces cisgender norms and posits being gay or lesbian as second-class to being straight. And so it goes for trans* people.

The choice to pass is perfectly valid. Yet, the personal issue of passing has broader social and political implications. The logic evident in the film, though not made explicit, is contradictory and mirrors contemporary debates about the politics of passing. On one hand, the gender binary, which is magnified and policed through media-driven standards of beauty, needs to be challenged and disrupted. On the other hand, passing reinforces the very binary that positions being trans* as strange, if not freakish.

Related to the issue of passing is a compelling debate raised in the film on how to ‘be’ in the social world as trans*. Hershel Russell expresses keen enthusiasm for being out as trans* (“It’s wonderful being trans!”) and does not seem to feel any compulsion to keep his gender identity and history private. He does not seem to be occupied by the burdens of having to pass as cisgender. By contrast, New Yorker and former sex-worker Krystina Elisa Crespo (Fig. 1) says that trans* people are much more acceptable when they are passable, adding, “I don’t think it’s important. I don’t think it’s relevant. If someone were to ask me, I wouldn’t deny it. I’m not ashamed of who I am. I just don’t think it matters.”

Fig. 1: Krystina Elisa Krespo.