Loren Pilcher | SUNY: University at Buffalo (original) (raw)
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Papers by Loren Pilcher
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2022
During the civil rights era, Georgia’s Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service produced local ... more During the civil rights era, Georgia’s Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service produced local nontheatrical films that imagined the state as rural, masculine, and white. Omitting segregation from direct view, these productions emphasized white men demonstrating respectable masculinity on rural land at a time when many southerners normalized Jim Crow as common sense for southern families and communities. These images still resonate in Georgia’s divided political climate, particularly in the 2018 campaign of Governor Brian Kemp. The racial implications of the extension service’s gendered vision of Georgia become clear in Kemp’s ads, which appeal to similar rural images to mask racist policies and voter suppression.
Genealogy
Movies beyond the scope of Hollywood and entertainment have shaped notions of race in American cu... more Movies beyond the scope of Hollywood and entertainment have shaped notions of race in American culture since the early decades of cinema. A range of nontheatrical sponsors and creators in the US made films to serve practical functions in society—to inform, to organize, to persuade, to promote, etc. The US federal government was a major sponsor of many of these films, which provided American and foreign audiences depictions of race that differed considerably from popular commercial images. For example, Men of the Forest, a film made in 1952 by the United States Information Service focuses on the Hunters, a Black family who owns land and a forestry business in rural Georgia. A documentary of sorts, the film highlights Black life, work, and land ownership in the South in ways not seen in popular feature films of the day. Yet, in the film and others like it, histories of institutional racism are woven into cinematic form and content in ways that are distinct from the entertainment indus...
The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema
This chapter considers the intersection of queer theory and nontheatrical film studies by examini... more This chapter considers the intersection of queer theory and nontheatrical film studies by examining antipornography film Perversion for Profit (1962). Produced and distributed by Citizens for Decent Literature, the film visualizes a range of straight and gay pornographic images by censoring and categorizing them as evidence of societal aberrations. Now in the public domain and streaming on Internet Archive, the film’s pornographic images have been repurposed for new meanings. By analyzing Barbara Hammer’s inclusion of Perversion in her experimental film History Lessons (2000) and a mash-up of the original film titled Come Join the Fun! (2004), shared on Internet Archive, the chapter argues that the Perversion’s value now lies in what queer creators make of its cinematic time and space.
Southern Cultures, 2019
This article analyzes and considers the contemporary significance of Palmour Street: A Study of F... more This article analyzes and considers the contemporary significance of Palmour Street: A Study of Family Life (1950) and All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story (1952), two nontheatrical films produced for the Georgia Department of Health (GDPH) in the early 1950s and now available online. Made by progressive writer/director George Stoney, the health-focused films feature rare documentary images of black mothers and midwives in rural southern homes and communities. As GDPH productions, they also envision a "useful" South in the midst of institutional modernization during the late Jim Crow era. The two films ultimately represent black women according to their utility in this New South by looking past the larger effects of racial segregation on cinematic and institutional perceptions of health. Today, Palmour Street and All My Babies allow us to confront a screen South that allows us to better imagine and create a region that embraces difference.
Edinburgh German Yearbook 10
On May 24, 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) (1919), “arguably the first fe... more On May 24, 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) (1919), “arguably the first feature film with an explicitly homosexual theme” premiered at the Apollo Theater in Berlin (Steakley 1999). The film, directed by Richard Oswald in collaboration with sexologist Magnus Hirschfield, depicted a gay relationship between a violinist and his male student and aimed to educate audiences on both the medical legitimacy of homosexuality and the legal discrimination facing homosexual males under Germany’s Paragraph 175. The controversial Different from the Others was soon banned, however, when censorship was reinstated in Germany in 1920. Relegated to Hirschfeld’s archive where its various prints were likely destroyed when the Nazis rose to power, the film exists today as a single fragment.
Since, activists, archivists, historians, and film scholars have returned to the extant fragment of Different from the Others in attempt to excavate and historically reconstruct its homosexual content. This essay approaches Different from the Others as a queer, material trace of Weimar sexual culture that resists dominant, seemingly neutral modes archiving and historical reconstruction. The first half of the article examines the instability and difficult-to-define nature of the homosexuality depicted in the original Weimar film. I argue that the educative narrative reflects German efforts to understand male homosexuality legally and socially in a modernizing nation. I then move to investigate how Richard Dyer’s foundational reading of the film in his 1990 Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film, Filmmuseum München’s 1999 reconstruction of the film, and LGBT organization Outfest/UCLA’s recent reconstruction-in-progress inevitably engage and resist an imaginative desire for a contemporary LGBTQ “origin” in the fragmented film. Investigating these recent processes surrounding Different from the Others, I argue that the ephemerality of the film is a crucial part of its material and representational significance as an archived queer narrative, past and present.
Course Syllabi by Loren Pilcher
Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will t... more Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will teach you how to view, think about, discuss, and write about films in a scholarly context. Films take many forms and are shaped by a wide range of cultural conditions and perspectives. In this course, you will learn how to analyze films and their forms by examining how moving images communicate to audiences in a variety of cinematic contexts. Early in the course, you will learn the vocabulary needed to dissect the parts at work and techniques utilized in individual films. You will then practice applying these terms as you use them to describe and interpret particular shots and sequences in both class discussion and written assignments. Later in the semester, you will begin to think, research, and write about how the form of a particular film reflects larger cultural conditions and perspectives. This course will teach you. . .-the vocabulary needed to understand how a film looks, moves, an...
Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will t... more Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will teach you how to view, think about, discuss, and write about films in a scholarly context. Films take many forms and are shaped by a wide range of cultural conditions and perspectives. In this course, you will learn how to analyze films and their forms by examining how moving images communicate to audiences in a variety of cinematic contexts. Early in the course, you will learn the vocabulary needed to dissect the parts at work and techniques utilized in individual films. You will then practice applying these terms as you use them to describe and interpret films in both class discussion and written assignments. Later in the semester, you will begin to think, research, and write about how the form of a particular film reflects larger cultural conditions and perspectives. This course will teach you. . .-the vocabulary needed to understand how a film looks, moves, and sounds.-to reflect on t...
JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, 2022
During the civil rights era, Georgia’s Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service produced local ... more During the civil rights era, Georgia’s Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service produced local nontheatrical films that imagined the state as rural, masculine, and white. Omitting segregation from direct view, these productions emphasized white men demonstrating respectable masculinity on rural land at a time when many southerners normalized Jim Crow as common sense for southern families and communities. These images still resonate in Georgia’s divided political climate, particularly in the 2018 campaign of Governor Brian Kemp. The racial implications of the extension service’s gendered vision of Georgia become clear in Kemp’s ads, which appeal to similar rural images to mask racist policies and voter suppression.
Genealogy
Movies beyond the scope of Hollywood and entertainment have shaped notions of race in American cu... more Movies beyond the scope of Hollywood and entertainment have shaped notions of race in American culture since the early decades of cinema. A range of nontheatrical sponsors and creators in the US made films to serve practical functions in society—to inform, to organize, to persuade, to promote, etc. The US federal government was a major sponsor of many of these films, which provided American and foreign audiences depictions of race that differed considerably from popular commercial images. For example, Men of the Forest, a film made in 1952 by the United States Information Service focuses on the Hunters, a Black family who owns land and a forestry business in rural Georgia. A documentary of sorts, the film highlights Black life, work, and land ownership in the South in ways not seen in popular feature films of the day. Yet, in the film and others like it, histories of institutional racism are woven into cinematic form and content in ways that are distinct from the entertainment indus...
The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema
This chapter considers the intersection of queer theory and nontheatrical film studies by examini... more This chapter considers the intersection of queer theory and nontheatrical film studies by examining antipornography film Perversion for Profit (1962). Produced and distributed by Citizens for Decent Literature, the film visualizes a range of straight and gay pornographic images by censoring and categorizing them as evidence of societal aberrations. Now in the public domain and streaming on Internet Archive, the film’s pornographic images have been repurposed for new meanings. By analyzing Barbara Hammer’s inclusion of Perversion in her experimental film History Lessons (2000) and a mash-up of the original film titled Come Join the Fun! (2004), shared on Internet Archive, the chapter argues that the Perversion’s value now lies in what queer creators make of its cinematic time and space.
Southern Cultures, 2019
This article analyzes and considers the contemporary significance of Palmour Street: A Study of F... more This article analyzes and considers the contemporary significance of Palmour Street: A Study of Family Life (1950) and All My Babies: A Midwife's Own Story (1952), two nontheatrical films produced for the Georgia Department of Health (GDPH) in the early 1950s and now available online. Made by progressive writer/director George Stoney, the health-focused films feature rare documentary images of black mothers and midwives in rural southern homes and communities. As GDPH productions, they also envision a "useful" South in the midst of institutional modernization during the late Jim Crow era. The two films ultimately represent black women according to their utility in this New South by looking past the larger effects of racial segregation on cinematic and institutional perceptions of health. Today, Palmour Street and All My Babies allow us to confront a screen South that allows us to better imagine and create a region that embraces difference.
Edinburgh German Yearbook 10
On May 24, 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) (1919), “arguably the first fe... more On May 24, 1919, Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others) (1919), “arguably the first feature film with an explicitly homosexual theme” premiered at the Apollo Theater in Berlin (Steakley 1999). The film, directed by Richard Oswald in collaboration with sexologist Magnus Hirschfield, depicted a gay relationship between a violinist and his male student and aimed to educate audiences on both the medical legitimacy of homosexuality and the legal discrimination facing homosexual males under Germany’s Paragraph 175. The controversial Different from the Others was soon banned, however, when censorship was reinstated in Germany in 1920. Relegated to Hirschfeld’s archive where its various prints were likely destroyed when the Nazis rose to power, the film exists today as a single fragment.
Since, activists, archivists, historians, and film scholars have returned to the extant fragment of Different from the Others in attempt to excavate and historically reconstruct its homosexual content. This essay approaches Different from the Others as a queer, material trace of Weimar sexual culture that resists dominant, seemingly neutral modes archiving and historical reconstruction. The first half of the article examines the instability and difficult-to-define nature of the homosexuality depicted in the original Weimar film. I argue that the educative narrative reflects German efforts to understand male homosexuality legally and socially in a modernizing nation. I then move to investigate how Richard Dyer’s foundational reading of the film in his 1990 Now You See It: Studies on Lesbian and Gay Film, Filmmuseum München’s 1999 reconstruction of the film, and LGBT organization Outfest/UCLA’s recent reconstruction-in-progress inevitably engage and resist an imaginative desire for a contemporary LGBTQ “origin” in the fragmented film. Investigating these recent processes surrounding Different from the Others, I argue that the ephemerality of the film is a crucial part of its material and representational significance as an archived queer narrative, past and present.
Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will t... more Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will teach you how to view, think about, discuss, and write about films in a scholarly context. Films take many forms and are shaped by a wide range of cultural conditions and perspectives. In this course, you will learn how to analyze films and their forms by examining how moving images communicate to audiences in a variety of cinematic contexts. Early in the course, you will learn the vocabulary needed to dissect the parts at work and techniques utilized in individual films. You will then practice applying these terms as you use them to describe and interpret particular shots and sequences in both class discussion and written assignments. Later in the semester, you will begin to think, research, and write about how the form of a particular film reflects larger cultural conditions and perspectives. This course will teach you. . .-the vocabulary needed to understand how a film looks, moves, an...
Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will t... more Office: Turlington 4325 Office Hours: MTW 6 and by appointment COURSE DESCRIPTION ENG 2300 will teach you how to view, think about, discuss, and write about films in a scholarly context. Films take many forms and are shaped by a wide range of cultural conditions and perspectives. In this course, you will learn how to analyze films and their forms by examining how moving images communicate to audiences in a variety of cinematic contexts. Early in the course, you will learn the vocabulary needed to dissect the parts at work and techniques utilized in individual films. You will then practice applying these terms as you use them to describe and interpret films in both class discussion and written assignments. Later in the semester, you will begin to think, research, and write about how the form of a particular film reflects larger cultural conditions and perspectives. This course will teach you. . .-the vocabulary needed to understand how a film looks, moves, and sounds.-to reflect on t...