The Postgraduate Networking Project

Lisa Purse Department of Film, Theatre and Television University of Reading Nationality: British Self-Funded Part-Time Registration: January 2001 Transfer to PhD: January 2003 Completion: January 2006 Director of Studies: Jim Hilier The aim of the PhD To examine contemporary American action cinema's mobilization of the spectacle of the human body, by bringing together a consideration of the representational frameworks of contemporary action cinema with an analysis of the stylistic dynamics of action sequences.  Experience in stages towards the PhD I funded myself through my PhD, undertaking it on a part-time basis over 4 years and 9 months, while at the same time working at an insurance company three days a week and doing some seminar teaching at the University of Reading of between 2 and 4 hours per week.  In terms of the time pressures, this was challenging, and yet I feel the experience has been valuable.  In general, I found that having more demands on my time meant I became more productive – writing and research became focused activities in a particular time-frame, I was sensible about not unnecessarily extending the time spent on preparation for teaching and conferences, I worked my set number of hours at the insurance company, and still managed to have some free time in which to relax!  I appreciated the opportunity to meet different types of people in different environments, and have found that the skills I developed in the insurance company have been valuable in the academic setting, and vice versa.  Indeed, in 2003 I co-organised a postgraduate conference at the University of Reading, directly drawing upon organization and administration skills acquired at the insurance company.  About a year into the PhD, I started to attend and present papers at conferences, which gave me a much broader sense of the issues at stake in my field of study, provided opportunities to share experiences with other postgrads, and gave me experience in debating critical issues, verbal presentations, and enhanced my writing skills.  The amount of useful information you absorb just by listening in such conferences cannot be underestimated.  In addition, it was around the same time that I began to do some part-time teaching in film at my institution, which was invaluable in helping me enhance my understanding of certain theoretical models, critical debates, and film history.  My thesis was originally imagined as an examination of how the body functions as a spectacle in contemporary mainstream American cinema, across a range of genres, and the implications for the spectator.  This was a broad area, whose limits I would need eventually to set; my proposal had mapped out the intended central focus of the thesis, but I did not have a chapter-by-chapter structure in place at the beginning of the process.  Given this sense that the exact parameters of the study had yet to be confirmed, the first phase of the PhD was – importantly – exploratory.  The purpose was to develop a stronger sense of the areas of existing theory and critical writing that my thesis related to, and the areas of contemporary US cinema I would be focusing on.  To do this, I researched the existing literature on key critical issues, and presented my findings verbally in supervisions or in short pieces (about 1500 words) which were then discussed with my supervisor, in order to identify appropriate areas for further research and study.  Since my thesis would involve the close textual analysis of key 'case study' texts, I also produced short pieces on each of the films I was intending to write on, and again these were reflected upon within supervisions.  Certain of the films I considered in these early stages did not appear in the final thesis, an indication of the way in which the thesis can evolve during the process of writing.  I then researched and wrote two chapters on films I had felt would clearly fit the parameters of the study.  Over the years of my PhD, the University's formal monitoring requirements changed, and it is worth saying that if I were starting a PhD now, it would be more difficult to work in this initially exploratory way I have described.    After an exploratory phase that had taken a year, and two first-draft chapters completed over a further year, I reached an impasse in terms of the structure and scope of the study.  I was struggling to reconcile the contrasting representational strategies of the films in a methodologically sound way, particularly since in my analysis of each film I found myself drawing on different theoretical and critical frameworks.  Just at the point when my structure should have been taking shape, I felt less and less confident about what that structure should look like.  I realised I needed to set clearer, and more restricted boundaries for the scope of the thesis, while remaining true to its initial impulse.  The solution was to focus the study on one specific genre of contemporary cinema, in a precisely defined time period.  This meant completely discarding one of my existing chapters, a decision I found difficult but which, once made, allowed the rest of the study to take shape much more quickly. At this point (2 years in), I was able to sketch a more detailed chapter-by-chapter structure for the first time, and produced a set of bullet-points representing a draft introduction.  Thereafter, the researching and writing of chapters was a more assured process.  By three years in, I had completed a further two chapters; three more chapters had been completed at the end of 4 and a half years, including a fully written introductory chapter.  In the final 3 months I re-read and re-wrote the thesis, and wrote the conclusion.  In the earlier years of the PhD, I met with my supervisor on a monthly basis, but as the PhD progressed the interval between meetings extended to 6 weeks, and sometimes 8 weeks.  Most meetings were an hour and a half.  Prior to the final re-write of the thesis, we had a more extended meeting about how the thesis was taking shape as a whole.  What was incredibly useful in the last 18 months of the PhD was a timetable for completion – a set end-date to aim for, with target completion dates for the chapters that were still to write.  Setting this out on paper was motivational, in that it was challenging but achievable, but also kept me on target – it was a timetable that I did keep to.  Support The Department of Film, Theatre and Television were extremely supportive throughout process of the PhD.  A key opportunity they were able to extend to me was part-time teaching work, the fees from which helped me to pay my annual course fee.  As an annual assessment process, the Department runs an Annual Review day for postgraduate students, at which they must present an aspect of their current research to fellow postgraduates and staff.  This was incredibly useful for airing methodological and structural problems, enhanced my ability to think critically about my own ideas, and gave an opportunity to receive feedback on my work.  Three times a term I also attended an informal film seminar group for postgraduates and staff of the Department, which developed my analytical skills and offered an important way to meet other postgraduates.  There is a strong and friendly postgraduate community at Reading, and several of my fellow postgraduates have shared their own experiences of the thesis-writing process, such as tips on research methods and resources, articles or chapters they have encountered that might be of interest, the writing-up process, and so on.  The Department was also able to cover the cost of purchasing key film texts, if they were not already available in the Department's extensive film archive, and also ensured that key written texts were available in the University library. What you would suggest to a new PhD student... In both your research and your writing, set yourself small, achievable goals with specific timescales, rather than trying to take on everything at once. And select a filing process (and related bibliographic software) at the start - this will be a valuable time-saver throughout the PhD, enabling you to quickly locate and refer to references you have collated. Abstract of the Thesis: The Body as Spectacle in Contemporary American Action Cinema The main aim of the thesis is to examine contemporary American action cinema's mobilisation of the body-in-action as spectacle.  While functioning as an account of the changes and continuities in the representational framework of the action movie that have occurred since the 1980s and early to mid 1990s, the study also counters the tendency in current critical writing to forego a detailed consideration of the body and focus instead on proposing narrative and spectacle as competing terms.  In contrast to such critical positions, this study interjects a more body-centred analytical approach into the current debates in this area, arguing that the body as spectacle is central to action cinema's pleasures, its narrative processes, themes and representational strategies, its engagement of the spectator, and its visual aesthetics.  To this end close textual analysis is applied in combination with a range of theoretical frameworks to a selection of film texts released between 1998 and 2005: The Matrix, Minority Report, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, Blade, Hulk, the Spider-Man films, and the X-Men films.  Building on existing writing on 1980s and 1990s action cinema, the study examines the ways in which issues of representation, of gender, race, technology, physicality, empowerment, and the cultural anxieties they mobilise, are worked out across the action hero's body on the levels of the thematic and the visual, creating opportunities for both reactionary and radical interactions with dominant representational hierarchies and the ideological positions they speak for. In proposing the importance of the visual impact of the potent action body, the study investigates the stylistic choices made in depicting that body, and their relationship to the sensorial nature of the spectators identification with the physicality, exertion and exhilaration of the body in action. Publications and Papers Purse, L. 'The New Spatial Dynamics of the Bullet-Time Effect', in Geoff King (ed), The Spectacle of the Real: From Hollywood to Reality TV and Beyond (Bristol and Portland, OR: Intellect, 2005), pp.151-160. Current Job In September 2005 I was appointed as a full-time lecturer in Film Studies at the Department of Film, Theatre and Television.  I teach Critical Practice in film and video, post-classical US mainstream and independent cinema, early cinema, surrealism, and textual analysis.  I also teach film theory and textual analysis on an interdisciplinary Masters Degree in Body and Performance. Contact details Lisa Purse Lecturer in Film Department of Film, Theatre and Television The University of Reading Bulmershe Court Reading RG6 1HY Email: l.v.purse@reading.ac.uk