Teaching the film Chinatown should be challenging given its depth, complexity, and lack of resolution, but students often walk away from a screening of the film saying the opposite: “That takes care of that” and “Now we know what happened.” Examining Chinatown opens up critical debate and discussion in my classroom because of the very misunderstandings and pat interpretations we make as viewers.1 Training students to see what lurks on the margins of this and other films and to think critically about the cinematic choices made in their construction causes them to be more critically aware not only as consumers of film but also of the tightly knit sociopolitical issues associated with trauma.2 “Who doesn’t know how to talk about movies? Of course, I’m going to get an easy ‘A’!” I hear some version of this mistaken statement in each film class I teach. Students often come in with a particularly problematic set of assumptions about what it means to be in a class dedicated to film, assumptions that erase history, theory, and methodology from our study. They frequently lack the cultural capital assumed in any study of classic Hollywood filmmaking, including a basic understanding of genre, but are overly confident in their knowledge base. Inversely, when I teach trauma narratives, students arrive terrified of how difficult and complex any examination of trauma must necessarily be. They are intrigued by but petrified of the word “trauma,” which is used in high frequency today but often goes without definition or context.

中文翻译：

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“尽可能少”：创伤美学与唐人街案例

鉴于电影的深度、复杂性和清晰度的缺乏，教授电影唐人街应该具有挑战性，但学生们经常在电影放映结束时说相反的：“这就解决了”和“现在我们知道发生了什么。” 考察唐人街在我的课堂上开启了批判性的辩论和讨论，因为我们作为观众所做的非常误解和轻描淡写的解释。 1 训练学生看到这部电影和其他电影的边缘潜伏着什么，并批判性地思考他们在电影中所做的电影选择。建构使他们不仅作为电影的消费者更加批判性地意识到与创伤相关的紧密联系的社会政治问题。2 “谁不知道如何谈论电影？当然，我会得到一个简单的'A'！” 我在我教的每个电影课上都听到了这种错误陈述的某些版本。学生们经常会提出一套特别有问题的假设，即在专门讨论电影的课程中意味着什么，这些假设会从我们的研究中抹去历史、理论和方法论。他们经常缺乏对经典好莱坞电影制作的任何研究所假定的文化资本，包括对类型的基本了解，但对自己的知识基础过于自信。相反，当我教授创伤叙事时，学生们害怕任何创伤检查必然是多么困难和复杂。他们对“创伤”这个词很感兴趣但又吓坏了，“创伤”这个词今天使用频率很高，但通常没有定义或上下文。和我们研究的方法论。他们经常缺乏对经典好莱坞电影制作的任何研究所假定的文化资本，包括对类型的基本了解，但对自己的知识基础过于自信。相反，当我教授创伤叙事时，学生们害怕任何创伤检查必然是多么困难和复杂。他们对“创伤”这个词很感兴趣但又吓坏了，“创伤”这个词今天使用频率很高，但通常没有定义或上下文。和我们研究的方法论。他们经常缺乏对经典好莱坞电影制作的任何研究所假定的文化资本，包括对类型的基本了解，但对自己的知识基础过于自信。相反，当我教授创伤叙事时，学生们害怕任何创伤检查必然是多么困难和复杂。他们对“创伤”这个词很感兴趣但又吓坏了，“创伤”这个词今天使用频率很高，但通常没有定义或上下文。