Just some thoughts in response to the invitation to comment on various
Salon matters
I started reading Cavell's book and, following his not-quite-invitation,
started out of order. I began with the last lecture on Shakespeare's and
Rohmer's Winters Tales - two favourite works, by two philosophically rich
artists. I found Cavell's reading (how can I say) too close, too Eng. Lit.,
too programmatic. Unfairly. Anticipating more of the same in the lectures on
films already visisted in Pursuits of Happiness, I stopped reading. Now,
months later, I have returned to the book after Grant's essay, Cavell's
reply, and my first viewing of Now Voyager (one of the films discussed).
What I am enjoying (still not in order - I must stop that) is Cavell's
small insights, the closeness I did not appreciate before, a nice way of
handling popular early American sound cinema so that is not just providing
examples and illustration of big philosophy but somehow making philosophy
smaller and revealing the films' moral thought at once, and a kind of
rendering of the abstractions of moral philosophy intimate. Things like
reading Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations as moral philosophy; its
opening image of childhood associated with the the children at the end of
Conte d'hiver; a paradox on difference in Plato's Parmenides likened in
humour and word for word to a convoluted dialogue late in The Awful Truth,
a clear statement of Kant's aesthetic value ('the test of which is my
declaration that they provide me with a pleasure I am compelled to share
with others...I judgment I demand that others agree with') used to assert
the 'critical vulnerability' of Now Voyager; a frank statement of surprise
(without disapproval) at the number of people for whom this is their
favourite film and a precise judgment of its 'invitations to campiness'; a
discussion of 'moral standing' and its relation to the ambiguous final
exchange between Charlotte (Davis) and Jerry (Henreid) in Now Voyager, etc,
etc
Grant summarises the book's big themes of perfectionism and the subject's
non-self-identity, but with moral philosophy it is the context and detail
that matter - Cavell for instance discusses this in relation to Aristotles
ethics - and art is all about context and detail. Still to appreciate
Grant's summary I think I need to stop dipping into the book where
curiousity happily takes me.
Ross
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