Ross:
I like your point about the non-pejorative sense of "ideology"...but there is a good deal of systematic philosophy that violates the principles urged by Bordwell and Carroll. Their point seems to be similar to one Nietzsche made a long time ago...that the will to a system (or grand theory) is (or leads to) a lack of integrity. Shoehorning a work into a theory that it doesn't fit violates the integrity both of the work and of the interpreter
All that aside, my question still remains...what is the difference between film theory on the one hand and philosophy of film on the other? I initially was drawn to Dan Barnett's characterization of the difference, but upon reflection it seems a bit too glib. A lot of what film philosophers write is limited to talking about the meaning of the films, and not the meaning of life. One might say that film theory is more concerned with the nature of the medium, while philosophy is more concerned with meaning and significance. But surely this is a matter of degree.
Another way to come at it is to say that film theory mobilizes theories that are not considered philosophical (like psychoanalysis or sociology) to movies...while film-philosophy studies the relevance of distinctly philosophical theories to the understanding and appreciation of films. On this view, a Freudian reading of a film is not philosophical, whereas a Kantian reading would be. I think this might be the most fruitful approach to the issue, although it doesn't solve the problem of where to put structuralism and semiology.
Anyway, I'd love to hear more from other members of the salon on the subject, a defining one for our subdiscipline.
"For beauty is the beginning of terror we are still able to bear, and why we love it so is because it so serenely disdains to destroy us" Rilke's First Duino Elegy
Daniel Shaw
Professor of Philosophy and Film
Lock Haven University
Managing Editor, Film and Philosophy
website: www.lhup.edu/dshaw
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