There's where I lose you mike, in that it seems to me that the point of the film is in the film...especially given the evidence that this is what Coppola was trying to do (among other things). How can you say it's not part of the film when I would argue that the students that just see it as a dramatic narrative don't appreciate what it means (until, hopefully, you explain it to them).
Just because they don't see it doesn't mean that it isn't in the film.,
"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
________________________________
From: Film-Philosophy Salon on behalf of Frank, Michael
Sent: Fri 9/12/2008 5:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Is Film a particularly philosophical medium?
dan writes:
Consider the following example: Coppola's The Conversation. If there is a point to the film, it is that the meaning of language is contextual, that we hear language as we expect to hear it, and that when our expectations change we hear things differently. One of the articles in the forthcoming Film and Philosophy edition argues that Coppola's masterpiece gives good reason to recognize that all meaning is contextual, as well as revealing how our expectations shape our experience.
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. . . and i absolutely agree, except for one small detail . . . he says "if there is a point to the film" and the very idea of a point is not - and cannot be - represented in the film . . . when i watch the movie i see much of what he sees . . . but when my students watch the movie they understand it to be not about contextual meaning but about some guy whose job is spying on people and who has some kind of breakdown and ends up playing the saxophone
in other words the film illustrates, exemplifies, perhaps even provides compelling evidence of the point - but the point is some verbal/conceptual [and, let me say it, philosophical] thing that is over or under or through the film but in some says not actually IN it
let me add one thing: when my students read plato or descartes or austin they immediately realize that there's a point even if they don't know quite what it is . . . so it's not that they're unable to recognize concepts and "points" . . . it's that these philosophical thingies are IN ordinary language in a way that they are not IN movies
no???
mike
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