When a film can radically shift our position then it doesn't matter
having semantic quibbles over their naming (film/text/movie). They exist
to entertain and/or educate as artifacts reflecting who or what we are
thinking through.
(Dan, I am presently teaching ethics through Schumacher's "A time to
kill". Horrible movie, great text to promote discussion on morality)
rwm
-----Original Message-----
From: Film-Philosophy Salon [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Shaw, Dan
Sent: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 2:45 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: FILM-PHILOSOPHY medium
________________________________________
Just an aside...this issue about whether a film is a text is at the
heart of the controversy over whether films can
philosophize...presumably if films are texts, they can philosophize..if
not, not. But being a text does not mean that a film has a single
determinate meaning...any more than novels, plays and poems (archetypal
examples of texts) can be so reduced.
But, being a good Heideggerean, I am constantly looking for what
characters and values are shown in a positive light in a film, and in so
doing films can definitely philosophize...
For example, I think that Being John Malkovich does philosophy by
showing the drawbacks of the major theories of personal identity
(personality, memories, bodily identity, etc.) and suggests that only a
Nietzschean theory of the self as will can do justice to the events
therein depicted.
And, by the way, I don't necessarily think that if a film is a text it
is ipso facto a language. But that is another issue.
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