Clark et al,

My comments on cinema, light and representation need more explanation. I
could do this through Levinas. At one point in 'Meaning and Sense' (1972),
he explains that 'the other' can be thought in two different ways:

1) The other is understood within the horizon of the concrete world (as
system of signs and symbols), just as any object in the world, e.g., a text,
is illuminated by its context.

2) The other signifies independently from the meaning attributed to it by
the world. "The other comes to us not only out of context, but also without
mediation; he signifies by himself." ('Meaning and Sense') In this way, the
other is an 'event' that disturbs the order of the world (as horizon of
meaning): it disturbs, precisely, the order of *images* (for
phenomenologists, of course, *all* phenomena are, by definition, already
images).

It is this effect of the irruptive 'non-image' that, paradoxically I know
(!), might lead to interesting ways of thinking about how films re-arrange
'the world' by allowing it to appear. At this moment, I'm not thinking of
any one particular film, but I'm interested in situating this kind of effect
in relation to debates about the nature of the image - which would be
precisely the point at which cinema suddenly opens up an interesting
approach: existing in its being projected, the moving image is not a thing
being illuminated by light (and by extension, by the 'light' of
consciousness), it is a thing that radiates light upon the spectator. By
saying that 'the film *happens* without me', what I mean is that, unlike
with other forms of visual art, we cannot walk around a film, nor can we
change our position relative to what is being shown, nor stop and go back to
a preceding point in narrated time (I'm not talking about video here,
obviously). [Something else off the point that occurs to me: upon entering
the darkened room, we surrender the initiative (but without being totally
passive) - we wait, we expect, we watch... I think that phenomenology has
lots to say about these kinds of experiences.]

Now, to my mind, this is not a matter of claiming precedence for one medium
of transmission over another (e.g., light waves over pressure waves, as in
your example - although I am just talking about the visual arts, I guess),
nor is it somehow claiming that 'film is "true"' (far from it, in fact).
When I said (paraphrasing Deleuze) that the world is not represented but
rather it becomes its own image, I take that to mean simply that film
doesn't signify in the same ways as other image-based forms: what's peculiar
about cinema? Well, for a start, a house in a film is 'really' a house
(usually...!); when a character walks, he/she 'is' walking; a tree hasn't
been painted (once again, usually...!), it 'is' a tree; a battle - well,
that's an interesting one, of course: the battle-scenes in _Saving Private
Ryan_ aren't 'real' battles, but the images we see - give or take the odd
digitally-manipulated amputated body part - did 'take place' (even if we
take into account the discontinuities of the entire shooting-editing
process).

So this isn't a question of truthfulness at all, I would venture. If
anything, it's actually about the construction *of* truth, or reality's
'constructedness', if you like (to return to a key phenomenological theme).
This is something that film is especially well-placed to question.

Doesn't this peculiar status of the cinematic image yield a different
ontological status of the image? Do films *appear* to perception in the same
way as a painting or other plastic artwork? My point, I guess, is that the
cinema creates all kinds of problems for theories of representation - as I
said in the previous email, I'm not claiming that this account provides any
straightforward answers (so no surprises there...).

This isn't doing '*real* philosophy with film', as you asked, but then I
wouldn't know what '*real*' philosophy should be: it just raises some
questions about the nature of the thing we're discussing/studying here. In
fact, we're probably talking with different aims: mine, here, are broadly
aesthetic inquiries about the specificity of film; your focus was on ways of
talking about specific films' philosophical content.

Richard