Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides 2019005352, 9781138351691, 9780429435157

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Philosophy and Film

This volume collects 20 original essays on the philosophy of film. It uniquely brings together scholars working across a range of philosophical traditions and academic disciplines to broaden and advance debates on film and philosophy. The book includes contributions from a number of prominent philosophers of film including Noël Carroll, Christopher Falzon, Deborah Knight, Paisley Livingston, Robert Sinnerbrink, Malcolm Turvey and Thomas E. Wartenberg. While the topics explored by the contributors are diverse, there are a number of thematic threads that connect them. Overall, the book seeks to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy of film in fruitful ways. Moving to the individual essays, Parts I and III offer novel takes on the philosophical value and the nature of film. Part II focuses on the film as philosophy debate. Part IV covers cinematic experience, while Part V includes interpretations of individual films that touch on questions of artificial intelligence, race and film, and cinema’s biopolitical potential. Finally, the last part proposes new avenues for future research on the moving image beyond film. This book will appeal to a broad range of scholars working in film studies, theory and philosophy. Christina Rawls teaches Philosophy at Roger Williams University, USA. Diana Neiva is a Ph.D candidate of Philosophy at the University of Minho, Portugal. Steven S. Gouveia is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minho, Portugal. He is the co-editor of Perception, Cognition, and Aesthetics (forthcoming, Routledge).

Routledge Research in Aesthetics

The Aesthetics of Videogames Edited by Jon Robson and Grant Tavinor Tragedy and Redress in Western Literature A Philosophical Perspective Richard Gaskin The Pleasure of Pictures Pictorial Experience and Aesthetic Appreciation Edited by Jérôme Pelletier and Alberto Voltolini Thinking with Images An Enactivist Aesthetics John M Carvalho A Film-Philosophy of Ecology and Enlightenment Rupert Read Fictive Narrative Philosophy How Fiction Can Act as Philosophy Michael Boylan A Philosophy of the Art School Michael Newall The Aesthetics of Self-Becoming How Art Forms Empower Paul Crowther Philosophy and Film Bridging Divides Edited by Christina Rawls, Diana Neiva and Steven S. Gouveia For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Aesthetics/book-series/RRA

Philosophy and Film Bridging Divides Edited by Christina Rawls, Diana Neiva and Steven S. Gouveia

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rawls, Christina, editor. | Neiva, Diana editor. | Gouveia, Steven S., editor. Title: Philosophy and film : bridging divides / edited by Christina Rawls, Diana Neiva and Steven S. Gouveia. Description: New York : Taylor & Francis, 2019. | Series: Routledge research in aesthetics ; 10 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019005352 | ISBN 9781138351691 (hardback) Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Philosophy. Classification: LCC PN1995 .P49925 2019 | DDC 791.4301—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005352 ISBN: 978-1-138-35169-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-43515-7 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex Covantage, LLC

Contents

Prefaceviii THOMAS E. WARTENBERG

Acknowledgmentsx Introduction

1

PART I

The Nature of Film9   1 (Collapsed) Seeing-In and the (Im-)Possibility of Progress in Analytic Philosophy (of Film)

11

MALCOLM TURVEY

  2 The World Viewed and the World Lived: Stanley Cavell and Film as the Moving Image of Skepticism

26

JÔNADAS TECHIO

  3 The Morph-Image: Four Forms of Post-Cinema

49

STEEN LEDET CHRISTIANSEN

  4 Deleuze’s Cronosigns

64

SUSANA VIEGAS

PART II

The Film as Philosophy Debate79   5 The Bold Thesis Retried: On Cinema as Philosophy PAISLEY LIVINGSTON

81

vi  Contents   6 Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment: Some Challenges and Opportunities

92

TOM MCCLELLAND

  7 Are There Definite Objections to Film as Philosophy? Metaphilosophical Considerations

116

DIANA NEIVA

  8 Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience

135

DAVID DAVIES

PART III

The Philosophical Value of Film157   9 Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film

159

CHRISTOPHER FALZON

10 Filmmaking as Self-Writing: Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963)

174

ROBERTO MORDACCI

11 Film and Ethics

185

ROBERT SINNERBRINK

PART IV

Cinematic Experience207 12 Movies, Narration and the Emotions

209

NOËL CARROLL

13 Predictive Processing and the Experimental Solution for the Paradox of Fiction

222

DINA MENDONÇA

14 The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures: A Phenomenological Approach to Cinema

239

HANNA TRINDADE

PART V

Interpreting Cinematic Works265 15 The Blade Runner Question: From Philosophy to Myth DEBORAH KNIGHT

267

Contents vii 16 Race, Bodies and Lived Realities in Get Out and Black Panther

281

MARY K. BLOODSWORTH-LUGO

17 Transnational Biopolitical Motives in Postmodern Cinema: Žižek and Badiou on Udi Aloni’s Forgiveness and Local Angel

298

OANA ŞERBAN

PART VI

Further Debates317 18 Cinema and Television: The Art and Industry of Joint Works

319

INÊS REBANDA COELHO

19 Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy

342

HUNTER VAUGHAN

20 Metaphysical Alter-Egos: Matheson, Dunne and the View From Somewhere

356

JOHN Ó MAOILEARCA

Contributors374 Authors / Filmmakers382 Films / TV Series384 Subject Index386

Preface

When I first started teaching the philosophy of film in 1980, there was not a great deal of philosophical literature on the cinema. The book that stood out at that time was Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. A central aspect of that work was a traditional one best captured by the term “film aesthetics.” This approach treated film as an art form and asked traditional philosophical questions about its nature. In particular, to echo Cavell’s title, questions of ontology arose about the precise nature of the object of the film aesthetics, that is to say, film itself. At the heart of Cavell’s book was the attempt to validate a revised version of the film theorist and critic André Bazin’s claim that film was an essentially realist medium in virtue of its use of photography. A second aspect of Cavell’s project was recognizing that certain films actually addressed questions about the nature of this artistic medium itself. Cavell’s view was that certain films actually engage in the philosophical project of the philosophy of film in virtue of a self-reflexive strategy. Thus, a film like Renoir’s Rules of the Game, which appears to be about the dissolution of the pre-World War II French aristocracy, is, for Cavell, equally or even more importantly a reflection on the nature of the cinema and its difference from theater. When Octave (played by Renoir himself) appears outside the chateau, Cavell takes the scene to capture an understanding of theater that distinguishes that art form from film. In his later work on film, Cavell concentrates on a specific philosophical issue that he believes films to be reflecting upon. He interprets films within the genres he calls “the Hollywood comedy of remarriage” and “the melodramas of the unknown woman” as making a contribution to philosophy. The central philosophical issue that occupied Cavell at the time was skepticism, most centrally what analytic philosophers call “the problem of other minds.” If we have special access to our own mental states via introspection, the argument goes, there is a problem about how we know whether others have minds like our own, for our access to their mental states appears to be inferential, based, say, on their behavior, and hence less certain, more subject to doubt.

Preface ix The idea of films actually doing philosophy has become a significant area for discussions of film and philosophy, though there has been a broadening of the issues films are seen to raise. Going under different titles depending on one’s philosophical orientation—film as philosophy and film-philosophy being the two most common—this area of inquiry has seen a great deal of scholarly activity. Indeed, a debate has been ongoing about whether films are actually capable of doing philosophy, as Cavell and others maintain. I focus on these two areas of philosophical discussion of film as a way of understanding the various concerns raised by the contributions in Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides. The excellent chapters in this volume make contributions to our understanding of two main areas of philosophical investigation of film: film aesthetics and film as philosophy. It includes contributions from theorists working within the continental tradition of the philosophy of film. Many working in this tradition have been influenced by the work of the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. A number of them seek to develop and update Deleuze’s influential division of films into the movement and the time image, a dichotomy he sees as characterizing pre- and post-World War II cinema. One of the many virtues of this anthology is its inclusion of contributions from both analytic and continental philosophers of film. Because the fundamental assumptions of these two traditions of reflections on film as an artistic medium with important connections to philosophy are so different, there has not been sufficient cross-fertilization between them. Perhaps, this volume can encourage this to occur. The reader of this excellent volume has the opportunity to get a good sense of the current state of the philosophical discussion of film, to see how far this field has progressed since the early days that I have described. The uniformly informative and provocative contributions to it will certainly move forward the discussion of the philosophy of film. Thomas E. Wartenberg

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to take a moment to thank  Sérgio Dias Branco,  Bernhard Sylla,  Emanuele Mariani and Susana Viegas for scientific support. We would also like to thank Jim Bahoh and  Marilynn Lawrence for their expertise and support. We especially would like to thank  Thomas E. Wartenberg for the preface and all contributors for trusting this project and contributing to the debates, all of whom have helped bridge the divide between philosophy and film, analytic and continental, in constructive, affective, intellectually informed and creative ways. Finally, we would like to thank  Andrew Weckenmann at Routledge Press for also trusting the project and the three editors.

Introduction

In Stephen Mulhall’s On Film we find the idea that films can be “philosophy in action.”1 Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides is philosophy in action, and it stirs. It’s a way to currently think through several contemporary and novel movements in film-philosophy studies. It is about the power of film to impress, to leave impressions, to not only affect the viewer’s mind and body through the moving image, but also leave lasting impressions upon the actors, directors, writers and crew of any good film. With film, in contrast to photography or painting, it is the motion we enjoy, the actions of the actors, the perfect slow motion shot of lighting from shadow to dawn, or the music. Motion pictures are not composed of only images, but many more affective elements. Sounds too are in motion, and even the silence of an important moment can affect our otherwise moving eyes, beating hearts and minds flowing with ideas. We are in motion, and the moving images of film affect us with tremendous strength and power. Philosophy can do the same. In addition to their more postmodern and Anthropocene aspects, the essays found in this anthology stray from grand (general) theories, but not without addressing some of the common, overarching philosophical questions worthy of address nonetheless, such as what is art, what is an author, what is a film, what does it mean to think philosophically using film or what does it mean to philosophize? The debates in this anthology lean well on novel contributions in the phenomenology of the cinematic experience too. Contained here are both established and new scholars from around the world, authors and philosophers who are diversely represented and rigorously lucid. In this respect, Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides includes a diverse display of authorship that crosses gender, nationalities, cultures and theoretical frameworks. The past few decades have seen a flurry of new anthologies and individual studies of the philosophy of film, philosophy and film, filmphilosophy and film as philosophy. These discussions are in their infancy even though we now have several decades of work to consider.

2  Introduction Philosophy and Film: Bridging Divides advances a theoretical framework for managing what the philosophy and film relationships are or can be. This area of research is more than the traditional philosophy of film as a “philosophy of X” questioning “what cinema is” alone. What we encounter and experience as a moving image continues to be determined philosophically and otherwise, and vice versa. This is an anthology dedicated to film and philosophy broadly conceived, and through different philosophical traditions, it poses questions about the specific relationships between film and philosophy, whether on specific questions about the philosophical value films can have, the nature of moving-image, the “film as philosophy” possibility, the cinematic experience and phenomenology, the relationship between films and politics, or the nature of cinema as an artform. In this anthology you will not find superficial divides and seemingly opposing methodologies, but rather a bridge for continentals and analytics, as well as between film and philosophy. It is an exciting time for this multidisciplinary discipline, and this book provides a perfect example. With this intention of thinking about film and philosophy in a broad sense with no barriers, there are new and original contributions in this anthology, and some of them are the result of previous engagements with the subjects at hand, thus also continuing contemporary debates while cooking new questions and offering novel insights.

Part I: The Nature of Film This anthology begins with one, if not the foundational, subject that relates film and philosophy: the nature of film. In Chapter 1, “(Collapsed) Seeing-In and the (Im-)Possibility of Progress in Analytic Philosophy (of Film),” Malcolm Turvey asks what it is that we “see” in a fictional film. Turvey confronts the theories that Robert Hopkins and Murray Smith offer based on Richard Wollheim’s theory of “seeing-in,” and points to problems in both of them. He also addresses the progress or lack thereof in analytic philosophy of film, based on David Chalmers’ thoughts about progress in philosophy. In Chapter 2, “The World Viewed and the World Lived: Stanley Cavell and Film as the Moving Image of Skepticism,” Jônadas Techio explores Stanley Cavell’s well-known argument about film’s relation to modern skepticism, arguing that our modern assumptions of a detached spectator may be wrong since our experience of movies and photographs can remind us of aspects of our ordinary relation to the world. In Chapter 3, “The Morph-Image: Four Forms of Post-Cinema,” Steen Ledet Christiansen argues that new media machines of post-cinema are able to produce thoughts that go beyond the ones identified in The Intelligence of a Machine (Jean Epstein, 2014),2 including four forms: animacies, capture, flows and plastic temporalities. He argues that a

Introduction 3 better proposal to understand a third kind of image other than Deleuze’s movement-image and time-image is the “morph-image.” In Chapter 4, “Deleuze’s Cronosigns,” Susana Viegas explores Gilles Deleuze’s distinction between the concepts of Chronos and Aiôn in The Logic of Sense (1969)3 to better understand his seminal works in filmphilosophy Cinéma 1 and 2,4 in order to question how these books contributed to his philosophy of time. She argues that movement and time-images create “chronosigns” (chronological time), but that only the “cinematographic crystal-image creates cronosigns,” non-chronological time (or pure time).

Part II: The Film as Philosophy Debate This part is dedicated to the ongoing debate around the film as philosophy (FAP) possibility, and we start it with one of the main figures in this debate in the Anglo-American context: Paisley Livingston. In Chapter 5, “The Bold Thesis Retried: On Cinema as Philosophy,” Livingston goes back to his proposed “bold thesis”5 to defend FAP. Here, Livingston suggests that there are different theses about “cinematic philosophy” that are defined by different variables and asks what of these are best supported by arguments and examples. He argues that the less exciting examples are easy to argue for, but the most exciting examples of cinematic philosophy that rely on a strong “bold thesis” are harder to justify, as he also responds to criticisms that have been made against his proposed bold thesis that he deems to be just weaker versions of a cinematic philosophy thesis. In Chapter 6, “Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment: Some Challenges and Opportunities,” Tom McClelland enters in the discussion of whether films can be thought experiments, and what such a hypothesis involves, namely the role of thought experiments in philosophy and its problems. He argues that “filmic thought experiments qualify as philosophical when they engage with a philosophical subject matter.” He also tackles the issue of whether filmic thought experiments can ever have epistemic value, faced with several concerns that he takes as opportunities to argue filmic thought experiments can actually be better equipped than academic ones to avoid certain shortcomings. In Chapter 7, “Are There Definite Objections to Film as Philosophy? Metaphilosophical Considerations,” Diana Neiva also focuses on the idea that films can be philosophical thought experiments and takes a look into the main objections that have been made against film as philosophy in general, and cinematic thought experiments as philosophy, especially those made by Bruce Russell6 and Murray Smith,7 and explores the metaphilosophical grounding of such objections. Neiva makes attempts to respond to these objections and concludes that their metaphilosophical grounds are implausible.

4  Introduction In Chapter  8, “Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience,” David Davies continues the discussion around the “film as philosophy” category and offers a new idea about exactly how films can philosophize. He discusses Livingston’s conditions for a bold thesis, putting forward two other conditions to defend a unique version of film as philosophy: a suitable understanding of what cinematic means are and how these are the ones that articulate the advance in philosophical understanding, and that this advance in philosophical understanding “must occur in the course of our experiential engagement with the work.”

Part III: The Philosophical Value of Film In this part we continue with the topic of how films can have some kind of philosophical value. In Chapter  9, “Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film,” Christopher Falzon also focuses on the relationship between film and philosophy via thought experiments. He argues that thinking about the similarities between film and thought experiments of philosophical texts subsumes film to a philosophical thought experiment, which misses what “film itself contributes to the proceedings.” Thus, he argues that it may be more interesting to see how the cinematic medium can allow for other kinds of experimentation beyond traditional philosophical thought experiments found in texts. He also argues that this opening of films as different kinds of experiments points to a “Foucauldean idea of philosophy as a practice of thought that transforms the thinker” through experiences. In Chapter  10, “Filmmaking as Self-Writing: Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963),” Roberto Mordacci argues for a specific way that films can philosophize. As he notes, Thomas E. Wartenberg had argued that films can philosophize through illustration, thought experimentation and counter-argumentation.8 He argues that there may be another way: “selfwriting.” This goes beyond autobiography, constituting “the examination of one’s actions and thoughts in a constant imaginary discussion with an observer.” An example he identifies is Michel de Montaigne in Essais. Thus, his argument is that this can also be done by a filmmaker through a film, and, in particular, he argues that Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) is an example of this kind of philosophical self-writing. In Chapter 11, “Film and Ethics,” Robert Sinnerbrink argues that cinema can approach ethics alongside philosophy, “exploring how certain filmmakers can be understood as engaging in ethics through film.” As an exploration of how cinema has a distinct way of thinking through ethical concerns, Sinnerbrink calls this the “ethical turn.” Sinnerbrink proposes to examine four different relations between ethics and cinema: ethics in cinema, ethics of cinematic representation, ethics of cinema as a cultural medium expressing moral beliefs, social values or ideology, and the aesthetic dimension of cinema, or the aesthetic experience of cinema as a way of evoking ethical experience and opening up ethical horizons.

Introduction 5

Part IV: Cinematic Experience In this part, the relationship between philosophy and film is addressed through the lens of what it is to experience watching a film. In Chapter 12, “Movies, Narrations and the Emotions,” Noël Carroll argues that his theory of erotetic narration9 (question driven narration) can be coordinated with his theory of criterial prefocusing of audience emotions.10 Although the method of question driven philosophy originated in the West with Socrates, Carroll’s main argument is specific to philosophy of aesthetics and the filmic experience. He argues that the criterial prefocusing makes the audience emotionally attach themselves or antipathize with certain characters, generating narrative macro and micro questions that are intensified by the viewers’ wishes regarding those questions. In Chapter 13, “Predictive Processing and the Experimental Solution for the Paradox of Fiction,” Dina Mendonça tries to give an answer to the paradox of fiction, with an “experimental solution.” This solution takes from the predictive processing theory of the mind in philosophy and some circles of cognitive science to explain the connection between emotions we feel alongside fiction, and those felt in daily life. Mendonça uses Ronaldo de Sousa’s notion of paradigm scenarios,11 and argues that that “fiction functions as a type of emotional laboratory where emotions are explored and tested.” She also advances two modifications to the make-believe theory. In Chapter 14, “The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures: A Phenomenological Approach to Cinema,” Hanna Trindade argues that cinema attempts to recreate human experiences, “visually expressing the relation we entertain with our reality,” and that if films are an expression of experience (of the filmmakers) through experience (of the spectators), then phenomenology can help us understand cinema and cinema phenomenology. Thus, Trindade uses a Husserlian approach to understand how the experience of a film is universal, by analyzing two acts of consciousness with which we access films: perception and imagination.

Part V: Interpreting Cinematic Works In this part, we find three chapters with interpretations of specific films. In Chapter  15, “The Blade Runner Question: From Philosophy to Myth,” well-known philosopher of film studies Deborah Knight argues that Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) and Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017) pose the central question of what it is to be human, or the personal identity question, but each version of these films contains different kinds of developments: in the first, there is a philosophical answer, and in the latter a religious one. Knight argues that both films also pose the question of what it is to be female, and that in the first Rachel is the femme fatale, but in the later Ana and Joi symbolize the tropes of virgin and whore, thus the two films do not move beyond familiar stereotypes.

6  Introduction In Chapter 16, “Race, Bodies and Lived Realities in Get Out and Black Panther,” Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo argues that both films recently released, Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) and Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018), as written and directed by black filmmakers, can convey to philosophers lessons about race and lived bodily realities, especially in the American context. Bloodsworth-Lugo also argues that philosophers of film should take into consideration the analyses of these films that were written by black writers and non-philosophers in online articles and reviews, in order to understand the racial and broader significance of both films. In Chapter  17, “Transnational Biopolitical Motives in Postmodern Cinema: Žižek and Badiou on Udi Aloni’s Forgiveness and Local Angel,” Oana Şerban, one of our newcomers to film-philosophy studies, argues that cinema has the power to make biopolitical critique (in the sense of Foucault’s considerations about biolitics). Şerban traces the philosophical and Jewish heritage influence on Udi Aloni’s films, specifically Local Angel (2006) and Forgiveness (2002), and explains how Žižek and Badiou’s critiques of Aloni’s works can be subsumed to a biopolitical project, specifically engaged with concepts like radical grace, forgiveness or new identity.

Part VI: Further Debates This part furthers the debates around film and philosophy with diverse topics that go from questions concerning authorship to new debates in film-philosophy. In Chapter 18, “Cinema and Television: The Art and Industry of Joint Works,” Inês Rebanda Coelho, another newcomer to television studies, asks whom the author of a television or cinematic work is. She evaluates three dominant theories that have been previously advanced in order to respond to these questions: the nature of solo authorship, “death of the author” and joint authorship. Her argument is that the latter is the most plausible one, and that films and even TV shows are actually joint works, i.e., created by several people who have influence over the artistic result since they influence language, aesthetics, narrative and diegesis. In Chapter  19, “Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy,” Hunter Vaughan argues that screen studies and philosophy and the intersection between them should incorporate concerns for the nonhuman natural world. Furthermore, he argues that the philosophical foundations of the Cartesian subject and utilitarian logic of new digital forms of mediating the environment are problems of social inequality, psychological wiring and environmental crisis. Vaughan’s essay is uniquely interdisciplinary in this way. In Chapter 20, “Metaphysical Alter-Egos: Matheson, Dunne, and the View From Somewhere” John Ó Maoilearca addresses the subject of

Introduction 7 time-travel both in philosophy and in film, particularly in J. W. Dunne’s metaphysics of time,12 and in the novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson (1975) and its screenplay Somewhere in Time by Jeannot Szwarc (1980). Maoilearca argues that although Matheson’s ideas about time, attention and identity have their origin in Dunne’s philosophy, his work is not just an illustration or implementation of them. On the contrary, in the novel and the film there is a resistance of Dunne’s views, so they are not reflections or representations of either, but refractions. It is our wish that this will be a pleasant and fundamental reading of the ideas presented in this collective book. Our anthology covers different perspectives on the various subjects present in the film and philosophy debates and studies. Thus, we hope that this book will awaken the critical spirit in its readers, and stir the debates further.

Notes 1 Stephen Mulhall, On Film (London: Routledge, 2001). 2 Jean Epstein, The Intelligence of a Machine, trans. Christophe Wall-Romana (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2014). 3 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (London: Athlone Press, 1990). 4 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Continuum, 2009); Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (London: Continuum, 2008). 5 Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 1–18. 6 Bruce Russell, “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” Film and Philosophy, Special Issue on Woody Allen (2002): 163–67. 7 Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 34–42; Murray Smith, “Film, Philosophy, and the Varieties of Artistic Value.” in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, ed. Katherine Thomson-Jones (New York: Routledge, 2016), 182–99. 8 Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007). 9 Noël Carroll, “Narrative Closure.” in Art in Three Dimensions, ed. Noël Carroll (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 355–72. 10 Noël Carroll, “Art. Narrative and Emotion.” in Beyond Aesthetics, ed. Noël Carroll (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 215–34. 11 Ronaldo de Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987). 12 John W. Dunne, An Experiment with Time (London: Faber and Faber, 1927).

References Carroll, Nöel. “Art. Narrative, and Emotion.” In Beyond Aesthetics, edited by Noël Carroll, 215–34. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Carroll, Noël. “Narrative Closure.” In Art in Three Dimensions, edited by Noël Carroll, 355–72. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

8  Introduction Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. De Sousa, Ronaldo. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. London: Continuum, 2009. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: Continuum, 2008. Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. London: Athlone Press, 1990. Dunne, John W. An Experiment with Time. London: Faber and Faber, 1927. Epstein, Jean. The Intelligence of a Machine. Translated by Christophe WallRomana. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2014. Livingston, Paisley. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 11–18. Mulhall, Stephen. On Film. London: Routledge, 2001. Russell, Bruce. “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” Film and Philosophy, Special Issue on Woody Allen (2002): 163–67. Smith, Murray. “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 34–42. Smith, Murray. “Film, Philosophy, and the Varieties of Artistic Value.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, edited by Katherine Thomson-Jones, 182–99. New York: Routledge, 2016. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007.

Part I

The Nature of Film

1 (Collapsed) Seeing-In and the (Im-)Possibility of Progress in Analytic Philosophy (of Film) Malcolm Turvey One of the most fundamental questions analytic philosophers have sought to answer about cinema is: what do we see when we look at a motion picture?1 A related but narrower question is: why do we tend to say that we “see” characters and other fictional entities in movies given that fictions by definition don’t exist? Film theorists have often answered both questions by arguing that we experience an illusion when viewing films, although illusion theories come in many shapes and sizes. What the philosopher Robert Hopkins calls classical illusionism asserts that we seem to see directly the events movies depict rather than a pictorial representation of these events.2 However, analytic philosophers have almost universally rejected classical illusionism by claiming that we do not react to films in the way that we would if it appeared we were face to face with the things they portray.3 We do not, for example, flee the movie theater when a dangerous alien is on the loose in a science fiction film, as surely we would if it seemed the alien were directly before us. Moreover, films are not typically designed to foster this illusion. They lack threedimensionality, frequently move through space and time via editing and camera movement, are often accompanied by extra-diegetic music and subtitles, regularly employ patently unrealistic staging, lighting, setting, costume, make-up and color (including black-and-white), use out-offocus shots, high, low and tilted camera angles and so on. Although it might be possible to manufacture and exhibit a film so that it seems to its viewers that they are seeing directly what the film depicts rather than a pictorial representation of it, films are not typically designed this way. In place of classical and other variants of illusionism, analytic philosophers have proposed different accounts of what we see in motion pictures. So-called transparency theorists believe that we actually see, albeit indirectly, the events recorded by photographic films. Others maintain that we recognize the contents of moving images, perhaps because they resemble things in the real world. Others still argue that, at least when watching fiction films, we imagine seeing the fictional entities they depict either directly or in a mediated way. Each of these powerful theories has won adherents who offer slightly different versions of them, and they

12  Malcolm Turvey have been refined and strengthened in response to criticisms over the years. However, there is little consensus about which is correct, and it is not clear how one can adjudicate between them. Like other answers to perplexing philosophical problems, they don’t, at least at first blush, seem as if they can be falsified by empirical investigations, and they each possess significant strengths and weaknesses.4 This lack of agreement about the answer to the question of what we see in motion pictures as well as other big philosophical questions, such as why we respond emotionally to fictional entities that we know do not exist, might lead one to doubt—as I increasingly do—whether analytic philosophy (of film) can ever make progress in the sense that its practitioners converge on the truth about a (cinematic) phenomenon.5 To be sure, analytic philosophy has contributed enormously to film studies by exposing the considerable logical and empirical inadequacies in previous film theorizing, clarifying important film-related concepts and proposing robust theories of cinema as well as intriguing interpretations of specific films. But as Peter van Inwagen remarks about philosophy in general, “Disagreement in philosophy is pervasive and irresoluble. There is almost no thesis in philosophy about which philosophers agree.”6 Or as David Lewis puts it, “Whether or not it would be nice to knock disagreeing philosophers down by sheer force of argument, it cannot be done. Philosophical theories are never refuted conclusively.”7 What Colin McGinn calls “the magnitude and intractability of much philosophical disagreement” may be due, as McGinn has suggested, to “inherent limitations on our epistemic faculties” rather than anything “intrinsically problematic or peculiar or dubious” about philosophical questions.8 But whatever the reason, at least in philosophy of film it is hard to think of any significant philosophical issue around which there is a consensus about the truth of the matter, or any authoritative philosophical theory that has been disproven definitively. When confronted by two or more such theories about a film-related topic, it seems that, at the end of the day, we have only our intuitions to guide us about which is correct.9 Or as Lewis concludes, “Once the menu of well-worked-out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion.”10 One way of pushing back against this skepticism about the possibility of philosophy (of film) making progress in the sense of its practitioners converging on the truth is to contest Lewis’ claim that “philosophical theories are never refuted conclusively.” While it may be the case that there is little consensus about which philosophical theory is right, it could be maintained that there is much more agreement over which are wrong. Peter van Inwagen, for instance, qualifies his pessimism about philosophical progress by allowing that “If there is any philosophical thesis that all or most philosophers affirm, it is a negative thesis: That formalism is not the right philosophy of mathematics, for example, or that knowledge is not (simply) justified, true belief.”11 Through robust criticism, one might

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 13 insist, the field of legitimate theoretical contenders is winnowed until only the strongest remain standing. Furthermore, this is progress in the sense of converging on the truth, for while there is never consensus about the right theory, there is at least agreement about which theories stand a chance of being correct and which don’t. Thus, the range of possible truths is narrowed even if no single victor ever actually emerges. A good example in the philosophy of film might be illusion theories. While philosophers may never ultimately concur about, say, whether photographic images are transparent, they at least agree that transparency is one of several theories of cinematic representation that should be taken seriously, unlike illusion theories, which have been shown to be wrong. However, while analytic philosophers might have almost universally rejected illusion theories for a time, recently the philosopher Robert Hopkins has resurrected the concept of illusion in proposing a novel theory he calls “collapsed seeing-in” or “collapsed photographic illusion.”12 Although it differs considerably from classical illusionism, this example, which I will consider in this paper before returning briefly to the issue of philosophical progress at the end, shows that even the most discredited theory can be salvaged in a modified, improved form by an enterprising philosopher on the lookout for alternatives to dominant views. Hopkins’ theory concerns standard fiction films in which “a photographic representation of a set of events, the events filmed . . . themselves represent other events, the story told.”13 Hopkins calls these “twotiered” movies and maintains that, when watching them, we can experience what he calls “collapsed seeing-in.” Although there is much debate about the precise nature of seeing-in, Hopkins defines it much as Richard Wollheim did in his later writings as a visual experience with a “distinctive phenomenology” that sets it apart from “seeing things in the flesh, or visualizing them.”14 In “seeing-in,” to employ Robert Stecker’s useful formulation, “I can see something that is F (e.g., a woman) in something else P (e.g., a painting), without it following that there is something F that I am seeing.”15 I can see F in P not because I am experiencing the illusion of seeing F. Nor am I really, albeit indirectly, seeing F, as transparency theorists would claim about photographs, or imagining seeing F, as the imagined seeing thesis would have it. Rather, as Hopkins puts it, the pattern of marks in P “is organized in such a way that we are thereby visually presented with something else.”16 This can happen by chance, as when we see a face in a cloud or a wallpaper pattern, or by design, as is the case with representational pictures. Hopkins also follows the later Wollheim in arguing that seeing-in is accompanied by what Wollheim called “twofoldness.” We not only see F in P, but we are also, to quote Stecker again, “aware of seeing P and some of its features.”17 Or as Hopkins says, “When seeing things in pictures we are in some sense aware of those things. But we are also aware of the surface before us.”18 In twofoldness, we are simultaneously aware of both the marked surface of

14  Malcolm Turvey P, what Wollheim called its configurational properties, and what we can see in the marked surface, which Wollheim referred to as its recognitional ones. Indeed, for Wollheim, the configurational and recognitional are “two aspects . . . of a single experience,” although it is debatable whether we are always aware of the marked surface when seeing in it.19 We see things in the marked surfaces of trompe l’oeil pictures, for example. But when trompe l’oeil pictures deceive us, we are unaware of their marked surfaces. Indeed, we are unaware that they are pictures with marked surfaces and instead seem to see directly what they depict.20 In collapsed seeing-in, according to Hopkins, we experience twofoldness and therefore always remain aware of the marked surface of the motion picture as we see in it. However, the representation of the movie’s story by the actors and sets—what Hopkins calls the “events filmed” or “theatrical representation” or “second” or “lower tier”—“drops out” of our experience of the movie, and we “see in the film the story told.”21 The photographic representation and the other tier, the story told, thereby collapse into each other in our experience, leaving out the events filmed or theatrical representation, and we see the story in the moving image. This can happen because the second tier of theatrical representation in movies is often “illusionistic.” “Illusionistic representations are precisely those for which it is difficult to see their configurational properties,” Hopkins asserts, and he compares the experience of a two-tier movie with an illusionistic theatrical representation to the experience of a picture of a trompe l’oeil picture: Provided the picture of the picture is not itself illusionistic, we will see the “outer” picture for what it is—a picture. We will see something in that outer picture. But since the depicted picture is illusionistic and since illusionistic pictures tend not to be experienced as pictures, what we see in the outer picture will be, not the depicted picture, but whatever it is that inner picture represents. . . . In two-tier filmmaking, the representation of the story told by the events is often illusionistic. It is so in just the same sense as trompe l’oeil depiction is illusionistic. When it is, given that cinema images are depictions of those illusionistic theatrical representations, our experience of those images will follow the course described above. Seeing-in collapses, so that what we see in the picture is simply whatever the “inner” representations represent.22 We are unable to see the inner, depicted trompe l’oeil picture in the outer picture because we cannot see the trompe l’oeil picture’s configurational properties. Thus, the outer picture appears to be a picture of the trompe l’oeil picture’s depicted content, rather than a picture of a picture of this content. Similarly, if we are unable to see the configurational properties in the illusionistic theatrical representation of a story in a two-tier movie,

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 15 we can lose awareness of the theatrical representation and see the story in the motion picture. Hopkins qualifies his account by acknowledging that his is not an illusion theory in the classical sense because the illusion occurs at the level of tier two, the theatrical representation of the story, not tier one, the pictorial representation as in other illusion theories of cinema. In collapsed seeing-in, we are always aware that we are looking at a motion picture. Nor does his theory require that “the configurational properties of the depicted representation . . . be invisible” to the audience as they typically are in a trompe l’oeil picture.23 Instead, we can “make visible to ourselves the configurational properties” of the theatrical representation by attending to them, as when we pay attention to the acting rather than the character portrayed by the acting, and Hopkins allows that such “two-tiered” seeing-in often occurs when watching movies.24 Nevertheless, he concludes that when the second tier of a two-tier movie is illusionistic in the sense that its configurational properties are difficult to see, collapsed seeing-in can occur and we can “cease to be aware of theatrical representations and simply see in the movie the story it tells.”25 Before assessing Hopkins’ theory, let me note that another theorist has drawn on Wollheim’s concepts of seeing-in and twofoldness to reach a conclusion diametrically opposed to Hopkins’. Murray Smith argues that our experience of fictional characters in films involves a simultaneous or twofold awareness of both their recognitional and configurational aspects. “Wollheim’s ‘recognitional aspect’ of seeing-in,” he avers, “equates with the aspect of our response to character” in which we “can speak of them and respond to them in many ways just as if they were actual persons—as if we were able to interact with them ‘face-to-face.’ ”26 The configurational aspect, meanwhile, consists of appreciation of the “designed status of a character, when we see a character as an element in a representation,” for example, when we pay attention to the performance of the actor or star playing the character.27 According to Smith, when watching an actor playing a character in a film, “I apprehend both of these aspects of the film at once. This is the twofoldness of character.”28 In extending Wollheim’s theory of seeing-in to film acting, however, Smith makes a stronger claim than Wollheim does, arguing that twofoldness consists of “attention to the recognitional and configurational aspects” at the same time.29 Whereas Wollheim maintains merely that we are aware of the configurational and recognitional simultaneously when seeing-in, Smith asserts that there is an “interplay  .  .  . between attention to the design and to the depicted content” of a picture.30 Smith allows that, when engaging with characters, we might sometimes attend to the configurational more than the recognitional or vice versa. But he insists that “we hold these two dimensions of character in mind . . . we apprehend both aspects of character simultaneously; neither aspect is eliminable from our experience.”31 Smith further claims that twofoldness is “characteristic of our engagement with representation in general,” not just characters

16  Malcolm Turvey in films.32 When reading a novel, for instance, “our awareness of that character brings together an understanding of their place in the fictional world with an appreciation of their place in the design of the work,” and when we engage with any representation, Smith seems to suggest that we apprehend both its configurational and recognitional aspects simultaneously.33 It is precisely this thesis that Hopkins challenges in the context of two-tier movies in arguing that, when the configurational properties (including the acting) of tier two, the theatrical representation, are difficult to see, we may cease to be aware of this tier and collapsed seeing-in can occur. So who is right, Hopkins or Smith? Can we lose awareness of tier two, the theatrical representation, and see just the story in the motion picture, as Hopkins concludes, or are we always aware of and attending to both at once, as Smith maintains?34 Both theories, I believe, say something important and interesting about our experience of films. But both also make some implausible claims. Taking Smith’s first, it is not quite clear whether Smith is making a normative argument about twofoldness—that we should attend to both the configurational and recognitional properties of representations simultaneously in order to engage with and appreciate them properly—or an empirical claim that this is what we in fact do. Either way, it is certainly the case that we can and often do pay attention to configurational and recognitional aspects of a representation at the same time. Watching Annabella Sciorra’s extraordinary, devastating performance as Tony Soprano’s doomed girlfriend Gloria Trillo in season three of The Sopranos (1999–2007), for which she deservedly won an Emmy, I noticed that Gloria sometimes smiles slightly when Tony is angry and violent towards her. After Tony discovers that she has been in contact with his wife, he goes to the car dealership where she works, shoves her against a wall and grabs her by the throat. As he thrusts his face into hers and threatens her, a brief smirk is discernible on her face, even though there is nothing at all funny about what is happening to her, and I wondered why Sciorra had chosen to smile during such seemingly inappropriate moments. To some extent, the smile is really a sneer that conveys contempt for Tony, I concluded, and the fact that, although Tony is the aggressor, Gloria is to a degree manipulating him by engaging in behavior that she knows will trigger his fury. She is in effect playing a dangerous game with him, one motivated by her own lack of self-worth and suicidal impulses, and indeed, in their final (violent) encounter, she pleads with him to kill her as he throttles her. But whatever the reason, in contemplating Sciorra’s unusual choice of facial expression, I was attending at the same time to both the design of the fiction, what Smith would call the configurational property of her superb acting, and what is happening in the fiction or its recognitional properties, the fact that Tony is physically abusive to her. Moreover, as numerous philosophers have argued in different ways, proper aesthetic appreciation of an artwork requires such a “twofold”

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 17 form of attention. If one does not at least some of the time “apprehend the character and content of an artwork . . . as anchored in and arising from the specific structure that constitutes it on a primary perceptual (or cognitive) level,” to use Jerrold Levinson’s words, then one is not responding to it appropriately and cannot appreciate it fully.35 That said, it is doubtful that the twofold attention putatively constitutive of genuine aesthetic appreciation either does or should occur in our engagement with all representations, as Smith seems to suggest when he writes that “The twofoldness of depiction should be thought of as a species of the twofoldness characteristic of our engagement with representation in general.”36 An example, as we have already noted, are trompe l’oeil pictures, which mask their configurational properties so that they trigger the illusion that we are seeing directly what they depict. Some films also hide some of their configurational aspects in order to fool us. Fiction films that disguise themselves as documentaries like David Holzman’s Diary (James McBride, 1967), for example, conceal the fact that they are really what Hopkins calls two-tier movies with a theatrical representation of a story. The innocent viewer doesn’t attend to the configurational properties of their theatrical representations, such as the acting, because she doesn’t know they contain theatrical representations. Smith might counter that such deceptive forms of representation are anomalies and that, in the great majority of cases, we are aware that we are engaging with a representation that has both configurational and recognitional dimensions that we do or should apprehend simultaneously. However, being aware that a representation has configurational aspects doesn’t mean we always attend to them or that it is appropriate to do so. Many forms of representation are primarily informational. We engage with them because we want to find out something from them, not because we are curious about, or wish to appreciate, their design features. We normally glance briefly at pictorial signs, such as the stick men and women that signify where bathrooms are located, or the icons on our computer desktops that represent applications, without attending to their configurational properties, and this is perfectly apt. While we can pay attention to and even appreciate their configurational aspects, we usually don’t, and this is not a failing. Similarly, we often look at home movies not because we have any aesthetic interest in their design features, but because we want to remind ourselves of what our loved ones and we used to look like and what we did on certain occasions in the past. Of course, we may be struck by and value their configurational properties, such as the distinctive color and texture of home movies filmed in Super 8 relative to video. But there is nothing wrong with attending only to their recognitional ones, and I submit this is sometimes all we do when watching home movies. The same is true of photographs of deceased people or newsworthy events. There is nothing deficient about my experience if I examine a photograph of Abraham Lincoln just to see what he looked

18  Malcolm Turvey like, or a photograph of Kanye West (aka Ye) hugging Donald Trump in the Oval Office just to see if this extraordinary event did indeed happen (it did). When we have an epistemic, as opposed to aesthetic, interest in a representation, it seems to me we often don’t attend to its configurational properties nor should we, although we certainly always can. Smith might allow that twofold attention doesn’t always obtain in our response to representations. However, he could continue to maintain that it does, or at least it should, when engaging with a work of art. We are, or ought to be, attentive to an artwork’s configurational and recognitional properties simultaneously, he might respond, even if this is not true of all representations. Yet, it is not clear that paying attention to an artwork’s configurational properties always occurs or is aesthetically appropriate, as is suggested by our response to mainstream fiction films. A  widely acknowledged aspiration of such movies is that they should completely absorb the viewer in their stories. Audiences should become so wrapped up in the fictional world of the protagonists and their struggles that they pay attention only to this world. Noël Carroll, for example, points out that “many of our responses to fictions, including fictional films, depend upon restricting our attention to the story world of the movie and what it presupposes.”37 The emotion of suspense, for instance, requires that “we should keep our minds focused upon what is contained within the bounds of the fiction.”38 This is because thoughts about the design of mainstream fiction films will vitiate the suspense. If the hero is dangling from a precipice and we feel suspense about the possibility that she might fall to her death, the suspense will be undermined if we start contemplating the fact that heroes always escape from such predicaments in mainstream movies. Similarly, our sympathy or empathy for Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991) as she first walks alone down the tunnel towards Hannibal Lecter’s cell and is harassed by other prisoners might abate if we remind ourselves that Clarice is not real, that she is played by the actress Jodie Foster, that the tunnel is a set and the prisoners are played by actors too, that Foster is in reality surrounded by the filmmaking crew who are off-screen and so on. It seems that, at least at some moments when consuming certain kinds of fictions, the aesthetically appropriate response is to bracket configurational properties in favor of recognitional ones in order to fully experience the emotions and other effects such fictions are designed to elicit. The opposite is also true. Sometimes, when consuming fictions, we pay attention to configurational properties and bracket out recognitional ones. For example, we might notice something about an actor’s performance in a film, say that Robert De Niro often doesn’t look directly at other actors but instead looks to the side of them, and recall instances in other films when the actor does something similar. We might then conclude that this is a technique the actor uses often in their work and that it is part of their acting style irrespective of the narrative of the specific film they are acting in. Of course,

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 19 none of this means that either absorption in a film’s story or exclusive focus on its design features is the single correct (aesthetic) response to a movie. However, it does suggest that Smith’s model of simultaneous or twofold attention to configurational and recognitional aspects is too narrow and that our experience of movies, like artworks in general, is more varied. In place of twofold attention, I propose a varied model in which we are sometimes attending to a film’s recognitional properties, sometimes to its configurational ones and sometimes to both at the same time. Nor does this mean that Hopkins’ theory is right. Certainly, it seems correct to argue, as Hopkins does, that sometimes we see the story in a motion picture just as sometimes we see fictional entities in other kinds of representations (although the sense in which we do so is hardly explained by Wollheim’s theory of seeing-in, as John Hyman points out).39 If I look at a Superman comic, I can in some yet to be clarified sense see Superman, a fictional entity, in the drawings it contains, just as I can sometimes (in some yet to be clarified sense) see Superman in Superman: The Movie (Richard Donner, 1978), which is why I might respond, “It’s Superman!” rather than “It’s Christopher Reeve!” if asked who I  see on the screen when Superman appears. However, Hopkins contends not only that we can see the story in a motion picture, but that we can do so because we “cease to be aware” of the theatrical representation of the story due to its illusionism, the fact that its configurational properties are hidden or hard to see. For Hopkins, it will be recalled, watching a two-tier movie is like looking at a picture of a trompe l’oeil picture in that, in both cases, we cannot see the configurational aspects of the inner, depicted picture or representation, which therefore drops out of our experience. However, first, the example of the Superman comics suggests that illusion is not required to see (in some yet to be clarified sense) a fictional entity, even a patently unrealistic one, in a picture. Second, if theatrical representations in two-tier movies were like trompe l’oeil pictures and we weren’t aware, at least at times, of their configurational properties, this would hardly explain why we (in some yet to be clarified sense) see fictional entities in motion pictures. This is because, when a trompe l’oeil picture deceives us, we only seem to see what it depicts. When we look at a picture of a trompe l’oeil picture, it only seems that we see a picture of the depicted contents of the trompe l’oeil picture rather than a picture of a trompe l’oeil picture depicting those contents. Hopkins, however, insists that we see fictions in films, not that we only seem to see them. Hopkins’ conception of theatrical representations as illusionistic at best explains only why we seem to see fictions in movies, not why we (in some yet to be clarified sense) see them. Moreover, in claiming that tier two or the theatrical representation in movies can be illusionistic in the same way as trompe l’oeil pictures, Hopkins is not comparing like with like. A trompe l-oeil is typically designed to deceive viewers into seeming to see directly what it depicts.

20  Malcolm Turvey Once we are made aware that it is a trompe l-oeil, we can look for configurational properties that reveal it to be a picture. Depending on where we are standing in relation to the picture, we will sometimes not be able to see its configurational aspects even though we know that it is a trompe l’oeil. Note that, just because we cannot see a trompe l’oeil’s configurational properties doesn’t mean we lose awareness of them. Once we learn that a trompe l’oeil is a picture, we know that, by definition, it must have a configurational dimension even if we cannot apprehend it. Just because I cannot at this moment see Andrea Pozzo’s trompe l’oeil of a dome in the church of Saint Ignazio doesn’t mean I lose awareness that it is a trompe l’oeil with configurational properties. Theatrical representations in movies, however, are not designed to deceive viewers as, excepting rare cases like David Holzman’s Diary, audiences already know when watching two-tier films that they consist of actors and sets that have been photographed by cameras.40 Thus, when viewing such movies, we can always attend to the configurational aspects of their theatrical representations, such as the acting, because we are always aware that they must contain them. Even though I  suspect we often attend exclusively to the story rather than the configurational dimension of the theatrical representation in a two-tier movie, this does not mean we lose awareness of the latter, as Hopkins claims, just as we don’t lose awareness of a film’s story just because we are paying attention only to its configurational properties. For how can we be unaware of the theatrical representation given that we know it is there (except in rare cases such as David Holzman’s Diary) and can always apprehend it when we wish? Indeed, how could we pay attention to it if, as Hopkins argues, we sometimes lose awareness of it? At the very least Hopkins owes us an explanation of how it is possible to lose awareness of something that we know is present and can see whenever we want to. Hopkins might respond that, by “awareness,” he means perceptual awareness rather than the epistemic kind. We often use the term “awareness” to refer to what we can currently perceive, as when we say, “I am aware of the distant hum of traffic,” as well as what we know, as when we remark, “I  am painfully aware that this paper is due tomorrow.” Hopkins could claim that, by “cease to be aware,” he means that we lose perceptual awareness of the configurational properties of the theatrical representation in two-tier movies, not epistemic awareness. In collapsed seeing-in, on this construal of awareness, we know that the theatrical representation has a configurational dimension, but we are not perceptually aware of it because it is hard to see due to its illusionism, just as we know an unmasked trompe l’oeil has configurational properties even when we cannot see them. However, the configurational aspects of the theatrical representations in two-tier movies are never difficult to apprehend in the way that they can be in trompe l-oeil pictures. For example, in addition to the acting we can easily pay attention to how the actors

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 21 and sets have been arranged for the camera in the frame, what lighting and color schemes have been chosen by the filmmakers in the setting, costumes and make-up and various other aspects of the mise-en-scène. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we always notice these configurational properties, for we might be so focused on a film’s story that we are not paying perceptual attention to them. We might be so absorbed in Tony’s mistreatment of Gloria in the scene in which he visits her at work, for example, that we don’t attend to the fact that the characters’ faces are centered in the frame and it is evenly balanced. However, this isn’t because of its illusionism. We don’t lose perceptual awareness of the scene’s mise-en-scène because it is difficult to see, as are the configurational properties of a trompe l-oeil picture, given that it is easy to see, for instance, how the characters have been arranged in the frame if we attend to it. Rather, it’s because we cannot pay attention to everything in a film at once. Fiction films usually have many configurational properties, and there is often a lot happening in their stories. It is, I submit, impossible to attend to all of these things at the same time, and our attention therefore has to be selective. Nor do we have nearly unlimited time, as we do with paintings, to examine and ponder the configurational and recognitional dimensions of movies, meaning that much passes us by. This is why we often notice things about films in repeat viewings that we didn’t the first time around. In addition, the degree to which we can pay attention to the configurational aspects of movies will depend on the extent to which we have been trained to do so and whether we are in possession of the concepts and the knowledge of the history of film art needed to identify these aspects. Smith is right, I think, that we are, except in unusual cases, cognitively and perceptually aware of the configurational and recognitional properties of a two-tier movie, which is why we can attend to one or the other or both at the same time, even though he is wrong to insist that we always pay attention to or apprehend both simultaneously. Hopkins, meanwhile, is right that we can (in some yet to be clarified sense) see the story in a motion picture, although he is wrong to contend that this is because we lose awareness (either perceptual or cognitive) of the theatrical representation due to its illusionism. It might seem that, in challenging Hopkins’ theory of collapsed seeingin, I  have made philosophical progress by contributing to the process of winnowing philosophical theories I  mentioned in the first part of this paper. I have tried to show that a new, improved illusion theory of what we see in motion pictures is wrong, and inasmuch as philosophical progress consists of narrowing the field of theoretical contenders to the truth by eliminating weaker rivals, I  have perhaps contributed to this progress by helping to discredit an illusion theory. This might be true, but a caveat is in order. In challenging Hopkins’ account, I have appeared to endorse yet another theory, which is the theory of seeing-in. While I have taken issue with Hopkins’ claim that illusion at the level of the theatrical

22  Malcolm Turvey representation is required for us to see the story in a motion picture, I agree that we often do (in some yet to be clarified sense) see fictional entities such as characters in two-tier movies.41 But in fact, I doubt that Wollheim’s theory of seeing-in can be used to explain why we see fictions in films and other representations. In addition to the various problems with Wollheim’s theory that philosophers such as Dominic Lopes and John Hyman have pointed to, for Wollheim, seeing-in is specific to our visual experience of pictures, and arguably we can perceive fictions in non-pictorial representations too. For instance, we say that we “see” characters and other fictional entities not only in films and paintings but also in theatrical plays.42 And we speak of “hearing” them in plays and other fictions on the radio. Moreover, Wollheim maintains that seeing-in is phenomenologically “distinct” from seeing things in the flesh and that “we get lost” when we compare the two experiences.43 However, the fact that we say that we “see” and “hear” (fictional) things in representations suggests that perceiving things in representations is in some ways like perceiving them in the flesh, that the two are enough alike to describe our experience as one of seeing and hearing, although it has proven notoriously difficult to specify in what respects they are similar. If this is the case, then Wollheim’s theory of seeing-in will not help us to understand what we see in motion pictures.

Notes 1 Richard Allen, “Looking at Motion Pictures.” in Film Theory and Philosophy, ed. Richard Allen and Murray Smith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 76. 2 Robert Hopkins, “Moving because Pictures? Illusion and the Emotional Power of Film.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 34, no. 1 (2010): 202. Hopkins argues that the illusion in classical illusionism is perceptual, not epistemic. 3 See Noël Carroll, Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), chapter three; and Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), chapter one. 4 Allen provides an excellent overview of these theories and their strengths and weaknesses in “Looking at Motion Pictures.” It should be noted that these theories are not mutually exclusive. 5 I am drawing on David J. Chalmers’ definition of progress in philosophy as “collective convergence to the truth.” See his “Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?” in Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, ed. John A. Keller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 278. 6 Peter van Inwagen, “Freedom to Break the Laws.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 28, no. 1 (2004): 334. 7 David Lewis, Introduction to Philosophical Papers, Volume 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), x. 8 Colin McGinn, Problems in Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 2.

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 23 9 To be clear, I  am talking only about authoritative philosophical theories. There are other kinds of theories, such as those found in the natural sciences, that have achieved near consensus, perhaps because there is a great deal of empirical evidence to support them. 10 Lewis, Introduction to Philosophical Papers, xi. 11 Van Inwagen, “Freedom to Break the Laws.” 334–35. 12 Hopkins, “Moving because Pictures?” 211. 13 Robert Hopkins, “What Do We See in Film?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66, no. 2 (Spring 2008): 149. 14 Ibid., 150. 15 Robert Stecker, “Film Narration, Imaginative Seeing, and Seeing-In.” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 7, no. 1 (Summer 2013): 148. 16 Robert Hopkins, “Realism in Film.” in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, ed. Katherine Thompson-Jones (New York: Routledge, 2016), 83. 17 Stecker, “Film Narration, Imaginative Seeing, and Seeing-In.” 148. 18 Hopkins, “What Do We See in Film?” 150. 19 Richard Wollheim, “On Pictorial Representation.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 221. 20 See Dominic Lopes, Understanding Pictures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 49 and Jerrold Levinson, “Wollheim on Pictorial Representation.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56, no. 3 (Summer 1998): 228. John Hyman doubts that trompe l’oeil pictures, or at least our standard experience of them, constitute a genuine counter-example to Wollheim’s theory, but offers other trenchant criticisms of seeing-in in The Objective Eye: Color, Form, and Reality in the Theory of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), chapter seven. 21 Hopkins, “What Do We See in Film?” 150. 22 Ibid., 151. Hopkins defines “configurational properties” broadly: “Representations have both representational and configurational properties. The former are a matter of what the representation represents, the latter any other property” (ibid.). 23 Ibid., 152. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 149 (my emphasis). 26 Murray Smith, “On the Twofoldness of Character.” New Literary History 42, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 280. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid (my emphasis). 30 Ibid., 281 (my emphasis). On this misinterpretation of Wollheim, see Hyman, The Objective Eye, 133. 31 Ibid., 286–87. 32 Ibid., 283. 33 Ibid. 34 To be sure, Smith’s concept of awareness is broader than Hopkins’, in that it includes thinking about configurational aspects, whereas Hopkins is focused on what we see in fiction films. Nevertheless, both are making an argument about what we are aware of. For Smith, we are always aware of the configurational and recognitional aspects of the acting in a fiction film, and indeed we are always attending to both, whereas for Hopkins, we sometimes lose awareness of the theatrical representation, including the acting, and see the fiction in the film.

24  Malcolm Turvey 35 Jerrold Levinson, “What is Aesthetic Pleasure?” in The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 6. 36 Smith, “On the Twofoldness of Character.” 283. 37 Noël Carroll, “The Problem with Movie Stars.” in Carroll, Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Images (Malden, MA; WileyBlackwell, 2013), 108. 38 Ibid. 39 Hyman, The Objective Eye, 139. 40 This claim needs to be qualified given that theatrical representations in twotier movies do sometimes aim to partially deceive viewers, as when standins are used in place of movie stars to perform stunts, or sets are employed in place of real locations. Such substitutions may be undetectable, although most viewers know that they occur in movies even when they cannot detect precisely where they occur. 41 Robert Stecker argues that we see fictions in films in something like Wollheim’s sense in “Film Narration, Imaginative Seeing, and Seeing-In.” 42 See Bernard Williams, “Imagination and the Self.” in Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 36; and Ted Nannicelli, “Seeing and Hearing Screen Characters: Stars, Twofoldness, and the Imagination.” in Screening Characters, ed. Aaron Taylor and Johannes Riis (New York: Routledge, forthcoming). 43 Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 46.

References Allen, Richard. “Looking at Motion Pictures.” In Film Theory and Philosophy, edited by Richard Allen and Murray Smith. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Carroll, Noël. Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Images. Malden, MA; Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Carroll, Noël. Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Chalmers, David J. “Why Isn’t There More Progress in Philosophy?” In Being, Freedom, and Method: Themes from the Philosophy of Peter van Inwagen, edited by John A. Keller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Currie, Gregory. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Hopkins, Robert. “Moving because Pictures? Illusion and the Emotional Power of Film.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 34, no. 1 (2010). Hopkins, Robert. “Realism in Film.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, edited by Katherine Thompson-Jones. New York: Routledge, 2016. Hopkins, Robert. “What Do We See in Film?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 66, no. 2 (Spring 2008). Hyman John. The Objective Eye: Color, Form, and Reality in the Theory of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Levinson, Jerrold. “What is Aesthetic Pleasure?” In The Pleasures of Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Levinson, Jerrold. “Wollheim on Pictorial Representation.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56, no. 3 (Summer 1998).

(Collapsed) Seeing-In and Progress in Analytic Philosophy 25 Lewis, David. Introduction to Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Lopes, Dominic. Understanding Pictures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. McGinn, Colin. Problems in Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Nannicelli, Ted. “Seeing and Hearing Screen Characters: Stars, Twofoldness, and the Imagination.” In Screening Characters, edited by Aaron Taylor and Johannes Riis. New York: Routledge, forthcoming. Smith, Murray. “On the Twofoldness of Character.” New Literary History 42, no. 2 (Spring 2011). Stecker, Robert. “Film Narration, Imaginative Seeing, and Seeing-In.” Projections: The Journal for Movies and Mind 7, no. 1 (Summer 2013). van Inwagen, Peter. “Freedom to Break the Laws.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 28, no. 1 (2004). Williams, Bernard. “Imagination and the Self.” In Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956–1972. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973. Wollheim, Richard. “On Pictorial Representation.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56, no. 3 (Summer 1998). Wollheim, Richard. Painting as an Art. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987.

2 The World Viewed and the World Lived Stanley Cavell and Film as the Moving Image of Skepticism Jônadas Techio The condition of human perception I  claim film reveals is our modern fate to live in the world primarily by viewing it, taking views of it. As if something has increasingly been happening to us over the past two or three centuries that has produced a sense of distance from the world. —Stanley Cavell1

1.  What Can Film Reveal to Philosophers? Stanley Cavell’s lifelong engagement with film has generated many important insights and inspired an unprecedented amount of critical attention to that subject in the analytic tradition of philosophy.2 One of Cavell’s most seminal contributions to the now burgeoning field of “film as philosophy”3 was to show that film could work as a laboratory, perhaps an ideal one, to investigate some of the fundamental questions that have occupied our philosophical minds in the last few centuries and to help bring us back to the ordinary that we (analytic?) philosophers are so prone to forget or to repress in our default mode of reflection. As he writes in an oft-quoted passage: to my way of thinking the creation of film was as if meant for philosophy—meant to reorient everything philosophy has said about reality and its representation, about art and imitation, about greatness and conventionality, about judgment and pleasure, about scepticism and transcendence, about language and expression.4 This is as bold a claim as one might find concerning the relation between film and philosophy. The same applies to the passage used as the epigraph to this chapter, which presents one of Cavell’s most challenging theses—namely that film can be seen as a sort of emblem, or embodiment, of a particularly modern, skeptical picture of our relation to the world and others, itself derived from a dissatisfaction with our finitude and the way it conditions our claims to knowledge and rationality, giving way to a feeling of isolation and loss of contact with external reality. My

The World Viewed and the World Lived 27 main goal in the following pages will be to elucidate those claims, first by presenting the contours of the ontological project pursued in Cavell’s earlier writings on film and then by gradually locating the results of those investigations inside a more general philosophical frame, characterized by the double aim of reckoning with skepticism and returning us to the ordinary. By doing so I hope to contribute to the task of articulating the “difficult thought” alluded to by Cavell in the following passage, when trying to convey how exactly Wittgenstein’s and Austin’s “return to the ordinary” could help us overcome skepticism, thus regaining our lost absorbed relation to the world and others: Wittgenstein’s and Austin’s return to ordinary or everyday language is, before anything else, a formidable attack on skepticism, epitomized by the difficult thought that it is not quite right to say that we believe the world exists (though certainly we should not conclude that we do not believe this, that we fail to believe its existence), and wrong even to say we know it exists (while of course it is equally wrong to say we fail to know this). And if one convinces oneself of the truth of such observations, it is then at issue, and much harder, to determine what it is right to say here, what truly expresses our convictions in our relation to the world. The idea is less to defend our ordinary beliefs than to wean us from expressing our thoughts in ways that do not genuinely satisfy us, to stop forcing ourselves to say things that we cannot fully mean. What the ordinary language philosopher is sensing—but I mean to speak just for myself here—is that our natural relation to the world’s existence is—as I sometimes wish to express it—closer, or more intimate, than the ideas of believing and knowing are made to convey.5 We shall come back to that suggestion—and to the notion of a “closer, or more intimate” relation to the world’s existence—at the conclusion of this chapter. But first let us try to understand how Cavell’s reflections on the ontology of film can have a bearing on those issues.

2.  Cavell’s Ontological Project Contextualized Although some form of dissatisfaction with finitude has accompanied our history from the start, it was reinforced in the West by the cultural and scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, giving rise to a characteristically modern sense of isolation and loss of contact with a world whose order and meaning were once taken for granted. On the basis of that feeling of loss Cavell diagnoses the emergence, in philosophy, of a new kind of fixation with the epistemological problem of justifying our claims to knowledge, themselves construed as a set of representations, beliefs or propositions needing to be grounded in some

28  Jônadas Techio kind of objective, impersonal and (preferably) indubitable evidence. That fixation goes hand in hand with a picture of our contact with the world in which we are seen as essentially detached spectators, passively looking at objects that are in themselves devoid of any value or significance and that could in principle be understood without any attention to their specific roles in our human practices, or forms of life. Now surprisingly—and for reasons to be explored in what follows— Cavell’s involvement with the photographic basis of film allowed him to reconsider modern skepticism by exploring our condition as viewers of a “succession of automatic world projections”6 and by showing that film can itself be understood as “a moving image of skepticism,”7 meaning that it is the art form that best encapsulates the epistemological and metaphysical picture underlying our modern worldview, giving it concrete expression, hence becoming a privileged medium for its philosophical exploration. More specifically, starting with his seminal book The World Viewed (originally published in 1971), Cavell will explore the idea that the advent of photography has satisfied our desire to overcome subjectivity and metaphysical isolation—hence finitude—precisely in the way modern skepticism envisaged, namely by removing the human agent from the task of reproducing the world, making it a purely mechanical and, as such, supposedly impersonal and objective task. Yet, as we shall see, the price to be paid for this newfound freedom is high: one has to become passive and absent from the world, as if watching it from behind a camera. By making us aware of that consequence, Cavell’s reflections on the ontology of film are apt to show that the modern feeling of isolation is largely self-imposed, in that the position of passive spectators is one that we have to assume. This finding, in turn, will be crucial for the therapeutic purpose of trying to overcome the skeptical impulse, allowing us to recognize that although our finite condition does limit our knowledge of the world and other people in many ways, those limits need not be seen as obstacles or limitations—on the contrary, they are precisely what first enables our contact with external reality, providing the foundations without which our practices would lack any purpose or, in Wittgenstein’s suggestive phrase, “friction.”8 Given the originality and complexity of The World Viewed’s approach to the ontology of film, that work presents great interpretative challenges, even for someone familiar with the Cavellian corpus. Despite being widely cited and even (partially) reproduced in anthologies devoted to the ontology of photography and film,9 interpreters rarely engage with the detail and nuance of Cavell’s prose,10 tending instead to subsume his views into already “known” positions in the contemporary debate, conveniently packaged under headings such as “realism” or (photographic) “transparency.”11 Now, to the extent that each of those headings provides a contrast with (some instance of) a representationalist view, in which photographs are understood as standing for something else, they

The World Viewed and the World Lived 29 do give expression to an important insight of Cavell’s—one that, as he is keen to stress, was inherited from previous “realist” theorists such as Bazin and Panofsky.12 Yet what many readers seem to miss is that Cavell also takes great pains to reformulate and to purify that insight from various obscurities and exaggerations that he detects in their original iteration13—thus, to give only one prominent example, he disagrees with the Bazinian idea that film can present us with reality as such, “in all its virginal purity,”14 or again that “Cinema is committed to communicate only by way of what is real” and is “of its essence a dramaturgy of Nature,”15 preferring the much more cautious gloss: “the basis of the medium of movies is photographic and . . . a photograph is of reality or nature.”16 In order to try and remedy this exegetical difficulty, achieving a clearer understanding of Cavell’s own stance on the ontology of film, one has to contextualize that work as part of a larger philosophical project, which seeks to carry forward the “ordinary language” tradition of philosophy inherited from J. L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as the concern with ordinary experience inherited from Martin Heidegger. An important methodological principle inherited from Wittgenstein is that “(e)ssence is expressed by grammar”17 and in order to clarify grammar (hence expressing essences by means of an ontology) we need to “remind ourselves . . . of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena.”18 Parallel to this Wittgensteinian heritage, The World Viewed was also inspired by Heidegger’s project of “fundamental ontology”;19 as Cavell acknowledges in the Preface, explaining the title of his book: When I  learned of an essay of Heidegger’s called “The Age of the World View,” the mere words suggested to me, from my knowledge of Being and Time, a range of issues—that ours is an age in which our philosophical grasp of the world fails to reach beyond our taking and holding views of it, and we call these views metaphysics.20 Setting aside for the moment the details of Heidegger’s own ontological project, what I  would like to emphasize from this acknowledgment is that in choosing the phrase “the world viewed” for his title, Cavell was simultaneously trying to draw attention to our experience as spectators of photography and film and to the essentially modern epistemological assumption that our only (or primary) way to access the world itself is by “holding views” of it. Hence the thesis that photography and film (understood as a succession of projected photographs) can provide a model or image of the detached relationship between self and world that has gripped our philosophical imaginations since the skeptical crisis of modernity. Hence also the book’s concerns to address different ways in which that skeptical image came into being, exploring its expressions not only in philosophy but in the arts and other aspects of our modern

30  Jônadas Techio culture, as well as investigating whether it is at all possible to regain our lost access to the world’s presentness.21 Having those methodological principles in mind will be crucial to understand the contours of the ontological project pursued in The World Viewed. My proposal in what follows will be to think of it as offering, simultaneously and complementarily, grammatical reminders about what we ordinarily say about photos and movies and a carefully worked out account of the phenomenological content of our experience of viewing photos and movies, thus revealing (in a Heideggerian turn of phrase) the “ways of being” peculiar to those artifacts and allowing us to see crucial differences with other kinds of perceptual and aesthetic experiences— with paintings, sounds, music, literature, theater and so on. Ultimately, I  will submit, what this set of reminders is meant to uncover is the complexity of our ordinary ways of inhabiting the world. Following the footsteps of authors such as Wittgenstein and Heidegger (but also Emerson and Thoreau, among others), the task this work takes upon itself amounts to nothing less than helping us acknowledge fundamental aspects of our condition that are often repressed in the modern epistemological tradition—­aspects such as skill, learning, involvement, manipulation, discrimination and judgment, understood as the “human capacity for applying the concepts of a language to things of a world.”22 In order to shed some light on Cavell’s overall argumentative strategy in The World Viewed, framing it inside the more general philosophical project I  have just delineated, I  want to introduce a comparison with a method employed by Wittgenstein in the opening paragraphs of the Philosophical Investigations and to which he returns often.23 As is wellknown, the Investigations begin with a passage from the Confessions in which Augustine recounts the way he has learned to use language— namely by connecting words uttered by the “grown-ups” with the things towards which they pointed, inferring intentions and desires from the sounds and gestures they produced. Wittgenstein’s first reaction to that passage is to say that it “give[s] us a particular picture of the essence of human language,”24 one that he will subsequently characterize as a “philosophical notion of meaning  .  .  . at home in a primitive idea of the way language functions,” or again an “idea of a language more primitive than ours.”25 It is in this connection that he asks us to “imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right.” The proposed language is composed of four words that name building stones (“block,” “pillar,” “slab,” “beam”) and are used by a builder A and an assistant B like this: “A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call.”26 Wittgenstein does not say much about the intended upshot of this imaginary exercise, instead inviting the reader to follow his reflections from this point on trying to make sense of it. What he does suggest is that although Augustine’s description fits a

The World Viewed and the World Lived 31 system of communication, “not everything that we call language is this system.”27 According to James Conant’s helpful assessment of this move, Wittgenstein’s intention would be to introduce us “to a seemingly intelligible scenario that appears to fit our theories of how language must work” and then showing us how “our assumption that language must be possible on such a scenario begins to fall apart on us as we try to think it through,”28 thereby reminding us of aspects of our ordinary language that have become invisible to us precisely because of their familiarity. My suggestion is that we should think of Cavell’s exploration of our condition as viewers of photographs and movies as providing an analogous object of comparison, aiming at reminding us of aspects of our ordinary relation(s) to the world and others that tend to be repressed in our philosophical (or, as Wittgenstein sometimes says, metaphysical) flights from the ordinary. More specifically, I will argue that Cavell’s ontological reflections are apt to show that the picture of a detached spectator looking at a world that we tend to assume in our epistemological investigations at least since modernity is a rather poor, perhaps “primitive,” way of describing our richer ways of inhabiting the world and hence falls apart once we try to think it through. (I imagine some readers at this point will have become impatient, considering preposterous to suggest that philosophers might have failed to distinguish between our condition as spectators in a movie theater and our condition as inhabitants of the real world. I hope to be able to assuage that anxiety in what follows; but for now it should suffice to repeat Wittgenstein’s warning, made in a similar connection, that sometimes the first step in the path towards philosophical confusion, the “decisive movement in the conjuring trick,” is the one that “altogether escapes notice,” precisely because it seems “quite innocent.”)29

3.  Skepticism and Our Loss of Presentness In order to understand virtually any of Cavell’s views it is important to realize from the start that his use of the term “skepticism” is broader than the one commonly made by analytic philosophers. As I have already hinted, Cavell employs the term to name a modern30 worldview that places an unprecedented emphasis upon the problem of knowledge, effectively transforming epistemology into a kind of “first philosophy.” The locus classicus for that view is generally taken to be Descartes’ Meditations, a work that notoriously starts with his author imagining himself (and inviting his reader to imagine herself) sitting before a fire in a dressing gown, passively receiving various sensory impressions that will subsequently be put in doubt, along with much of his ordinary beliefs, with the goal of finding a secure and indubitable ground to reconstruct the whole edifice

32  Jônadas Techio of knowledge. Now, according to Cavell, it is precisely this fixation with the concept of certainty and what is present to the senses that will ultimately generate the feeling of isolation and loss of contact with external reality that he identifies as being at the basis of modern skepticism. The following passage presents that diagnosis in a nutshell: In the unbroken tradition of epistemology since Descartes and Locke (radically questioned from within itself only in our period), the concept of knowledge (of the world) disengages from its connections with matters of information and skill and learning, and becomes fixed to the concept of certainty alone, and in particular to a certainty provided by the (by my) senses. At some early point in epistemological investigations, the world normally present to us (the world in whose existence, as it is typically put, we “believe”) is brought into question and vanishes, whereupon all connection with a world is found to hang upon what can be said to be “present to the senses”; and that turns out, shockingly, not to be the world. It is at this point that the doubter finds himself cast into skepticism, turning the existence of the external world into a problem.31 What one gathers from passages like this is that the use of the term “skepticism” in Cavell is not to be confined to a negative stance concerning our claims to knowledge (say, one that puts them to doubt); rather, it names a general way of framing the problem of our relation to the world and others, applying to “any view which takes the existence of the world (and of others) to be a problem of knowledge.”32 Now, as previously indicated, Cavell connects this way of framing the problem with the modern discovery of our distance from a world that once was (supposedly) closer and familiar, a world that under the auspices of modernity became “disenchanted,” to use Max Weber’s well-known phrase. In Cavell’s own words: At some point the unhinging of our consciousness from the world interposed our subjectivity between us and our presentness to the world. Then our subjectivity became what is present to us, individuality became isolation.33 Faced with this (skeptical) realization, different routes to try to recover our lost presentness were pursued in different spheres of human activity. Philosophy’s own reaction was to interpret that discovery as showing the limitations of our capacities to know. This interpretation then fueled different epistemological projects aimed at reassuring us in our conviction to getting to know the world—projects as different as, say, Cartesianism (to apply a methodical, hyperbolic doubt and rebuild knowledge from an indubitable certainty), (British) Empiricism (to rely on impressions

The World Viewed and the World Lived 33 immediately received by the senses plus dependable principles of connection, in order to distinguish contentful ideas from empty ones) and (German) Idealism (starting with Kant’s “Copernican Revolution,” limiting knowledge to “appearances” or “phenomena,” hence emphasizing the role of our subjective conditions to know). (Cavell is keen to remind us that both Heidegger and Wittgenstein, arguably the main philosophical forebears of the work under analysis, are inheriting the Kantian approach, if only to question it from the inside: “Heidegger is investigating Being by investigating Dasein  .  .  . and Wittgenstein investigates the world . . . by investigating what we say, what we are inclined to say, what our pictures of phenomena are.”34 From this perspective, it is worth remarking, there is no way to return to the ordinary that does not involve retracing the steps that might at some point have led us astray—hence the need to pay close attention to the temptations of what both Heidegger and Wittgenstein would derisively call “metaphysics.” Hence the need for a therapeutic strategy of the sort I am trying to articulate.) But philosophy’s response to that skeptical challenge is not the only way. In the arts it has led to different strategies, each connected to the particular history of its own medium. In literature, for example, Shakespeare developed tragedies and comedies exploring different consequences of the modern loss of presence for creating and maintaining human relationships, thus providing a literary context in which several manifestations of the skeptical impulse could be expressed, enacted and put to test.35 (To give one brief example, Cavell suggests that Othello’s doubt concerning Desdemona’s fidelity can be seen as a symptom of the same quest for knowledge and certainty that moved Descartes in his Meditations; at the same time that doubt serves as a “cover story” that displaces Othello’s refusal to acknowledge Desdemona’s love and hence his own dependence and incompleteness. In this way a disappointment with finitude is intellectualized, becoming a disappointment with knowledge.)36 A different route back to our conviction in reality was sought by modern painting, in whose development we can devise a gradual recognition of the artist’s own subjectivity. The “Romantic” landscapes painted by Caspar David Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner are good examples of representations that try to capture not exactly the scene as it “objectively existed,” independently of the artist’s perception and mood, but rather acknowledging the feeling of the sublime (say) as it struck him or her. That development was then taken up and radicalized in modernist painting, which is commonly characterized as a rejection of accepted or traditional styles that, in attempting to represent the depicted scenes “objectively” (employing geometrical perspective, a naturalistic use of color palette, of the contrast between light and shadows, etc.) ended up producing a feeling of artificiality and distance. Hence the need, felt by artists such as Manet, for painting “to forgo likeness exactly because of its own obsession with reality, because the illusions it had learned to

34  Jônadas Techio create did not provide the conviction in reality, the connection with reality, that it craved”;37 whence the use of unconventional perspective, high contrast, “non-natural” lightning, etc.38 It is in this historical context that a new form of art—photography— comes to the scene, providing a novel way to overcome subjectivity, namely by means of its automatism, “by removing the human agent from the task of reproduction.”39 Photography, Cavell claims, maintains the presentness of the world precisely by reversing the route taken by painting, by accepting our absence from the world. And this realization finally leads to one of Cavell’s most original and insightful discoveries concerning the relationship between photography and modern skepticism— namely that to accept our absence, hence our separation, from a world thus (re)created amounts more or less exactly to what modern skepticism has taught us to expect as the only way of satisfying our epistemological craving for objective knowledge, for certainty. Now that is a claim that can be correctly understood only if we look at it inside its wider context, and to provide that context will be the aim of the remainder of this section. One useful entry point to this territory is to contrast Cavell’s and Bazin’s respective views on the relationship between photography and the other arts, particularly painting. In his seminal “The Ontology of the Photographic Image,” Bazin defends a view of the development of the plastic arts—from their postulated origin in the practice of embalming the dead to sculpture and finally to painting—as being in some kind of competition to achieve what he variously describes as “resemblance,” “likeness” or “realism,” or again “the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny.”40 In the case of (Western) painting, Bazin emphasizes a development starting at the Renaissance and fully realized in the Baroque towards the aim of expressing “as complete an imitation as possible of the outside world,”41 employing to that end techniques such as the use of geometrical perspective “to create the illusion of three-dimensional space within which things appeared to exist as our eyes in reality see them.”42 Seen from this angle, photography (and subsequently film) can be understood as natural continuations towards the “satisfaction of this appetite for illusion”: since perspective had only solved the problem of form and not of movement, realism was forced to continue the search for some way of giving dramatic expression to the moment, a kind of psychic fourth dimension that could suggest life in the tortured immobility of baroque art.43 According to Bazin that fourth dimension was finally provided by photography in movement, that is, by cinema, which in so doing finally “freed

The World Viewed and the World Lived 35 the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness,” satisfying “once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism.”44 Now, as we saw at the beginning of this section, instead of presenting the development of the arts as a competition to achieve “realism,” Cavell insists on the specificity of each medium to take up the modern challenge of recovering some kind of presence. Consequently (and contrary to Bazin), there is no suggestion in Cavell’s writings to the effect that photography’s solution would be “more realist” than painting’s solution, say (or, for that matter, literature’s, or Romanticism’s, or Modernism’s as a whole). Being faithful to the real is still as much a challenge for the painter as it is for the photographer, the difference being that, given painting’s history and tradition, the painter has to manage a way of doing so that no longer represses the necessary intervention of his or her own subjectivity, while the photographer, although free to intervene at various times prior to the capture of the real (choosing the best angle, decoupage, exposure time, etc.), is mechanically removed from that task at one crucial moment. The point is not, therefore, to suggest that the artist has no active role at all in the production of photographs, but rather to indicate a necessary condition of that production that is absent in the case of paintings and that apparently makes all the (metaphysical and epistemological) difference—namely a distinctive causal role for reality. That this condition seems to make all the difference starts to become clear when one realizes that certain questions that would be relevant in the case of photographs sound odd or even preposterous when asked of paintings and vice versa. Thus, for example: You can always ask, pointing to an object in a photograph—a building, say—what lies behind it, totally obscured by it. This only accidentally makes sense when asked of an object in a painting. You can always ask, of an area photographed, what lies adjacent to that area, beyond the frame. This generally makes no sense asked of a painting. You can ask these questions of objects in photographs because they have answers in reality. The world of a painting is not continuous with the world of its frame; at its frame, a world finds its limits. We might say: A painting is a world; a photograph is of the world. . . . When a photograph is cropped, the rest of the world is cut out. The implied presence of the rest of the world, and its explicit rejection, are as essential in the experience of a photograph as what it explicitly presents.45 Cavell’s main challenge in passages like this is to find a convincing and clear way to formulate this “more intimate” relation between photographs and reality, without falling into the trap of not being able to separate those relata any longer (as Bazin’s writings are at the very least on

36  Jônadas Techio the verge of doing, all but identifying the medium of photography with the reality it registers). Cavell’s interest is to probe deeper than philosophers often do into what are the ontological, epistemological and phenomenological consequences of the displacement of reality that occur when it is photographed (and in the case of film, projected and screened). In his own words, the beginning of wisdom in this subject depends on being reminded of “how mysterious these things are,”46 even how paradoxical they are.47 Having made these preparatory remarks, I hope that certain nuances of Cavell’s prose in The World Viewed will come more clearly to the fore. For example, consider the following exploration of further peculiarities of photography in relation to paintings: A photograph does not present us with “likenesses” of things; it presents us, we want to say, with the things themselves. But wanting to say that may well make us ontologically restless. “Photographs present us with things themselves” sounds, and ought to sound, false or paradoxical.48 Most readers of The World Viewed have not given the necessary attention to the qualification “we want to say” that I  italicized in the first sentence and to the specific way it is rebuked in the remainder of the passage. That dialogical device, which is typical in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, is put to use on many occasions in Cavell’s work. Cavell himself has described its use in Wittgenstein’s book as marking a conversation between two voices, a “voice of temptation,” which gives expression to pictures or ideas that one might feel naturally or even inescapably willing to entertain while reflecting on philosophical difficulties and then a “voice of correction,” which reminds us of problematic consequences, puzzles or perhaps even contradictions generated by the ideas just formulated.49 This point might be further borne out by means of an instructive illustration: Obviously, a photograph of an earthquake, or of Garbo, is not an earthquake happening (fortunately), or Garbo in the flesh (unfortunately). But this is not very informative. And, moreover, it is no less paradoxical or false to hold up a photograph of Garbo and say, “That is not Garbo,” if all you mean is that the object you are holding up is not a human creature.50 The intended upshot of these grammatical reminders is to make us aware of how difficult it really is to place photographs ontologically: We might say that we don’t know how to think of the connection between a photograph and what it is a photograph of. The image is not a likeness; it is not exactly a replica, or a relic, or a shadow, or

The World Viewed and the World Lived 37 an apparition either, though all of these natural candidates share a striking feature with photographs—an aura or history of magic surrounding them.51 Following Wittgenstein’s procedures in the Investigations, Cavell’s proposed way out of this kind of ontological conundrum (which, N.B., was created by attending to what we are tempted to say about phenomena when trying to understand their essence) is to pay even closer attention to the region of our grammar that is under scrutiny, marshaling more useful reminders, providing finer distinctions. We have already been reminded that both photographs and paintings provide visual records of reality, yet the causal role of reality is very different in each case. One way of trying to grasp that difference more clearly is to say that photographs are not visual representations of reality at all (the photograph does not merely “stand for” something else that was photographed), but rather visual transcriptions—a term that emphasizes the mechanical, automatic character of the process of recording reality that is peculiar to photography. “Representation,” Cavell claims, “emphasizes the identity of its subject, hence it may be called a likeness; a photograph emphasizes the existence of its subject, recording it, hence it is that it may be called a transcription.”52 Now, what exactly does it mean to say that photographs emphasize existence, as opposed to identity? Cavell tentatively submits that when we look at a photograph what we see is a (past) portion of the real world (hence the peculiar connection between our experience of photographs— and movies—and the realm of memory); yet this does not happen with paintings. These can, of course, be (contingently) inspired by scenes or events in the real world that once took place, but they can as easily be created entirely in the mind of their authors; in either case, what we see in a painting is, in Cavell’s suggestive formulation, a world in itself. I hope these clarifications will help us better understand what I suggested is perhaps the most difficult yet crucial insight achieved in The World Viewed, namely the claim presented earlier in this section, according to which it is precisely because of the way photographs are capable of presenting a world that we can see and that can therefore become present to us, but to which we ourselves are not present, that this medium illustrates and gives concrete expression to the modern skeptical fantasy of our relation to the world. Let us now explore this view head on.

4.  Photography and Film as Images of Skepticism The following passage, which is among the most quoted from The World Viewed, articulates Cavell’s main insight exemplarily: So far as photography satisfied a wish, it satisfied a wish not confined to painters, but the human wish, intensifying in the West since the

38  Jônadas Techio Reformation, to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation—a wish for the power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another.53 In reading that passage I want once again to emphasize the nuance and complexity of Cavell’s prose, starting with its very first words—namely “So far as . . . ”—which are simply bypassed on many occasions in which the text is quoted.54 The use of that adverb should immediately prompt us not to interpret the passage categorically, that is, as simply asserting that photography did satisfy a wish to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation; read conditionally and against the philosophical background provided in the former section, I hope it becomes clear that what the pas­ sage suggests is that if and insofar as photography has satisfied a wish, it was precisely the skeptical, modern wish that I have been characterizing. Why is this relevant? Roughly, my sense is that Cavell wants to show that, to the extent that photography has satisfied a wish, it was a wish not completely transparent to us (say to our collective, modern philosophical consciousness), thus generating a false or incomplete or illusory feeling of satisfaction, which could be correctly assessed only if the wish itself was thought through. Now if only we could think it through, we would be in a position to see that the supposed achievement of photography is at best a Pyrrhic victory, since it already grants the skeptic all she most wanted, namely a particular way of framing the problem of our relation to the world and others that makes it into an epistemological quest for certainty. I’ll now try to clarify that interpretation, or intuition, step by step. First, I  do not think Cavell would want to deny that, as a matter of historical fact, photography did (in a sense) enable us to overcome our subjectivity, by providing a means of transcribing and accessing reality that has since modernity been taken (explicitly or tacitly) as the only possible way of recovering objectivity, fidelity to the real. But it is precisely because that (skeptical) picture of our relation to the real was already in place—because our modern philosophical consciousness had already interpreted what we take as being the world as mere image,55 something to be seen or viewed as if from outside, while we ourselves are unseen and absent—that the advent of photography could be (and indeed was) felt as the achievement we were hoping for since modernity. In this sense our relation to photographs becomes a perfect image of our (skeptically fantasized) relationship to (past, static parts of) the world. (As we will see shortly, our relation to film provides a dynamism that our relation to still photographs lacks and thus takes this fantasy one step further.) This reading will receive further support if we go back to that almost casual allusion to the Reformation in the passage under scrutiny and with it the idea of “a wish for the power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another.” Lisa Trahair

The World Viewed and the World Lived 39 has provided a helpful analysis of that allusion in a paper to which I am indebted: Cavell suggests here that the religious idea that the laity were entitled to a direct relation to God without need of the church’s representation and intervention finds a purely secular expression in the cultural realm in a human striving for a direct relation to nature. The new relation to God brings with it a new relation to nature. . . . Photography becomes the medium that observes our isolation from nature by removing subjectivity from the equation altogether. Photography simultaneously and somewhat paradoxically promises a direct relation to reality.  .  .  . By Cavell’s logic (if not his word), it expiates original sin by returning us to an age of innocence.56 What Trahair does not say and perhaps does not need to say is that innocence, once lost, can never be fully recovered—hence the paradox of photography. And that is precisely the problem with what I have called the Pyrrhic victory of photography: only insofar as we keep interpreting our predicament in the way the skeptic suggests, namely as an “unhinging of our consciousness from the world,” causing our subjectivity to become interposed “between us and our presentness to the world,”57 the redemption offered by photography (by taking views of a world from which we are mechanically excluded) will be felt as liberating. Now, as I have already suggested, the condition of seeing a world from which we are detached and to which we are invisible is precisely the condition of an audience in the film theater: The world of a moving picture is screened. . . . A screen is a barrier. What does the silver screen screen? It screens me from the world it holds—that is, makes me invisible. And it screens that world from me—that is, screens its existence from me.58 One way of interpreting the achievement of film (call it the glass-half-full interpretation) is to say, as Cavell does (echoing Bazin), that “[t]he idea of and wish for the world re-created in its own image was satisfied at last by cinema.”59 However, as I suggested was the case with photography, there is another, more self-conscious way of considering the situation (call it the glass-half-empty interpretation), in which that wish itself will be seen as an expression of a myth, which as such tends to conceal its true significance. That is what I think Cavell is getting at in passages like the following, where he alludes to what Bazin calls “the myth of total cinema”: What is cinema’s way of satisfying the myth (of re-creating the world in its own image)? Automatically, we said. But what does that

40  Jônadas Techio mean—mean mythically, as it were? It means satisfying it without my having to do anything, satisfying it by wishing. In a word, magically. . . . Not by literally presenting us with the world, but by permitting us to view it unseen. This is not a wish for power over creation (as Pygmalion’s was), but a wish not to need power, not to have to bear its burdens. It is, in this sense, the reverse of the myth of Faust.60 A wish not to need power, not to have to bear the burden of knowing and making sense of the world, is hardly a description that would satisfy the modern epistemologist, given her own self-interpretation—“objective certainty” is her professed ultimate aim. Yet why else would the invention of photography and film feel as if it had at last satisfied our wish for a connection with the (real) world, when all it has to offer is a connection with a world that is present only while we are absent—hence, not literally presenting the (real) world, but rather “magically reproducing” it? Cavell’s answer, I take it, is that this could happen only once connecting to the world by having views of it has become “our natural mode of perception,”61 once we started feeling at home behind our own selves, as if always seeing the world from behind recording devices (a condition that, since the time Cavell wrote his book, has become even more widespread and thus feels even more “natural”). One way of describing the change that has been taking place since modernity is to say that the lived world has been gradually forgotten or repressed in our philosophical consciousness, being replaced by the image of a world (merely) viewed, a world as image; but perhaps a more accurate (if more disturbing) way of expressing this change is to say that the world viewed is gradually becoming our lived world.

5.  The World Viewed and the World Lived The preceding considerations should offer at least an initial support to the negative or diagnostic claim made at the outset of this chapter, namely that the price to be paid for the apparent freedom achieved when the world becomes image and when we become its absent spectators is quite high. I now want to complement that diagnosis and also indicate a possible way out of that skeptical predicament by going back to the “difficult thought” Cavell tentatively expressed in a passage quoted in section 1, according to which “it is not quite right to say that we believe the world exists” and “wrong even to say we know it exists,”62 the harder task being to express our convictions more positively. One of the main lessons to be drawn from Cavell’s diagnosis of our modern predicament is that to understand our relation to the world and others in terms of holding beliefs is a big part of the problem,63 because that understanding already assumes a picture in which the relata are construed as separate and independent entities—“objects” observed by

The World Viewed and the World Lived 41 a detached “self,” or (Cartesian) “ego.” Now what would an alternative picture look like? First, it would be a picture in which my understanding of myself is intrinsically connected with my understanding of the world (or perhaps the worlds) I live in. Perhaps one simple illustration will help us grasp this point. We sometimes talk of “the world of _____,” where “____” can be filled in with the name of a particular set of human practices, such as the world of academia, the world of fashion, the world of politics, the world of business, etc. Take the former as a test case: living in the world of academia, being at home within it—say by being a professor—involves the ability to interact in different ways with different people (students, faculty, staff. . .), as well as a capacity for using different “tools of the trade” (books, blackboards, chalk, projectors. . .). In this sense, the very identity and self-understanding of someone who is part of this world cannot be accurately construed as a mere property or status that a person has independently of her way of inhabiting academia. Sure, a title or some other official document or ritual can establish that someone is a professor in a juridical sense, allowing her that status within our institutions; however, no one who inhabits the world of academia— colleagues, students, not even our imaginary subject herself—would take a mere title as defining one’s very being. In other words, from an ontological perspective, no one would really count as a professor unless she could feel at home navigating a set of practices that characterize the world of academia (giving lectures, attending students, grading papers and so on). By the same token, the identity or understanding of something as a tool for teaching, say, is equally (ontologically) dependent on its context of use, the set of practices that gives it its purpose. It is important to realize how different a conception this picture of our being-in-a-world would generate for understanding the ground of our conviction in (what we might call) that world’s existence, as well as our own existence within it. Recall that according to the modern, skeptical picture we have been exploring in the preceding sections—in which the world is conceived as an object or a set of objects separated from ourselves—our conviction in its existence is only as strong (or as weak) as the grounds we have to believe in the accuracy of our representations of that world. Echoing one of Cavell’s formulations, in order to believe in the existence of a world thus conceived we would have to be somehow convinced of it.64 Contrast that to the picture just outlined, in which being-in-a-world is conceived as a primordial unity (or an equiprimordial relation); since according to this picture my very being is (at least partially) defined by the way I inhabit a given world, there is no question of “connecting” separated entities in a larger whole. On the contrary, the whole is prior to any (conceivable) “parts.” Thus, from a phenomenological perspective, as long as I am practically engaged in a context of meaningful activities, there is no separation between a “self” and a set of “objects” (the tools being used). That does not mean, of

42  Jônadas Techio course, that one will always and infallibly feel at home in a given world— our ground can always crack, as Cavell warns us in another context.65 But it is precisely when some disruption occurs and only when it occurs that it will feel natural to describe one’s phenomenological situation as being a subject, separated from the objects that are now being observed from a detached perspective. The interesting question—one that I hope our preceding engagement with Cavell’s writings on the ontology of film helps answering—is again why such a condition became what we feel as the only natural way of relating to the world. Pondering a little further on what happens when such a disruption in our engaged activities occurs might help bring home the content of the “difficult thought” I  have been trying to articulate. Going back to our illustration, think of what not being at home in the world of academia would look like: clearly it would not amount merely to getting outside a place (although it might include something like that), but rather to a failure in engaging with (or perhaps a renouncement of) a set of practices and commitments that normally gives meaning and purpose to the actions performed inside this world. If “world” is understood along these lines (roughly as a horizon of meaning), then “denying its existence” (which is the intellectualized understanding of its abandonment, better suiting the skeptic’s own self-interpretation), although always possible, would imply adopting a particular attitude towards one’s own experience, one’s practices, one’s commitments and one’s fellow human beings, an attitude that ultimately may isolate oneself from the world and others. Now, supposing these considerations help us make better sense of the idea of a relation to a world that is “closer, or more intimate, than the ideas of believing and knowing are made to convey,” I  would like to redeem one final promissory note issued earlier (at the end of section 2), concerning the elucidative potential of an analogy between Cavell’s method in The World Viewed and the method employed by Wittgenstein in paragraph 2 of the Investigations.66 My suggestion is that Cavell’s engagement with the media of photography and film—in particular his claim that film is an image of (modern) skepticism—parallels Wittgenstein’s engagement with Augustine’s picture of meaning in the Investigations, in that both aim at allowing the reader to think through those images and realize their hidden (and costly) consequences. In both cases, that can work only by means of carefully crafted formulations (“we want to say. . . ,” “so far as. . . ,” etc.) that might in turn be taken differently by differently inclined readers, or by the same reader in different frames of mind, becoming (alternatingly) tempted to feel the pull of those images and also suspicious of them. One way of expressing the upshot of (my reading of) The World Viewed’s argument, therefore, would be to say that it should allow us to see through the skeptical fantasy of our relation to the world, thus reminding us that the world viewed is very different from the world lived (as the builder’s language, itself an embodiment of Augustine’s picture,

The World Viewed and the World Lived 43 is very different from our ordinary, lived language). But again, being more careful, perhaps I should say that Cavell’s aim is to show us that the world viewed differs only from the way our lived world used to be67—namely a world apprehended primarily in an active and embodied way, as a world of things that are useful and affordable for certain human projects and to that extent are always already filled with meaning and value within our practices. But to show that is certainly not a task that could be fulfilled by one single book. At any rate, by investigating the ontology of photography and film in The World Viewed Cavell has taken one important step in that direction, suggesting that our modern sense of isolation is largely self-imposed. This finding, in turn, is crucial for the therapeutic purpose continuously explored in his work, of enabling us to overcome the skeptical impulse, hence returning to the ordinary.

Acknowledgments The research leading to this work received support from The Humboldt Project (directed by James Conant), CAPES’ Visiting Scholar Program (Process n. 88881.171587/2018–01) as well as CNPq’s Research Productivity Grant (PQ n. 303905/2017–4).

Notes 1 Stanley Cavell, Cavell on Film (New York: SUNY Press, 2005), 109–10. 2 Among the main contemporary exponents of Cavell-inspired philosophy of film in that tradition are Andrew Klevan, David Rodowick, James Conant, Jerry Goodenough, Robert Pippin, Robert Sinnerbrink, Rupert Read, Stephen Mulhall, Thomas E. Wartenberg and William Rothman. 3 I am here echoing an expression introduced by Stephen Mulhall in his influential book On Film, at the end of the following, much quoted passage: I do not look to these films as handy or popular illustrations of views and arguments properly developed by philosophers; I see them rather as themselves reflecting on and evaluating such views and arguments, as thinking seriously and systematically about them in just the ways that philosophers do. Such films are not philosophy’s raw material, nor a source for its ornamentation; they are philosophical exercises, philosophy in action—film as philosophizing. (Stephen Mulhall, On Film, 2nd ed., New York: Taylor and Francis, 2008, 4.) 4 Stanley Cavell, Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), xii. 5 Stanley Cavell, Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983), 192–93. 6 Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (New York: The Viking Press, 1971), 72. 7 Ibid., 188. 8 “We want to walk: So we need friction. Back to the rough ground!” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation, 3rd. ed., trans. G.E.M Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), §107.

44  Jônadas Techio 9 For example, Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds., Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 8th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)—arguably the most widely used and cited anthology of critical writings about film since the publication of the first edition, in 1974. 10 Notable exceptions to that rule are David N. Rodowick’s The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), William Rothman and Marian Keane’s Reading Cavell’s The World Viewed: A  Philosophical Perspective on Film (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000) and Martin Shuster’s “The Ordinariness and Absence of the World: Cavell’s Ontology of the Screen-Reading The World Viewed.” MLN 130, no. 5 (2015). 11 See Gregory Currie, Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 50; Noël Carroll, “Towards an Ontology of the Moving Image.” in Philosophy and Film, ed. Cynthia Freeland and Thomas Wartenberg (New York: Routledge, 1995), 70; Noël Carroll, Theorizing the Moving Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): passim; and also Cynthia Freeland and Thomas Wartenberg, Philosophy and Film (New York: Routledge, 1995), 377. 12 See André Bazin, What Is Cinema? Vol. 1 (trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967) and Erwin Panofsky, “Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures.” in Film, ed. Daniel Talbot (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959). 13 Although this is not a point I will be able to pursue at this occasion, I should indicate that there are a few (more recent) readers of Bazin’s work who would disagree with the more negative aspects of Cavell’s assessment (which, to a large extent, reproduces the “received wisdom” about Bazin’s position vis-àvis the ontology of photography and film). Among those I would recommend in particular Jonathan Friday’s “André Bazin’s Ontology of Photographic and Film Imagery.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63, no. 4 (Autumn, 2005): 339–50 and Daniel Morgan’s “Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics.” Critical Inquiry 32, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 443–81. 14 Bazin, What Is Cinema? 15. 15 Ibid., 110. Panofsky formulates basically the same point by saying that “The medium of the movies is physical reality as such.” Panofsky, “Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures.” 31. 16 Cavell, The World Viewed, 16. 17 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §371. 18 Ibid., §90. 19 As presented by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time (Albany, NY: ExcelsiorX, 2010). 20 Cavell, The World Viewed, xxiii. 21 See Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 323–24. 22 Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 17. 23 About the use of this method in the Philosophical Investigations see David Stern, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 10–15. 24 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §1. 25 Ibid., §2. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid, §3. 28 James Conant, “The World of a Movie.” in Making a Difference: Rethinking Humanism and the Humanities, ed. Niklas Forsberg and Susanne Jansson (Thales: Stockholm, 2011), 294.

The World Viewed and the World Lived 45 29 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §308. 30 There were, of course, many skeptics before modernity, but Cavell’s focus is in the peculiar variety of skeptical challenge that our (Western) culture has been grappling with in the last few centuries. For a clarifying treatment of the different varieties of skepticism see Conant; “Two Varieties of Skepticism.” in Rethinking Epistemology, Vol. 2, ed. Guenter Abel and James Conant (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2012), 1–73. 31 Cavell, Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 94. 32 Cavell, The Claim of Reason, 46. 33 Cavell, The World Viewed, 22. 34 Ibid. 35 Cavell suggests in another context, not thinking specifically of Shakespeare, that “if tragedy is the working out of a scene of skepticism, then comedy in contrast works out a festive abatement of skepticism, call it an affirmation of existence” (Cavell, Cavell on Film, 239). 36 The following passage states in a nutshell what Cavell calls his main “intuition” concerning the relationship between Shakespeare and modern skepticism: “My intuition is that the advent of skepticism as manifested in Descartes’s Meditations is already in full existence in Shakespeare. . . . The issue posed is no longer, or not alone, as with earlier skepticism, how to conduct oneself best in an uncertain world; the issue suggested is how to live at all in a groundless world. . . . In Descartes’s thinking, the ground, one gathers, still exists, in the assurance of God. But Descartes’s very clarity about the necessity of God’s assurance in establishing a rough adequation or collaboration between our everyday judgments and the world . . . means that if assurance in God will be shaken, the ground of the everyday is thereby shaken” (Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 3). 37 Cavell, The World Viewed, 21. 38 For a very helpful treatment of the modernist revolution in painting introduced by Manet (which is partially inspired by Cavell, among many other sources) see Robert B. Pippin, After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2014). 39 Cavell, The World Viewed, 23. 40 Bazin, What Is Cinema? 9–10. 41 Ibid., 10–11. 42 Ibid., 11. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Cavell, The World Viewed, 23–24. 46 Ibid., 19. 47 See ibid, 211. 48 Ibid., 17; my italics. 49 See Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? chapter 2. 50 Cavell, The World Viewed, 17. 51 Ibid., 18. 52 Cavell, Cavell on Film, 118. 53 Cavell, The World Viewed, 21. 54 See, for example, James Elkins, Photography Theory (New York, Routledge, 2007), fn. 16; Darren Ambrose, Film, Nihilism and the Restoration of Belief (Croydon: Zero Books, 2013), 13; and Jinhee Choi and Mattias Frey, CineEthics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship (New York: Routledge, 2014), 3. 55 In this connection, compare Heidegger’s claims in “The Age of the World Picture,” particularly the following passage: “Where the world becomes picture,

46  Jônadas Techio what is, in its entirety, is juxtaposed as that for which man is prepared and which, correspondingly, he therefore intends to bring before himself and have before himself, and consequently intends in a decisive sense to set in place before himself. . . . Hence world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as picture. What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it first is in being and only is in being to the extent that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth. Wherever we have the world picture, an essential decision takes place regarding what is, in its entirety. The Being of whatever is, is sought and found in the representednes of the latter” (Heidegger, The Question concerning Technology, and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1997), 129–30; (my emphasis). 56 Lisa Trahair, “Being on the Outside: Cinematic Automatism in Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed.” Film-Philosophy 18 (2014): 133–34. 57 Cavell, The World Viewed, 22. 58 Ibid., 24. 59 Ibid., 39. 60 Ibid., 39–40. 61 Ibid., 102. 62 Cavell, Themes Out of School, 192–93. 63 The following passage presents a useful grammatical reminder to further reflect on this point (I refer the reader also to its larger context, the Introduction of Disowning Knowledge): “Doubt, like belief, is most fully, say originally, directed to claims of others, of speakers; an appropriate reaction to, for instance, rumour, Iago’s medium. If you tell me that there is a table in the next room I may or may not believe you; hence I may say I believe or do not believe there is a table there. But philosophers are led to say that they believe that there is a table here (the presence that is for all the world this table), before the very eyes” (Cavell, Disowning Knowledge, 7). 64 “Movies convince us of the world’s reality in the only way we have to be convinced, without learning to bring the world closer to the heart’s desire . . . by taking views of it” (Cavell, The World Viewed, 102). 65 See Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? 240. 66 Not only at that paragraph. See again Stern, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, 10–15. 67 Incidentally, Cavell has expressed similar qualms concerning the case of the builders’ language-game and its relation to our own declining culture—see Cavell, “Declining Decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 31, no. 3 (1988): 253–64.

References Ambrose, Darren. Film, Nihilism and the Restoration of Belief. Croydon: Zero Books, 2013. Bazin, André. What Is Cinema? Vol. 1. Translated by Hugh Gray. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967. Braudy, Leo, and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 8th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Carroll, Nöel. Theorizing the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

The World Viewed and the World Lived 47 Carroll, Nöel. “Towards an Ontology of the Moving Image.” In Philosophy and Film, edited by Cynthia Freeland and Thomas E. Wartenberg. New York: Routledge, 1995. Cavell, Stanley. Cavell on Film. New York: SUNY Press, 2005. Cavell, Stanley. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality and Tragedy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Cavell, Stanley. “Declining decline: Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Culture.” Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 31, no. 3 (1988). Cavell, Stanley. Disowning Knowledge: In Six Plays of Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Cavell, Stanley. Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.Cavell, Stanley. Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983. Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. New York: The Viking Press, 1971. Choi, Jinhee and Mattias Frey. Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship. New York: Routledge, 2014. Conant, James. “Two Varieties of Skepticism.” In Rethinking Epistemology, Volume 2, edited by Guenter Abel and James Conant. Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2012. Conant, James. “The World of a Movie.” In Making a Difference: Rethinking Humanism and the Humanities, edited by Niklas Forsberg and Susanne Jansson. Thales: Stockholm, 2011. Currie, Gregory. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Elkins, James. Photography Theory. New York, Routledge, 2007. Freeland, Cynthia and Thomas E. Wartenberg. Philosophy and Film. New York: Routledge, 1995. Friday, Jonathan. “André Bazin’s Ontology of Photographic and Film Imagery.” In The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 63, no. 4 (Autumn, 2005): 339–50. Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time: A Revised Edition of the Stambaugh Translation. Albany, NY: ExcelsiorX, 2010. Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. New York: Harper and Row, 1997. Morgan, Daniel. “Rethinking Bazin: Ontology and Realist Aesthetics.” Critical Inquiry 32, no. 3 (Spring 2006): 443–81. Mulhall, Stephen. On Film, 2nd ed. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2008. Panofsky, Erwin. “Style and Medium in the Moving Pictures.” In Film, edited by Daniel Talbot. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. Pippin, Robert B. After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2014. Rodowick, David N. The Virtual Life of Film. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2007. Rothman, William and Marian Keane. Reading Cavell’s The World Viewed: A  Philosophical Perspective on Film. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000.

48  Jônadas Techio Shuster, Martin. “The Ordinariness and Absence of the World: Cavell’s Ontology of the Screen-Reading the World Viewed.” MLN 130, no. 5 (2015). Stern, David. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Trahair, Lisa. “Being on the Outside: Cinematic Automatism in Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed.” Film-Philosophy 18 (2014). Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation. 3rd. Ed., edited and translated by G.E.M Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001.

3 The Morph-Image Four Forms of Post-Cinema Steen Ledet Christiansen

Post-cinema has expanded the forms of cinema and audiovisual culture in general with the introduction of new image production and media technologies. No longer contingent on profilmic reality or continuity editing, post-cinema allows for a new image of time beyond that of indirect and direct images of time, the two images proposed by Gilles Deleuze in his two volumes on cinema, respectively termed the movement-image and the time-image.1 This article investigates how post-cinema thinks about contemporary audiovisual culture through new forms. Three forms are detailed—animacies, capture and flows—showing how digital workflows revise earlier versions of cinema, producing new insights into how our world is organized. The fourth form—plastic temporalities—challenges classic cinematic time as reaching beyond continuity through contiguity, suggesting instead that the concept and experience of time have become increasingly flexible to adapt to a new spatiotemporal organization. In Detention (Joseph Kahn, 2011) we find a stunning example of a new image of time that goes beyond the movement-image and the time-image. In a continuous shot, the camera circles a group of students held in detention while simultaneously moving back in time. Although the editing joins are evident, morphing software is used to smooth out these joins and produce a synthetic long take. As the shot skips back in time, snippets of hit songs from the corresponding decade play as the soundtrack and the students’ fashion changes as well. As a time travel film, this sequence is not a flashback. Nor is the shot a meditation on the nature of the past and its relation to the present. What we come up against is the question of how cinema expresses duration, the key question for Deleuze’s work on cinema. Deleuze’s interest in duration comes from his larger interest in Henri Bergson’s philosophy of time.2 Bergson distinguishes between clock time and real, lived time, which he refers to as duration.3 Duration, for Bergson and for Deleuze, is indivisible and continuous.4 Part of this article complicates this notion of continuous, indivisible duration by adding multiple layers to that duration. David Rodowick laments the shift to digital video because digital video cannot express lived duration, sliced, as it is, into ones and zeros.5

50  Steen Ledet Christiansen Following Bergson’s philosophy, this is a loss for Rodowick. Rodowick is concerned about the spatialization of the image, which he rightly identifies as continuous due to the lack of cuts in digital cinema that we traditionally find in analog cinema. However, in Detention time takes on another, far more interesting, characteristic: time becomes plastic. This shot is emblematic of a change in cinema that views time as a resource, something to be outright manipulated. We live today in a time of simultaneity and juxtaposition;6 our current spatiotemporal world is one of flow, flux, acceleration and above all a demand for flexibility. The image for our time and of our time is what I will call the morph-image; an image of quick-change, metamorphoses and performativity (as in doing). We find the morph-image in what is currently called post-cinema, understood as the new media ecology after cinema’s dominance,7 the transmutation of time as internal flux8 and post-photographic cinema.9 Post-cinema names how new audiovisual media technologies enhance, reverse, retrieve and obsolesce cinema, all at the same time, as part of the same process, to use Marshall McLuhan’s conception of media tetrads.10 As such, it is imperative to understand how new audiovisual forms connect, disrupt, invert and perpetuate contemporary life, to use Marie-Luise Angerer’s idea of how technology and affect connect and express time.11 Angerer’s notions of connection, disruption, inversion and perpetuation are all forms of relations, ways in which forms interact with each other. In this way, even a disruption functions as a relation, because the negation of a relation is in itself a relation.12 We cannot separate sounds and images from our lives; audiovisual media participate in, produce and organize everyday life, rather than only reflect or represent it. I will argue that this participation, production and organization amount to a form of thinking of and about the world. Thinking about our culture in terms of its dominant image was established by Gilles Deleuze in his two books on cinema. The movementimage is classical narrative cinema, where one event follows another in a logical, causal sequence. Time is experienced indirectly through actions and consequences.13 The time-image liberates cinema from clichéd, causal narrative unfolding and allows us to engage with the very question of time itself. This is what is often called modernist or experimental cinema. The time-image also marks a rupture in cultural organization after World War II, where fragmentation, dislocation and disjointedness reigned.14 Deleuze finished his study of cinema by pointing out that a third image was emerging, but never defined it.15 Proposals for this new image have been plentiful, including the neuro-image, the desiring-image, the lifeimage, the non-time-image, the space-image and the rhythm-image.16 While all these different image proposals are insightful, none of them successfully integrate or explain the new spatiotemporal world we live in and that new image technologies are part of. Each proposed image limits

The Morph-Image 51 itself entirely too much by dealing with only one aspect of contemporary image production, whether it is the shift to neuroculture (Pisters’ neuroimage), the queering of cinema (Davis’ desiring-image), the biopolitics of (post-)cinema (Casarino’s life-image), the digital nature of current cinema (Sanchez’s non-time-image), the spatialization of time in videogames (Galloway’s space-time) and the interactions of sound and image, particularly in music videos (Shaviro’s rhythm-image). Contemporary image production is involved in all of these aspects at the same time, and prioritizing one over the other is insufficient. We urgently need an image-form that encapsulates all these aspects of contemporary culture, and to do so, we need a new vocabulary for how soundimages work.17 On the other hand, that images think is axiomatic for film-philosophy. Exactly how much agency can be ascribed to cinematic images has been the subject of much debate in film-philosophy. In this debate, I side with what is referred to as the “bold thesis” by Paisley Livingston—that film has exclusive capacities for making significant contributions for philosophy.18 Livingston himself rejects this notion, arguing that the bold thesis is caught in a dilemma, that of paraphrase, where if film does philosophy through audiovisual means it cannot be paraphrased in language and is meaningless for us, while if film’s philosophy can be paraphrased, we are better off sticking with language anyway.19 Aaron Smuts takes issue with Livingston’s rejection based on this first horn of the dilemma, pointing out that film can make contributions to philosophy by presenting thought experiments.20 These thought experiments need not necessarily be expressible linguistically, and rather than paraphrase we should consider their articulation in language as translation. Detention’s synthetic long take can be stated linguistically but will lose its force as a thought experiment. My description of the scene in the beginning of this article is not the same experience as watching the shot and does not adequately reproduce the notion that time may run backwards. Film does philosophy through projecting “its own world with its own rules,” a world that is “less a reproduction of reality than a new reality.”21 Such a new world and new reality is evident in the scene from Detention I opened this article with. The film allows us to think time differently. This “film as philosophizing” becomes particularly evident and salient with the integration of new media and imaging technologies into cinematic production.22 While film has always employed special effects and trick shots, the rise of digital workflows has expanded the forms that film can take, the worlds film can produce and the new realities that film can show. Without going too far into the debate, the fact that digital cinema produces, rather than necessarily captures or records, reality removes Livingston’s “second horn of the dilemma” of cinema being dependent on objects in front of cameras.23 Plenty of films today, including Detention, are produced without solely depending on a camera. Digital animation along with unusual imaging techniques produce images that do not have

52  Steen Ledet Christiansen a profilmic instance. In such cases, the plasmatic nature of images allows for an entirely different way of experiencing the world. This is not to say that all digitally recorded films will employ these potentialities, yet they remain a virtual force of the soundimages. Even films like Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001), which famously discusses existentialism in its dialog, may be considered as doing philosophy through the rotoscopic animation that overlays profilmic reality with an animated layer, thus allowing for smoother transitions between dream and diegetic reality. Images think through forms, and so new forms are new thoughts; these new thoughts are necessarily thoughts about and of the new spatiotemporal world that we live in. Understanding these new film forms also allows us to understand the shape of the world we live in, which is one of the purposes of philosophy. Post-cinema does not imitate the world we live in but produces new experiences, new ways of being in the world, new embodied sensations that did not previously exist in the same manner. Post-cinematic images—morph-images—thus give shape to the world we live in by providing new experiences. By understanding how these images work, we understand the contemporary spatiotemporal regime better. Here, I will outline three forms: animacies, capture and flow, before concluding with a fourth form: the plasticity of time. These four theses can only be the starting point for how post-cinema thinks our spatiotemporal moment but are suggestive of how the post-cinematic image ecology differs from earlier eras.

Animacies Post-cinematic works are increasingly animated moving images rather than recorded images. There is a long-standing debate on how film and cinema have become a subset of animation. Lev Manovich is the strongest voice from digital culture studies, while Alan Cholodenko has made the same argument for much longer in animation studies.24 In either case, post-cinema no longer relies solely on cameras to produce images; other imaging technologies are used as well. These new imaging technologies allow for new ways of producing images, new image behaviors and radically different workflows. In Tony Scott’s time-travel action-thriller Deja Vu (2006), part of the plot hinges on a machine that can see the past unfold. This time window, as the technology is called, has a surreal, dreamlike quality to its images. Part of that quality comes from the fact that scenes were shot with a LIDAR device—a digital device that records distance rather than image through the use of laser light. These distances are then converted into images, but this process is an animation process, since there is no inherent connection between the distances recorded and the resulting images. While Deja Vu aims for resemblance, the LIDAR process of acquiring images allows for a much greater flexibility in how the images are finally

The Morph-Image 53 rendered. In the film, the images of the past are grainy and static-y and produce ghostly trails of the characters moving around, producing a unique texture that renders the discrepancy in diegetic temporalities sensible for the viewer. The body of Claire Kuchever (Paula Patton) stretches and dissipates across the room in uncanny movements; her body takes on a degree of “plasmaticity” similar to what Eisenstein identified decades ago in Disney cartoons.25 Much like with Disney’s hand-drawn animations, Claire’s body is rendered plasmatic through the introduction of non-conventional imaging technologies and is subsequently animated. Animation, then, increasingly becomes part of cinema, although the perceptual realism of digital animation obscures this very fact.26 These new digital images are attractions in both Tom Gunning’s and Angela Ndalianis’ senses, but they are also attractors in Aylish Wood’s sense— something that “exerts a particular influence over how a viewer engages with a text.”27 The special effects afforded by digital imaging and animation exert a force over the viewer, attracting attention and interest. This force is an animating force—an animacy—that gives life not just to the images on screen but also to viewers. These digital animations innervate our nervous systems by integrating new image and media technologies into their forms of expression.28 These new technologies are animating technologies, themselves forms of movement and force. Innervation suggests integration with these new technologies to make us more lively, but also indicates a lack of distinction between human and nonhuman bodies.29 Post-cinematic animacies blur the agencies between images and viewers, because images are now able to take on new forms and expressions. In Angerer’s schema, then, animated images connect our bodies to the screen in new ways, because of the new technological affordances. This connection expresses itself through innervation, new energies that were not possible before. And yet, we should temper that enthusiasm for new media affordances with the recognition that much of this new innervation is in fact a retrieval of what cinema used to be—the early cinema of attractions that Gunning has analyzed so elaborately was itself a version of new innervations and blurring of images and bodies. The techniques that are used in Deja Vu are tied to digital technologies, but the practice that they generate—the animacies that are produced—are not new. Cinema has always been interested in the plasmatic movement of images. And yet again, what is new in Deja Vu and a host of other films that incorporate LIDAR devices or other non-camera recorders is the obsolescence of the camera. While early cinema was born among a plethora of visual technologies, slowly these alternate forms fell to the wayside, and visual culture solidified around the camera as the predominant image producer. No more is this the case; we see a host of imaging technologies emerge that do not require a camera, or where the image recording device is so far removed from the classical film camera that it may as well not be

54  Steen Ledet Christiansen considered a camera. Devices such as motion capture and performance capture technologies are really not cameras, even though they are often referred to as such. Instead, these devices record movement for images to be mapped onto later. The camera with its required profilmic reality is slowly becoming a residual technology and a residual practice. Post-cinema is more plasmatic than traditional cinema, and its morphing form expresses a deep relation between humans and technology, a relation that can no longer be regarded as prosthetic30 but instead must be regarded as an interrelation or a transductive relation.31 Although such an argument—that post-cinema reveals the transductive relationship between human being and technologies—may appear to be a radical claim, such an argument has a long tradition in film-philosophy, formulated by Jean Epstein, who recognized that cinema produced an “upheaval in the hierarchy of things.”32 Cinematic reproduction—and for that matter post-cinematic production—is precisely the mechanism through which this realization becomes more acute. For Epstein, these mechanisms came through accelerating or slowing down time, but today’s forms are broader and more varied. All special effects broaden our perception and so broaden our agency.

Capture and Disruption The flip side of animacies is that we are captured by soundimages; whether this is a matter of entrainment, corporealization or modulation, postcinematic works sometimes articulate our capacities to feel, to act and to think through their intensities. While we are animated by the new forms of post-cinema, these forms may also realize our bodies and attentions in ways that connect to biopower. When images are regarded as attractors, they not only produce new affective and attentive states but also limit and modulate what we experience. The animacies of post-cinematic images entrain us, where entrainment is “the coordinating of the timing of our behaviors and the synchronizing of our attentional resources.”33 Particularly rhythmic patterns align our bodily features with these same patterns; our bodies synchronize to the movement of the moving images. In this way, post-cinematic works function as what Nikolas Rose has termed technologies of power.34 Post-cinematic works do so by the way they animate new experiences in us. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000) stands as one of the clearest examples of post-cinematic technologies of power. The movie uses a full range of different cinematic techniques and technologies to produce its intense sequences, including sequences shot with video cameras, rapid MTV-style editing, Snorri-cam shots, time-lapse sequences and split screens, as well as the juxtaposition of extreme close-ups and extreme long shots. This arsenal is indicative of the expanded type of filmmaking that has become typical in post-cinema: any kind of camera,

The Morph-Image 55 any kind of cinematic practice, may be used, as long as it generates new experiences and new forms. As for the characters, they are all caught in nightmarish scenarios of addiction and control, constantly trying to get out of their circumstances but never able to succeed. The movie immediately suggests the technologies of “healthism,” the link between the social body and individual well-being,35 as well as responsibilization, turning unemployment, illness and poverty into an individual issue of self-care.36 Clearly, none of the characters are capable of self-care, and the film shows how even TV and sugar are addictions that modulate behavior. There is a constant tension between the characters’ goals and ambitions and what they are able to achieve. However, Requiem for a Dream actually disrupts the technologies of healthism and self-care by producing empathy for the characters and the estranging and shocking drug sequences. Instead, we would do better to think of the entwined notions of “cruel optimism” and “slow death” put forth by Lauren Berlant.37 The only option that the characters in Requiem for a Dream have is to survive in a time of “struggling, drowning, holding on to the ledge, treading water, not-stopping.”38 The stark, delirious images produce the same sensation of corporealization: forced into conditions beyond one’s control, constantly spiraling out of control. There is agency here but only the lateral agency of choosing how to die. Pushing the notion of corporealization further, we also see how postcinema renders certain feelings and sensations as more successful than others, which is what we can call modulation. Modulation is not the production of specific feelings or sensations but rather what Deleuze calls a “sieve whose mesh varies from one point to another.”39 If we exhibit the proper feelings and sensations, we are allowed to pass through the sieve uncontested, but if not, we are blocked, questioned and antagonized. These rhythms are converted into what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have termed affective labor.40 Where Siegfried Kracauer’s salaried masses would be compensated in the form of distraction, the compensation of the multitude is to work even during their compensation.41 Entrained by the post-cinema’s flow of images, an abundance of affect is created, which demands us to participate in the attention economy. Sensory overload was always the strategy for giving people the busy-ness they wanted after a full day of unfulfilling work, but for post-cinema, we can trace a move towards an overload of affect that puts us in a state of flow, fully subsuming our attention so that we do not even notice that we are working. The flow of images is the capture of time and attention. Capture, then, becomes one of the dominant forms of control in our contemporary era. As such, the entrainment that new image forms elicit follows Angerer’s perpetuation of contemporary life—the articulation of our bodies and sensations through audiovisual rhythms is just such a perpetuation. But while our attention may be attracted and captured,

56  Steen Ledet Christiansen some films also disrupt perpetuation by eliciting feelings that are incongruent with dominant moods. Requiem for a Dream’s fragmented audiovisual style ends up disrupting the technologies of power that currently structure contemporary life. We can consider this disruption a form of reversal, according to McLuhan’s schema. The intensities of audiovisual entrainment are reversed so that what is often captured instead becomes disruption. Rhythmic patterns become disjointed, and the form of Aronofsky’s film is precisely what allows us to recognize the survival time of the characters.

Flows A different form of capture, although closely related, is the state of flow: a state that feels exhilarating but is also that moment when our attention is fully captured. This capture of attention is often done through intense audiovisual sequences that propel our experience into new territories. Again, morphing techniques are crucial for such attention capture so that images can reach the proper flow of intensity. A very literal version of this flow is played out in Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013), where Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is stranded in space and has to get back to Earth or die. Here, animation technologies allow for sublime sequences—most famously the opening 13 minutes—of floating, the camera seemingly moving uninhibited by gravity itself. In fact, these shots are not continuous or weightless. Instead, several shots are morphed together into one apparently continuous shot. This sensation of flow is produced in two primary ways: elastic shots and morph cuts. An elastic shot is Yvonne Spielmann’s term for shots that create alternative understandings of space other than perspectival space, through special effects.42 Spielmann notes that most special effects in cinema could legitimately be called “spatial effects” because they almost always depend on bending space in new ways. In Gravity these spatials are produced by having the camera move in highly unconventional ways that sever us from a stable point of view. Instead, our point of view changes unexpectedly as objects that leave frame right flow back in frame left. This spatial unmooring is spectacular because we are so unused to this kind of cinematography that it produces a renewal of perception. Part of this unmooring comes from the morph cuts, an animation technique where shots that end and begin with almost the same composition can be morphed seamlessly together to present a continuous shot. Morph cuts are distinctive in that they are invisible if done well and so produce a literal version of Bordwell’s concept of “intensified continuity.”43 In Gravity the continuity of shots is intensified through morphing and so produces space and time as a continuous unfolding relation. This unfolding is another example of the logic of intensity, where new articulations of space help generate and attract attention.

The Morph-Image 57 Another aspect of flow and elastic images comes in the form of temporal elasticity, what I will call temporals. Temporals are instances of time moving at different speeds, whether faster or slower. The iconic example of a temporal effect is the bullet-time effect in The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999). The Wachowski sisters’ movie innovated a new image of time, which spatialized time by morphing multiple shots together to one seamless tracking shot that in fact does not move. One hundred twenty cameras were used in this time-slice sequence, before digital composting and animation morphed these still images together to a moving image. Once again, while time is indeed spatialized (since the non-camera appears to rotate while characters do not move), it is more useful to think of the plasticity of time, the way that time may move without duration, in a sense. Time moving without duration is precisely what Rodowick objects to about digital cinema, since it contradicts a key Bergsonian idea: that movement and duration are the same. Rodowick borrows Deleuze’s logic of becoming when he (Rodowick) argues that “the electronic image is never wholly present in either space or time.”44 What Rodowick does not grapple with and which is what is at stake here is the distinction between quantitative and qualitative differences. This distinction is developed by Bergson in The Creative Mind and commented on by Deleuze in his book on Bergson. For both Bergson and Deleuze, qualitative differences are about repetitions that are not the same, an intensity of variation.45 Temporals exist outside of quantitative difference, outside linear, clock time, but they also exist not “wholly present” in real time, that of lived duration, since the experience of plastic time goes beyond human perception. We experience something we cannot experience. Static images turn into moving images, but they do so only through a spatial change, a spatial re-orientation. This plastic time connects quantity (more than 12,000 frames per second) to quality (the intensity of the sequence) and produces change (shift in camera perspective) without change (strings of code). Time moves without duration, and multiple scales of time are introduced as the qualitative multiplicities of different temporalities: the temporality of the viewer, the temporality of the bullet-time setup, the temporality of the morphing animation and so forth. The bullet-time effect has since become standard issue for action movies and has been further intensified. So far, the effect has culminated in Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012), where the experience of time is slowed down by a drug called “Slo-Mo.” People under the influence of Slo-Mo provide the spectacular superslow-motion temporals. As the results of a drug, the slowing down of time no longer solely expresses power but instead becomes control. When Judge Dredd attacks criminals under the influence of Slo-Mo, he is able to act much faster than the criminals. We are placed in a position of awe as Dredd metes out justice. The superslowing down of time is an example of how this new kind of image is intensified to present time as an awe-inspiring resource: time becomes a technology

58  Steen Ledet Christiansen of control. Master villain Ma-Ma is punished by falling to her death under the influence of Slo-Mo, an act of justice in itself. Time becomes a technology of power, and being subjected to the slowing down of time is in itself a punishment in Dredd. This kind of temporal suggests a very different relationship to time, as time suddenly becomes part of the narrative plane of the film, rather than being solely a matter of viewer experience. Time becomes, in a sense, tactile, something that characters feel and are aware of experiencing. Time, then, is not expressed indirectly through the actions of characters, as in Deleuze’s movement-image, nor is it a direct image of time passing, as in Deleuze’s time-image. Rather, time has become plastic, something that can be changed and manipulated, more like a resource than something outside of human experience. In other words, our relation to time has changed into something palpable. Time flows, but no longer is this flow unilateral or at the same speed. While time ramping has always been part of cinema, making time part of the diegetic makeup of the film indicates a shift in temporality. Cinematic time is enhanced, made more intense in the new forms of spatials and temporals whose flows capture viewer attention. Flow, then, becomes a state that perpetuates contemporary life in Angerer’s schema, because viewer attention is swallowed up by these morph shots that produce new impressions of space-time. For McLuhan, these new intensities of space and time would indicate cinema’s enhancement into something more, something that goes beyond older technological limits. The digital workflows of post-cinema allow for new articulations of space and time and as a result produce new experiences and new ways of thinking space and time. Such new articulations are most evident in the plastic temporalities produced by post-cinema.

Plastic Temporalities Time has special traction in post-cinema and in our current spatiotemporal world. Animacies, capture and flow are all forms of modulating time. We can state this positively: time becomes emancipated; or we can state it negatively: time becomes a resource to be managed. As I have tried to show, neither is more correct than the other, but they are instead two modalities that individual movies articulate and make sensible. Cinema, or rather post-cinema, thus modulates our reception of time, in what I  suspect John Mullarkey would call a refraction of the becoming-oftime.46 Time is constantly constituted anew in cinema, as time is increasingly manipulated. Epstein already called cinema a time-thinking machine, since we can see “the lengthening or shortening of time on screen.”47 Epstein makes a radical claim—that cinema has taught us “the unreality of continuity and discontinuity” through time compression and expansion and so

The Morph-Image 59 “ushers us into the unreality of space-time.”48 For Epstein, then, cinema is a machine that thinks time differently through its technological makeup. As post-cinema expands the technological devices used to produce soundimages, it stands to reason that space-time is similarly expanded. These spatiotemporal manipulations and distortions are part of a larger shift in contemporary culture, where notions of “non-places”49 and “timeless time”50 are necessary to understand the ways we live. The emerging forms of post-cinema are ways of grasping these changes, changes that increasingly revolve around the demand for flexibility. All the forms I have outlined here converge on the notion of plastic temporalities, which was where I  opened with Detention and its new image of time. That film is not the only film that has developed a new way of engaging with time, an engagement beyond implicit or direct images of time. Instead, the image of time currently emerging is one of plasticity and morphing. The images we have encountered are all morphs, able to take on any shape necessary. Space and time become resources rather than constants, something for post-cinema to modulate and re-articulate in new plastic forms. I employ the term “plastic” in the sense that Catherine Malabou has developed it across a range of books, most importantly What Should We Do With Our Brain?, where she also takes issue with the idea of submitting to capitalism’s demand for flexibility.51 Plastic temporalities, then, suggest a new kind of temporal organization, a revision of Mary Ann Doane’s “cinematic time”—no longer is the cut the predominant way of organizing post-cinematic time, the way editing did for cinematic time.52 Since so many cuts are in fact smoothed over and morphed together, as I  have shown, duration is a malleable element in post-cinema. Time is increasingly viewed as reversible and fluid, in shots such as Detention’s tracking shot into the past, in reversenarration films such as Irréversible (Gaspar Noé, 2002), in the temporal paradoxes created by films such as Predestination (The Spierig Brothers, 2014) and even in the time loops of Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). Time’s emancipation and modulation show how postcinema emerges as a new mode of thought. Deeply embedded in contemporary spatiotemporal organizations, post-cinema is indicative of and part of how time is rendered differently today. No longer is time a matter of contingency, organized around a paradoxical continuity of noncontinuous moments.53 Post-cinematic time takes several forms, only a few of which I have discussed here, but as should be evident, flexibility and changeability are predominant aspects. The inclusion of new image and media technologies into contemporary audiovisual culture has facilitated these changes and will continue to develop new forms. These forms are inherently centered around an expansion of duration into multi-temporalities, a thickening of time.

60  Steen Ledet Christiansen

Notes 1 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (London: Bloomsbury, 1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (London: Bloomsbury, 1987). 2 Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. T.E. Hulme (New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1920). 3 Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and William Scott Palmer (New York: Zone Books, 1991), 205. 4 Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F.L. Pogson (Mineola, Dover Publications, 2001). 5 David Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 171. 6 Bergson also discusses simultaneity in The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison (Dover, 1946). 7 Steven Shaviro, Post-Cinematic Affect (Winchester: Zero Books, 2010), 1. 8 Garrett Stewart, Framed Time: Toward a Postfilmic Cinema (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), 6. 9 James Hoberman, Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema (London: Verso, 2012), 5. 10 Marshall McLuhan and Eric McLuhan, Laws of Media: The New Science (Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1992), 124ff. 11 Marie-Luise Angerer, Ecology of Affect, trans. by Gerrit Jackson (Lüneberg: Meson Press, 2017), 27. 12 Hegel deals at length with relations and their negation in his discussion of being, nothing and becoming, as well as his outline of Concept in The Science of Logic. 13 Deleuze, Cinema 1, 61ff. 14 Ibid., 73ff. 15 Ibid., 273. 16 Patricia Pisters, The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012). Nick Davis, The Desiring-Image: Gilles Deleuze and Contemporary Queer Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Cesara Casarino, “Three Theses on the Life-Image (Deleuze, Cinema, Bio-politics),” in Releasing the Image: From Literature to New Media, ed. Khalip, Jacques and Robert Mitchell (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). Sergi Sánchez, “Towards a Non-Time Image: Notes on Deleuze in the Digital Era.” in Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film, ed. Denson, Shane and Julia Leyda (Falmer: REFRAME Books, 2016). Alexander R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Steven Shaviro, “The Rhythm-Image” (Paper presented at The Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference 2015). 17 I choose to compound “soundimages” into one word, rather than two words or a hyphenated term, since I  believe it impossible to separate sound and images in film, except as an analytical category. We experience sound and image at the same time, hence soundimages. 18 Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 11. 19 Ibid., 12. 20 Aaron Smuts, “Film as Philosophy: in Defense of a Bold Thesis.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, no. 4 (2009): 414. 21 Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy: A Manifesto for a Radically New Way of Understanding Cinema (London: Wallflower Press, 2006), 5. Emphasis in original. 22 Stephen Mulhall, On Film, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge 2008), 4.

The Morph-Image 61 3 Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” 12. 2 24 Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001). Alan Cholodenko, The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation (Sydney: Power Publications, 1991). 25 Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney, ed. Jay Leyda, trans. Alan Upchurch (Kolkata: Seagull Books, 1986). 26 Stephen Prince, “True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory.” Film Quarterly 49, no. 3 (1996): 32. 27 Tom Gunning, “Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde.” Wide Angle 8, nos. 3  & 4 (1986). Angela Ndalianis, “Special Effects, Morphing Magic, and the 1990s Cinema of Attractions.” MetaMorphing: Visual Transformation and the Culture of Quick-Change, ed. Vivian Sobchack (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). Aylish Wood, Digital Encounters (London: Routledge, 2007), 82. 28 For more on innervation, see Miriam Bratu Hansen, Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 29 Angerer, Ecology of Affect, 26. 30 Ibid., 26. 31 Adrian MacKenzie, Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed (London: Bloomsbury, 2006). 32 Jean Epstein, The Intelligence of a Machine, trans. by Christophe WallRomana (Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2014), 3. 33 P. Gill Satinder, “Entrainment and Musicality in the Human System Interface.” AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication 21 (2007): 568. 34 Nikolas Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 35 Ibid., 74. 36 Thomas Lemke, Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction, trans. by Eric Frederick Trump (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 92. 37 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011). 38 Lauren Berlant, “Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal.” Public Culture 19, no. 2 (2007): 279. 39 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations: 1972–1990, trans. by Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 179. 40 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), 108. 41 Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 325. 42 Yvonne Spielmann, “Elastic Cinema: Technological Imagery in Contemporary Science Fiction Films.” Convergence 9 (2003). 43 David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 121ff. 44 Rodowick, The Virtual Life of Film, 137. 45 Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind, 23, 197. Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism (Zone Books, 1991), 94. 46 John Mullarkey, Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 169. 47 Epstein, Intelligence of a Machine, 21. 48 Ibid., 25. 49 Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995).

62  Steen Ledet Christiansen 50 Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Second edition with a New Preface (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 460. 51 Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain? trans. by Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 78. 52 Mary Ann Doane, The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, Archive (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 25. 53 Ibid., 195.

References Angerer, Marie-Luise. Ecology of Affect. Translated by Gerrit Jackson. Lüneberg: Meson Press, 2017. Augè, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995.Bergson, Henri. The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Mabelle L. Andison, Mineola. Dover Publications, 1946. Bergson, Henri. Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by T.E. Hulme, New York: G.P. Putnam and Sons, 1920. Bergson, Henri. Matter and Memory. Translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and William Scott Palmer. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Translated by F.L. Pogson. Mineola, Dover Publications, 2001. Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Berlant, Lauren. “Nearly Utopian, Nearly Normal.” Public Culture 19, no. 2 (2007): 273–301.Bordwell, David. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society, Second Edition with a New Preface. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Cholodenko, Alan. The Illusion of Life: Essays on Animation. Sydney: Power Publications, 1991. Deleuze, Gilles. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Zone Books, 1991. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. London: Bloomsbury, 1986. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. London: Bloomsbury, 1982. Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations: 1972–1990. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. Doane, Mary Ann. The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, Archive. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Eisenstein, Sergei. Eisenstein on Disney. Edited by Jay Leyda. Translated by Alan Upchurch. Kolkata: Seagull Books, 1986. Epstein, Jean. The Intelligence of a Machine. Translated by Christophe WallRomana. Minneapolis: Univocal Publishing, 2014. Frampton, Daniel. Filmosophy: A Manifesto for a Radically New Way of Understanding Cinema. London: Wallflower Press, 2006. Hansen, Miriam Bratu. Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004.

The Morph-Image 63 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Science of Logic. Translated by George Di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Kracauer, Siegfried. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. Translated by Eric Frederick Trump. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Livingston, Paisley. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 11–19. Mackenzie, Adrian. Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed. London: Bloomsbury, 2002. Malabou, Catherine. What Should We Do with Our Brain? Translated by Sebastian Rand. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. McLuhan, Marshall and Eric McLuhan. Laws of Media: The New Science. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 1992. Mullarkey, John. Refractions of Reality: Philosophy and the Moving Image. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Mulhall, Stephen. On Film, 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2008. Prince, Stephen. “True Lies: Perceptual Realism, Digital Images, and Film Theory.” Film Quarterly 49, no. 3 (1996): 27–37. Rodowick, David. The Virtual Life of Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007. Rose, Nikolas. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Satinder, P. Gill. “Entrainment and Musicality in the Human System Interface.” AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication 21 (2007): 567–605. Smuts, Aaron. “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, no. 4 (2009): 409–20. Spielmann, Yvonne. “Elastic Cinema: Technological Imagery in Contemporary Science Fiction Films.” Convergence 9 (2003): 56–73. Wood, Aylish. Digital Encounters. London: Routledge, 2007.

4 Deleuze’s Cronosigns Susana Viegas

1.  Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time In this essay, I explore Gilles Deleuze’s inquiry into moving images and time by considering concepts such as Chronos (being, the chronological time) and Aiôn (becoming), with the final proposal of analyzing the cinematographic crystal-image as the ultimate cronosign. I intend to depart from the distinction between Chronos and Aiôn made in The Logic of Sense (from 1969) in order to understand how this book has contributed to Deleuze’s conceptual creation of crystalimages as presented in Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985). How can we intersect Deleuze’s in-depth concerns with regard to time in both The Logic of Sense and the Cinema books? Could it be as simple as identifying Chronos and the arrow of linear time of the three successive dimensions (past → present → future) with the movement-image, thus creating cinematographic chronosigns, and the nonlinear time of Aiôn with the time-image, creating cronosigns? A  more careful look reveals that the problem is more challenging since Deleuze claims that it is not the timeimage regime but one of its kinds, the crystal-image, that shows us “nonchronological time, Cronos and not Chronos,”1 a distinction I will develop. Time, its manifold readings and possible forms of expression, always fascinated Deleuze, remaining one of his most-studied subjects. Not by chance, it is one of the essential issues of Deleuze’s entire oeuvre. In fact, the study of this issue touches on other problems—from subjectivity to signs and sensation, from the virtual to the actual and from duration to difference and repetition. In film-philosophy, it is hard not to see the connection between moving images and time. But, isn’t time a rather comprehensive and vague subject to begin with? Deleuze departed not from abstract, universal concepts or from general philosophical questions, but from real experimentation. In his philosophy of time, he would start by questioning the living present and the experience of the present that passes, that flows; he would question the experience of time through moving images: how does the present

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 65 pass? Deleuze is known for being truly fascinated with rhizomatic types of taxonomies, and, with this methodology in mind, in the Cinema books he classifies the moving image in terms of the way it represents time and its manifold perceptions as temporality. Thus, he attains the two great semiotic regimes of the movement-image and the time-image.2 Whereas the movement-image is understood as a mediated and indirect representation of time, attained with montage, following the sensorymotor schema and logical-narrative course, all deriving from and dependent on movement, the time-image is understood as an immediate and direct presentation of time, as seen in the long take and traveling, for example, a regime that does not need to follow the rational principles of the first semiotic type.3 This plain distinction may lead us to think that these two regimes represent the symmetrical division of a historical, linear and chronological time, of pre and postwar regimes, of classical and modern cinema, as if the two cinematic regimes did not coexist, when they do exist and are even intertwined. Prior to this opposition, however, Deleuze divided time into two different perspectives, namely Chronos and Aiôn: “Thus time must be grasped twice. . . . [First,] [o]nly the present exists in time and gathers together or absorbs the past and future. But [second,] only the past and future inhere in time and divide each present infinitely. These are not three successive dimensions, but two simultaneous readings of time.”4 These two simultaneous readings of time express a disagreement: whereas Chronos is understood as the chronological succession of present moments, of a present that seems not to pass at all, the Aiôn presents the present dimension that is constantly engulfed and annihilated by the past and the future. Therefore, by centering the analysis of moving images on the opposition between Chronos and Aiôn, it is important to note that the sets of opposites function not as pure antagonism or negation (in the disjunctive sense of the decision between “either one or the other”), but rather as simultaneous forces. How can they coexist? The “game” between them is not a dialectical progressive movement. For example, there is no evolution from the movement-image to the time-image. Instead of the mutually exclusive disjunction “either/or,” we defend the inclusive conjunction “and.” That is to say, dualities or oppositions are constituted not by antagonist halves (as if deciding between “either Chronos or Aiôn” entailed a division of time into two symmetrical parts), but by asymmetrical halves, within a heterogeneous form of force—to what Deleuze would call a “disjunctive synthesis.” According to Deleuze, this twofold Stoic perspective on the temporal dimensions of past, present and future can give us two distinct readings of time that reorganize the common chronological and empirical division of time into the exclusive succession of the three distinct dimensions (past, present and future). The problem is that once the time-image

66  Susana Viegas regime creates “chronosigns” (with an “h”),5 we cannot presuppose the direct correspondence of Chronos to the movement-image and of Aiôn to the time-image—or can we?

2. Becoming, at the Same Time: The Logic of Sense and Literature The Logic of Sense was published by Gilles Deleuze in 1969 and consisted of 34 series, or 34 paradoxes, such as difference and repetition, virtual and actual, movement and time, order and series, becoming and returning, depth and surface, smooth and striated, hot and cool. Paradox is the true passion of philosophy: “Philosophy is revealed not by good sense but by paradox. Paradox is the pathos or the passion of philosophy.”6 Paradox and not negation is the way in which philosophy can think the sensible, difference in itself. The philosophical resolution of a paradox goes beyond the wish to find a unified, clear and distinctive thought, free of contradictions—one that would resolve the initial paradox that one finds, for example, in truth-functional propositional logic. In the very first series, Deleuze begins to trace the temporal process of becoming in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. When Alice grows up, she becomes bigger than she was before, but even so, she remains smaller than she possibly will be; conversely, when Alice becomes smaller than she was, she remains bigger than she possibly will be. She grows up superficially on the edges. Our question, though, is not focused on the stretching or shrinking process of changing size. Changing is a spatialization of time insofar as it demands a quantitative number of successive changes, a sequential before and after. But what is the temporal difference between “being” and “becoming”? Although Alice is not bigger and smaller at the same time (when simultaneously compared with someone/something), she becomes bigger and smaller at the same time. Here, “at the same time” does not mean at the same shared instant, as if she became bigger in an isolated moment that we can compare to other contemporaneous moments. As James Williams states: “It is common to think that ‘at the same time’ means ‘in the same instant’ and ‘not at different times.’ Neither of these definitions is correct here.”7 Here, “at the same time” means timelessly. Becoming is not an isolated moment, a freezing instant, but rather a process connected to a series of other processes. Therefore, the present dimension of this simultaneous process of becoming has no place—it “eludes the present.”8 A few pages later, Deleuze mentions the “ideal game,” thus returning to his own ideas about the game as presented in the concluding chapter of Difference and Repetition.9 Still, in this particular book, The Logic of Sense, Deleuze will talk about time in a different way than he does in Difference and Repetition—which is the book where he developed his

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 67 metaphysics of time through the three syntheses of time (the passive synthesis of the living present, the active synthesis of the empirical past and the passive synthesis of the transcendental past).10 For Deleuze, Carroll reinvented the rules of well-known games by conceiving an ideal game. With no fixed rules and no winners or losers, Carroll’s ideal game contradicts the general definition of a “human and collective” game, to quote Difference and Repetition.11 In the ideal game, there are no preexisting rules; each move reinvents the game’s rules, and, from an ontological point of view, there is only a single indistinctive move—the move of chance in the minimum thinkable time (a succession of moves) and the set of moves at the maximum thinkable time (all moves are simultaneous). As seems obvious, the ideal game is not playable; neither is it human. We cannot but consider the ideal game nonsensical— because only thought can assume chance. According to Difference and Repetition, this is a “lonely and divine” game. We will return to this singular characteristic of the ideal game later—the fact that it cannot but be thinkable. Still with the ideal game in mind, the affirmation of change may lead us to think that we will need an infinite time to embrace all possibilities (to change in each move). However, according to Jorge Luis Borges, who Deleuze quotes, we will need only to think of a finite time that is infinitely divisible. This will be precisely the time of the Aiôn. Deleuze will defend what he considers to be the twofold Stoic perspective on time: past, present and future are not three distinct parts of the same, continuous temporality, but are instead rearranged differently, thus corresponding to two simultaneous readings of time—one of the present alone, Chronos, and another of the past and future, Aiôn.12 Thus, by “Chronos” Deleuze means the present dimension of “now.” In this sense, only the present exists in a continuous movement of contraction of past and future, of a passing present moment and a future present moment (past ← present → future). It is a dimension that is a linear, intra-temporal image of time, the only one that exists in time. This is the chronological empirical time of our everyday life and tasks. It consists in a pliable conception of interval since, when taken for measuring time, it may be equal to the duration of a minute, a day, a week, a month and so on. But if the present dimension is endless in the sense that we have only “presents,” then time understood as a whole will correspond to the eternal return of the same, just as Deleuze warned in Difference and Repetition and Nietzsche and Philosophy (infinite but limited cyclic time). It is precisely bearing in mind this overflowing of the present moment to all temporal dimensions that Deleuze will divide Chronos into two types: the “good Chronos,” or the dimension of the “living present,” and the “bad Chronos” of the infinite present, the eternal return of the same as a “becoming-mad of depth.”13

68  Susana Viegas Aiôn is identified with the past and the future dimensions: the present dimension has no place. Does this mean that the present dimension has no place at all, or only as it is described in Chronos? Here, the present has the smallest duration of an instant that is infinitely divided into past and future. This is the unlimited, although finite, temporality in which we can expand the past and the future without limits. As Deleuze puts it, we cannot but think this time because it conflicts with the chronological empirical time of our everyday life, in which we do not live as a constant bifurcation, in the temporal interval. Yet what is the difference between this Aiôn and the bad Chronos when both search for eternal repetition? They are indeed two very different types of becoming. The eternal present (past ∞ present ∞ future) differs from the Aiônical eternity with no present (past | present | future): if the bad Chronos is repetition as becoming-mad; it is also intra-temporal—a repetition of something that happened before, like a ghost that remains. Think, for example, of the tedious repetition of a rather foreseeable day, of a present day that happens over and over again, as dramatized in the film Groundhog Day (1993) by Harold Ramis and in Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (2014). On the contrary, the Aiôn is the repetition of the different, as a pure becoming, as an “empty form of time.”14 As we will see, this difference between the bad Chronos and Aiôn will matter to our analysis of film and will be crucial to understanding the concept of the crystal-image. This Aiônical empty time is the dead time of the event, meaning that nothing extraordinary or of relevance happens there.15 This thesis is inspired by Bernard Groethuysen’s “event”: “Groethuysen said events always take place, so to speak, when nothing’s happening. People miss the amazing wait in events they were least awaiting. It’s art, rather than the media, that can grasp events: The films of Ozu or Antonini, for example.”16 In Ozu’s filmography, the creation of pure optical and sound situations (opsigns and sonsigns) breaks the rules of the movement-image, breaks the rules of the sensory-motor schema and the logical-narrative flow centered on “what happens next,” thus presenting us with time in its pure form: the 10 second long fixed take of a vase in Late Spring (1949) is understood by Deleuze as a still life that endures, that has a duration— a length of 10 seconds: “The still life is time, for everything that changes is in time, but time does not itself change.”17 However, returning to our question, can the eternal present of Chronos (past ← present → future) join the past and the future of Aiôn (past | present | future), thus keeping intact the homogeneous and uniform succession of the chronological order that our common sense takes for granted (the succession of dimensions past → present → future)? Complementarity does not function as a puzzle, since the present of Chronos does not correspond to the present instant that is infinitely divided into past and future (insofar as it has no duration). If the former is like an interminable

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 69 sequence shot, the latter is like the blink of an eye. As we will see with the crystal-image, the temporal divide that infinitely unfolds the present into past and future is one towards heterogeneous directions. Besides that, why do we assume that the past and the future can be infinite? Should not the correct schema for Aiôn be “∞ past | present | future ∞”?

3.  A Crystalline Time-Image: Cinema At this introductory point of the analysis, as I  now turn to Deleuze’s Cinema books, I would like to bring the concept of the crystal-image into the discussion about time. One first difference strikes us immediately: in his writings about the moving image, Deleuze abandons the opposition Chronos/Aiôn, which had been dominant in his analysis of Carroll’s Alice, instead advancing a distinction between the movement-image and the time-image. Can we presuppose a direct application of the metaphysics of time from The Logic of Sense’s conceptual framework to the context of his film-philosophy? If so, should we continue to connect Chronos to the movement-image and Aiôn to the time-image? All indications point to yes.18 More than an illustration, however, I would like to think of the first pair (Chronos/Aiôn) as the basis for the second (movement-image/ time-image). Yet once Deleuze states that the time-image regime creates “chronosigns” with an “h,” this leads us, on a first provisory approach, to match the movement-image and the time-image to the The Logic of Sense’s Chronos, leaving the Aiôn apparently alone, with no corresponding cinematographic sign. The time-image is defined by pure optical and sound situations that do not expect any resolution or action/reaction. In this way, the present/actual perception-image prolongs itself not in another present/actual perception-image but in a past/virtual memory-image. Time-images are direct presentations of time. Deleuze will develop a specific category of sign that appears in this time-image regime: the hyalosign (from the Greek yalos, glass), or the crystal-image, which reveals the split that time is, the split between past and present. How can the crystal be a figure of time? Deleuze tells us that, just like Cronos, the crystal-image is the Titan,19 the “foundation of time”: it is not time, the God of time, but we can see time through its actions, says Deleuze.20 When analyzing the eternal return of the ancient Greeks, Deleuze refutes the common tendency to associate the “eternal return” with the ancient Greek myths and “history” or a linear time with modernity. According to Deleuze, we can find a circular time in Homer, but not in Hesiod. In Hesiod’s Theogony, we find the genealogy of Gods, of what Jean-Pierre Vernant considers “the time of the myth”: from a wild, untamed, open and tumultuous time that is then domesticated as circular time, in other words, from primitive pure chaos to the organized and hierarchical cosmos.21 Only Zeus, the son of Cronos, can establish order in the original chaos (since Cronos

70  Susana Viegas lives by chaos) by domesticating time itself. Cronos, the Titan from the Theogony, is written without an “h,” where Chronos with an “h” means the succession of temporal dimensions past → present → future (time domesticated). The crystal-image, one of the four kinds of the time-image, shows us “non-chronological time, Cronos and not Chronos.”22 It is also important to note that after the chapter where Deleuze introduces the concept of the crystal-image as the smallest temporal circuit between the present/ actual and its past/virtual, he will develop the two largest circuits, the two kinds of time-image, as the cinematographic images are grounded in the past or in the present, thus autonomizing each of the crystal’s splits between the past and the present: for example, the coexistence of sheets of past (aspects) as seen in Orson Wells’ Citizen Kane (1941) and the simultaneity of peaks of present (accents) in Last Year in Marienbad (1961) by Alain Resnais. These constitute the two kinds of “chronosigns” of the time-image.23 Therefore, Deleuze clearly states that the time-image regime creates “chronosigns” and that the crystal shows us Cronos, not chronological time. The crystal shows us the only thinkable, changeable and indiscernible movement between a present/actual image and its past/virtual image at the same time. We can now see that crystalline cinematographic images lead us to the genesis of a non-chronological time, to its perpetual, neverconvergent bifurcation: the immanent eternity of Aiôn. Does this mean that becoming is thinkable but not perceivable? Does it mean that only the hyalosign, the crystal-image, can be a cronosign in the Aiônical sense as developed in The Logic of Sense? We shall not mistake these three presentations of time in itself for the crystal-image. Nonetheless, we tend either to miscomprehend the types of time-images and crystal-images or to understand the crystal as an element that happens inside the time-image.24 The key is a distinction between time-images and crystal-images, as only the last seem able to show us time as a non-chronological sequence. What do we see in the crystalline? The crystal-image plays a central role even beyond Deleuzian filmphilosophy. It is a concept created by the cinematographic images from the “smallest circuit” between the actual image and its virtual image, which corresponds to the objective and real characteristics of that image, which is “by nature double.”25 The crystal is the eternal and passing event, a changeable movement occurring at the same time. It is important to note that, just as we saw with Chronos and Aiôn, there are no priorities among opposites. The crystal-image is temporally double by nature, blending past and present. It may appear optically or as sound. Optically, we can see it in a mirror reflection, for example, in Albert Lamorisse’s White Mane (1953), where a boy walks with his horse on a seashore, or even in two films by Orson Welles, a filmmaker who

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 71 played a very important role in the formation of the concept. In Citizen Kane (1941), a crystal-image appears when Kane walks between two facing mirrors; in The Lady from Shanghai (1947), the characters played by Rita Hayworth, Welles and Everett Sloane meet in a hall of mirrors at an empty amusement park. Which is actual and which is its virtual image? The crystal may also have a sound configuration, as in the subtle combination of the ritornello and the horse gallop in so many westerns, with High Noon (1952) by Fred Zinnemann (and its score by Dimitri Tiomkin) as a possible example: “The gallop and the ritornello are what we hear in the crystal, as the two dimensions of musical time, the one being the hastening of the presents which are passing, the other the rising or falling back of pasts which are preserved.”26 The crystal even emerges in the ambiguity of some of the characters that inhabit documentaries of fabulation, such as Anwar Congo from The Act of Killing (2012) by Joshua Oppenheimer, who is himself, plays himself and reenacts his own memories. Is he genuine or a fiction? In an infinite, only thinkable game of multiple mirror reflections, the elements of the virtual and the actual replace and absorb each other one at a time, at the same time. While in Difference and Repetition Deleuze analyzes the relation between the virtual and the actual from the point of view of the actualization of the virtual, with the complex process of differentiation, in Cinema 2 he is dedicated to the reverse point of view. It is the other side of the Deleuzian ontology of the virtual, contrary to the process of actualization of the virtual (by differentiating it): The crystallization of the actual, as Deleuze will develop it in his 1995 essay “The Actual and the Virtual.”27 In crystal-images, instead of surrounding the actual image in larger circuits (of dreams or memories, for example), we are looking for the reverse movement: maximum concentration in the smallest internal circuit, but guaranteeing the active circuit between the actual and the virtual. Deleuze explains: “Contracting the image instead of dilating it. Searching for the smallest circuit that functions as internal limit for all the others and that puts the actual image beside a kind of immediate, symmetrical, consecutive or even simultaneous double.”28 The crystallization of the actual image follows a game of “double movement of liberation and capture” and is based on a physical, objective point that in a single film shot shows us the temporal scission between past, present and future by unfolding the present of the actual image towards the past, from the future. These are “two dissymmetrical jets”: “Time consists of this split and it is this, it is time, that we see in the crystal.”29 This natural unfolding creates two distinct problems: one concerning the crystalline structure of an actual image with its own virtual image (as described earlier) and the other concerning the genetic foundation of that structure. This means that, at its foundation, we must have a “virtually crystallizable” structure,30 a plane able to accept the forces involved in

72  Susana Viegas this process. The circuits between actual and virtual, or present and past, or the limpid and the opaque, or even the environment and the seed, lead us to the series between them: they happen at the same time, not in the sense that the actual and virtual are negatives or opposites but in the sense that the process mutually determinates them. “At the same time,” as we have seen, means timelessly, even if it takes us some time to grasp this. It corresponds to the Aiônical time of the event. The crystal-image has two simultaneous sides: the smallest circuit or point of indiscernibility has an actual image and its virtual image at the same time, within a process (of becoming). It is in this sense a synonym of the event, as Christine Buci-Gluksmann has argued, for example.31 Dilation and contraction are temporal movements, but the crystallization process ensues from the genetic birth of temporality, a permanent unfolding, with an ephemeral duration that creates time through images as “the foundation of time,” or “a time machine.”32 The actual becomes virtual, the limpid becomes opaque and the visible becomes invisible. However, this process of becoming is reversible, mutual and simultaneous: the virtual becomes actual, the opaque limpid and the invisible visible. As the movement is not unidirectional, the dramatic pressure remains active—as long as we think it. Thus, like the Aiôn from The Logic of Sense, it is a finite time that is infinitely divisible. It is shorter than the minimum continuous thinkable circuit—the gap between past and future—and it is longer than the maximum continuous thinkable—infinitely divisible.33 As Deleuze explains when thinking about the eternal return in Nietzsche: “That the present moment is not a moment of being or of present ‘in the strict sense,’ that it is the passing moment, forces us to think of becoming, but to think of it precisely as what could not have started and cannot finish, becoming.”34 At this point, how can we distinguish what is past and what is future, when in the blink of an eye the instant is without duration? The answer is: we can do so because the present and its own past are indiscernible and contemporaneous (the present passes because it is past), but in a movement that comes from the future. Without a succession of events, time is thus seen as ahistorical and achronological.

4.  Untamed Time Reversing William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (I, 5), which Deleuze quotes (“Time is out of joint”), 35 we may say that, in a first stage corresponding to our everyday life, disciplined time is in its right place: time subordinates itself to movement. In cinema, this will be translated into movementimages since it is with movement-images that we can easily think this natural understanding of time and its linear succession, past → present → future. With montage, we create a certain image of time,36 an indirect image of time derived from movement, subordinated to movement, from

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 73 homogeneous and identical present moments where past and future are dimensions that are only inferred, not actually experienced. Within this cinematographic regime, we can only expect something to happen in the next moment. When time is out of joint, aberrant and not-rational movements can appear. In the time-image regime, time is now in charge, directing movement itself. At the end of this analysis, we find out that time and temporality are two faces of a possible understanding of how we perceive and live the passing of time. As Henri Bergson states with his example, a sugar cube dissolves in a glass of water and, no matter how long it takes us to perceive it, in a longer or shorter duration, there is always an objective time for that event: “Why does the universe unfold its successive states with a velocity which, in regard to my consciousness, is a veritable absolute? . . . Why, in other words, is not given at once, as on the film of the cinematograph?”37 The chronological time that the dissolution of sugar takes is that of the dissolution itself. Duration can be longer or shorter for us, but it cannot be only an interior and subjective experience; it has to do with objective time as well. There is a necessary aspect to this horizontal perspective of time flow. Alice becomes bigger and smaller at the same time. Duration becomes longer and shorter at the same time. But not all moving images are the same. The crystals of time help us to understand what a Bergsonian vertical, synchronic perspective of temporality flow can be. Christopher Nolan’s films give us a lively idea of the longer and shorter duration of different but simultaneous present moments. Interstellar (2014) and Dunkirk (2017), for example, explore presentism and the fact that montage is more than a technique for sequentially ordering temporal dimensions: in Dunkirk, for example, the parallel editing of three different scenes—air, sea and earth—ultimately converges as simultaneous narratives, although we initially experience them as having a sequential and chronological structure. Presentism signifies “meanwhile” (a possible translation of “entre-temps” that does not capture the idea of a temporal interval) at the same shared instant: different locations of simultaneous events. As we saw, there is no direct application of Deleuze’s previous metaphysics of time (from The Logic of Sense) to the specific context and material that form the basis of his philosophy of film. However, by defining the crystal-image, Deleuze expands his analysis of time. From the Cinema books backwards, Difference and Repetition becomes a rather important source for understanding the ontological and temporal dimension of the cinematographic crystal. The cinematographic crystal-image will be the other side of the ontological process described in Difference and Repetition: the other side of a process that is double by nature. Both the movement-image and the time-image create “chronosigns,” while the crystal-image creates “cronosigns.” With that, the crystal-image comes

74  Susana Viegas closer to the concept of Aiôn as developed in The Logic of Sense. It shows us the paradoxical, active and unsolved time of the event, ahistorical and achronological time. This inquiry into the temporal distinction between Chronos and Aiôn has provided us with another perspective on the crystal-image, while the crystal-image, as it has been analyzed in this essay, has clarified the importance of the temporal distinction between Chronos and Aiôn, thus bringing together two different readings of time, from The Logic of Sense to the Cinema books. The concept of the crystal-image may be a late concept in the Deleuzian philosophical corpus, but it faces the difficulty of being a synthesis of Deleuze’s thought.38 And if, as is commonly accepted,39 in its different connections to ontology and to aesthetics the crystal-image is one of Deleuze’s most complex concepts, then at the end of this essay we have a clear perspective on the indispensable introduction of moving images into this wider ontological debate on time. We may argue that only the crystal-image is truly Aiônical, as the dominant dimension is the future (antecedent to the moving image, which has internal movement, a dramatic pressure between the actual and the virtual). The future tense marks the crystallization of the actual image in which time is perpetually unfolding from the future towards two dissymmetrical jets (past and present). The crystal-image is the true and only direct image of time: we see the foundation of non-chronological time, the appearance of time in itself. As François Zourabichvilli observes, the crystal will not perform the synthesis of Chronos and the Aiôn, solving their antagonism as a single, dialectical, progressive movement; instead, it is the synthesis of Aiôn and Mnemosyne, the true past, a past that was not a previous present.40 This synthesis is nothing other than Cronos.

Notes 1 Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta (London: Continuum, 2008), 79. 2 Each semiotic regime will have its own images and signs: the movementimage regime has ten images and 33 signs, while the time-image regime has five images and nine signs. David Deamer, “A Deleuzian Cineosis: Cinematic Syntheses of Time.” Deleuze Studies 5, no. 3 (2011): 358–82. 3 Deleuze, Cinema 1, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Continuum, 2009), 46–47. 4 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (London: Athlone Press, 1990), 5. 5 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 97–98. 6 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 225; Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 74. 7 James Williams, Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A Critical Introduction and Guide (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 139. 8 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 1.

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 75 9 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 282. 10 The connection between Difference and Repetition and Cinema is well documented by Deamer, “A Deleuzian Cineosis.” 358–82. Jean-Louis Leutrat even directly relates the three syntheses of Difference and Repetition with Cinema 2 and the concept of the time-image: Jean-Louis Leutrat, Kaléidoscope: Analyses de films (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1988), 146. 11 This game is itself regulated by four standard principles: (1) the categorical value of preexisting rules (it is cheating to disregard the rules, a referee is required and so on); (2) the rule of chance, in a controlled frame of possibilities (if x then y and so on); (3) the distinctiveness of all moves; and (4) either winning or losing is a consequence of each move. 12 John Sellars, “An Ethics of the Event: Deleuze’s Stoicism.” Angelaki 11, no. 3 (2006): 161: “Although it may be more accurate to say that they derive from Goldschmidt’s reading of the Stoics.” 13 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 164. 14 Ibid., 165. 15 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 158. 16 Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, trans. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955), 160. 17 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 16. 18 David Deamer, “Cinema, Chronos/Cronos: Becoming an Accomplice to the Impasse of History.” in Deleuze and History, ed. Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 170. 19 Sometimes Cronos (the Titan, meaning the one who creates) is confused with Chronos (the God of time). Hesiod, Hésiode: La Théogonie, Les Travaux et les Jours, trans. Élie Bergougnan (Paris: Librairie Garnier Frères, 1940), 266 endnote 34. 20 Gilles Deleuze,  “Cours Vincennes 07/02/1984,” accessed November  24, 2017, http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/article.php3?id_article=328. 21 Jean-Pierre Vernant, Les origines de la pensée grecque (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962). 22 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 79. 23 Ibid., 98. 24 Tom Conley, “Time-image.” in The Deleuze Dictionary (Revised Edition), ed. Adrian Parr (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 286–87. 25 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 68. 26 Ibid., 90. 27 Gilles Deleuze, “The Actual and the Virtual.” trans. Eliot Ross Albert, in Dialogues II, Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 148–52. 28 Deleuze, Cinema 2, 66. 29 Ibid., 79. 30 Ibid., 72. 31 Christine Buci-Gluksmann, La folie du voir (Paris: Galilée, 2002). 32 David N. Rodowick, Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 107–8. 33 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense, 63. 34 Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson (London and New York: Continuum, 2002), 48. 35 Deleuze, Cinema 2, xi. 36 Deleuze, Cinema 1, 30.

76  Susana Viegas 37 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (London: Macmillan, 1922), 371. For a closer analysis of Bergson’s criticism of cinema and his strong influence on Deleuze’s theses about moving images, see Susana Viegas, “Gilles Deleuze and Early Cinema: The Modernity of the Emancipated Time.” Early Popular Visual Culture 14, no. 3 (2016): 239–41. 38 François Zourabichvilli, Le Vocabulaire de Deleuze (Paris: Ellipses Édition, 2003), 20. 39 Anne Sauvagnargues, Deleuze et l’art (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005), 246. 40 Zourabichvilli, Le Vocabulaire de Deleuze, 23–24.

References Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchell. London: Macmillan, 1922. Buci-Gluksmann, Christine. La folie du voir. Paris: Galilée, 2002. Conley, Tom. “Time-image.” In The Deleuze Dictionary, Revised Edition, edited by Adrian Parr. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Deamer, David. “Cinema, Chronos/Cronos: Becoming an Accomplice to the Impasse of History.” In Deleuze and History, edited by Jeffrey A. Bell and Claire Colebrook. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Deamer, David. “A  Deleuzian Cineosis: Cinematic Semiosis and Syntheses of Time.” Deleuze Studies 5, no. 3 (2011): 358–82. Deleuze, Gilles. “The Actual and the Virtual.” Translated by Eliot Ross Albert. In Dialogues II, edited by Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 1. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. London: Continuum, 2009. Deleuze, Gilles Cinema 2. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. London: Continuum, 2008. Deleuze, Gilles. “Cours Vincennes 07/02/1984.” Accessed November 24, 2017 http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/article.php3?id_article=328. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. London: Athlone Press, 1990. Deleuze, Gilles. Negotiations. Translated by Martin Joughin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955. Deleuze, Gilles. Nietzsche and Philosophy. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson. London and New York: Continuum, 2002.Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). Hesiod. Hésiode: La Théogonie, Les Travaux et les Jours. Translated by Élie Bergougnan. Paris: Librairie Garnier Frères, 1940. Leutrat, Jean-Louis. Kaléidoscope: Analyses de films. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1988. Rodowick, David N. Gilles Deleuze’s Time Machine. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Sauvagnargues, Anne. Deleuze et l’art. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005.

Deleuze’s Cronosigns 77 Sellars, John. “An Ethics of the Event: Deleuze’s Stoicism.” Angelaki 11, no. 3 (2006). Vernant, Jean-Pierre. Les origines de la pensée grecque. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962. Viegas, Susana. “Gilles Deleuze and Early Cinema: The Modernity of the Emancipated Time.” Early Popular Visual Culture 14, no. 3 (2016): 234–50. Williams, James. Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy of Time: A  Critical Introduction and Guide. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. Zourabichvilli, François. Le Vocabulaire de Deleuze. Paris: Ellipses Édition, 2003.

Part II

The Film as Philosophy Debate

5 The Bold Thesis Retried On Cinema as Philosophy Paisley Livingston

As the expression “cinema as philosophy” is highly ambiguous, it is a good idea to identify some of the different claims or theses that can be associated with it. To that end, I have proposed a simplified model based on two factors.1 In what follows I address myself to some misunderstandings of this model and offer a number of clarifications. I also turn to ways in which the initial, simplified model can be made more complex. The first factor in the implied model is a matter of the degree to which a given cinematic work realizes what can be somewhat pompously called the “epistemic philosophical desideratum,” or for shorthand, the “epistemic property.” Basically, this is a name for one of the results one hopes to find in an instance of cinematic philosophy. As I explain in what follows, this is a complex property that encompasses a variety of more particular, contributing properties, such as soundness, coherence, justification, novelty, generality, explanatory value, relevance to specifically philosophical problems and so on. There are significantly different ways in which each of these properties can be understood. It is also possible to conceive of different combinations of these constituent properties; such combinations would correspond to significantly different complex epistemic philosophical properties. For example, in some theses regarding cinematic philosophy, the epistemic property includes a novelty condition, whereas in others it does not. I return to this issue later. Whether a given cinematic work has a particular kind of composite epistemic property is generally a matter of degree, which means we think of a work’s cognitive merit as situated on a scale where it stands in relation to greater or lesser merits of the same sort. For a start we can simplify by distinguishing broadly between high and low merit in this regard, at least for the purposes of an initial sorting out of some very general claims that can be made about cinematic philosophy. We certainly should not assume that all such assessments of a film’s epistemic results are unproblematic, but nor should we imagine that all of them are deeply controversial. I turn now to a second factor, which is a matter of the extent to which the cinematic work’s epistemic property is realized by means of devices

82  Paisley Livingston that are exclusive to the cinema. An assessment of this factor could be based on some account of the exclusive essence of the cinematic medium, such as the view that cinema, unlike other media or art forms, can present a dynamic or changing display of (depictive and/or non-depictive) visual images.2 For those who are of the opinion that the cinematic medium or cinematic art form has no such stable essence, a claim about cinematic specificity or exclusivity could be couched instead in terms of a historically contingent cluster of features based in the technology and in entrenched patterns of its usage. It is, I believe, important to note here that some justifiable judgements regarding degrees of cinematic specificity are indeed based on habits and expectations rather than essential media-based constraints. For example, it is technologically possible to make a lengthy cinematic work comprising a philosophical text scrolling down the screen, yet relative to prevalent practices and expectations, this is likely to be taken as a fairly uncinematic option. People could gather in a cinema in order to read texts that scroll by (as they do in the opening of a Star Wars film), but this is far from being an entrenched cinematic practice, and in the actual case of the Star Wars movies, scrolling text is quickly followed by representations of fast-moving, screeching spaceships. Clearly, those who are skeptical about there being any exclusive features of cinema compared to other media or art forms are in no position to argue for a cinematic philosophy thesis involving medium specificity as identified earlier. Yet such skepticism hardly seems reasonable, and it is widely thought that although works of cinema share some expressive or representational devices with other art forms, such as theater, there are other cinematic devices that are not so shared. Skepticism with regard to the normative thrust of such assessments is another matter: it is perfectly coherent to maintain that degrees of cinematic specificity have no implications for one’s evaluative assessment of the artistic and other merits of a cinematic work. To put it bluntly, the fact that work x is more cinematic than work y does not entail that x is artistically better than y. Perhaps there is a weaker correlation between the value of a cinematic work and the degree to which its virtues depend importantly on devices exclusive to the medium. With regard to the property of cinematic specificity, we can again simplify by beginning with a broad distinction between low and high degrees. It might be thought, for example, that if the philosophizing in a film relies heavily on linguistic expression (in the strict sense of one or more spoken or written natural languages), this tends to push the work towards the low end of the cinematic specificity scale. By contrast, the use of what Eisenstein called “intellectual montage” to express some philosophical idea contributes to cinematic specificity since this is something that cannot be done in prose fiction, as least not via a template-generated sequential presentation of visual representations.

The Bold Thesis Retried 83 By combining our two broad distinctions, we discover four initial categories. In the first category, we find films that manifest low cinematic specificity as well as low epistemic value. For example, a video can by means of a single long “talking head” shot depict someone who makes some mediocre or misleading statements about some topic in philosophy. I do not know of anyone who has in print denied that there is cinematic philosophy in this very weak sense, but it is also widely agreed that this is not the sort of cinematic philosophy we ought to be excited about, since it manifests neither philosophic nor cinematic excellence. Here we see that normative expectations and claims are pervasive in the discourse about cinema as philosophy. Moving on to a second category, consider a case where the philosophizing is truly excellent given uncontroversial standards, or high on one’s scale of epistemic merit, but where the cinematic factor is still very low. For example, on the internet one can find poorly made videos of some important philosophers, such as Saul Kripke, giving lectures on topics in philosophy. Some of these videos are philosophically quite informative, but are they good instances of cinematic philosophy? One may say “yes” in one sense, since it is a matter of a moving image that has significant philosophical content. However, quite a number of philosophers, such as Tom Wartenberg, say that this is not what we are primarily looking for in the way of cinematic philosophy.3 The reason for such a verdict could be that the philosophical interest or value of the work is entirely parasitic on the philosopher’s performance; the filmmakers have added little or nothing in the way of an independent, specifically cinematic contribution that is distinct from the medium’s bare “recording” capacity. More specifically, such a video scores low on a scale of cinematic specificity because the moving image could be replaced by a transcription of the text of the philosopher’s lecture without any great philosophical loss. It can be argued, however, that this should not matter in an overall estimation of the philosophical merit of the film. Imagine that Kripke or some other brilliant philosopher had chosen video as his or her favorite mode of philosophizing. Such a person’s audiovisual oeuvre would have made a significant contribution to philosophy. Consider now cases where the epistemic variable is low, but the cinematic specificity variable is high; for example, some average or familiar philosophical content is conveyed by a dazzling montage and other devices that are deemed to be specific to cinema. Some people deem such cases to be the truly important instances of cinematic philosophy. An example, it would appear, is Irving Singer, who makes the following statement on this topic in a book entitled Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher: Apart from any unfortunate efforts to duplicate what trained philosophers do, films we consider great are philosophical insofar as the

84  Paisley Livingston meaningfulness they embody and the techniques that convey their type of meaningfulness, exploit at a significantly deep level the visual, literary and sonic dimensions of this art form.4 I find this passage somewhat ambiguous, but deem it to be consistent with the idea that philosophizing that falls far short of the standards of trained philosophers could nonetheless count as a great instance of cinematic philosophizing as long as the devices of the cinematic art form have been “exploited” to some significant extent. Singer’s reference to a “literary dimension” of the cinematic art form allows that talk and texts could be cinematic, but presumably his idea is that this sort of thing is genuinely cinematic only as long as it does not descend into the kind of sophisticated technical lecturing at which trained philosophers are highly practiced. Singer’s contention (at least as I have just interpreted it) is controversial because some people have even higher standards when it comes to the epistemic property required for excellent or interesting examples of cinematic philosophy. The idea is simple: we do not have a truly great instance of cinematic philosophizing if the philosophical content is banal or mediocre, even if the performance qua cinema per se is genuinely remarkable. This sort of reasoning leads us to our fourth category, which conjoins high epistemic merit with strong cinematic specificity. Two logically independent questions regarding such cases immediately come to mind: 1. Are there such cases and, if so, how do they work? 2. Are these cases the ones that matter most to cinema as philosophy? What I have in print called “the bold thesis” is a proposition regarding a position that falls at the top end of this fourth category. According to this bold thesis, there are indeed profoundly original, insightful, independent and uniquely cinematic instances of philosophizing. These would be cases where devices belonging exclusively to the cinematic medium are crucially used to make an important and innovative contribution to philosophical knowledge. These would also be the main kind of examples on which an argument for the importance of cinematic philosophy is to be based. In my view this thesis is probably false. I  think the burden of proof is on the shoulders of those who want to argue for such a strong thesis. I have yet to see a successful argument in this area. Some philosophers have claimed to provide one, but what they have managed to do is give reasons for accepting a thesis that is weaker than the bold thesis that I have identified. This is explicit in the case of Aaron Smuts, whose imaginary example of a strikingly original and highly cinematic “Eisensteinian” critique of religion is presented as supporting a “bold thesis” that is

The Bold Thesis Retried 85 distinct from what he calls the “super bold thesis.” More specifically, the bold thesis Smuts argues for does not involve a claim about the unique capacities of cinema, whereas the bold thesis I  earlier identified does. That was what was meant by devices or capacities “exclusive to the cinematic medium or art form.” Smuts says there is some ambiguity in the expression “exclusive to the cinema.” I doubt this, as I take it that if some x and some y both have capacity C, we do not say that C is “exclusive to x.”5 My arguments against the bold thesis give good reasons why it is not likely to be true, but it could turn out that there are actual examples that support that very thesis. For example, Rafe McGregor, Andrew Kania and other philosophers have claimed that Memento is a film that amply supports the bold thesis.6 According to them, this is a film successfully designed to give the spectators an experience leading to the conclusion that memory is both unreliable and essential to our understanding of reality. This is an important philosophical payoff, they argue, and moreover, it is one that is delivered by the film’s highly cinematic montage, which helps the spectator engage imaginatively with the central figure’s rather severe memory disorder. Briefly, my response to these claims is that it is not at all obvious that the point of Memento is some platitude to the effect that memory is important and often unreliable. It would be a mistake to take Leonard’s severe disorder as an allegorical representation of the cognitive condition of Everyman. What is more, if the spectator genuinely shared that disorder, or effectively imagined having it, he or she could not grasp or retain the platitude about memory that is supposedly the philosophical moral of the story. The proposition that memory is unreliable at least some of the time or even most of the time would hardly be an innovative or sophisticated philosophical thesis for a film to convey. The same truism about memory is driven home to us even more powerfully when we discover that we have forgotten where we put our keys. If the philosophers are right about the film’s philosophical lesson, Memento belongs to the third category I mentioned earlier: it is high on cinematic specificity, but low on the epistemic property, and that is not what the bold thesis requires. Perhaps it is necessary for me to declare explicitly that I am far from claiming that cinema’s contribution to philosophy requires the truth of the bold thesis. One can coherently believe that films belonging to any one of the other categories also make contributions to philosophy and, in some cases, significantly valuable ones. It would also be coherent to think that the bold thesis is true of a few, highly exceptional works, but that the cinema’s main philosophical contribution is made by works falling within the other categories. I think there are some good reasons why it is unlikely that examples supporting the bold thesis will be found. Here is an argument to that effect.

86  Paisley Livingston To the extent that philosophical excellence requires extensive verbal argumentation, it is unlikely that any work of art that does not rely significantly upon the medium of natural language could manifest the epistemic philosophical property to a high degree. Consequently, those who contend that there can be exclusively cinematic, non-verbal expressions of important philosophical knowledge face a dilemma. If they do not translate the epistemic property into words, it is reasonable to wonder whether it really exists in any particular case; but if they do provide a verbal statement of the film’s philosophical content, we can reasonably doubt that this is really an accurate account of an exclusively cinematic feature of the work (unless you defend an account of the specificity of cinema that construes it as overlapping with verbal devices). And if the statement made about the film’s philosophical meaning recapitulates some well-known bits from the history of philosophy, we have reason to doubt that the novelty condition, which is also part of the bold thesis, has really been met. It is hardly novel for a filmmaker to express the platitude that memory is important yet frequently unreliable—sometimes disastrously so—and even if this platitude is expressed with genuine cinematic virtuosity, that does not give us a case that exemplifies the bold thesis strictu sensu. It may be good enough for some purposes to think that Memento has philosophical merit simply because it is well designed to occasion some reflections on the unreliability of memory, but that is not the sort of epistemic merit that is called for by the genuinely bold thesis, so this film does not corroborate or provide a positive instance of any such strong thesis. To recapitulate, I have identified four broad categories of cases corresponding to different theses about cinematic philosophy. A first, unexciting thesis is that many films satisfy the low epistemic merit as well as low cinematic specificity conditions. A  second thesis holds that some films have high epistemic merit as well as low cinematic specificity. A  third thesis refers to cases where high cinematic specificity is manifest, but high epistemic standards are not. The fourth thesis says that in some cases, high epistemic and specificity standards are both met. One can also defend or reject various higher-order theses regarding the first four theses yielded by our simplified model. One can hold, for instance, that any sufficiently strong thesis regarding cinematic philosophy depends crucially on there being robust examples that belong to the fourth category. Another option is to maintain that the best prospects for a sound thesis about cinematic philosophy lie in a conjunction of the second and third theses. I have argued elsewhere that this sort of thesis can be backed up with reference to some of Ingmar Bergman’s achievements in the way of cinematic philosophy, but I am far from thinking that Bergman is the only good example who can be mentioned.7 At this point it might be complained that the initial model with which I began is too simplistic because it lumps together a number of distinct

The Bold Thesis Retried 87 epistemic desiderata. I  agree. We could have a more distinct and finegrained approach to our topic by emphasizing distinctions between these different epistemic properties as well as corresponding distinctions between theses about the philosophical merits of films. One could, for example, isolate several significantly different sub-categories of valued epistemic properties. For example, some of the advocates of cinematic philosophy do not consider a novelty or originality condition to be necessary. They say that even if the moral of Memento is a highly familiar truism about memory, this would not entail that the film is not an important instance of cinematic philosophy. Isn’t it philosophically significant and valuable in many contexts to give a reliable account of prior philosophical knowledge? This is something even the world’s best philosophers spend a lot of time doing. I concur, but I deem it important to point out that bold claims about the originality and conceptual creativity of cinematic philosophy are pervasive in the literature. As Malcolm Turvey argues convincingly in his book Doubting Vision, these strong claims are meant to be taken literally.8 It may be added that when it comes to contributions to knowledge, originality is very often considered to be a very important desideratum. There are other options to be considered should we wish to reconsider the claims that might be defended with regard to the philosophically relevant epistemic merits of cinematic works. Consider, for example, justification or warrant, which are generally taken to be important epistemic desiderata. Since many of the films that are deemed to have philosophical significance are works of fiction, it could be wholly inappropriate to expect them to provide any kind of evidentiary support for empirical theses, so that if that is what is meant by “justification,” the expectation is not likely to be met. The upshot of this could be that some other expectation is more appropriate. By ruling that one or more epistemic features is unnecessary to the overall epistemic merit of the work, we can generate a number of distinct, cinematic philosophy theses that are significantly weaker than what I  have called the bold thesis. This is what Murray Smith has helpfully called the “expansive strategy” with regard to cinematic philosophy.9 By weakening the standards concerning what is classified as a contribution to philosophy, we embrace cinematic works that can serve to perform the pedagogical function of helping to make spectators familiar with traditional philosophical questions and arguments. Another philosophically useful contribution is to make unfamiliar philosophical lines of thought more vivid or graspable to an audience by evoking them with an engaging depiction of fictional events.10 This is in my mind a perfectly sensible and genuinely strong way to defend a cinema as philosophy thesis. I turn now to a question that is relevant to the conjunction of an emphasis on cinematic specificity with an emphasis on sophisticated, determinate philosophical content. The most efficient way for a filmmaker to

88  Paisley Livingston deliver complex philosophical argumentation is to have some spokesperson or porte parole in the film deliver lines conveying this philosophical content. This could be one or more fictional characters. We can call this “explicit philosophizing,” and there are plenty of examples where this device is successfully used. In my view one of the great merits of Bergman’s films is that they are peopled with highly articulate characters who say all sorts of interesting things, sometimes making statements having genuine philosophical significance. This is no doubt at least part of what Singer has in mind in his praise of Bergman as a cinematic philosopher. Bergman also makes skillful use of a dialogical approach where opposing philosophical perspectives are brought into conflict, it being unclear sometimes whether there is any decisive argument favoring either side. As David Bordwell has shown in great detail, unresolved ambiguity is one of the most characteristic features of art cinema, and in this regard Bergman is no exception.11 Yet the artistic value of ambiguity and rich symbolic content is in tension with an interest in cinematic philosophizing, at least if the latter is understood as the communication of complex, epistemically valuable philosophical content, such as a general thesis and reasons or arguments given in its support. It could seem, then, that the philosophical filmmaker also faces a dilemma: either rely heavily on explicit verbal philosophizing or give up on determinate philosophical content. How, in the absence of explicit verbal philosophizing, could a cinematic work have determinate philosophical content? One answer to that question is that it is up to the philosophical spectator to bring some explicit theoretical framework to bear on the analysis of the film, thereby articulating some determinate philosophical content in his or her interpretation of the work. One objection to this way of defending cinematic philosophy is that whenever the philosophical content has been creatively projected onto the work by the interpreter, any claim to the effect that the work literally had the epistemic property independently of this interpretative operation remains unfounded. This is not a new problem. Consider in this regard the following passage from one of Seneca’s letters: It may be, perhaps, that they make you believe that Homer was a philosopher, although they disprove this by the very arguments through which they seek to prove it. For sometimes they make of him a Stoic, who approves nothing but virtue, avoids pleasures, and refuses to relinquish honour even at the price of immortality; sometimes they make him an Epicurean, praising the condition of a state in repose, which passes its days in feasting and song; sometimes a Peripatetic, classifying goodness in three ways; sometimes an Academic, holding that all things are uncertain. It is clear, however, that no one of these doctrines is to be fathered upon Homer, just because they are all there; for they are irreconcilable with one another. We may admit

The Bold Thesis Retried 89 to these men, indeed, that Homer was a philosopher; yet surely he became a wise man before he had any knowledge of poetry. So let us learn what were the particular things that made Homer wise.12 Seneca suggests that the interpreters’ proposed elucidations of Homer’s putative philosophizing in his poetry were collectively self-defeating in that their incompatible accounts could not all be true. Seneca was not asking for original philosophizing from the poet. His requirement, rather, is that the liberal arts contribute to the formation of character by means of manifesting an accurate understanding of virtue. The conclusion to be drawn is not that a work’s philosophical content can be determined only by some explicit philosophizing provided by the author or some character who functions as his or her porte parole. We know from the philosophy of communication that an ambiguous stimulus can take on a determinate meaning in a communicative exchange, provided that the sender and receivers share mutual contextual knowledge or a common background. If I say to you “some politicians are honest,” this could be a sincere and straightforward assertion to the effect that not all politicians are dishonest. On the other hand, it could be a deadpan ironic statement, the unstated, implicit point of which is that most or even all politicians are dishonest. Someone hearing my statement could fail to perceive the irony, but that would not change the implicit meaning of my utterance. One can perfectly well express the thought that most politicians are dishonest without explicitly saying so. By analogy, what the filmmaker needs to do in order to provide an elaborate philosophical framework within which the work is to be understood is to indicate or evoke the relevant background assumptions. To put this idea in a slogan, implicature can come to the rescue of the cinematic philosopher who wishes to avoid the dilemma of either lecturing the audience (either in person or by means of a fictional porte parole) or failing to express any determinate philosophical thinking.13 As I understand it, however, implicature is not fully determined by conventions but emerges instead in the utterer’s contextually situated expressive or communicative activity. We have no formula for determining whether or how a filmmaker, or collaborating team of filmmakers, successfully acts upon and realizes philosophical intentions in the making of a work. In such a context, careful attention to specific cases is more likely to be illuminating than theoretical polemics.

Notes 1 For some of my earlier discussions of this topic, see “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 1–18; “Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy.” Philosophy Compass 3, no. 4 (2008): 490–603; and Cinema Philosophy Bergman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

90  Paisley Livingston 2 See, for example, Trevor Ponech, “The Substance of Cinema.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 187–98; and for another view, Rafael De Clercq, “Does the Debate about Cinematic Motion Rest on a Mistake?” Analysis 77, no. 3 (2017): 519–25. I explore issues related to cinematic specificity in “Impossible Characterizations.” in Screening Characters, ed. Johannes Riis and Aaron Taylor (London: Routledge, 2019), 129–42. 3 Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007), 77–78. 4 Irving Singer, Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 3. 5 Aaron Smuts, “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, no. 4 (2009): 209–40. 6 Rafe McGregor, “Cinematic Philosophy: Experiential Affirmation in Memento.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72, no. 1 (2014): 57–66; Andrew Kania, ed., Memento (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009). 7 See my Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman. 8 Malcolm Turvey, Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 9 Murray Smith, ‘Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity’, in Thinking through Cinema: Film as Philosophy, ed. Murray Smith and Thomas E. Wartenberg (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 33–42. 10 For this line of thought, see Richard Fumerton, “Skepticism.” in The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, ed. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga (London: Routledge, 2009), 601–10. 11 David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Methuen, 1985). 12 Seneca ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. William E. Gummere (London: William Heinemann, 1920), Vol. II, LXXXVIII, 5, pp. 351–53. 13 I follow Wayne A. Davis in thinking that the important phenomenon of implicature can be dissociated from much of Paul Grice’s theorizing about its “mechanisms”; see Davis, Implicature: Intention, Convention and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

References De Clercq, Rafael. “Does the Debate about Cinematic Motion Rest on a Mistake?” Analysis 77, no. 3 (2017): 519–25. Kania, Andrew ed. Memento. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009. Livingston, Paisley. Cinema Philosophy Bergman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Livingston, Paisley. “Impossible Characterizations.” In Screening ­Characters, edited by Johannes Riis and Aaron Taylor, 129–42. London: Routledge, 2019. Livingston, Paisley. “Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy.” Philosophy Compass 3, no. 4 (2008): 490–603. Livingston, Paisley. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 1–18. McGregor, Rafe. “Cinematic Philosophy: Experiential Affirmation in Memento.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 72, no. 1 (2014): 57–66. Ponech, Trevor. “The Substance of Cinema.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 187–98.

The Bold Thesis Retried 91 Singer, Irving. Ingmar Bergman, Cinematic Philosopher. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. Smith, Murray. “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” In Thinking through Cinema: Film as Philosophy, edited by Murray Smith and Thomas E. Wartenberg, 33–42. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Smuts, Aaron. “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67, no. 4 (2009): 209–40. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007.

6 Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment Some Challenges and Opportunities Tom McClelland 1. Background Within the film as philosophy movement we find a diverse family of positions. Bold positions include Mulhall’s view that films can be seen as “themselves reflecting on and evaluating  .  .  . views and arguments, as thinking seriously and systematically about them in just the ways that philosophers do.”1 Other views are more circumspect, acknowledging the potential limitations of film as a tool of philosophical inquiry. The potential limitations that these moderate views attempt to confront concern the philosophical relevance of filmic narratives. The suggestion that filmic narratives can contribute to philosophy raises a number of initial worries. Philosophical inquiry is plausibly characterized by careful argument, yet filmic narratives are not arguments. Philosophical inquiry is plausibly characterized by the pursuit of general conclusions, yet filmic narratives present us with particular cases. Philosophical inquiry is plausibly characterized by the pursuit of truths about the real world, yet fictional narratives depict non-actual worlds. Philosophical inquiry is plausibly characterized by the pursuit of explicit and precise assertions, but filmic narratives, to the extent that they express thought at all, can do so only implicitly and without the kind of conceptual precision characteristic of philosophical conclusions. Wartenberg introduces a promising strategy intended to confront worries of this ilk. He notes that “there is a well-developed philosophical technique that involves narratives, indeed, fictional ones at that: The thought experiment.”2 This simple observation drives Wartenberg’s proposal that some films are philosophical thought experiments. He argues: Like philosophical thought experiments, fiction films present nonexistent events and/or worlds to their audiences. The hypothetical examples of philosophical thought experiments—“Consider, for example, a person who . . .”—have a marked similarity to the

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 93 fictional worlds presented by films, some of which are even presented in similar ways—“Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away. . . .” It therefore seems reasonable to assume that some fiction films function as thought experiments. All that is required is that the imaginative activity that an audience experiences in watching a film yield the sort of conclusion that philosophical thought experiments do.3 Although this film as philosophical thought experiment (FAPTE) view is one of the most promising ways of defending the philosophical contribution of narrative cinema, it does raise some theoretical questions. The first question is this: I. Granting that some films can act as thought experiments, how (if at all) can we justify regarding them as philosophical thought experiments? Thought experiments (TEs) are deployed in a variety of disciplines including physics, biology, economics, history and mathematics.4 Interestingly, Wartenberg himself notes in passing that “thought experiments are not the exclusive domain of the philosopher,” yet nowhere in Wartenberg, nor to my knowledge in the wider literature, do we find an explicit argument for some target film being a philosophical TE rather than a non-philosophical one.5 This raises some surmountable, but nonetheless important, challenges that I confront in Section 2. The second theoretical question raised by FAPTE is this: II. Granting that some films can act as philosophical thought experiments, how (if at all) can they make a valuable contribution to philosophical inquiry? FAPTE attempts to defend the claim that film can make valuable contributions to philosophy by arguing that some films should be classified as philosophical TEs. However, it is one thing for a narrative to constitute a philosophical TE and quite another for it to make a valuable contribution to philosophy. This is because not all philosophical TEs succeed in enhancing our philosophical knowledge. Some fail to make any significant contribution to our understanding, and others positively mislead us. Indeed, there is a significant body of work that questions the epistemic value of TEs in philosophy. Machery, for example, has influentially argued that “thought experiments cannot play any evidential role in philosophy and their contribution to the growth of philosophical knowledge is severely limited.”6 If this kind of wholesale skepticism can be sustained, then the efforts of FAPTE will have been for naught:

94  Tom McClelland Wartenberg and company will have successfully equated film with a particular method of philosophical inquiry only to find that this method of inquiry is itself epistemically impotent. Of course, such wholesale skepticism about TEs would be a bold position to sustain. But even a more moderate skepticism would present a challenge for FAPTE. Moderate skeptics claim that although some TEs contribute to our philosophical knowledge, others fail to enhance our knowledge at all and, in some cases, positively corrupt it. The considerations that count against some academic TEs being of epistemic value might also count against the epistemic value of various filmic TEs.7 Worse, the shortcomings of some academic TEs might be ones to which filmic TEs are especially vulnerable. Worse still, the worries about the epistemic value of TEs might be such that it is always better for a hypothetical scenario to be depicted in an academic text than in a filmic narrative. In Section 3 I explore these challenges and attempt to defend FAPTE against the problems they generate. Moreover, I suggest that these challenges to the epistemic value of TEs actually present an opportunity for advocates of FAPTE. There are many respects in which film is less vulnerable than academic texts to the shortcomings of bad philosophical TEs. This helps vindicate FAPTE’s claim that filmic TEs can be superior to traditional textual TEs and that we therefore ought to find a place for film in our philosophical tool-box. The overall message of the paper is that in order to properly implement FAPTE we must reflect carefully on the place of TEs in philosophy. Only with an appreciation of the circumstances under which a TE qualifies as philosophical, and of the characteristics it must have to make a genuine contribution to philosophical knowledge, can we deploy FAPTE fruitfully. I thus hope not only to defend FAPTE against potential objections but to point the way for its future development.

2. Philosophical and Non-Philosophical Thought Experiments Famous philosophical TEs include Descartes’ evil demon, Foot’s trolley problem8 and Jackson’s Mary the neuroscientist.9 TEs such as these have played a huge role in philosophical discussion, but philosophy isn’t the only discipline that employs TEs. Physics, for example, has a long history of using TEs. Galileo used a TE, in which a cannon ball and a musket ball are simultaneously dropped from a tower, to demonstrate that heavy bodies and light bodies fall at the same speed. Newton used a TE, describing a world consisting of two spheres joined by a chord that maintains tension, to demonstrate that space is absolute. Further important TEs in physics include Maxwell’s demon, Einstein’s elevator and Schrödinger’s cat. Other disciplines have also employed TEs. For instance, Lennox points out that TEs play a crucial role in Darwin’s

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 95 argument for evolution by natural selection.10 This raises the following question for FAPTE: I. Granting that some films can act as thought experiments, how (if at all) can we justify regarding them as philosophical thought experiments? Perhaps some putative cases of philosophical filmic TEs might better be regarded as TEs in speculative science. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for instance, might better be regarded as a filmic TE in cognitive neuroscience rather than, as Wartenberg proposes, in ethical philosophy.11 Or perhaps some films constitute TEs but lack the kind of features needed to qualify as philosophical TEs as opposed to TEs of some other kind. Maybe there’s just no fact of the matter about whether Ex Machina constitutes a TE in philosophy or in computer science. These possibilities raise the bar for FAPTE. In order to meet this challenge, we need to find some criteria the satisfaction of which qualifies a filmic TE as a philosophical TE. One might suggest that a characteristic feature of philosophy is its method and that philosophical TEs are those that are embedded in arguments that employ distinctively philosophical methods. This approach would require us to characterize the philosophical method, perhaps citing conceptual analysis and formal (or quasi-formal) argument. However, no matter how this is cashed out it is unlikely to help FAPTE. In film, narratives are not embedded within wider arguments.12 Rather, the narrative must speak for itself. Films are not articulate enough to use narrative scenarios in the ways that philosophical texts do, so if it is the context of use that makes a TE philosophical, then that would be bad news for FAPTE. This ties in with long-standing worries about precision, explicitness and generality: academic philosophy uses TEs to make precise and explicit claims that are general in scope, yet film has only imprecise implicit content and is anchored to the single narrative it depicts. The threat to TE here is that even though narratives are used in philosophy, it might be that a narrative only qualifies as philosophical if supplemented with material that film is unable to provide. A more promising suggestion is that philosophy is characterized by its subject matter. Philosophy articles generally engage with questions about ethics, knowledge and the nature of reality by offering explicit rigorous arguments for general conclusions, but if other works engage with those same issues in different ways, then they should qualify as philosophical. So, if a work offers a TE that engages with a philosophical topic, it should qualify as philosophical regardless of whether it employs typical philosophical methods. Taxonomizing TEs in terms of their subject matter has some prima facie promise. It certainly helps capture the difference between the philosophical and non-philosophical TEs mentioned earlier:

96  Tom McClelland the philosophical ones are about philosophical topics, and the scientific ones are about scientific topics. A methodology-based taxonomy would be less promising in this regard, as scientists seem to reason in much the same way as philosophers when they employ their TEs. Of course, scientists also use other methods that philosophers don’t, but these methods are not in play in their presentation of a TE so cannot plausibly be what makes that TE scientific rather than philosophical. If the proposed subject-matter taxonomy is formulated too strongly, it could still cause trouble for FAPTE. One might take the view that philosophical TEs are those used to reach philosophical conclusions, that scientific TEs are those used to reach scientific conclusions and so on. But then we would again run into the problem that films don’t reach philosophical conclusions: they don’t explicitly state anything, and any implicit claims we can attribute to a film are unlikely to have the precision or generality characteristic of philosophical conclusions. In response to this problem, the advocate of FAPTE should note that a work can engage with a certain subject matter without itself reaching conclusions about that subject matter. In fact, some paradigmatic cases of philosophy do just this. Socrates often made deep contributions to our philosophical knowledge without drawing any firm conclusions at all. Instead he enhanced others’ understanding by inviting them to reflect on their own beliefs. Although contemporary philosophy tends to be more assertoric than this, we wouldn’t say that a work fails to qualify as philosophical because it fails to reach firm conclusions. If Frank Jackson had just said “here’s an intriguing scenario about a vision scientist in an achromatic prison—now what should we make of it?” his paper would still have been a valuable contribution to the philosophy of mind. In fact, Jackson’s TE has been more influential than the conclusion he originally extrapolated from it. Jackson took the Mary scenario to demonstrate the falsity of physicalism, but the majority of respondents in the vast literature on Mary took it to reveal some other feature of consciousness more consistent with physicalism. Indeed, Jackson himself eventually adopted a physicalist interpretation of the TE.13 So if it’s the TE itself that has the real value, there’s nothing to preclude a TE from having epistemic value without being presented as a premise in an argument. The job of drawing conclusions is left to the consumer of the philosophical work rather than having to be contained in the philosophical work itself. The foregoing suggests that where a narrative film invites us to reflect on a philosophical topic it constitutes a philosophical TE. This “Socratic Model” of FAPTE, which I have developed elsewhere, helps us to confront the issues of explicitness, precision and generality that have been hovering in the background of our discussion.14 So long as a film can invite us to consider explicitly propositions that have the precision and generality characteristic of philosophical conclusions, it doesn’t matter if

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 97 the film itself only enjoys content that is implicit, imprecise and limited in scope. So where does this leave us with respect to our guiding question? The question was how we can justify regarding a filmic TE as philosophical. The answer encouraged by the Socratic Model is that we are justified when we have good reason to regard a film as inviting us to use its narrative to reflect upon some philosophical subject. Insofar as putative cases of philosophical films can satisfy this criterion, the threat to FAPTE can be circumvented. Of course, this does leave us with the question of what exactly constitutes a philosophical subject. That, however, is a problem for everyone rather than a problem specifically for FAPTE. It’s often hard to say what makes the subject matter of paradigmatic works of philosophy philosophical, so we shouldn’t be surprised if it is similarly hard to say what makes the subject matter of filmic TEs philosophical too. So long as we can recognize it when we see it, we don’t owe necessary and sufficient conditions. We also shouldn’t be surprised if there is some blurriness in the line between philosophy and non-philosophy: Newton’s TE with the two spheres is a TE in physics, yet the subject matter of the TE— absolute space—is as much a concern of philosophy as of physics. This suggests the possibility of filmic TEs that could reasonably be construed as philosophical or as scientific. Although these residual issues remain, we’ve come far enough to show how a case can be made for a filmic TE constituting a specifically philosophical TE.

3. Valuable and Useless Philosophical Thought Experiments 3.1  The Question of Value My next target question is the following: II. Granting that some films can act as philosophical thought experiments, how (if at all) can they make a valuable contribution to philosophical inquiry? In order to assess this question, we need to reflect on what exactly it means to make a contribution to philosophy. I take it that a work contributes to philosophy when it contributes to our philosophical knowledge. And in line with the conclusions of the previous section, we can say that knowledge is philosophical when it is knowledge of a philosophical subject (as opposed to knowledge reached by philosophical methods). We tend to think of philosophical knowledge as knowing that some philosophical proposition is true or false. An argument can, of course, contribute to our philosophical knowledge by showing us that Moral Particularism

98  Tom McClelland is true or that physicalism is false, but philosophical knowledge needn’t take this form. Some have suggested that knowing a philosophical topic is sometimes less a case of knowing that p and more akin to knowing Paris. To know Paris is to know your way around the city, to know how it works and how to engage with it. Although this will doubtless involve various pieces of propositional knowledge, it would be wrong to say that the only way to improve one’s knowledge of Paris is to add to the collection of propositions one knows to be true or false of Paris. Rather, there’s a know-how that cannot be straightforwardly reduced to any amount of know-that. Similarly, a contribution to one’s knowledge of ethics needn’t give you knowledge that some proposition about what’s right or wrong is true. Instead, a contribution might help one understand how a set of issues fits together, to appreciate how different considerations come to bare on the topic at hand and to recognize where one is vulnerable to error. This more inclusive understanding of philosophical knowledge is relevant when we’re trying to understand the epistemic value of TEs. A TE is of value to philosophy only if it contributes to our philosophical knowledge, and in some cases, this might involve a TE being used to make a case for some philosophical conclusion. But in other cases, the TE might improve our epistemic position in more subtle ways such as highlighting salient issues, revealing the relationship between different questions and considerations, uncovering potential errors in thinking or encouraging humility about one’s knowledge of the topic. So philosophical TEs make a valuable contribution to philosophy just in case they contribute to our philosophical knowledge in one of the ways described. But how exactly can the hypothetical scenarios raised in TEs contribute to our philosophical knowledge? Once you’ve argued that certain films can be construed as philosophical TEs, you might think that the epistemic value of film is guaranteed. In reality, though, the epistemic value of TEs is itself contentious, so the advocate of FAPTE still has more work to do. A  range of worries have been raised about the epistemic value of philosophical TEs, and my aim is to explore how these worries bare on FAPTE. Of course, if one adopts a general skepticism about the epistemic value of philosophical TEs, then this would entail skepticism about filmic philosophical TEs. To my mind, however, none of the worries raised in the literature warrant such a general skepticism. What they do reveal, however, is that academic TEs are vulnerable to certain shortcomings that can render them epistemically useless. The problem for FAPTE is that film might also be vulnerable to these shortcomings and might even be more vulnerable than academic TEs. This brings to the fore a longstanding concern about film not being the best means of engaging with philosophical issues. The concern is expressed vividly by Smith: “As that sage of Hollywood, Sam Goldwyn, might have put it: ‘Pictures are for

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 99 entertainment—if I wanted to make a philosophical point, I’d publish an essay in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society.’ ”15 Livingston, drawing on Hegel’s thoughts on the value of art, expresses a similar thought: If we in fact believe a better (for example, more efficient) means to our goal is available, would it not indeed be irrational to pass it by? To propose an analogy: If you know you can quickly, easily, and very effectively tighten a screw with a screwdriver that is ready to hand, or laboriously and imperfectly tighten it with a coin, would it not be irrational to prefer the coin?16 Here the concern isn’t so much that film can’t contribute to philosophy (you could, after all, tighten the screw with a coin). Rather, the worry is that typical academic texts are a superior means of philosophizing and that we therefore shouldn’t be engaging with film when doing philosophy. It is reasonable, after all, to adopt what we might call the Best Tool Principle, according to which it is irrational to use an inferior tool to perform a task when a superior tool is available. The threat posed by the TE literature to FAPTE isn’t that it might reveal filmic TEs to be epistemically useless. Rather, the threat is that it might reveal filmic TEs to be of less epistemic value than their academic counter-parts and therefore that we shouldn’t be turning to film to enhance our philosophical knowledge. FAPTE must at least show that film is no worse than academic TEs with respect to these potential shortcomings. Better, FAPTE should exploit this opportunity to show that filmic TEs are less vulnerable to some of these shortcomings and that there are therefore times when the enhancement of our philosophical knowledge is best served by eschewing the library in favor of the cinema. 3.2  Four Challenges for Philosophical Thought Experiments A) The Problem of Detail The philosophical significance of a hypothetical scenario is often contingent upon the details of that scenario. Philosophical TEs are often presented with brevity, giving only those details that the author takes to be important for their purposes. Wilkes has launched an extensive attack on philosophical thought experiments with a special focus on TEs in the personal identity literature: Consider next one of the familiar thought experiments to do with personal identity: That we might all split like amoebae. It is obviously and essentially relevant to the purposes of this thought experiment to know such things as: How often? Is it predictable? Or sometimes predictable and sometimes not, like dying? Can it be induced, or

100  Tom McClelland prevented? Just as obviously, the background society, against which we set the phenomenon, is now mysterious. Does it have such institutions as marriage? How would that work? Or universities? It would be difficult, to say the least, if universities doubled in size every few days, or weeks, or years. Are pregnant women debarred from splitting? The entire background here is incomprehensible. When we ask what we would say if this happened, who, now, are “we”?17 One of Wilkes’ reasons for taking detail to be so important is that the principles that govern phenomena are intertwined in such a way that one cannot propose a violation of one law of nature without knock-on consequences. She explains, “The physical, just as much as the psychological, is holistic—with laws arranged in a systematic hierarchy of mutual dependence and involvement.”18 When philosophical TEs propose a violation of one of these laws, they fail to specify what happens with respect to all those laws with which it is entwined. Only when a possible world is specified in such a way that these open questions are answered can we start to reflect seriously on what the TE shows. Wilkes also points out that lack of detail can lead you to take yourself to be conceiving of a scenario when you are actually conceiving of something else. You might, for example, take yourself to be imagining an iron bar floating on water. Wilkes points out that once you include details about the gravity that an iron bar must have and the circumstances under which an object will float, you will find that it is inconceivable that the iron bar should float.19 So ignorance of the scientific details can lead you to think you’re conceiving of scenarios that are actually inconceivable and to draw erroneous conclusions about what is and is not possible. Wilkes takes her objections to apply to philosophical TEs quite generally.20 I  would suggest that this is too harsh to philosophical TEs— sometimes they do manage to specify the conceptually relevant details of a situation, and the details they choose to leave out are genuinely irrelevant to the question they are targeting. That said, examples abound in which missing details make all the difference. Returning to Jackson’s Mary scenario, huge chunks of the literature are dedicated to fleshing out the story in more detail to close gaps left in Jackson’s original exposition. There are even views according to which we are incapable of capturing the relevant details of the scenario because we ourselves are ignorant of some of the physical facts that are crucial to Mary’s knowledge of vision.21 22 Lack of detail can be a genuine shortcoming of philosophical TEs, and descriptions of hypothetical scenarios that miss out key details can be positively misleading. Since this is a general vulnerability of philosophical TEs, we should expect to find cases of filmic philosophical TEs that lack crucial details. Ex Machina asks whether an artificial being—Eva—is a person but tells us very little about how she was created, what range of cognitive

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 101 functions she can perform and what computational processes lie behind her (often very human) behavior. But these are exactly the details we need to consider when assessing whether she is a genuine person or a clever simulation. Looper misses out details about how time travel and alterations to the timeline are meant to work in its reality. A little reflection reveals that the scenarios depicted are, by the director’s own admission, utterly incoherent. In this case the lack of detail in the film can positively mislead us about what’s metaphysically possible, just like the putative case of the floating iron bar. We should concede that filmic TEs can lack crucial details and that when they do their epistemic value is severely diminished. But are filmic TEs more or less vulnerable than academic TEs in this regard? The first thing to note is that filmic TEs are generally a lot more detailed than philosophical TEs. It would take just a couple of minutes to read out the original formulation of the trolley problem, for instance, but filmic narratives are typically around a couple of hours. If we’re considering the film as a whole to constitute a TE, it will have more detail than almost any academic TE. And even if we’re considering specific scenes from a film as TEs, the rest of the film would still provide details of context that far outstrip typical academic TEs. Consider the ethical themes explored in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. Here a huge range of details influence how the audience thinks about justice, forgiveness and revenge. The life that the protagonist and her family lead after the murder of her daughter, the suicide of the police chief who oversaw the investigation and the redemption of the racist officer who eventually acts in support of the protagonist all contribute to the moral lessons we draw from the film. A  two-minute academic-style summary of the narrative depicted in this film would be epistemically impoverished, yet the film itself is rich with insight. Interestingly, Wilkes does acknowledge that fictions have the detail that she accuses academic TEs of lacking,23 and explores what it would mean to equate fictions and TEs: we should ask the “fantastical” thought-experimenter how he distinguishes what he does from what the writer of fairy stories does. . . . Now he may of course cheerfully concede, even welcome, the conflation. He may argue that philosophers should, as a matter of professional duty, go to see 2001 and The Return of the Jedi.24 Her objection to this move is that if a philosopher claims that fantasies can be philosophically informative, then they can have no grounds for appealing to scientific evidence when it is available. This seems to oversimplify the interactions between hypothetical and actual cases and between nomological and logical possibilities. A  proper philosophical examination of personal identity, for example, can rightly encompass

102  Tom McClelland both empirical data on commissurotomy patients and the wild fantasy of Being John Malkovich.25 So long as the epistemic significance of each is properly understood, there is no threat of incoherence. It’s also worth noting that filmic TEs can be grounded in scientific possibility: we’re probably not that far away from the kind of mobile AI depicted in the movie Her, for instance, so there can be no grounds for dismissing it as fantastical. Besides being more detailed in general, film also has the advantage that some potentially important details are much easier to depict cinematically than textually. To properly assess whether an artificial being is a person we must be sensitive to every nuance of its behavior. We may wish to know, for example, the exact respects in which the being’s behavior is indiscernible from a human’s and the exact respects in which it is not. Ex Machina shows us subtleties of facial movement, vocal cadence and motion that are absolutely crucial to our evaluation of Eva’s personhood. Yet those details are far too fine-grained to ever be captured in an academic text. Other details, however, are much harder to depict cinematically. When assessing the ethics of someone’s action, for instance, we might need to know what they were thinking in the moments prior to their act. Whether the officer in Rules of Engagement was morally wrong to order his troops to fire on the crowd of civilians invading a U.S. embassy depends on how he saw the situation at the time. A  film might depict a character articulating their thoughts after the fact or provide a voiceover in which a character reports their thoughts in real time, but these are indirect and often clumsy ways of specifying morally salient details of the scenario. A textual TE, by contrast, can straightforwardly specify what an agent is thinking when they act. Whether filmic TEs are more or less vulnerable than academic TEs to a misleading lack of detail depends on the case at hand. In line with the Best Tool Principle, we should always use the most appropriate intellectual tool for the task at hand. What the foregoing suggests is that for some jobs academic texts will be the best tool, giving us a TE with the right kind of details to improve our philosophical knowledge. But in other cases, film will be better suited to giving us the kinds of detail that need to be considered to achieve the relevant philosophical understanding. Since advocates of FAPTE were never proposing that filmic TEs should supplant academic TEs, this proposed division of labor should be a welcome outcome. B) The Problem of Generality Academic papers often reach general conclusions on the basis of a single case presented in a TE. Worries about how one can justify moving from a single case to a general conclusion have been picked up already in the

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 103 FAPTE literature by thinkers including Bruce Russell.26 Of course, one case might constitute a counterexample to a general claim and so warrant one in affirming the negation of that general claim. Jackson’s Mary scenario, for example, might constitute a counterexample to physicalism and so single-handedly warrant the general conclusion that it’s not the case that all facts are deducible from the physical facts. To the extent that filmic TEs can yield counterexamples, they too could be used to justify negative general conclusions. Russell, for example, regards Crimes and Misdemeanors as a counterexample to the claim that wrongdoing is always practically irrational. It would be unfortunate, though, if TEs, filmic or otherwise, were limited to providing such negative contributions to our philosophical knowledge. In defense of FAPTE, Hunt suggests that TEs justify positive general conclusions by offering explananda that drive inferences to the best explanation.27 He notes that Socrates’ slave boy in Meno offers a single case of knowledge that stands in need of explanation and the explanation offered is that our souls are immortal and omniscient. Similarly, Hunt suggests, the narrative of “A Quality of Mercy”—an episode of The Twilight Zone—offers a wartime scenario that stands in need of explanation. In the depicted scenario, American soldiers are bombarding a Japanese emplacement at the end of the war and discussing the morality of their actions, only for the officer advocating the bombardment to find himself in an inverted world in which Japan has won the war and he is leading troops who are mercilessly bombarding an American emplacement. According to Hunt, the conclusion invited is that “none of the normal moral structures against killing applies to enemy personnel in the conduct of war.”28 Thanks to this kind of abductive reasoning, one can justify positive general conclusions using single cases. There are, however, important differences between academic and filmic TEs. As Hunt himself acknowledges, there is a world of difference between presenting a hypothetical scenario and using that scenario in an argument. In academic TEs, the author can make observations about the significance of the scenario and explicitly articulate the process of reasoning that leads one from the single case to the general conclusion. In Meno, for example, the real philosophical work isn’t done in the presentation of the slave boy case, but in the explicit reasoning from this case to a general conclusion about our immortal souls. But films are not articulate enough to offer such reasoning, so leave the audience to do the reasoning for themselves. In “A Quality of Mercy” the hard work is left to us: we have to reason from the case presented to reach positive general conclusions about the morality of war. In light of the foregoing, one can imagine a critic of FAPTE arguing as follows: 1. Single cases warrant positive general conclusions only if supplemented by careful abductive reasoning.

104  Tom McClelland 2. Academic texts are far superior to film as a means of articulating careful abductive reasoning. 3. Therefore, academic texts are far superior to film as a means of warranting general conclusions. 4. Therefore, academic texts are far superior to film as a means of doing philosophy. Although there is something tempting about this toy argument, it can be challenged at a number of stages. One assumption implicit in the argument is that it is always better for the reasoning to be done in a philosophical work rather than by the consumer of the philosophical work. There are, however, some respects in which our epistemic position might be improved by having to do the abductive work ourselves. First, there are epistemic advantages to working something out for ourselves. Indeed, the key lesson of Socrates’ slave boy scenario is that following another person’s reasoning might give one “true opinion,” but only by reasoning to the conclusion for ourselves do we achieve genuine knowledge. Second, if we are left to reason for ourselves there is less risk of us being misled by the author of the TE. Although Socrates’ slave boy scenario is philosophically pertinent, his reasoning from this case is extremely dubious. Perhaps if the scenario were left to speak for itself, we could avoid hasty conclusions about the immortality of the soul and use our own capacity for reason to work out the real significance of the scenario. These considerations suggest that 3 does not follow from premises 1 and 2: even though abductive reasoning is required to reach positive general conclusions, we can’t assume that this reasoning must be found within the philosophical work. Instead, the reasoning might better be left to the consumer of that work. The point remains, of course, that our philosophical knowledge is often served by philosophical works that reason explicitly from hypothetical cases. Philosophical discussion would be severely impoverished if we were limited to presenting scenarios without such explicit supplementation. Nevertheless, with respect to these two considerations, filmic TEs may have epistemic advantages over their academic counterparts. There can thus be situations in which it is advisable to turn to film to enhance our philosophical knowledge. A deeper assumption behind the discussion of this problem is that philosophical knowledge is propositional knowledge of general conclusions. As I’ve already suggested, philosophical knowledge doesn’t always have this character. The epistemic virtue of “A Quality of Mercy” is that it provokes us to reflect upon a moral issue from multiple perspectives and where the impact of actions is emotionally salient. Even if we don’t reach Hunt’s proposed general conclusion, watching the episode can still improve our philosophical knowledge by capturing pertinent ethical

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 105 questions, raising important considerations and highlighting potential inconsistencies in the way we think about war. When this is the kind of knowledge we’re seeking, the fact that academic texts can explicitly offer abductive arguments is neither here nor there. This means that the step from 3 to 4 is mistaken: warranting general conclusions isn’t the only epistemic game in town, so even if academic TEs were always the best way to warrant general abductive conclusions it doesn’t follow that they are always the best way to achieve philosophical knowledge. Once this artificial limit on our conception of philosophical knowledge is lifted, the real epistemic value of film becomes evident. C) The Problem of Extrinsic Significance We sometimes talk as if the significance of a TE is intrinsic to it: as if a thought experiment shows what it shows objectively, without room for rational disagreement about its significance. Some, however, have argued that the significance of a TE is heavily dependent upon extrinsic factors. McAllister, for example, concludes that “the evidential significance of thought experiment [is] the outcome of historical and local accomplishments.”29 On this view, a TE never demonstrates that p without auxiliary premises.30 Instead, a TE only gives evidence that p within a wider network of assumptions. This comes out most vividly when different parties use the very same TE as evidence for diametrically opposed conclusions. When Jackson introduces the Mary TE he takes it to be clear that Mary would learn something new on leaving her monochromatic room. Dennett, however, takes it that Mary wouldn’t learn anything new at all.31 Years later, Jackson would come to agree with Dennett that Mary acquires no new knowledge.32 What, then, can the Mary scenario be said to show? It would be a mistake to say that it fails to show anything—the scenario has proven important for the articulation and development of a range of different views. It seems, however, that what the scenario shows depends upon one’s wider framework of assumptions. Put another way, the evidential significance of a TE is not intrinsic, but is rather an extrinsic matter contingent on what you already believe to be case. One implication of this is that it becomes hard to sustain the claim that TEs are arguments. Arguments are individuated in part by their conclusions: a pair of arguments that yield opposing conclusions cannot transpire to be the same argument. But the same TE can be used to argue for opposing conclusions. So, to avoid the implausible claim that different arguments based on the very same scenario nonetheless constitute different TEs, we must follow Bishop in concluding that TEs are not arguments after all.33 But if they aren’t arguments, then what are they? The most natural view is that they can play the role of premises in arguments. This is not to say that they are epistemically useless—arguments, after all, do

106  Tom McClelland need premises. It does mean, however, that the epistemic significance of a TE is highly contingent upon context. Incidentally, the same applies to scientific TEs and even to concrete scientific experiments. Regarding TEs, Bokulich offers examples showing that “the same thought experiment can be ‘rethought’ from the perspective of different—and even incompatible—theories.”34 Similarly, Bishop’s case against TEs being arguments is based on his observation that Einstein and Bohr use the same “clock in the box” TE to yield diametrically opposed conclusions.35 And regarding concrete experiments, McAllister notes that according to our best understanding of concrete experiments—i.e., real scientific experiments—their evidential significance is not intrinsic to them but rather dependent on extrinsic matters. It is thus unsurprising that the same should hold for TEs. The foregoing does not amount to skepticism about the value of TEs. Extrinsic evidential value, after all, is still evidential value. A  case can be made, however, for thinking that matters are much worse for filmic TEs. As we have already discussed, where academic TEs generally offer explicit interpretations of hypothetical scenarios, filmic TEs must leave the hypothetical scenario to speak for itself. The worry now is that a hypothetical scenario left to speak for itself has very little to say. It’s only when supplemented with auxiliary premises that a TE warrants a specific conclusion, yet film is ill-equipped to express such auxiliary premises. This suggests that if we want evidence for philosophical conclusions, we’d be better off sticking with academic TEs. This challenge to FAPTE has a lot in common with the Problem of Generality. In both cases we find that much of the real philosophical work in academic TEs is done by the explicit arguments in which the TE is embedded rather than by the TE itself. To the extent that film is unsuited to doing this wider work, we then have reason to prefer academic TEs to filmic TEs. As with my response to the Problem of Generality, though, we can defend FAPTE against the Problem of Extrinsic Significance by identifying the potential advantages of leaving the audience to work out the significance of a TE for themselves. If the very same scenario can be used in support of opposing conclusions, there can be epistemic advantages to audiences being left to work out for themselves what to conclude on the basis of the TE. Someone reading Jackson’s account of the Mary scenario is being given that scenario in conjunction with the wider assumptions that Jackson brings to bare on the topic and so is biased towards the conclusion that Mary would learn something new. Someone reading Dennett’s account would be given that scenario in conjunction with a different set of assumptions and so would be biased towards the view that Mary learns nothing new. The points that Jackson and Dennett make in their discussion of the scenario are, of course, philosophically important. Nevertheless, there’s something to be said for starting with a neutral depiction of the scenario. If someone

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 107 is presented with a TE without the biases of its author, they are left free to work out what the scenario shows given their own wider convictions rather than the convictions of the author. Film is especially well-equipped to do this because it doesn’t explicitly offer auxiliary premises that would lead us to draw one conclusion from the depicted scenario over another. It is also an advantage in this regard that film presents scenarios visually rather than describing them linguistically. An unbiased description of the Mary scenario would be hard to achieve: the terms you use to describe Mary’s knowledge in her room and to describe what happens when she escapes can easily reflect one’s own slant on the TE. But if we can show the scenario on film it is freer to speak for itself and to leave audiences to make up their own mind. There is a flip-side to this. Filmmakers can, of course, encourage us towards one conclusion rather than another. When we read Jackson’s and Dennett’s takes on the Mary scenario their own position is explicit in the presentation. Any sensible reader knows that the scenario is being offered with a specific slant and will question that slant, accordingly, perhaps reaching a conclusion that contradicts that of the author. The tools used by filmmakers, in contrast, are implicit. The subtleties of editing, framing, acting, etc. that might bias us towards one conclusion rather than another often act upon us without us realizing. Their very implicitness makes them more likely to lead us into epistemic error. So, what’s the final verdict for film? Since the evidential significance of a TE depends on auxiliary premises, it will often be best to employ a medium that can present those auxiliary premises immediately. Nevertheless, there can be cases where an audience finds epistemic value in experiencing a TE in isolation from any such auxiliary material. And so long as they don’t bias audiences towards a particular assessment of the scenario, they can be very well-suited to allowing the audience to make up its own mind about the significance of a scenario. One last note. Philosophers are well aware that conflicting interpretations can be given of the same TE. One method they use to break the resultant dialectical stale-mate is to offer counter thought experiments.36 Dennett, for example, doesn’t just flatly insist that Mary wouldn’t learn anything new. Instead, he offers a revised version of the TE designed to persuade readers towards his interpretation.37 In Dennett’s scenario, on leaving her room Mary is presented with a blue banana and, applying her formidable knowledge, responds that bananas are yellow and that they are trying to trick her. The Mary TE has been adjusted in innumerable ways by countless authors, and it is the plasticity of this TE—its availability for revealing adjustments—that helps give it its epistemic value.38 Similarly, scenarios like the trolley problem often get given various iterations within the same paper in order to reveal the significance of each component of the scenario. Filmic TEs are not like this. When a scenario is depicted in film, another filmmaker doesn’t normally come along and offer a

108  Tom McClelland slightly different version of the same TE designed to encourage a different interpretation. Of course, they might do this, but film certainly doesn’t lend itself to counter thought experiment. In this regard, film may be less suited than academic works to navigating the extrinsic significance of a TE. In the discussion of this problem I’ve again granted the assumption that contributions to philosophy must take the form of evidence for explicit general conclusions. But if we take a more nuanced view of philosophical knowledge the Problem of Extrinsic Significance becomes less worrisome. If you’re looking for firm conclusions, then filmic TEs, like any TE, face the problem that the conclusion they support is relative to one’s existing convictions. But this kind of worry doesn’t count against filmic TEs helping us navigate a philosophical issue, making pertinent conceptual issues salient to us, revealing inconsistencies in our thinking, etc. With respect to this kind of improvement to our philosophical knowledge, films that let us reflect on a scenario for ourselves can again have epistemic advantages over academic texts that drive us straight towards some conclusion or other. D) The Problem of Proper Domains Machery offers an insightful and influential case for skepticism about philosophical thought experiments. His case is premised on the claim that the psychological mechanisms at work when we reflect on a thought experiment are the same as those we use in our everyday life: whatever means we have for assessing the ethics of actual acts, for example, are the same as those we use to assess the ethics of the trolley problem. Since the only alternative seems to be that TEs employ a “spooky” capacity that is wholly isolated from our capacities to make judgements in real life, this is an assumption we should grant Machery. He observes that the reliability of a skill or capacity depends on the circumstances in which it is applied. I  might be very good at shooting targets within a certain distance but poor if those targets are placed at a greater distance and might be very good at mental division if the numbers are in a certain range but poor when they exceed this range. Machery goes on: I will say that the circumstances in which a physical or psychological capacity is reliable form “the proper domain” of this capacity. If we have reason to suspect that a physical skill or a psychological capacity is applied outside its proper domain, our confidence in the success of this application should decrease.39 The challenge to the epistemic value of TEs is that “the situations described by thought experiments might be beyond the proper domains of the

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 109 relevant psychological capacities.”40 Even if one has a reliable capacity to judge the moral status of acts in one’s everyday life, for example, scenarios like the trolley problem are outside the proper domain of your skill. We should no more expect a skilled moral judge to accurately assess the morality of rerouting the train than we should expect the skilled marksman to still hit a target when placed at twice the normal distance. Machery’s argument doesn’t seem to justify skepticism about all philosophical TEs. Rather, it encourages skepticism about what he calls “fanciful” TEs that present scenarios distant from those in which we normally make our judgements. The degree of our skepticism should be proportional to how fanciful the scenario is, so those philosophical TEs that depict realistic scenarios don’t face a problem. What does this mean for filmic TEs? Well, filmic TEs fall on a wide spectrum of fancifulness. It would be hard to say that Crimes and Misdemeanors falls outside the proper domain of our moral judgements. But the bizarre scenario in Being John Malkovich is (I assume) very different to the kind of scenario any of us encounter in our everyday lives, so perhaps the judgements we make about personal identity in this film should not be trusted. Since both filmic and academic TEs cover the full spectrum of fancifulness, it seems inappropriate to accuse one medium of being more vulnerable to fancifulness than the other. Machery does notice that making judgements about fictions is something we frequently do in our everyday lives and considers the possibility that this might be used as leverage against his skepticism. One could object that we are used to fanciful situations in, for example, science fiction or heroic fantasy novels and movies and that we regularly make judgements about them. At an abstract level, however, the situations described in, for example, science fiction novels are clearly very similar to everyday situations, and we thus have reasons to believe that they belong to the proper domains of the relevant psychological capacities. If they are not similar in this way, then we should suspect that they do not belong to the relevant proper domains.41 This somewhat compressed footnote from Machery stands in need of development. The first thing to note is that Machery considers it a potential problem for his skepticism that we “regularly make judgements” about fictions. Here he seems to assume that if we regularly make judgements about some class of scenario, then that class of scenario falls within the proper domain of our judgement. It is unclear, however, why regularity should be an indicator of reliability. After all, even if I make judgements about the trolley problem every day Machery would say it still falls outside the proper domain of my moral judgement. The fact

110  Tom McClelland that our judgements about fanciful situations in fiction are made regularly does not mean they are made reliably, so the worry about proper domains persists. Another interesting remark in this passage is that sci-fi is “at an abstract level . . . clearly very similar to everyday situations.” It’s not clear why Machery would make this generalization. The scenarios described in the trolley problem, the prisoner’s dilemma or the ship of Theseus are surely closer to everyday life than those presented in The Matrix, Edge of Tomorrow or Inception. Perhaps the most appropriate course is to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a hypothetical scenario falls within the proper domain of our judgement and not to make generalizations about academic TEs being more or less fanciful than TEs in fiction (filmic or otherwise). Degrees of fancifulness are not, however, the only factor that determines whether a scenario falls in the proper domain of judgement. Another factor that might be relevant is how a scenario is depicted. Maybe you’d be able to make a reliable judgement about a scenario if you came across it in real life but would make your judgement less reliably if that same scenario were briefly sketched in a philosophical text. This raises the interesting possibility that we’re better equipped to make judgements about scenarios on film than in academic text. Perhaps the proper domain of our capacities for judgement is scenarios embedded in a wider reality: we never make judgements about situations that somehow exist in isolation from a wider world. The fragments of possible worlds we find in academic TEs would fall outside this domain, but filmic depictions of scenarios embedded in full narratives and rich environments might fall within it. If so, our judgements about this scenario would be more reliable than if that same scenario were sketched in an academic text. And perhaps the proper domain of our judgement is scenarios with which we engage perceptually: most of our ordinary judgements are about things we can see and hear (and even where they are not, they are still about things we could have seen or heard had we been present). Academic TEs offer descriptions of scenarios with which we cannot perceptually engage, which might mean they fall outside the proper domain of our judgement. Film, by contrast, presents us with scenarios we can see and hear so might better fall within the proper domain of our judgement. Of course, there are many respects in which our engagement with filmic scenarios differs from our engagement with real scenarios: we can’t smell, touch or taste the film-world, we can’t interact with its characters, etc. But this is true of academic TEs too, so there might still be a net advantage for filmic TEs here. These are big topics, and it would be hasty to conclude that being depicted on film makes a scenario more likely to fall with the proper domain of our capacities for judgement than if that same scenario were presented in an academic text. It does, however, raise an interesting

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 111 possibility that advocates of FAPTE should take seriously. That said, advocates of FAPTE should also be sensitive to Machery’s plausible suggestion that the more fanciful a scenario is—whether depicted filmically or textually—the further it is from the domain in which our judgements are reliable. One assumption I’ve granted in the foregoing discussion is that the epistemic value of a philosophical thought experiment is dependent upon the accuracy of the judgements we make about that philosophical thought experiment. As with our earlier discussions, a more inclusive view of philosophical knowledge casts the issue in a different light. The epistemic value of a TE might lie in the way it reveals the limits of our judgements. When presented with fanciful scenarios we sometimes make confident judgements despite the scenario being so distant from our everyday lives, but in many cases we are much more circumspect. Perhaps the epistemic value of Ex Machina doesn’t lie in it giving us evidence for some positive conclusion about Eva being a person, but in shaking our confidence in our capacity to make judgements about personhood. And perhaps the epistemic value of “A Quality of Mercy” doesn’t lie in showing us what is actually right or wrong in war, but in revealing something about how we tend to make judgements (reliably or otherwise) about what is permissible in war. Here the philosophical insight is into our own patterns of thought rather than into the scenarios towards which our thought is targeted. Relatedly, a film might reveal a tension in how we think about a certain topic. Simecek argues that the poem “How to Kill” highlights a tension in our concept of a soldier. She explains: Having explicit awareness of the structures of our individual conceptions puts us in an (epistemically) privileged position because once the structures that shape our concepts are made explicit we are then in a position to evaluate the structures and norms embedded in our concepts.42 A film can have much the same value and may be better equipped than academic TEs to engage the full range of our psychological responses to a situation.

4.  Concluding Remarks The equation of films with thought experiments remains of the upmost importance to our understanding of the potential philosophical value of film. Advocates of FAPTE must be sensitive to the fact that not all TEs are philosophical TEs. To justify the claim that a given film constitutes a philosophical TE, they must be able to demonstrate that the topic with which the film engages is a philosophical topic. This raises questions about the nature of philosophy that can never be entirely brushed

112  Tom McClelland away. Once advocates of FAPTE have made a case for a given film being a philosophical TE, matters get more complex. An adequate defense of FAPTE requires not just that a given film constitutes a philosophical thought experiment, but that it is worth our while turning to film for contributions to our philosophical knowledge rather than sticking to traditional academic TEs. Here the advocate of FAPTE must be sensitive to ongoing debates about the epistemic value of philosophical thought experiments. I discussed four of the main potential shortcomings of philosophical TEs. An initial examination suggests that film is not generally more vulnerable than academic TEs to any of these shortcomings. We saw that there are some specific respects in which film might be at an advantage over academic TEs with respect to some of these problems, but other respects in which it might be at a disadvantage. Applying the Best Tool Principle, there will be many cases where academic TEs are the most appropriate tool with which to improve our philosophical knowledge. But in other cases filmic TEs can have considerable advantages and choosing to move away from traditional tools of philosophy becomes the most appropriate move. Advocates of FAPTE must also remain sensitive to the full range of ways in which a TE might contribute to our philosophical knowledge. Philosophical knowledge isn’t always about positive general conclusions. Films have a great deal to offer in helping us to find our way around a philosophical issue, making important considerations salient to us, revealing limits to our knowledge and capacities for judgement, highlighting tensions in our conceptual framework and more besides. Some of the worries raised against philosophical TEs, whether filmic or textual, simply don’t apply once we adopt this more liberal conception of philosophical knowledge. One further issue with which I  haven’t engaged in this paper is that film is not just in competition with academic TEs. Other works of art—especially literature—can also constitute thought experiments.43 The Best Tool Principle means that we should not use film as a tool for philosophical inquiry if the same job is better performed by literature. It will be worth our while to explore how a novel stacks up against the four skeptical challenges raised and to compare this with the standing of film. What kind of detail is more easily depicted in a novel than in a film and vice versa, and how does this bare on the philosophical value of each? What advantages might there be to having an authorial voice helping us extrapolate general conclusions from particular cases? To what extent can a novel supplement a hypothetical scenario with further premises to yield warranted conclusions? Are narratives depicted in novels more or less likely to fall within the proper domain of our capacities for judgement? Although all of these questions will yield challenges for FAPTE, they also yield opportunities: opportunities to achieve substantive insights into the distinctive epistemic virtues of the filmic philosophical thought experiment.

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 113

Notes 1 Stephen Mulhall, On Film (London: Routledge, 2002), 4. 2 Thomas Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007), 24. 3 Ibid., 66. 4 James Robert Brown and Yiftach Fehige, “Thought Experiments.” The Stan­ ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017): . 5 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 57. 6 Edouard Machery, “Thought Experiments and Philosophical Knowledge.” Metaphilosophy 42, no. 3 (2011): 191. 7 For convenience I  will refer to thought experiments explored in academic texts as academic thought experiments. In doing so, I do not intend to pre­ judge the question of whether filmic thought experiments ought, in certain circumstances, to be regarded as academic. 8 Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect.” Oxford Review 5 (1967). 9 Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982): 127–36. 10 James Lennox, “Darwinian Thought Experiments: A  Function for Just-So Stories.” in Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy, ed. Tamara Horowitz and Gerald Massey (Lanham: Rowman  & Littlefield, 1991) 223–45. 11 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen. 12 One might object that thought experiments are arguments in their own right, and that films therefore can argue. We will see why this response is untenable a little later on. 13 The same applies to non-philosophical TEs. If Schrödinger had just said “here’s an intriguing scenario about a cat encountering a machine that releases poison depending on the result of quantum events—now would the unobserved cat be alive, dead or both?” his paper would still have been a valuable contribution to quantum physics. And Schrödinger’s cat is typically discussed as a puzzle for quantum science to resolve rather than, as Schrödinger intended, a flat reductio of quantum indeterminacy scaling up to the macro level. 14 Tom McClelland, “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2 (2011). 15 Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 39. 16 Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 56. 17 Kathy Wilkes, Real People: Personal Identity without Thought Experiments (Oxford: OUP, 1993), 11. 18 Ibid., 30. 19 Ibid., 11. 20 Incidentally, Wilkes holds that scientific TEs are not vulnerable to her objections. This is because they are framed using natural kind terms and in line with the known laws of nature (except when explicitly violated) and so give us exactly the kind of detail we need to reach warranted conclusions. 21 Daniel Stoljar, Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness (Oxford: OUP, 2006). 22 Tom McClelland, “The Neo-Russellian Ignorance Hypothesis: A  Hybrid Account of Phenomenal Consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 20, nos. 3–4 (2013): 125–51.

114  Tom McClelland 23 Wilkes, Real People, 11. 24 Ibid., 44. 25 Tom McClelland, “What Is it like to be John Malkovich?” The Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 7, no. 2 (2010). 26 Bruce Russell, “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” in Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, ed. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 387–90. 27 Lester Hunt, “Motion Pictures as a Philosophical Resource.” in Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, ed. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 397–406. 28 Ibid., 399. 29 James McAllister, “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiments in Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27 (1996): 25. 30 McAllister also notes that according to our best understanding of concrete experiments—i.e., real scientific experiments—their evidential significance is not intrinsic to them but rather dependent on extrinsic matters. It is unsurprising, then, that the same holds for TEs. 31 Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained (Boston, MA: Little-Brown, 1991). 32 Frank Jackson, “The Knowledge Argument, Diaphanousness, Represen tationalism.” in Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, ed. Toril Alter and Sven Walter (Oxford: OUP, 2007), 52–64. 33 Michael Bishop, “Why Thought Experiments are Not Arguments.” Philosophy of Science 66 (1999): 534–41. 34 Alisa Bokulich, “Rethinking Thought Experiments.” Perspectives on Science 9 (2001): 286. 35 Bishop, “Why Thought Experiments are Not Arguments.” 36 Brown and Fehige, “Thought Experiments.” 37 Dennett, Consciousness Explained. 38 Brown and Fehige, “Thought Experiments.” 39 Machery, “Thought experiments and philosophical knowledge.” 201. 40 Ibid., 202. 41 Ibid. 42 Karen Simecek, “Beyond Narrative: Poetry, Emotion and the Perspectival View.” British Journal of Aesthetics 55, no. 4 (2015): 501–2. 43 Edward Davenport, “Literature as Thought Experiment (On Aiding and Abetting the Muse),” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 13 (1983): 279–306.

References Bishop, Michael. “Why Thought Experiments are Not Arguments.” Philosophy of Science 66 (1999): 534–41. Bokulich, Alisa. “Rethinking Thought Experiments.” Perspectives on Science 9 (2001): 285–307. Brown, James and Yiftach Fehige. “Thought Experiments.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2017). Accessed https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2017/entries/thought-experiment/>. Davenport, Edward. “Literature as Thought Experiment (On Aiding and Abetting the Muse).” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 13 (1983): 279–306. Dennett, Daniel. Consciousness Explained. Boston, MA: Little-Brown, 1991. Foot, Philippa. “The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.” Oxford Review 5 (1967): 5–15.

Film as Philosophical Thought Experiment 115 Hunt, Lester. “Motion Pictures as a Philosophical Resource.” In Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, edited by Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi, 397–406. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Jackson, Frank. “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982): 127–36. Jackson, Frank. “The Knowledge Argument, Diaphanousness, Representationalism.” In Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge: New Essays on Consciousness and Physicalism, edited by Torin Alter and Sven Walter, 52–64. Oxford: OUP, 2007. Lennox, James. “Darwinian Thought Experiments: A Function for Just-So Stories.” In Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy, edited by in Tamara Horowitz and Gerald Massey, 223–45. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1991. Livingston, Paisley. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 11–18. Machery, Eduoard. “Thought Experiments and Philosophical Knowledge.” Metaphilosophy 42, no. 3 (2011): 191–214. McAllister, James. “The Evidential Significance of Thought Experiments in Science.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 27 (1996): 233–50. McClelland, Tom. “The Neo-Russellian Ignorance Hypothesis: A  Hybrid Account of Phenomenal Consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 20, nos. 3–4 (2013): 125–51. McClelland, Tom. “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2 (2011). McClelland, Tom. “What Is it Like to be John Malkovich?” The Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 7, no. 2 (2010).Mulhall, Stephen. On Film, 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2002. Russell, Bruce. “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” In Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, edited by Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi, 387–90. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Simecek, Karen. “Beyond Narrative: Poetry, Emotion and the Perspectival View.” British Journal of Aesthetics 55, no. 4 (2015): 497–513. Smith, Murray. “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 34–42. Stoljar, Daniel. Ignorance and Imagination: The Epistemic Origin of the Problem of Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007. Wilkes, Kathy. Real People: Personal Identity without Thought Experiments. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

7 Are There Definite Objections to Film as Philosophy? Metaphilosophical Considerations Diana Neiva I1 The idea that films can be philosophical goes back to, at least, the 70s, with Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film (1971), and Gilles Deleuze’s Cinéma 1: L’image-movement (1983) and Cinéma 2: L’image-temps (1985). But, the “film as philosophy” (FAP) hypothesis turned into a field in its own right during the 2000s, after Stephen Mulhall’s On Film (2001). In this work, Mulhall defended that some films philosophize for themselves—they are not just “philosophy’s raw material” but can think “seriously and systematically . . . just the ways that philosophers do.”2 The aforementioned caused controversy. Around the same time of On Film’s release, Bruce Russell published the article “The Philosophical Limits of Film” (2000). This article had one of the first attacks against FAP, posing some main objections based on metaphilosophical grounds, which were called the “generality” and the “explicitness” objections. These objections made by Russell and by Murray Smith are based on the idea that film and philosophy are too different in their purposes or ways of presentation, ideas that are grounded in implicit or explicit conceptions of philosophy. In this chapter, I will analyze these, as well as some other metaphilosophically grounded objections, as I will try to draw a line of reasoning connecting to attempts of responding to them. After doing so, I will conclude that their metaphilosophical grounds are implausible, and, thus, they are not definite objections against FAP.

II The generality objection is concerned with the fact that FAP’s advocates are usually interested in fictional narrative films, which are fictional and particular cases. Philosophy, on the contrary, has “universalistic aspirations,”3 as it seeks to assert general or universal theses.

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 117 Bruce Russell defended that “film can vividly introduce philosophy problems and can solve some problems by showing us what is possible. But it cannot show us what is probable and sometimes not even what is possible.”4 According to him, a film like Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen, 1989) can show us a possible outcome of a crime, and A Simple Plan (Sam Raimi, 1998) can show a probable one.5 According to Russell, besides its capacity to introduce philosophy and to show what is possible or probable, film can also “refute a philosophical thesis, say, that necessarily wrongdoing will make you unhappy or will be contrary to your self-interest.”6 However, the main limit film has is that it cannot establish philosophical theses since “no one can establish that something holds in all possible worlds by presenting an example or two of a possible world depicted in film.”7 Therefore, the philosophical interest one can find in film is limited. Faced with this problem, philosophers usually appeal to thought experiments (TEs). As Noël Carroll says, thought experiments are “frequently employed by philosophers to defend and/or motivate their claims,” and “if philosophy conducted by means of thought experiments is an adequate source of knowledge and education, then so literature should be.”8 Philosophers frequently use these imaginary cases, the fictional narratives films are. Thought experiments, in philosophy, can have several functions. Thomas E. Wartenberg identifies six kinds: TEs that function as counterexamples to a certain philosophical thesis, TEs that seek to establish possibilities, the failed TEs that demonstrate impossibilities, TEs that establish necessary connections, TEs that seek to confirm theories or TEs through which philosophers construct certain theories.9 As we saw, Russell accepts only that films can function as counterexamples to philosophical theses. Wartenberg, on the other hand, famously argued that The Matrix (Lili and Lana Wachowski, 1999) is a TE that establishes the “deception hypothesis,”10 the possibility that what seems to be real is just a complete illusion, specifically a simulation created by super-intelligent machines. Noël Carroll too argued Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity (1970) is a thought experiment that puts the hypothesis that “movement is an essential feature of cinema.”11 This appeal still does not convince everyone, however. For example, Richard Eldridge believes an argument for cinematic thought experiments to be uninteresting since in philosophy they are minor projects.12 Wartenberg, however, notes that although these tools are a fraction of what philosophy does, TEs are sometimes central in philosophical texts, such as is the Evil Genius hypothesis by Descartes. Thus, Wartenberg argues that “what we need to do is emphasize the importance and vivacity of such thought experiments in philosophy proper to give the thesis that films contain philosophical thought experiments more punch and greater plausibility.”13 Here, the appeal to TEs may be more than just a

118  Diana Neiva defensive strategy: it can also be something films are especially good at doing. Note, however, that if we want to argue that films philosophize as a TE (in philosophy) does, we must accept that TEs are good and important contributions to philosophy; otherwise, we will instantly relegate films to bad or unimportant philosophy. It seems that if our argument is that films can be good philosophical works, we must make some kind of argument that shows why TEs are good philosophical tools. Even with arguments for the idea that films are cinematic TEs, some caveats have been put forward. In philosophy, TEs do not come isolated; they are explicitly and clearly framed within a more extensive argument or philosophical work and have clear purposes explained by their authors. I link this realization to two other objections: the explicitness and the propriety objection. The explicitness objection states that film “lacks the explicitness to formulate and defend the precise claims that are characteristic of philosophical writing.”14 Murray Smith, for example, argues that “while philosophy seeks to clarify our understanding of the world, the vocation of art is to deliver an adventure in perception, cognition, and emotion.”15 He, furthermore, states that, if on the one hand, the value of works of art lies in properties such as “complexity, ingenuity, inventiveness, density, ambiguity, and profundity,”16 philosophy is primarily valued in epistemic terms, which seems to go against film’s ambiguity adequate for its artistic status. As he asserts “few criticisms are more apt to strike terror into the heart of the philosopher than the assertion that such-and-such a proposition is ‘ambiguous,’ while in the world of art, that term is more apt to be used as a term of praise.”17 This idea is also defended when the “propriety objection” is posed. This Hegel-inspired objection,18 as Paisley Livingston poses it, states that art has a proper value that is intrinsic, not instrumental. So, the artistic value should not be reduced to non-artistic purposes, such as philosophical ones.19 Such objections are also applied specifically to cinematic TEs. Deborah Knight, for example, argues that a cinematic TE is focused on what is aesthetically relevant, like the narrative structure, genre or characters, and not on the concepts, as philosophical TEs do.20 For Knight, this is because “they have different characteristics and different goals.”21 So, if cinematic TEs lack the explicitness that philosophical TEs have, this is both a sign that cinema and philosophy have different proper values and a problem to an argument that focuses on the potential philosophical value of cinematic TEs. This also relates to the generality objection: as we saw, Russell thinks philosophy seeks to establish general theses and to do so we should not rely on fictional narrative singular cases. To establish such general theses, philosophers resort to some kind of justification, usually to explicit

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 119 arguments. The problem here is that thought experiments are not arguments per se. For Russell, “thought experiments can be a stimulus to argumentation, can motivate the listener, reader, or viewer to produce an argument, but they are not arguments themselves.”22 As TEs are not arguments, they usually are framed within proper arguments,23 and this is not what happens with cinematic TEs. We could say that TEs in philosophy are very commonly used to pose a counterexample to a supposed necessary theory; i.e., if this scenario x is possible, that contradicts the necessary theory y. On the other hand, it is possible that Russell thinks that TEs cannot establish general theses by themselves because, as they are not arguments, they do not rely on other premises, such as empirical data. An easy way to solve this problem is to say films can present explicit arguments. Films can do so in various ways: for example, a film that is just a record of a philosophy seminar/lecture/presentation where there are philosophers making explicit arguments. Wartenberg imagines a film called Justifying Difference that is just a record of a lecture given by John Rawls.24 Another example he gives is Waking Life (Richard Linklater, 2001), where Robert Solomon, as an animated “character,” gives a lecture and talks about existentialism. Other examples could be The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (Sophie Fiennes and Slavoj Žižek, 2012), or the American TV series The Good Place (2016–). Now, why are these films and TV series not philosophy? When philosophers talk about film as philosophy, they are usually interested in fiction narrative popular films, like The Matrix. This is because they seem to fulfill what Livingston calls the following two conditions for defending a bold FAP thesis: a. The “means condition,” which is “a conception of which sorts of exclusive capacities of the cinematic medium . . . are said to make a special contribution to philosophy.” b. The “results condition,” which requires a “significance and independence of the latter contribution.”25 The first condition relates to the so-called medium specificity, that art forms and, in this case, cinema have specific or unique features, such as juxtaposition, editing, selective focus of the camera and correlations between soundtrack and image, among others. These film abilities, according to Livingston, offer an articulated content of a nonlinguistic, but visual form.26 The second condition suggests that the philosophical contribution made by the specific cinematic medium must be “historically innovative and independent.”27 Additionally, Livingston argues that one result of accepting such a bold thesis with these two conditions is a dilemma of paraphrase: if we cannot paraphrase the cinematic philosophical content into text since it is done

120  Diana Neiva by exclusive cinematic means, how could we even begin to make sense of such content? On the other hand, if we can paraphrase that content, then it is not significantly independent and innovative, or, it is too trivial.28 Several versions of a bold thesis have been defended by different philosophers to avoid this dilemma. Cox and Levine (2012) tried to adopt a “moderate thesis” according to which “certain philosophical things are better done in film than in written texts,” and “this would not require film to have unique access to its own mode of philosophizing or its own branch of philosophical insight.”29 So, even though they argue that films can do certain things better than texts, for them there is no need for any exclusive cinematic ability to defend that films philosophize, which seems to be an attempt to avoid medium essentialism. Now, it seems that to say films can do things (or at least unique things) better than texts, we have to say something about film’s specific techniques. Noël Carroll argued that to defend FAP we need not assume a medium essentialism, but the “movie-made philosophy should be recognizably cinematic.”30 In this same vein, Aaron Smuts argued that we do not have to maintain the idea of kinds of exclusive cinematic abilities; we only have to recognize that those films that interest philosophers have paradigmatic techniques that “include montage, camera angles and movement, and the juxtaposition of word and image.”31 In any case, we could agree that even if we do not require an essentialist account of the cinematic medium, we have to rely on some specificity; i.e., it has to be the film as a specific art form that philosophizes through its (at least) paradigmatic techniques. As for the second condition, Carroll questioned the requirement for the film to have original and innovative philosophical content. As he states, “little philosophy, if any, could survive such a test.”32 We can, however, accept that most films do not make historically “innovative” and “original” philosophical contributions, and still find them to be unique and valuable. It seems, however, that what Livingston is trying to argue is not that the film has to have a ground-breaking philosophical discovery, but some originality. We can understand that especially when we encounter the commonly made dichotomy between real philosophical films and films that are “mere” illustration of a philosophical theory. Mind, however, that Wartenberg rejected this dichotomy, arguing that illustration can be a valid way of finding cases of FAP.33 When Livingston identifies the themes addressed by Eino Kaila in Bergman’s films, he does not mean to say his films are not philosophical in their own right; on the contrary, it seems his argument is that Bergman was inspired by Kaila’s philosophy but did not just illustrate his positions. That is why identifying links between films to previously defended

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 121 positions in philosophy may not be a problem. And even if we want to maintain that illustration can be good philosophy too, we can support this claim by saying that by fulfilling the first condition films philosophize in their own right; i.e., films make good philosophical contributions precisely because their own specific techniques do so in a way that philosophical texts do not. What seems to be required is that the film has some kind of new perspective or insight on a philosophical issue or position. These are the reasons the previously mentioned films that would be easy solutions to the lack of explicitness are not very satisfying to FAP advocates: in all cases, arguably there is a strong reliance on verbal means and/or without relevant innovation; such films and TV series do not make use of their specific/paradigmatic means to make new philosophical insights.34 Because we are interested in films that philosophize through their paradigmatic cinematic techniques that go beyond verbal means, it is hard to see how a film makes, cinematically, an explicit argument. It will always lack the kind of explicitness that traditional philosophical verbal means like texts can have. Thus, when we appeal to thought experiments as tools that philosophy uses, we are still left with a problem at hand: philosophical thought experiments, as ambiguous and as open as they may be, are usually completed by further explicit explanation.

III One solution to this problem is to retrieve to a metaphilosophical clarification: as Wartenberg and Carroll say, not all philosophical works are that explicit, and sometimes they even are ambiguous. Wartenberg gives the example of the historical dispute over how to characterize the precise conclusion of the Transcendental Deduction of Categories in Kant, concluding that “just because an argument is philosophical, it need not be unambiguous.”35 Carroll too argues that anyone who regards Nietzsche’s aphorisms or genealogies or Wittgenstein’s puzzles as philosophy will not accept an argument based on such an assumption.36 A metaphilosophical clarification, however, does not seem very satisfying, because it retracts to a defensive position rather than an active one of positively acknowledging film’s ambiguity and its own potential mode of philosophizing. Another metaphilosophical strategy would be the “reader-response theory” where “any text [in this case, work], that gets read as philosophy, from Shakespeare to Darwin, counts as philosophy. Philosophy lies in the eye of the beholder.”37 Nevertheless, we could say that such a strategy, in Smith’s words, “drains the debate of part of its lifeblood, leaving us with a rather anemic general solution: whatever someone somewhere has designated ‘philosophy’ can serve as a measure of whether film can philosophize,” which is a “low threshold to meet.”38

122  Diana Neiva This relates to the two kinds of metaphilosophical strategies that Smith says FAP advocates can adopt: the “expansive” strategy and the “reductive” strategy. The first “begins with a looser, more inclusive conception of philosophy,” and the latter “around a specific, narrow conception of philosophical activity.”39 What Smith seems to say is that when defending or objecting to FAP we need to defend specific conceptions of philosophy, normatively. This may be because the acceptance of a looser conception of philosophy facilitates the idea that every film can philosophize, and that that might not be a bullet we’d be willing to bite (although maybe some philosophers are). In such a case, how would we decide if a film is philosophy or not, or if it is bad or good philosophy? That is possible to decide only when we defend some kind of “prescriptive” or evaluative normative metaphilosophy, i.e., if we state how philosophy “should be done,” and not just do “descriptive” metaphilosophy, which is to say how it “has been done” factually.40 Posed in this metaphilosophical light, we may question in what aspects can films be good philosophy. Why it is worth watching films when we have philosophical objectives in mind? This question is a version of what Livingston calls the rationality objection that we can otherwise call a rationality challenge and not so much an objection against FAP. Livingston asks: “if we in fact believe a better (for example, more efficient) means to our goal is available, would it not indeed be irrational to pass it by?”41 To understand this problem, Livingston suggests an analogy with the use of a screwdriver to tighten a screw versus the use of a coin: if you know you can quickly, easily, and very effectively tighten a screw with a screwdriver that is ready to hand, or laboriously and imperfectly tighten it with a coin, would it not be irrational to prefer the coin (assuming all other conditions are equal)?42 Put another way, and applying the question to TEs (as, let us remember, they are said to solve the generality objection): why resort to films as TEs as they appear in an incomplete version, when we can resort to traditional philosophical means (primarily linguistic ones, like books, articles or lectures) capable of explaining the TEs’ purposes, framework or conclusions? If we consider that philosophy ought to use explicit argumentation, even when it relies on TEs, would it not be irrational to watch ambiguous films instead of accessing explicit means? So, another way of solving the explicitness objection that does not retreat to a deflationary metaphilosophy is to say that a lack of explicitness (or the existence of implicit premises in a film) can be advantageous, thus putting forward a prescriptive metaphilosophy where the argument is

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 123 that philosophy can positively benefit from the ambiguous or incomplete character of TEs. This is what Tom McClelland tried to do with his defense of a “Socratic Model.” Instead of explaining specific arguments and conclusions, films can “actively prompt us to reach the general and precise propositions characteristic of philosophy,”43 and “without stating any philosophical conclusions, you can cleverly stimulate an audience into achieving their own insights,”44 such as Socrates did in his philosophical dialogues. Here, it is the viewers themselves who do part of the philosophical work, and this could be advantageous especially when we are talking about TEs, given some problems that philosophical TEs are attacked for having.45 It seems, however, that relying on the ambiguity or incompleteness of films compared to traditional philosophical means does not maintain a FAP bold thesis, for traditional philosophical means have the same potential capacity for ambiguity and incompleteness. So, we should remind ourselves of the “means condition” and ask why we should turn to films when we have an interest in finding philosophical TEs, and not to not only traditional philosophical means but also other art forms. What do films have that specifically allows them to be better equipped to do good if not even better TEs than texts, novels or plays? When Thomas E. Wartenberg argues that The Matrix philosophizes through specific cinematic techniques,46 that is a way of saying that other artistic or traditional philosophical media could not have philosophized in the same way. The same seems to happen when Robert Sinnerbrink argues that Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) “cannot be reduced to any specifically philosophical theme, idea or perspective.” It is so “new” that it resists any translation into a known philosophical thesis. For Sinnerbrink, in this case, philosophy only “accompanies” film.47 Thus, he argues, there is a “distinctively cinematic kind of thinking.”48 We could argue that films do not have anything special about them and that they can philosophize in just the same ways as other art forms. Still, it seems possible to think that films have some kind of je ne sais quoi, those cinematic features that give them the upper hand for making philosophical TEs. Maybe films are better at dramatizing ethical dilemmas or imagining and visualizing hypothetical future scenarios. This may mean that we could put any work side by side with a film and evaluate on a case-by-case basis: maybe there are films that are better philosophical TEs than some other TEs found in a traditional philosophical medium and vice versa, depending on various factors—it is probably wiser to go to the movies to see a TE without explicit argumentation and get the Socratic advantage out of it, and read a typical philosophical TE if explicit argumentation is required for the purpose at hand, whatever that may be. Let us keep in mind, however, that the latter does not diminish any philosophical potential that can be found in an “ambiguous” TE: ignoring the potential that cinematic TEs can have just because we want

124  Diana Neiva to keep relying on explicit arguments, even for academic philosophy’s own interest, can be an epistemic flaw by itself.

IV So, now we should ask: are there definite objections to film as philosophy? Do the generality or the explicitness objections put the FAP hypothesis to rest? Posing this question seems to be the same as asking if there are definite objections to certain conceptions of philosophy. If a skeptic wants to refuse FAP, it seems adequate to do so on metaphilosophical grounds, as Russell and Smith do. Responding to their metaphilosophical conceptions with counterexamples of philosophers who do not fit their criteria presumes that they would worry about excluding such philosophers from their conception. Russell and Smith might respond that appealing to such counterexamples assumes a deflationary or institutional49 metaphilosophy, one that argues that philosophy “is whatever the people who are employed as philosophers at universities and other institutions do, or whatever material librarians catalog as such—end of story.”50 Such metaphilosophies as the “prototype and family resemblance” theory that thinks that philosophy is whatever that resembles Plato or Descartes’ texts51 may or may not be problematic. So, Russell and Smith seem to be defending some kind of essentialist metaphilosophy that, as we are already predicting, seems to take the risk of excluding too many, even well-known philosophers. And this is not just a problem with Smith and Russell’s essentialist accounts; it may be a problem of essentialist accounts themselves. Defending an “essentialist” metaphilosophy is “to lay down a definition, an eternal fence, so what lies within is philosophy, and what lies without is not.”52 According to Overgaard, Gilbert and Burwood, essentialist metaphilosophies are usually “topical” or “methodological”: they try to define philosophy in terms of its topics/themes like the “big questions,” or methods like conceptual analysis. We could say that philosophy is also sometimes defined by its objectives. For example, philosophy can be defined as aiming at discovering the true answer to one of the “big questions” in a Platonic sense, or at helping us improve morally. The main possible problem with essentialist accounts is that they usually are too inclusive or too exclusive: an account of philosophy as conceptual analysis excludes too much, and this too seems to be the case with Smith and Russell’s accounts, for they exclude too much by insisting on philosophy’s supposed explicitness and generality, and an account of philosophy as thinking about the big questions includes too much.53 This is why Overgaard et al. argue that a good descriptive metaphilosophy takes both into account, saying that philosophy is usually concerned about the fundamental questions and addresses it by “reason and argument, broadly conceived” (my emphasis).54

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 125 Furthermore, Overgaard et al. suggest how to confront and evaluate each metaphilosophical position: it should not be too revisionist, which would imply that “most philosophers (past and/or present) have been doing philosophy in completely the wrong way,” and it should “explain the relative ‘lack of progress’ characteristic of philosophy relative to the natural sciences.”55 That philosophy lacks progress is a debatable idea. However, it should be said that we are talking in relative terms, contrasting with the process we see in the sciences. Eric Dietrich proposes a thought experiment in order to understand why, according to him, philosophy does not progress. Imagine that Aristotle . . . pops forward to today, on a well-known campus somewhere in some English-speaking country. . . . Curious about the state of knowledge, he finds a physics lecture and sits in. What he hears shocks him. A feather and an iron ball fall at the same rate in vacuum. . . . Sadly, he trundles off to a philosophy class—a metaphysics class, as it turns out.  .  .  . He knows exactly what the professor is talking about. . . . Then Aristotle goes on an ethics class, where he learns of the current importance of what is apparently “virtue ethics.” He recognises it immediately.56 This seems to be an indication that, contrary to science where, for example, “Darwin’s conclusions are regarded as true,” on the other hand in philosophy we still do not know whether a philosopher’s theory is right or not; for example, “Mill’s conclusions are not regarded as true, but rather, interesting and important.”57 Now, as Dietrich argues, this is not to say that philosophy does not transform somehow, especially in its different methods or technical language; however, it seems undeniable that philosophy at least does not progress into an agreement about propositions as science does. So, beyond not denying this relative lack of progress, Overgaard et al. explain why any metaphilosophy should not be too revisionist: because they would be suggesting that philosophy should be something that “does not count as philosophy at all.” They give the following example of a similar position: “consider someone who suggested that football would be better played without goalkeepers. One’s reply would be that this might be an interesting game . . . but it would not be football.”58

V So now, let us take a few steps back and remember Russell and Smith’s metaphilosophical accounts. According to Russell, philosophy aims at establishing general theses and does so through explicit argumentation, and according to Smith philosophy is valued for its explicitness and

126  Diana Neiva clarity since it has cognitive ends. More recently he also argued that philosophy follows three specific norms: 1. Rational warrant: philosophy’s “attention to the rational—or nonrational or irrational . . . underpinning of our beliefs and practices.” The rational assessment of these underpinning is done, according to Smith, through the tools of logic. 2. Empirical support/soundness: we should also consider the empirical evidence at our disposal. 3. Reflective maturity: inspired by Rawls’ reflective equilibrium, Smith defends that the philosophical conclusion we reach should be “the product of a sustained process of reflection, of testing our beliefs and assumptions by examining them from a multitude of angles.”59 As we saw earlier, Carroll argues that philosophy is not always regulated by explicitness, and we could give counterexamples to all these norms. For one, there are lots of philosophies purely a priori, not recurring to empirical evidence. For example, David Chalmers relies on the conceivability of “P-Zombies” to show how physicalism is not a necessary theory of the conscious mind.60, 61 And if we apply Overgaard et al.’s criteria, we see how problematic these conceptions can be. Russell and Smith seem to be “too parochial, too narrowly bound to an analytic conception of philosophy,” as Smith puts it.62 We can see how revisionist they are. Furthermore, their accounts seem to be essentialist: Russell attaches philosophy to one of its methods (explicit argumentation), and Smith attaches philosophy to three of its methods, as we saw. Even so, Smith’s prescriptive metaphilosophy turns philosophy into something narrow and uninteresting. Like football, philosophy has a history that includes different rules and protagonists. How interesting would it be to watch football if we only knew that its main aim is to score goals and that it has various rules to be followed, unaware of its historic and social framework? Surely, football is a game with that aim and those rules, but it’s also more than that: it involves stars such as Cristiano Ronaldo, supporters’ clubs, different equipments and so on. As such, philosophy does not have just one aim, nor is it subsummed under its narrow rules. We could say that if football’s rules are not followed it is no longer the same game; philosophy, however, has the advantage of being able to change its own rules, as it has done throughout history with various kinds of additions. Within the FAP debate, this seems to be what commonly happens: usually, philosophers do not think much about what they do; they just do it. Despite this, when someone poses the FAP hypothesis, that films can philosophize in their own right “in just the same ways as philosophers do,” the reaction seems to be a retraction to narrow conceptions of philosophy in order to maintain professional philosophers’ exclusive access to the field. So, it seems that philosophers and theorists such as Russell

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 127 and Smith would rather defend a narrow conception of philosophy, as problematic as it is, than to accept that philosophy may be something that films can do too, in order to preserve a clear categorization of disciplines. Sinnerbrink and Wartenberg argued that this derives from the Platonic prejudice against art, and results in a “philosophical disenfranchisement of film.”63 Now, if their metaphilosophical accounts are not very adequate, then we can ask what kind of metaphilosophy we should defend when we address FAP. Let us remember that, according to Smith, a mere descriptive philosophy is not very interesting. However, it might be a starting point. Wartenberg presented his own metaphilosophical account to defend FAP. To him, there are three conceptions we should regard inclusively: 1. Philosophy as approaching a set of “eternal questions,” such as knowing what a moral action is (a topical account)64 2. Philosophy as a meta-discipline, i.e., as a discipline that asks questions about the nature of other disciplines, such as sciences and arts (which also seems to be a topical account) 3. Philosophy as a set of methods, as the use of explicit argumentation and formal logic, or the use of thought experiments (a methodological account) Wartenberg argues that we should regard these conceptions in a “mutually supportive” way precisely to avoid excluding or including too much.65 This account seems to be more adequate and have better explanatory power. Simon Blackburn argues that philosophy and literature both lack progress, which he doesn’t regard as a problem, and that it is not a “sufficient answer to this to proclaim that philosophy aims at truth and literature does not.” He states that “a serious work of fiction aims at truth about what matters.”66 In this case, as philosophy, a film can aim at “truth about what matters,” and as in traditional philosophy we see the use of TEs as means to achieve truth; maybe films can be such TEs, imaginary cases that aim at truth. Mulhall’s metaphilosophy seems to suffer from the opposite “problem” to Russell and Smith’s, for it seems to be too inclusive. Drawing from Cavell, he argues that: 1. There is no essential break between natural human reflection and “inveterate reflectiveness of the philosopher,” the distinction being that the philosopher questions more persistently. 2. Philosophy can occur anywhere or at any time—any human who has a certain practice may question its nature and resources, and a filmmaker can make the same kind of radical questioning (or philosophy).

128  Diana Neiva 3. Since philosophy questions and reflects other human activities, it must do the same about itself.67 It seems that this would imply that every human work can be philosophy, which seems to be counterintuitive and not very helpful when we try to decide when a film philosophizes or not. It is probably more reasonable to maintain some kind of philosophical identity, something we can point at and say: “Ah! That is philosophy!” It is also possible to say that philosophers are not very well equipped to decide if films can philosophize, and what philosophy is. As Gary Gutting puts it, the main reason metaphilosophy is not that interesting is that when philosophers defend their metaphilosophy they have a “dogmatic attitude that derives the nature of philosophy from controversial philosophical doctrines” and “an abstract, overly generalized approach that pays no attention to the details of philosophical practice.”68 Wartenberg also thinks the question of what philosophy is an “intractable” problem.69 It can be in this line that we arrive at the idea that philosophers cannot decide what philosophy is, and that we should think about the FAP subject in non-philosophical terms, as John Ó Maoilearca defends.70

VI Where does this leave us? I would suggest that we should advance from a general open and democratic attitude, which does not mean loosening or expanding our conception of philosophy, but just recognizing that philosophy is not the only human activity related to thinking. But when we engage with film analysis, when we find a film that we think philosophizes, we can try to do prescriptive metaphilosophy where we specifically say how the film thinks for itself, in which ways, why it is specifically thinking philosophically and why that is philosophically important. So maybe we can say, first, that films think (and not philosophize per se), as philosophy and other human activities and works think.71 As Mulhall says, films seem to be more prone to thinking about their own means of possibility, so they are in the “condition of philosophy,” in this case, philosophy of film. As he states, philosophy raises “questions about the basic techniques, resources and presuppositions of cinema.”72 However, Mulhall notes, “in theoretical writings about film . . . films themselves are assumed to be silent with respect to such question” and assume that “at best, they provide the data in relation to which possible answers to such questions must at some point be assessed for validity.”73 When I say that films can think, or that the filmmakers think through and about film and other philosophical subjects, it is because, as Mulhall says, “films—like novels, plays and paintings—are the products of intentional human practical activity,” and so they “can have representational content and can take pretty much anything as their subject matter.”74

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 129 Let us remember that Mulhall’s conception of philosophy is that it is linked to reflectiveness and the questioning of the nature and resources of human activities and that philosophy itself seems to be a discipline or even professional field that radicalizes the questioning. Mulhall quotes Cavell on this idea when he says that philosophy is “a willingness not to think about something other than what ordinary human beings think about.”75 It is a fact that every human, at some point, thinks about the morality of certain actions, the justice of certain principles, the meaning of their existing, the nature of art and so on. These are the “big,” “eternal,” philosophical questions. However, as we have seen, philosophy should not be defined by its topics, since such a definition “launches too wide of a net.”76 Thus, to have a more precise, but still not too narrow conception of philosophy, we should add the methodological side, as we saw. Philosophy uses thought experiments as one of its methods to tackle the general philosophical questions. Therefore, we can compromise with a moderate FAP: some films think philosophically; i.e., they think about philosophical issues through a philosophical method. This seems to be a general hypothesis, but it has to be “tested” on a case-by-case basis—or, through a particular or “local” way as Wartenberg and Mulhall defend.77 Maybe there are films that are TEs on philosophical questions, and if there are, maybe we can see their relations to other works that do the same, whether in traditional philosophy or in other media. We can also see what said film specifically offers to the subject through its paradigmatic techniques. And if professional philosophers take this film to further develop their arguments or theories, this does not have to be seen as a problem nor does it mean that it was the philosopher who actually philosophized, since philosophy and cinema are not isolated from each other and can do the same through different means. The same inversely applies: if a filmmaker is not clearly endorsing a specific philosophical theory, it does not mean that the film is not doing philosophy at all. This question matters because it allows us to discover new ways of philosophizing. It is possible that all of us, as well as professional philosophers, are losing some particular perspective that can, somehow, be fundamental. Maybe a film can tell us what philosophy might be, as Mulhall puts it,78 and maybe we are not seeing a new way of thinking philosophically when we retract to a skeptical attitude and a too narrow and closed conception of philosophy. Additionally, even professional philosophers should be interested in this, since they should be open to different ideas of philosophy; otherwise, as Mulhall says, philosophy fails to do what it does about other disciplines: thinking about its own nature, limits, possibilities and so on.79 It seems, so far, that we are not able to decide if objections against FAP are definite or not, because that would mean deciding if there are definite narrow conceptions of philosophy. We can say, however, that they

130  Diana Neiva are not only non-democratic but actually implausible too. As we saw, Smith and Russell’s objections against the possibility of films being able to philosophize are, for example, based on metaphilosophies that are too revisionist. Instead of making general objections against FAP relying on problematic conceptions of philosophy, the discipline can really gain something from opening itself to other ways of thinking, and when we address a film philosophically, we can evaluate if and how it is important for our philosophical endeavor. Adding a new means to philosophize does not seem to defy our common conceptions of philosophy, for it does not seem that any advocate of FAP argues that philosophy has not been done correctly over the millennia. Film is a relatively new human activity, and arguments for FAP do not seem to question our past and present philosophy in extreme ways; they are only suggestions of how, besides traditional philosophical means, philosophy can also be made through other new means.

Notes 1 I would like to thank Steven Gouveia, Tom Wartenberg, Tom McClelland, Chris Rawls and Raquel Pereira for the support and encouragement, as well as for their precious help in philosophical and linguistic terms. 2 Stephen Mulhall, On Film, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008), 2. 3 Thomas E. Wartenberg, “Film as Philosophy: The Pro Position.” in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, ed. Katherine Thomson-Jones (New York: Routledge, 2016), 170. 4 Bruce Russell, “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” Film and Philosophy, Special Issue on Woody Allen (2000): 163. 5 Ibid., 165. 6 Ibid., 166. 7 Ibid. 8 Noël Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60, no. 1 (2002): 7. 9 Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007), 58–65. 10 Ibid., 150. 11 Noël Carroll, “Philosophizing Through the Moving Image: The Case of Serene Velocity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 179. 12 Richard Eldridge, “Philosophy In/Of/As/And Film. Thomas Wartenberg’s Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy.” Projections 13, no. 1 (2009): 114. 13 Thomas E. Wartenberg, “On the Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy.” in New Takes in Film-Philosophy, ed. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 21. 14 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 16. 15 Murray Smith, “Film, Philosophy, and the Varieties of Artistic Value.” in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, ed. Katherine Thomson-Jones (New York: Routledge, 2016), 185. 16 Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 40.

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 131 17 Ibid. 18 This idea can be found in Hegel, who asserts, for example, that “the poetic work of art has no aim other than the production and enjoyment of beauty; in its case aim and achievement lie directly in the work itself . . . the artistic activity is not a means to a result falling outside itself but an end which in its accomplishment directly closes together with itself.” G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, vol. 2, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 992. 19 Paisley Livingston, Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 39–41. 20 Deborah Knight, “The Third Man: Ethics, Aesthetics, Irony.” in Ethics at the Cinema, ed. Ward E. Jones and Samantha Vice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 288. 21 Ibid., 289. 22 Bruce Russell, “Film’s Limits: The Sequel.” Film and Philosophy 12 (2007): 13. 23 See, for example, Michael A. Bishop’s “Why Thought Experiments are not Arguments.” where it is argued that thought experiments cannot be arguments for different philosophers draw different conclusions from the same single thought experiment. 24 Thomas E. Wartenberg, “Film as Argument.” Film Studies 8, Summer (2006): 128. 25 Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 11. 26 Ibid., 12. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Damian Cox and Michael Levine, Thinking Through Film: Doing Philosophy, Watching Movies (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 10. 30 Noël Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy.” in Film as Philosophy, ed. Bernd Berzogenrath (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 273. 31 Aaron Smuts, “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 410. 32 Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy.” 274. 33 Thomas E. Wartenberg, “Beyond Mere Illustration: How Films Can Be Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 19–32. 34 I want to reiterate that this is arguable, and arguments can be made to prove that these films actually philosophize for themselves maintaining some kind of bold thesis. 35 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 20. 36 Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy.” 277. 37 Simon Blackburn, “Foreword.” in What Philosophy Is, ed. Havi Carel and David Gamez (London: Continuum, 2004), xiii. 38 Murray Smith, “Response to Neiva.” American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal (forthcoming). 39 Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” 34. 40 Nicholas Rescher, The Strife of Systems (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), 261. 41 Livingston, Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman, 17. 42 Ibid., 56. 43 Tom McClelland, “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2 (2011): 21. 44 Ibid., 20.

132  Diana Neiva 45 See McClelland’s chapter in this volume where he explains how these problems that philosophical TEs are attacked for having can be solved if we turn to films. 46 Thomas Wartenberg, “Philosophy Screened: Experiencing the Matrix.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXVII (2003): 139–52. 47 Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London: Continuum, 2011), 181. 48 Ibid., 7. 49 Blackburn, “Foreword.” xiii. 50 Søren Overgaard, Paul Gilbert and Stephen Burwood, An Introduction to Metaphilosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 20. 51 Blackburn, “Foreword.” xiii. 52 Ibid., xiii. 53 Overgaard et al., Introduction to Metaphilosophy, 20–22. 54 Ibid., 23. 55 Ibid., 25. 56 Eric Dietrich, “There Is No Progress in Philosophy.” Essays in Philosophy 22, no. 2 (2011): 334. 57 Ibid., 335. 58 Overgaard et al., Introduction to Metaphilosophy, 25. 59 Smith, “Film, Philosophy, and the Variety of Artistic Value.” 187–89. 60 David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 61 For more on this problem with Smith’s norms of philosophy, see Diana Neiva, “Can Films Philosophize?” review of Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, ed Katherine Thomson-Jones, American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal (forthcoming). 62 Smith, “Film, Philosophy, and the Varieties of Artistic Value.” 190. 63 See Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, 128. 64 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 29. 65 Ibid., 30–31. 66 Blackburn, “Foreword.” xviii. 67 Stephen Mulhall, “Ways of Thinking: A Response to Andersen and Baggini.” Film and Philosophy 9 (2005): 29. 68 Gary Gutting, What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 2. 69 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 28. 70 John Mullarkey, “Films Can’t Philosophise (And Neither Can Philosophy): Introduction to a Non-Philosophy of Cinema.” in New Takes in FilmPhilosophy, ed. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 91. 71 Susana Viegas makes a similar case, although specifically in Deleuzian terms, that film and philosophy both think. See Susana Viegas, “Deleuze and Film’s Philosophical Value.” Kriterion: Revista de Filosofia 139 (2018): 271–86. 72 Mulhall, On Film, 130. 73 Ibid., 131. 74 Ibid. 75 Stanley Cavell, Themes Out of School: Causes and Effects (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 9. 76 Overgaard et al., Introduction to Metaphilosophy, 22. 77 Wartenberg, “Film as Argument.” 131; Mulhall, On Film, 131. 78 Mulhall, On Film, 145. 79 Mulhall, “Ways of Thinking.” 29.

Are There Objections to Film as Philosophy? 133

References Bishop, Michael A. “Why Thought Experiments Are Not Arguments.” Philosophy of Science 66, no. 4 (1999): 534–41. Blackburn, Simon. “Foreword.” In What Philosophy Is, edited by Havi Carel and David Gamez, xiii–xviii. London: Continuum, 2004. Carroll, Noël. “Movie-Made Philosophy.” In Film as Philosophy, edited by Bernd Berzogenrath, 265–85. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Carroll, Noël. “Philosophizing Through the Moving Image: The Case of Serene Velocity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 173–85. Carroll, Noël. “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60, no. 1 (2002): 3–26. Cavell, Stanley. Themes Out of School: Effects and Causes. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Chalmers, David. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Cox, Damian and Michael Levine. Thinking Through Film: Doing Philosophy, Watching Movies. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinéma 1: L’image-movement. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1983. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinéma 2: L’image-temps. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1985. Dietrich, Eric. “There Is No Progress in Philosophy.” Essays in Philosophy 22, no. 2 (2011): 329–44. Eldridge, Richard. “Philosophy In/Of/As/And Film. Thomas Wartenberg’s Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy.” Projections 13, no. 1 (2009): 109–16. Gutting, Gary. What Philosophers Know: Case Studies in Recent Analytic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Hegel, G. W. F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. 2. Translated by T. M. Knox. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Knight, Deborah. “The Third Man: Ethics, Aesthetics, Irony.” In Ethics at the Cinema, edited by Ward E. Jones and Samantha Vice, 285–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Livingston, Paisley. Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Livingston, Paisley. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 11–18. McClelland, Tom. “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2 (2011): 11–35. Mullarkey, John. “Films Can’t Philosophise (And Neither Can Philosophy): Introduction to a Non-Philosophy of Cinema.”  In  New Takes in FilmPhilosophy, edited by Havi Carel and Greg Tuck, 86–100. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Mulhall, Stephen. On Film. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2008. Mulhall, Stephen. “Ways of Thinking: A  Response to Andersen and Baggini.” Film and Philosophy 9 (2005): 24–29.

134  Diana Neiva Neiva, Diana. “Can Films Philosophize?” Review of Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, edited by Katherine Thomson-Jones. American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal (forthcoming). Overgaard, Søren, Paul Gilbert and Stephen Burwood. An Introduction to Metaphilosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Rescher, Nicholas. The Strife of Systems. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985. Russell, Bruce. “Film’s Limits: The Sequel.” Film and Philosophy 12 (2007): 1–16. Russell, Bruce. “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” Film and Philosophy, Special Issue on Woody Allen (2002): 163–67. Sinnerbrink, Robert. New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images. London: Continuum, 2011. Smith, Murray. “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 34–42. Smith, Murray. “Film, Philosophy, and the Varieties of Artistic Value.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, edited by Katherine Thomson-Jones, 182–99. New York: Routledge, 2016. Smith, Murray. “Response to Neiva.” American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal (forthcoming). Smuts, Aaron. “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 409–20. Viegas, Susana. “Deleuze and Film’s Philosophical Value.” Kriterion: Revista de Filosofia 139 (2018): 271–86. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “Beyond Mere Illustration: How Films Can Be Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 19–32. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “Film as Philosophy: The Pro Position.” In Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film, edited by Katherine Thomson-Jones, 165–80. New York: Routledge, 2016. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “On the Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy.” In New Takes in Film-Philosophy, edited by Havi Carel and Greg Tuck, 9–24. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “Philosophy Screened: Experiencing the Matrix.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXVII (2003): 139–52. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007. Wartenberg, Thomas E. “What Else Films Can Do: A Response to Bruce Russell.” Film and Philosophy 12 (2008): 27–34.

8 Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience David Davies

I It has become fashionable over the past 20 years to maintain that at least some artworks “do philosophy” and that experiential engagement with such works can advance philosophical understanding. This idea has been promoted primarily for the narrative arts of literature and cinema, and a very lively debate has ensued in respect of the philosophical claims of the latter. In this debate, it has generally been assumed that, if film can indeed be a philosophical medium, it thereby supplements rather than replaces linguistically embodied philosophical activity. More recently, proponents of so-called “performance philosophy” have made a much more radical claim concerning the performing arts. The claim is that traditional philosophical reflection on the performing arts—as in “philosophy of music” and “philosophy of dance”—seeks to fit artistic practice into preexisting philosophical frameworks, thereby distorting and misunderstanding that practice. Performance philosophers such as Laura Cull and Andrew Bowie propose that we eschew traditional “analytic” philosophical approaches to the performing arts and seek philosophical understanding directly through engagement in performance practice. Bowie speaks here of “philosophy through music.”1 In this paper, I shall not address these claims for “performance philosophy.” I shall, however, in the later sections, ask whether the idea that the philosophical dimensions of the performing arts call for a rethinking of what it is to do philosophy admits of a plausible extension to cinematic art. Before that, I shall establish some conditions that must be satisfied by any interesting “film as philosophy” thesis, critically drawing upon conditions proposed by Paisley Livingston.2 I  shall argue for two such conditions: (FP1) In any advance in philosophical understanding attributable to a cinematic artwork, the philosophical content through which such an advance is accomplished must be articulated in a manner that is distinctively cinematic, on a proper understanding of the latter.

136  David Davies (FP2) The advance in philosophical understanding attributable to a cinematic artwork must occur in the course of our experiential engagement with that work, rather than in some distinct philosophical activity to which our experiential engagement with the work provides an extractable input. I shall raise doubts as to whether both conditions are met in the kinds of cases of “film doing philosophy” most often cited by philosophers working in the analytic tradition—namely films taken to cinematically articulate thought experiments. While condition (FP2) might be satisfied if we endorse a particular model of how we can learn from thought experiments, condition (FP1) remains problematic, although not for the reasons presented by Livingston. A second but more elusive possibility is that philosophical understanding is advanced through qualities of the experiences cinematically elicited in receivers of a narrative film, where the philosophical work draws essentially upon affective qualities of these experiences. To assess this possibility, we need to look both at the ways in which cinematic affect is generated and at the kind of philosophical work the eliciting of such affect might do. I shall critically discuss Robert Sinnerbrink’s defense of what he terms “cinematic thinking.”3 I shall conclude by looking at some films that might be said to be “doing philosophy” in ways that depend essentially upon the distinctively experiential qualities of cinema (thereby satisfying (FP1)), although it is open to question whether all of these films also satisfy (FP2).

II4 In his book Thinking on Screen, Thomas E. Wartenberg5 distinguishes between two ways of defending the idea that film is a medium in which one can “do philosophy.” A “global” defense proposes an essential connection between film and philosophy residing in the very nature of the cinematic medium. A “local” defense, by contrast, looks at individual films and the ways in which they might be taken to exemplify particular ways of “doing philosophy.” Wartenberg argues that we should eschew the global approach and pursue the local one. He cites Stanley Cavell as one who has proposed an essentialist thesis. Cavell6 claims that the viewer’s inability to access the screened world makes cinema a moving image of skepticism. Wartenberg rejects this view for two reasons: he thinks that film’s philosophical potential is not restricted to the exploration of skepticism and that essentialist claims about particular art forms are highly dubious. Another problem, we might note, is that, if film is essentially philosophical because of its medium, this does not in itself show that particular films do philosophy. “Doing philosophy” is surely

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 137 an activity that requires the exercise of certain kinds of cognitive capacities that film, by itself, lacks. The global thesis must therefore be a claim about the philosophical potential of cinema, something exploitable by particular filmmakers. Cavell himself seems to acknowledge this when he praises Terrence Malick’s cinema for drawing upon what is essential to the cinematic medium in films that make manifest to the viewer certain “central Heideggerian themes.” In Days of Heaven (1978), Malick “discovered, or discovered how to acknowledge, a fundamental fact of film’s photographic basis: That objects participate in the photographic presence of themselves; they participate in the re-creation of themselves on film; they are essential in the making of their appearances.”7 Local arguments for “film as philosophy” maintain, less boldly, that, while not inherently philosophical, cinema, like natural language, can be used to advance philosophical understanding. Stephen Mulhall, for example, speaks of some works of cinema as “philosophy in action.” The Alien series is a philosophical exploration of “the relation of human identity to embodiment.”8 Wartenberg himself has argued9 that film is capable of “screening” philosophical thought experiments, as well as serving as a medium for other kinds of philosophical inquiry. How we assess the claim that film can “do philosophy” obviously depends upon what we take to be required for an activity to count as doing philosophy. The differences between the broadly “analytic” and “continental” philosophical traditions are as much differences in methodology as they are differences in philosophical concerns. Wartenberg and his philosophical interlocutors have generally assumed the analytic conception of what it is to do philosophy, and the discussion has focused upon ways in which at least some films might be thought to fit this conception. For analytic philosophers, doing philosophy involves constructing and presenting arguments that support or challenge stances on particular philosophical issues. Such arguments often involve making distinctions and clarifying concepts through hypothetical reasoning. But such activities seem by their very nature to require the use of language and to lend themselves ill to a realization in the visual medium of cinema. This accords with a more general skepticism in analytic philosophy as to the cognitive value of the arts. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the analytic tradition has proved to be a hostile environment for the idea that film may serve as a medium for philosophizing. For example, Jerome Stolnitz’s “evidence” objection against literary cognitivism10 holds that the most that we can get from literary artworks are interesting hypotheses. Even if there are truths, particular or general, contained in literary fictions, the fictions themselves provide no good reasons to accept those truths. Consider, for example, general principles that might be thought to be the “thematic meanings” of literary works. The supposed evidence furnished by such works for the truth

138  David Davies of these principles is, it is claimed, triply flawed: the work cites no actual cases, it relies on a single example and it is gerrymandered to support such principles, having been carefully designed to exemplify them. While skeptics such as Stolnitz have focused on literature as a narrative art, this argument seems to transfer mutatis mutandis to film.11 And it bears even more obviously on the idea that film and literature are capable of doing philosophy. For, as we saw, in the analytic tradition this is very much tied to the construction of arguments and the giving of reasons, and this, according to the “evidence argument,” is just what narrative artworks cannot do. There is, however, a popular response to the “evidence” argument. Fictional narratives, it is claimed, can do serious cognitive work if they function as thought experiments.12 Thought experiments (TEs), which are themselves short fictional narratives, are, it is claimed, an instrument for cognitive advance in various branches of science13 and are a widely acknowledged philosophical resource within the analytic tradition.14 If so, why shouldn’t the more extended fictional narratives characteristic of literary and cinematic works also, at least on occasion, serve a cognitive purpose? This suggests how we might counter the “evidence” argument against the idea that film can be a philosophical medium (term this “the FPM thesis”): F1: If verbally presented fictional narratives can serve as a legitimate philosophical resource in works of philosophy, why can’t they also serve in this way in works of literary fiction? F2: And, if they can do this in works of literary fiction, why shouldn’t cinematically presented fictional narratives serve a similar function? Wartenberg presents a version of this line of reasoning. He identifies a number of roles that thought experiments can play in philosophy.15 These include: (1) providing a counterexample to a theory; (2) establishing that something is possible; (3) establishing that something is impossible; and (4) contributing to the development of a philosophical theory through the imagining of an idealized scenario. He then argues that films can play some of these roles. The Matrix (Lilly and Lana Wachowski, 1999), for example, not only provides an illustration of Descartes’s “deception” hypothesis, but also “actually deceives us, its viewers,” in order to get us to consider the possibility that “computers and other devices with screens—films, video and DVD players, for example . . . may have screened us from the world rather than allowed the world to be visible on their screens.” And Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004) is offered as an example of a film that provides a counterexample to a philosophical theory—utilitarianism—and, in so doing, presents an argument against that thesis.16

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 139 The argument for the FPM thesis sketched earlier is open to two kinds of challenges, however: Not-F1: It might be argued that fictional narratives in artworks, whether literary or cinematic, differ from fictional narratives in philosophical writings in that the former are not properly viewed as serving a philosophical purpose. Not-F2: It might be argued that even if we grant that literary fictions may sometimes present thought experiments that do genuine philosophical work, visually presented fictional narratives cannot bear any independent philosophical weight. One argument for Not-F1 is that, even though it may be possible to treat a fictional narrative in an artwork as a philosophical TE, to do so is to fail to properly engage with the narrative as an element in an artwork. This extends to cinematic narratives a general line of argument against literary cognitivism developed by Peter Lamarque and Stein Olsen in their attack on what they term the “Propositional Theory of Literary Truth.”17 The Propositional Theory holds that we value works of literary fiction because, at the “thematic” level, they imply or suggest general propositions about human life whose truth we must assess if we are to properly appreciate the works. Lamarque and Olsen respond that it is not part of the ordinary activity of readers or critics of literary fictions to inquire into the truth or falsity of such general thematic statements. General thematic statements in literary fictions are properly understood as devices for organizing and producing aesthetically interesting structure in a story’s narrative content. Versions of this argument directed at cognitivist claims for cinematic works can be found in papers by Paisley Livingston and Murray Smith.18 Livingston claims that there is a conflict between an interest in a film as a work of art and an interest in a film as philosophy. An interest in a film as art is an interest in how its themes have been expressed through its style and by devices specific to the medium. This rarely requires that we bring to bear a relevant philosophical background, whereas this is crucial if we view a film as philosophy. On the other hand, to take a philosophical interest in a film is to use it as an illustration, without attending to the individuality of the film. One response to this line of reasoning19 challenges Livingston’s assumption that illustrating a philosophical idea cannot be a genuine contribution to philosophical understanding. Wartenberg cites illustrations in birding books, which are essential for recognizing types of birds. The illustrations contain information not verbally communicable as to how the bird looks when it is flying. Thus, we shouldn’t conclude that, if something is an illustration, then it isn’t illuminating. And it is a mistake to think that

140  David Davies a film that “illustrates” the views of a philosopher cannot be philosophically illuminating. Wartenberg offers Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) as an example of a film that advances philosophical understanding by illustrating, in this sense, a philosophical idea, namely Marx’s view of alienated labor and of how the worker becomes a machine in a capitalist economic system. Smith also argues that the aims and purposes of cinematic narratives undermine their ability to function as philosophy. He notes that, whereas philosophical (and indeed scientific) TEs involve narratively sparse fictions, with a minimum of detail, fictional narratives in the arts, whether literary or cinematic, are lush in detail. This difference, he maintains, reflects a difference in narrative purpose. Smith cites as an example Carl Reiner’s All of Me (1984), which might be thought to be a nuanced cinematic exploration of the role of embodiment in the constitution of personal identity. He argues that tensions within the cinematic narrative are best explained not in terms of philosophical nuancing but in terms of a different primary purpose, namely to entertain and amuse the reader. The film is primarily a vehicle of comedy, and the “nuances” are in fact philosophical inconsistencies that are tolerated in the interests of achieving this primary purpose. Smith’s analysis might seem less persuasive when we turn to the kinds of narrative films cited by proponents of the FPM thesis. Consider Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1981/1991/2007), for example, which Mulhall20 takes to be explicitly concerned with what it is to be a human being. Here it seems that the philosophical issue is not merely a vehicle for the amusement or entertainment of an audience, but the driving force in the construction of the fictional narrative. But Smith has a further challenge for proponents of the FPM thesis. What, he asks, is the significance of the much greater narrative detail in artistic fictions? Drawing on a distinction made by Richard Moran,21 Smith suggests that philosophical and artistic fictions are intended to elicit different kinds of imaginings— “hypothetical” and “dramatic” respectively. To hypothetically imagine something is to entertain a counter-factual in an abstract way, whereas to dramatically imagine something is, as he puts it, to try on the hypothesis, to imagine inhabiting it or to explore its implications. The detail in fictional narratives is intended to promote dramatic imagining in order to serve what are primarily non-philosophical purposes. For the purposes of philosophy, it is hypothetical imagining that is required. But why cannot dramatic imagining also serve a properly philosophical function? In Blade Runner, for example, the greater narrative detail provides a richer account of our ways of interacting with other cognitive agents, and this bears crucially on the philosophical issues. The narrative detail in Scott’s film, it might be said, provides greater insight into what is at stake in philosophical debates about the relative status of persons and of artificial forms of life. Dramatic imagining, then, can deepen our

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 141 understanding of what the philosophical issues are and thereby place our responses to the TE on a firmer rational foundation.22 I shall return to this debate shortly, but before doing so it will be helpful to consider another possible challenge to the argument offered earlier for the FPM thesis. The target here is F2, which maintains that, to the extent that literary narratives are a medium in which one can “do philosophy,” so too are cinematic narratives. Livingston has presented nested dilemmas for proponents of what he terms the “bold thesis,” according to which films can make “creative contributions to philosophical knowledge . . . by means exclusive to the cinematic medium.”23 The overarching dilemma offers alternative ways of cashing out what it is for a means to be “exclusive” to cinema. Either we construe the representational devices that are exclusive to cinema broadly or we construe them narrowly. Broadly construed, such devices include the capacity to record what is in front of the camera. This capacity might be said to be exclusive to cinema since only cinema can provide moving images of past events. Livingston maintains that on this broad reading the FPM thesis is trivialized. An audiovisual recording of a philosophy lecture would involve an exclusively cinematic resource, but any philosophical value here surely resides in the event recorded, not in the film. Livingston concludes that a non-trivial version of the FPM thesis must construe the representational devices exclusive to the cinematic medium narrowly. On this construal, “the cinematic medium’s exclusive capacities involve the possibility of providing an internally articulated, nonlinguistic, visual expression of content, as when some idea is indicated by means of the sequential juxtaposition of two or more visual displays or shots.”24 Exclusively cinematic devices will then include montage or editing, camera movement, selective focus within a shot and correlations between soundtrack and moving image. But then, Livingston argues, the proponent of the FPM thesis faces the following “dilemma of paraphrase”: 1. If the “exclusively cinematic insight” proposed by the proponent of the FPM thesis cannot be verbally paraphrased, we can reasonably doubt its existence. 2. If, on the other hand, it can and must be verbally paraphrased, the philosophical insight is not a purely cinematic one, since linguistic mediation turns out to be constitutive of (our knowledge of) the epistemic contribution a film can make. Even if specifically cinematic devices, such as montage, were essential to a film’s philosophical content in the sense that this content could not have been fully articulated in another medium, the successful philosophical function of that device remains importantly dependent on linguistically articulated background thoughts that are mobilized in both the creation and interpretation of the film’s philosophical significance.25

142  David Davies More specifically, according to Livingston, “if aspects of the film’s thematic and narrative design are to resonate with sufficiently sophisticated and well-articulated theses or arguments  .  .  . an interpretative context must be established in relation to which features of the film are shown to have some worthwhile philosophical resonance.”26 He therefore rejects the “bold” thesis, while allowing that films can play lesser, but still significant, pedagogical and heuristic roles in philosophy: “Films can provide vivid and emotionally engaging illustrations of philosophical issues and when sufficient background knowledge is in place, reflections about films can contribute to the exploration of specific theses and arguments, sometimes yielding enhanced philosophical understanding.”27 “Exclusivity” for Livingston is what we may term “medium exclusivity”: an interesting version of the FPM thesis must claim that, in at least some cases, there are philosophical insights articulated in a given film that are articulated by means that are exclusively cinematic. This is required to set up the overarching dilemma, which is supposed to establish that a film can genuinely do philosophy only if it relies on resources that are not exclusive to cinema. Livingston assumes that, to avoid trivialization of the “bold thesis”—the filmed philosophy lecture example— we must constrain more narrowly the means taken to be exclusive to the cinematic medium and that, when we do this, a film can be seen as having philosophical resonance only through verbal mediation that injects a verbal representation of elements in the film into a verbally presented philosophical problematic. But the presented choice between broad and narrow construals of exclusivity seems a false dilemma. To rule out the “filmed lecture” example, we need not restrict the resources of cinema to those individual elements that are unique to cinema. Rather, we need to articulate an appropriate conception of medium exclusivity for an essentially mixed art form such as sound cinema. What would such a notion of medium exclusivity look like? Suppose that M2 is a verbal medium that can be used to articulate content of type C and that M1 is a mixed medium that incorporates M2 as one of its elements. Then M1 can be rightly viewed as a distinct medium for articulating this type of content iff for some such content Cn, an “utterance” U in M1 articulates Cn and it is not the case that the utterance in M2 contained in U articulates Cn. Using this as a model, we can now propose the following notion of medium exclusivity applicable to the claims of the FPM theorist. For film to be capable of providing philosophical insights that are medium exclusive relative to the verbal medium employed in sound cinema, there must be some film F and some philosophically relevant content PCa such that F articulates PCa while it is not the case that PCa is articulated by the verbal content of F. This requirement is clearly violated in Livingston’s “filmed lecture” example. But it is not difficult to see how a film might satisfy this condition even though it contained, as an element, a recording of a philosopher

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 143 presenting an argument. For the manner in which a filmmaker employs the kinds of distinctively visual cinematic resources incorporated in Livingston’s narrow conception of medium exclusivity—other aspects of the visual image, montage, editing, selective focus, etc.—might provide a critical commentary on what is being said, so that the overall philosophically relevant content articulated by the film differs significantly from the philosophically relevant content articulated verbally. However, it might be claimed, even then the film could not speak for itself philosophically but would require verbal paraphrase if its insights were to be brought into the arena of philosophical thinking. But what role is such a paraphrase supposed to play? If it is required only in order to verbally communicate the insights gained in watching the film, this would not undermine the “bold thesis” that film can make distinctive contributions to philosophical inquiry. The FPM thesis will be compromised only if the verbal mediation necessary for bringing a film into the philosophical arena is not itself operative in the watching of the film. This is what Livingston indeed seems to be claiming. The problem, he maintains, is that the verbal paraphrase of cinematic content required if the latter is to do philosophical work must be an interpretation of what is visually presented in light of linguistically mediated philosophical background assumptions. So, even if specifically cinematic devices such as montage are essential to a film’s content, the content can function philosophically only via such linguistic mediation. Only when exported into a verbally formulated philosophical “problematic” can aspects of the film’s thematic and narrative content resonate with well-defined philosophical theses and arguments. Philosophical work is done not in our engagement with the film as a visually and aurally presented manifold, but only when such exportation has taken place. Livingston’s objection to the FPM thesis is in fact similar to the “evidence” objection to the cognitive claims of literary works—films, it is claimed, are at best of only heuristic value, providing resources for making philosophical progress through further reflection that takes place independently of our experiential engagement with the film. The objection is also of a piece with “deflationary” views of scientific TEs, according to which the latter either are at best of merely heuristic value or must be stripped of their narrative attire to reveal the bare body of argument underneath. I have argued against such deflationary views elsewhere28 and shall only briefly summarize these arguments here. Some authors—whom we may term “extreme deflationists”—simply dismiss TEs as sources of scientific understanding.29 TEs yield only hypotheses that must be subjected to empirical testing before we can have any confidence in their conclusions. More moderate deflationists30 hold that TEs, insofar as they have cognitive value, have it in virtue of being disguised arguments. Our trust in the general conclusion we are invited to draw from the particular fictional example in a scientific TE is, on this view,

144  David Davies rationally grounded only to the extent that we are able to reconstruct the TE as a standard deductive or inductive argument. If the generality of the conclusion of the TE is to be legitimized, such a reconstruction must prescind from the narrative details. On either the extreme or the moderate deflationist view, TEs considered in their customary narrative splendor teach us nothing. If we accept this view of TEs, the prospects for defending a cognitivist view of fictional narratives—let alone the idea of film as a philosophical medium—by appeal to the TE analogy seem bleak. The much greater detail in artistic narratives seems cognitively unmotivated, since it is irrelevant to the cognitive import of a TE. Furthermore, this view of how TEs can have cognitive value is disastrous for any interesting FPM thesis, since we cannot evade Livingston’s objection that philosophical work can be done only when a suitable verbal paraphrase of the “message” of the film is exported into a broader philosophical problematic. There is, however, a less deflationary view of TEs in science that brings them more closely into line with our intuitive sense of what is going on in TEs in philosophy, which arguably work by mobilizing intuitions grounded in our implicit understanding of certain concepts.31 On what we may term a “moderate inflationist” view of scientific TEs,32 they serve a similar function. They cannot be reconstructed as explicit arguments because their power to rationally persuade draws upon cognitive resources we already possess, grounded in our experience of the world, which may not be available to us in any explicitly propositional form. According to Tamar Gendler’s spelling out of this view, the narrative details of the TE are crucial to its power to convince, since it is the details of the TE that mobilize our intuitions about the world as we experience it. TEs then have cognitive value because they enable us to realize certain things about the world, or (in the philosophical case) about our concepts, that we would not have been able to grasp without the detailed narrative of the TE. This account is much more promising for the defender of both literary cognitivism and the FPM thesis. For it makes the “rational assessment” of the TE, viewed as a reason for accepting a general conclusion, internal to the process of engaging with the TE—or, in the case of fictional narratives presented in literary or filmic fictions, internal to the reading of the novel or the watching of the film. Our sense of having learned something in reading a novel or watching a film will be justified to the extent that we have drawn upon genuine cognitive resources already possessed but not otherwise available to us. The “philosophical problematic” necessary to engage philosophically with elements in a film and, in that engagement, do philosophy will be something that the receiver brings to her encounter with the film and that enters into that encounter, not something separate from that encounter into which elements from our cinematic experience have to be imported in order for matters philosophical to be joined.33

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 145

III Let us take stock. We have been considering a standard defense of the FPM thesis, using something like the argument offered in the preceding section. We have responded to a number of criticisms of this argument, arguing that (i) “doing philosophy” may be a legitimate aim of cinematic artworks, (ii) dramatic imagining may serve a legitimate philosophical purpose, (iii) the notion of “medium exclusivity” required for the FPM thesis can be defined in a way that does not obviously fall prey to Livingston’s “nested dilemmas” argument and (iv) a “moderate inflationist” model of the cognitive value of TEs shows how a film’s doing philosophy through presenting a TE can be internal to the experience of watching the film. But a further problem emerges when we ask whether those films that are taken to do philosophy by presenting TEs can satisfy our revised “medium exclusivity” requirement. The requirement, applied to a particular sound film F offered as an example of doing philosophy by presenting a TE, is that there be some philosophically relevant content PCa such that F articulates PCa while it is not the case that PCa is articulated by the verbal content of F. This requirement will not be satisfied, however, if F’s philosophically relevant content is carried entirely by narrative properties of F that it would share with a literary analogue. Take, for example, Noël Carroll’s suggestion34 that Graham Greene’s novel The Third Man is rightly seen to be a TE that provides a philosophical defense of the thesis that one’s duty to one’s country outweighs one’s duty to one’s friends and that it is a response to E. M. Forster’s claim to the contrary. If so, the film version of The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) can “do philosophy” in a way that is “medium exclusive” in our sense only if it has content bearing upon what it achieves philosophically that depends upon the cinematic presentation of the narrative, rather than upon the narrative itself. But, if film “does philosophy” by presenting TEs, it is not obvious why this will be the case. In responding to Smith, we suggested that the kind of dramatic imagining elicited by the fictional narrative in artworks can serve to deepen our understanding of a philosophical issue, but it isn’t clear why the kind of dramatic imagining generated by a cinematic TE differs in its philosophically relevant content from the kind of dramatic imagining that might be produced by a corresponding literary TE. Consider, again, Blade Runner, offered earlier as an example of how “dramatic imagining” might serve a legitimate philosophical purpose in the presentation of a cinematic TE. Blade Runner might seem to exemplify the very issue of current concern, since it is based on a literary work, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?,35 which is generally taken to be a TE. One complication, however, is that if Blade Runner is a cinematic TE, its thematic meaning is strikingly different from that

146  David Davies of Dick’s book.36 While Dick’s narrative is intended to point to the possibility of biological humanity in the absence of what, following Berys Gaut,37 we may term “evaluative humanity,” Scott’s narrative concern is with the possibility of evaluative humanity in the absence of biological humanity. A more serious problem is that it is far from clear that Blade Runner is usefully seen as a TE, let alone as a TE that is distinctively cinematic or works through dramatic imagining. This is in part because the persuasiveness of the thematic meaning of the film relies upon the very empathetic tendencies in the viewer that the film, if viewed as a thought experiment, would be intended to validate. But, for the reasons noted earlier, it does seem that a film like Blade Runner uses distinctively cinematic means to promote dramatic imagining that can deepen our understanding of philosophical issues. What we require then is an alternative to the TE account of how films can “do philosophy” in terms of which to make sense of the philosophical import of a film like Blade Runner.

IV Recent work by Robert Sinnerbrink suggests how such an alternative account might go. Sinnerbrink notes that, for standard cognitivist views of cinema, viewers are expected to treat the images in a narrative film as the means whereby the film’s narrative is to be reconstructed. Much of the viewer’s pleasure attends this process of reconstruction and the solving of narrative puzzles that arise. While granting that this is one aspect of our engagement with narrative cinema, Sinnerbrink argues that it ignores what he terms the “aesthetic dimension” of the images, the images’ sensuous qualities, their visual rhythms and tempo, their use of color, texture and form, their dramatic (and undramatic) moments of singularity in gesture and performance, their mood-disclosing capacities, their orchestrating of aural and visual patterning, their ability to reveal and conceal nuances of expression in the human face and body, their capacity to express movement and time in novel ways and so on.38 Cognitivist accounts of film narrative “do not always acknowledge the role of our ‘non-cognitive’ aesthetic responses to film—the multifarious sensuous and affective ways in which film can provoke altered states of mind, body and thought.”39 Sinnerbrink argues that we should focus upon the ways in which cinema can do philosophical work in virtue of this aesthetic dimension. Unlike Mulhall, Carroll and Wartenberg, whose examples are drawn from mainstream narrative cinema, Sinnerbrink’s examples are “art films” by directors such as David Lynch, Lars von Trier and Terrence Malick. Such films, he maintains, promote “cinematic thinking”: Works of cinematic art do not generally make abstract universal claims in theoretical or argumentative terms. Rather, they aesthetically (that

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 147 is to say cinematically) disclose novel aspects of experience, question given elements of our practices or normative frameworks, challenge established ways of seeing and open up new paths for thinking. . . . The philosophical dimensions of film . . . are enacted or performed rather than posited or proven, which implies . . . that the question of “film as philosophy” cannot be decided by theoretical argument alone. Rather, the only way to establish reliably and contestably, that particular films can be philosophical is by translating the kind of experience they afford into aesthetically receptive and theoretically inflected film criticism.40 Cinematic thinking in Sinnerbrink’s sense is internal to our experiential engagement with a film, rather than occurring subsequent to that experience. A film may have “aesthetic and cinematic qualities that prompt an experience conducive to thought: Films . . . provoke, incite, or force us to think, even if we remain uncertain as to what kind of thinking (or writing) might be adequate to such an experience.” Such films “resist theory” in the sense that, while evoking an experience that is aesthetic and reflective, this experience resists philosophical translation or paraphrase.41 What is of philosophical value, then, occurs in a dialogical process involving our experiential engagement with the “aesthetic dimensions” of the film and the reflections prompted thereby. While we may have recourse to language to describe the cinematic thinking elicited in us by a film, the philosophizing is intrinsic to the cinematic thinking, not something that occurs when we export content from the film. In both of these respects, Sinnerbrink’s account speaks to Livingston’s arguments against the “bold thesis.” It makes the doing of philosophy internal to the watching of a film. It also makes it essentially cinematic, dependent not on the narrative per se but upon the “aesthetic dimensions” of the film where intrinsically cinematic means are used to produce affect. The obvious questions that a skeptic like Livingston will raise, however, are why “cinematic thinking” so construed should count as doing philosophy and how the “aesthetic dimensions” are essential to such philosophizing. To assess Sinnerbrink’s claims, I shall first provide some examples of affective responses grounded in “aesthetic dimensions” of cinema that are essentially cinematic. I shall then look at two of Sinnerbrink’s own examples of “cinematic thinking” and raise some skeptical concerns. Finally, I shall consider other films our intended responses to which might be thought to exemplify doing philosophy through “cinematic thinking” in Sinnerbrink’s sense.

V In a couple of very interesting papers, Amy Coplan examines the relationship between the formal features of two films—Terrence Malick’s

148  David Davies The Thin Red Line (1998) and Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner—and the emotional, affective and perceptual experiences that these formal features evoke.42 Malick’s films, she argues, are more cinematic than most because they foreground features of experience that can be communicated only through appeal to the senses. As a result, much of the viewers’ experience in watching The Thin Red Line is non-cognitive or minimally cognitive, perception and attention often being focused on sensory information. Coplan provides a detailed analysis of various cinematographic and editing techniques used in the film to construct an episodic narrative and to create numerous shots, scenes and sequences that are highly subjective and impressionistic. Three distinctive formal features of the film— a highly subjective perspective, impressionistic images and sounds and an episodic narrative—result in viewers having an overall emotional or affective experience of the film that is, at least initially, primarily perceptual and embodied rather than cognitive and evaluative. She shows how camera movement and lighting contribute to the creation of such a subjective perspective. The use of lighting is also central to Coplan’s account of Blade Runner. She again examines how formal elements of the film influence how we experience and interpret its meanings. She focuses especially on the film’s use of the stylistic conventions of film noir. It is mood, rather than details of setting or narrative content, that is distinctive of film noir, Coplan argues: moving light and an extremely detailed environment and atmosphere elicit mood responses in viewers, thereby influencing how they engage with and interpret the film. She explores how formal elements of Blade Runner generate a mood of noir and thereby crucially inflect the viewer’s experience. Two distinctive features are the dominant use of backlighting and the use of carefully projected shafts of light. The work of Coplan and others on the cinematic mechanisms generative of affect gives us a way of understanding, in terms of the use of such mechanisms, what it would be for a film to have philosophical content that was essentially cinematic. The philosophical work would not be done by the narrated content alone but would depend crucially upon the way in which affect-generating mechanisms are used in the presentation of that content. But are there persuasive examples of the “aesthetic dimension” of cinema being used for such philosophical purposes and used in ways that elude the kinds of skeptical doubts raised by Livingston and others? Two of three examples discussed at length by Sinnerbrink43 are examples of what Stephen Mulhall44 terms film in the condition of philosophy: the purported philosophical content of these films pertains to the nature and possibility of film itself as an artistic medium. There is no doubt that artists working in an artistic medium can raise questions about, or call into question, the artistic potentialities and limits of that medium. For example, one might see Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon as calling into question contemporary assumptions about painting as a

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 149 representational art. However, those who are skeptical about the idea of artworks “doing philosophy” might claim that philosophical insight into the artistic medium in such cases requires that we reflect after the fact on the implications of what Picasso has done. To meet this challenge, the proponent of the idea that artistic experience can itself be a way of doing philosophy must argue that such reflections are prompted in receivers by the experiences elicited in them by the aesthetic dimensions of the work in question and are thereby internal to our experiential engagement with the work. With this in mind, we may consider the first two films presented by Sinnerbrink as examples of “cinematic thinking.” The first is David Lynch’s Inland Empire (2006), described as “a meditation on the crisis of Hollywood film,”45 part of a critical dialogue with Hollywood narrative, whose subject is the significance of film. But while the film promotes “cinematic thinking” about its subject, a Livingstonian skeptic might argue that philosophical insight into the nature of film is not given through the “cinematic thinking” itself but occurs only when we reflect upon and evaluate Lynch’s “meditation.” That Lynch is able to use the aesthetic dimensions of cinema to get us to think about film in a certain way testifies to his ability to use the aesthetic aspects of the medium to engender a particular way of thinking about the subject. But it arguably requires further reflection after our viewing to confer upon the thoughts elicited in us by Lynch’s film the description of philosophical insight or inquiry. The second example is Lars von Trier’s Antichrist (2009). Sinnerbrink46 sees the film as an example of cinematic thinking because it offers a cinematic counterexample to prevailing cognitivist theories of horror such as Noël Carroll’s account whereby our pleasure in horror films is a pleasure in cognitive puzzle-solving and aesthetic contemplation.47 What von Trier’s film shows is that we can take pleasure in destruction, violence, sexuality and abjection, and this reestablishes the case for psychoanalytical accounts of certain kinds of film experience. Again, however, while the insights in this case depend essentially upon our own affective responses to the film, these philosophical insights might be thought to be conclusions that we draw in reflecting after the fact on our film experience, rather than insights that arise in the very process of watching the film. In raising these skeptical questions, I am not denying the importance of these films for philosophical reflection and insight, but only questioning whether “doing philosophy” in these cases is sufficiently internal to the process of watching the film to deflect Livingston’s objections. But there are other examples of “cinematic thinking” in Sinnerbrink’s sense that are better equipped to evade these kinds of objections. Consider here Sinnerbrink’s third example, Malick’s The New World (2006). The work’s narrative retells the story of Pocahontas, but does so in Malick’s distinctively polysemic style, with different content-bearing levels—the

150  David Davies representation of actions, shots of stunning natural beauty, non-diegetic voice-overs—interlaced with and overlapping one another. Sinnerbrink claims that the film “invites philosophical and aesthetic responses, while articulating a kind of thinking that resists translation into a ready-made thesis, position, or argument.” The response called for is not a traditional philosophical one: rather “cinematic thinking invites an exchange that allows the thinking immanent within the work to be translated between media of thought (between film and philosophy).” Philosophy here is “an accompaniment to the film . . . elaborating and translating the uniquely cinematic aesthetic experience into a register that opens up a transformative encounter with philosophical reflection.”48 That the thinking that accompanies our watching of this film is philosophical is explained in terms of its themes: Sinnerbrink describes it as “a mesmerizing cinematic meditation on our relationship with nature, our experience of mortality and the nature of love.”49 The film “enact(s) alternative forms of world-disclosure, aesthetically revealing, through cinematic art, new ways of being, of dwelling, within a world-context and relationship with nature that is under pressure from a destructive rationalism, reductive instrumentalism and imperialist violence.”50 The film offers “an experience of cinematic thinking that evokes the possibility of another way of thinking, being and dwelling—if only we are open to this possibility.”51 In this case, the philosophical work involves our becoming experientially aware of new ways of thinking about perennial philosophical questions in the very process of watching the film, and this essentially involves the aesthetic dimensions of the film. We thereby gain what Hilary Putnam has termed “conceptual knowledge”—knowledge of a possible perspective from which we can view the world, but conveyed in an essentially experiential way in virtue of the aesthetic dimensions of the film.52 A similar kind of analysis might be given of the role played by affect in Blade Runner, which prompts experientially inflected dramatic imagining that enlarges our understanding of philosophical issues. Let me conclude with a couple of films I have discussed elsewhere that might also be said to “do philosophy” through eliciting something like Sinnerbrink’s “cinematic thinking.” Both films, I suggest, satisfy conditions whose importance emerges from the previous discussion: the purported philosophically valuable insight involves the use of distinctively cinematic means to elicit certain complex experiences (a) that are philosophically significant and (b) the recognition of whose significance is part of the very experience. Where these conditions are satisfied, it will indeed be the case that a verbal account of our “cinematic thinking” will report a doing of philosophy rather than being itself that doing. First, consider again Malick’s The Thin Red Line. In discussing Coplan’s paper setting out the cinematic means productive of the film’s affective and aesthetic dimensions, we noted various mechanisms used to generate a primarily perceptual and embodied, rather than cognitive and

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 151 evaluative, experience of parts of the film’s narrative. This, I have argued elsewhere,53 serves a philosophical purpose and one that is realized and recognized in the very experience of watching the film. The film arguably offers, both thematically and cinematically, a broadly Merleau-Pontian model of embodied seeing and embodied agency, narratively expressed in the character of Witt. The notion of embodied seeing, I argue, is exemplified in the cinematic style of Malick’s film. The images have a tactile, holistic quality, the camera representing things in terms of their textures and acting as a medium of touch as much as of vision. The voice-overs present the viewer with a stream of reflective thinking that generally stands apart from the actions of the characters. The voice-overs serve, along with the depictions of nature, as the frame for the human actions presented—actions that are always those of embodied agents whose actions, while called forth by the experienced world, are permeated by language and conceptual awareness. In this way, the voice-overs play an essential part in Malick’s cinematic presentation of the manner in which the human agent encounters and responds to its world. Most importantly in the present context, it is through the aesthetic dimensions of the film, grounded in the kinds of cinematographic resources described by Coplan, that we come to reflectively experience the embodied nature of the characters’ engagement with their lived worlds. The enriched understanding of the nature of embodied agency—our embodied agency—is both given and recognized in the very process of viewing the film, thereby satisfying our requirement that “cinematic thinking” that “does philosophy” be both internal to our viewing of the film and essentially cinematic. My second example is Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, which, I have argued,54 is intended to generate in the viewer a troubling self-knowledge, thereby according with at least one traditional “Socratic” model of philosophical inquiry. The film is intended to work through the viewer’s recognition of and reflection upon her own response to the narrated events. What is being represented in the central scene in the film—the anal rape and vicious beating of a young woman in a subway passage filmed in real time and with clinical lighting by a stationary camera positioned in front of the woman so that her face is clearly visible—is horrendous. Viewers are consciously aware of this yet find themselves unable to look away. This is because various cinematic devices have been employed in presenting the preceding scenes in the film so as to both produce extreme affect and “train up” the viewer to carefully scrutinize the images. So, read, the film seeks to elicit in viewers a feeling of disgust at themselves for having desires to watch things they believed they would never have such a desire to watch. It thereby reworks an example used by Plato in The Republic. Leontius, Socrates relates, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time, he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing his eyes

152  David Davies open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying, Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.55 Plato’s aim in telling this story is to make us aware of how the “passionate or spirited” element in the agent, here manifest in Leontius’ anger at himself, can take a critical stand on the agent’s desires, here the desire to look at that which is evil or depraved. But crucially it is Leontius’ discovery of his own baser nature that evokes the meta-response of anger. This suggests that an artwork might seek to bring about a related metaresponse by confronting us with our own baser first-level responses to a work’s representational content. Such a work would have a transformative goal, in that experience of the work is intended to change the agent’s self-understanding. In watching the central scene in Irreversible, our state of mind mirrors that of Leontius, in that we find ourselves drawn to watch the unwatchable, challenging our sense of ourselves as nonmorbid viewers. We thereby come to know our own natures better in the process of watching the film. If, following Socrates’ dictum, we take acquiring such self-knowledge as a philosophical task, this film seems to “do philosophy” in a way that is (i) essentially cinematic, because of the ways in which the film engages us affectively both in preparing us for the central scene and in presenting the content of that scene, and (ii) internal to our experiential engagement with the film.

Notes 1 Laura Cull, “Performance Philosophy: Staging a New Field.” in Encounters in Performance Philosophy, ed. Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2014), 15–38; Andrew Bowie, “The ‘Philosophy of Performance’ and the Performance of Philosophy.” Performance Philosophy I (2015): 51–58. 2 Paisley Livingston, “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 11–18. 3 Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London: Continuum, 2011); Robert Sinnerbrink, Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (London: Routledge, 2015). I focus in this paper on the former. 4 The material in this section is a much condensed and revised version of material presented in David Davies, “Can Philosophical Thought Experiments be ‘Screened’?” in Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts, ed. Melanie Frappier, Letitia Meynell, and James Robert Brown (London: Routledge, 2012), 223–38. 5 Thomas Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 28. 6 Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979). 7 Ibid., xv, xvi. 8 Stephen Mulhall, On Film (London: Routledge, 2002), 2. 9 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen. 10 Jerome Stolnitz, “On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.” British Journal of Aesthetics 32, no. 3 (1992): 191–200.

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 153 11 See, for example, Bruce Russell, “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” Film and Philosophy (2000): 163–67. 12 See, for example, Noël Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60, no. 1 (2002): 3–26; Catherine. Z. Elgin, “The Laboratory of the Mind.” in A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, ed. Wolfgang Huerner, John Gibson, and Luca Pocci (London: Routledge, 2007), 43–54. For a critical discussion of this kind of defense of cognitivism concerning literary fictions, see David Davies, “Learning Through Fictional Narratives in Art and Science.” in Beyond Mimesis and Convention: Representation in Art and Science (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 262), ed. Roman Frigg and Matthew Hunter (Dordrecht: Springer, 2010), 51–70. 13 For an extended critical discussion of the literature on TEs in science, see David Davies, “Thought Experiments and Fictional Narratives.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy VII, no. 19 (2007): 29–46. 14 See Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue.” 15 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 57–75. 16 Ibid., 76–91. 17 Peter Lamarque and Stein Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). 18 Livingston, “Theses on Film as Philosophy”; Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 33–42. 19 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 33–54. 20 Mulhall, On Film. 21 Richard Moran, “The Expression of Feeling in Imagination.” The Philosophical Review 103 (1994): 105. 22 For such a claim, see David Davies, “Blade Runner and the Cognitive Values of Cinema.” in Blade Runner, ed. Amy Coplan and David Davies (London: Routledge, 2015), 134–54. 23 Livingston, “Theses on Film as Philosophy.” 11. 24 Ibid., 12. 25 Ibid., 12–13. 26 Ibid., 15. 27 Ibid., 11. 28 Davies, “Thought Experiments and Fictional Narratives”; Davies, “Learning Through Fictional Narratives.” 29 See, for example, Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P. Weiner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954); Carl Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York: Free Press, 1965). 30 For example, John Norton, “Are Thought Experiments Just What You Always Thought?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26, no. 3 (1996): 333–66. 31 See Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue”. 32 See, for example, Ernst Mach, “On Thought Experiments.” reprinted in Knowledge and Error (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975 [1905]), 134–47; Tamar Gendler, “Galileo and the Indispensability of Thought Experiments.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1998): 397–424. 33 It is important to note a possible objection to this kind of defense of the FPM thesis. On the moderate inflationist account, the person who can be described as learning something as a result of running a TE is not in a position to provide a full justification of what she claims to have learned. This is the obverse of the claim that the TE cannot be fully reconstructed as an argument. Thus, if we are to talk of knowledge or warranted belief derived from TEs on the moderate inflationist view, it seems this must be from an

154  David Davies externalist epistemic perspective. For further discussion of this point, see Davies, “Learning Through Fictional Narratives”. 34 Carroll, “The Wheel of Virtue”. 35 Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 25th Anniversary ed. (New York: Ballantive Books, 2007). 36 See Davies, “Blade Runner and the Cognitive Values of Cinema.” 134–54. 37 Berys Gaut, “Elegy in LA: Empathy, Blade Runner, and Death.” in Blade Runner, ed. Amy Coplan and David Davies (London: Routledge, 2015), 31–45. 38 Sinnerbrink, “New Philosophies of Film.” 52. 39 Ibid., 53. 40 Ibid., 141. 41 Ibid., 142. 42 Amy Coplan, “Form and Feeling in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.” in The Thin Red Line, ed. David Davies (London: Routledge, 2008), 65–86; Amy Coplan, “In the Mood for Thought: Mood and Meaning in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.” in Blade Runner, ed. Amy Coplan and David Davies (London: Routledge, 2015), 118–34. 43 Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, part III. 44 Mulhall, On Film, 1–11. 45 Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, 144. 46 Ibid., 163. 47 Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or the Paradoxes of the Heart (London: Routledge, 1990). 48 Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film, 181. 49 Ibid., 182. 50 Ibid., 182. 51 Ibid., 192. 52 Hilary Putnam, “Literature, Science, and Reflection.” in Meaning and the Moral Sciences (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), 83–94. 53 David Davies, “Vision, Touch, and Embodiment in The Thin Red Line.” in The Thin Red Line, ed. David Davies (London: Routledge, 2008), 45–64. 54 David Davies, “Watching the Unwatchable: Irréversible, Empire, and the Paradox of Intentionally Inaccessible Art.” in Suffering Art Gladly: The Paradox of Negative Emotions, ed. Jerrold Levinson (London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2013), 246–66. 55 Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett (New York: Vintage Books, 1991), Book IV, 439e–440a.

References Bowie, Andrew. “The ‘Philosophy of Performance’ and the Performance of Philosophy.” Performance Philosophy I (2015): 51–58. Carroll, Nöel. “The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature, and Moral Knowledge.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60, no. 1 (2002): 3–26. Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. Coplan, Amy. “Form and Feeling in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line.” In The Thin Red Line, edited by David Davies, 65–86. London: Routledge, 2008. Coplan, Amy. “In the Mood for Thought: Mood and Meaning in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.” In Blade Runner, edited by Amy Coplan and David Davies, 118–34. London: Routledge, 2015.

Philosophical Dimensions of Cinematic Experience 155 Cull, Laura. “Performance Philosophy: Staging a New Field.” In Encounters in Performance Philosophy, edited by Laura Cull and Alice Lagaay, 15–38. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Davies, David. “Blade Runner and the Cognitive Values of Cinema.” In Blade Runner, edited by Amy Coplan and David Davies, 134–54. London: Routledge, 2015. Davies, David. “Can Philosophical Thought Experiments be ‘Screened’?” In Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Science, and the Arts, edited by Melanie Frappier, Letitia Meynell, and James Robert Brown, 223–38. London: Routledge, 2012. Davies, David. “Learning Through Fictional Narratives in Art and Science.” In Beyond Mimesis and Convention: Representation in Art and Science, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 262, edited by Roman Frigg and Matthew Hunter, 51–70. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010. Davies, David. “Thought Experiments and Fictional Narratives.” Croatian Journal of Philosophy VII, no. 19 (2007): 29–46. Davies, David. “Vision, Touch, and Embodiment in The Thin Red Line.” In The Thin Red Line, edited by David Davies, 45–64. London: Routledge, 2008. Davies, David. “Watching the Unwatchable: Irréversible, Empire, and the Paradox of Intentionally Inaccessible Art.” In Suffering Art Gladly: The Paradox of Negative Emotions, edited by Jerrold Levinson, 246–66. London: Macmillan Palgrave, 2013. Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 25th Anniversary ed. New York: Ballantive Books, 2007. Duhem, Pierre. The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory. Translated by P. Weiner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954. Elgin, Catherine. Z. “The Laboratory of the Mind.” In A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, edited by Wolfgang Huerner, John Gibson, and Luca Pocci, 43–54. London: Routledge, 2007. Gaut, Berys. “Elegy in LA: Empathy, Blade Runner, and Death.” In Blade Runner, edited by Amy Coplan and David Davies, 31–45. London: Routledge, 2015. Gendler, Tamar. “Galileo and the Indispensability of Thought Experiments.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49 (1998): 397–424. Hempel, Carl. Aspects of Scientific Explanation. New York: Free Press, 1965. Lamarque, Peter, and Stein Olsen. Truth, Fiction, and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Livingston, Paisley. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 11–18. Mach, Ernst. “On Thought Experiments.” Reprinted in Knowledge and Error, 134–47. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975 [1905]. Moran, Richard. “The Expression of Feeling in Imagination.” The Philosophical Review 103 (1994): 75–106. Mulhall, Stephen. On Film. London: Routledge, 2002. Norton, John. “Are Thought Experiments Just What You Always Thought?” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26, no. 3 (1996): 333–66. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: Vintage Books, 1991, Book IV, 439e-440a.

156  David Davies Putnam, Hilary. “Literature, Science, and Reflection.” In Meaning and the Moral Sciences, 83–94. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976. Russell, Bruce. “The Philosophical Limits of Film.” Film and Philosophy (2000): 163–67.Sinnerbrink, Robert. Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film. London: Routledge, 2015. Sinnerbrink, Robert. New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images. London: Continuum, 2011. Smith, Murray. “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 33–42. Stolnitz, Jerome. “On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.” British Journal of Aesthetics 32(3) (1992): 191–200. Wartenberg, Thomas. E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

Part III

The Philosophical Value of Film

9 Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film Christopher Falzon

One way in which the gap between film, in particular narrative fiction film, and philosophy has been bridged is via the notion of experiment. We are well acquainted with the idea of experimental film as traditionally understood, film that challenges the form and content of filmmaking and its conventional patterns. In so doing, film can be thought of as doing something quite philosophical. At its limit, such experimentation is raising the question of what film is, whether what one is watching is a film at all. In this it is similar to avant-garde art like the minimalist and conceptual art of the 60s and 70s. Such art, experimenting with unorthodox artistic forms, reflects on its own nature, raising the question of whether it is art at all. It thereby becomes a philosophical activity, confronting the question—what is art?1 Avant-garde film, such as structural film, similarly represents experimentation that poses questions about what counts as film.2 Even in a conventional narrative fiction film, where one can be quite confident that what one is watching is a film, it is still possible for film conventions to be challenged or subverted, even conventions that are being relied upon in the film. These are all instances of the kind of internal reflection, bound up with experimentation, that can go on within film in relation to its own form and conventions. Films can also be thought of as experimental in the sense of offering something like a narrative thought experiment in which one is asked to imagine what things would be like if such and such were the case. Such imaginary scenarios or hypothetical situations can be found readily enough in philosophical texts, and viewed as experimental in this way, film has been seen as having the capacity to engage with philosophical questions. The locus classicus for this line of thinking is Thomas E. Wartenberg’s Thinking on Screen (2007). There are, of course, also some significant differences between film and philosophy in this respect, differences that have led some to argue that there are too many disanalogies for film to be understood as philosophizing in this way.3 However, rather than trying to subordinate film to the model of the philosophical thought experiment, as it were only validating film’s critical credentials to the extent that it conforms to this model, it seems more fruitful to me

160  Christopher Falzon to argue that the differences film brings to the table, particularly the ability to present experience in a richly detailed way, enhance its capacity to engage in such narrative experimentation, to put ideas and presuppositions to the test of experience, allowing film to do this in ways that go beyond what is possible within the philosophical text. That’s the first claim. As a second line of argument, I would like to suggest that film as experimental in this enhanced sense points us towards forms of experimental reflection within philosophy itself that go beyond the humble thought experiment. The philosophical reflection in question is represented by Foucault’s idea of philosophy as a practice of thought that transforms the thinker and that does so not through the force of better argument, of reasons justified by foundations, but through experiences that call one’s foundational assumptions into question and make it impossible to continue thinking in the same way. Insofar as it is possible for film to engage in this form of experimental reflection, it is capable of producing the same kind of critical effects as are provoked by this form of reflection in philosophy.

Experimental Film In order to explore this bridge between narrative fiction film and philosophy, it is useful to say something about the gap that needs to be bridged. If by “philosophy” is meant a philosophical treatise in which a position or point of view is argued for, on the basis of some fundamental principle or set of presuppositions, then film, of course, differs significantly from philosophy. At the very least, films typically make their points in the realm of action and appearance, rather than reflection and debate.4 A film might have a peripheral relation to philosophy in the sense that it portrays an attitude or action that might be analyzed or evaluated in terms of some philosophical theory or position. A philosophical position might intrude more forcefully into the film insofar as it is illustrated or implied by some character through their attitudes and actions, or even explicitly cited by them. Nevertheless, talking about the film as philosophically relevant in these terms is never going to exhaust what is going on in a film. Films have a life of their own, and there will always be more happening than the provision of material for philosophical judgement, or the illustration of some philosophical idea or position. There will be the story to get on with and the lives of the characters to portray; and many non-philosophical concerns, artistic, dramatic or comic, are inevitably going to come into play in determining what is being portrayed. By the same token, that a film has a life of its own and is inevitably going to be governed in significant ways by non-philosophical concerns is not incompatible with a film’s having philosophical content. It would be strange to argue that films, simply by virtue of having nonphilosophical concerns, are unable to engage with such content, or that

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 161 these non-philosophical concerns are simply going to “trump” any philosophical considerations.5 More positively, that a film is irreducible to the instantiation of philosophical ideas or views leaves open the possibility that there are the resources available within film itself for a critical engagement with those ideas, and more broadly, to engage with any idea or view that might enter into the film’s orbit in a critical, philosophical manner. Certainly, a film may do little more than promote a certain viewpoint or way of thinking. There are dogmatic, moralistic and propagandistic films of this sort, dedicated to affirming some social orthodoxy or other. But as Stam argues, a wholesale dismissal of films as reactionary in this sense, as merely reproducing prevailing ideologies, ignores the empirical reality of the films themselves. It fails to distinguish between more or less reactionary films or see how films can sometimes challenge forms of thinking and practices even as they portray them. They can do so through playfulness, irony, even downright subversion.6 And it can be very much part of their artistry, drama or comedy that they do so. One of art’s accomplishments is surely that it is able to hold up a critical mirror to ourselves. Let us look more carefully at how film might be said to “go beyond” philosophy, to have a life of its own. Here the idea of narrative plays an important role. Whereas a philosophical treatise relies on arguments to move forward, fiction film typically advances by way of narratives, unfolding stories. It is in and through its narrative that a film is going to be able to be playful, ironic or subversive, with respect to an idea or point of view that enters into the film’s orbit. However, the reliance on narrative has itself been seen to count against film’s being considered able to engage in philosophical activity. This is one of the a priori objections to the idea of film as doing philosophy mentioned by Wartenberg in Thinking on Screen. The issue is that narratives feature particular events, situations and characters, whereas philosophy is concerned with general, universal truths. This is an objection that in general terms goes back to Plato. Plato insists that philosophy arises through the rejection of mythical narratives in favor of a rational discourse devoted to universal truths. It emerges when abstract principle begins to rival narrative as a way of understanding the place of human beings in the world.7 As such, narrative film is inherently the wrong kind of medium to embody philosophical reflection. In response, Wartenberg makes the point that history is a field of knowledge that film can contribute to. It can do so because one method that historians use to present their research in history is the narrative. Narrative can be defined as the telling of some (fictional or true) event or sequence of events, and history uses narratives to make events intelligible. Narrative provides the scaffolding that joins events in a pattern, allowing us to comprehend their significance. As such, films are able to do more than just photographically record historical events. They can do

162  Christopher Falzon history, in the sense that while they may contain documentary footage, they can also edit this footage into a coherent narrative.8 So narrativity provides a link between history and film, making it possible for films to screen history. Wartenberg then goes on to argue that we are too quick to claim that philosophy does not involve narratives. In fact, thought experiments represent a distinctively philosophical use of narrative. This provides the required link between philosophy and film, allowing us to say that it is possible in principle for narrative film to screen philosophy.9 This is a first convergence between film and philosophy. The key point is that film’s reliance on narratives does not make it the alien other of philosophy. However much philosophy might want to repudiate narrative in its “official” pronouncements, narratives can be readily found within philosophical texts in the form of thought experiments. The binary opposition between philosophy and narrative that Plato insists on is undermined, in best deconstructive fashion, since the repudiated other appears within that which defines itself through its exclusion.10 Indeed, Plato himself makes memorable use of narrative thought experiments, like the myth of the cave, to make philosophical points.11 In turn, insofar as film offers something like a narrative thought experiment, it can be seen as having the capacity to engage in philosophical reflection. This is Wartenberg’s argument, that it makes sense to think of some fiction films as working in ways that philosophical thought experiments do, questioning existing views, posing counterexamples, exploring what is essential to a concept and so on, and in that regard, as not only capable of illustrating philosophical ideas and themes, but of “doing philosophy.”12 The same kind of move can be used to counter the argument that narrative films have nothing to do with philosophy because like all fictive arts, they portray unreal events, at a remove from reality, whereas philosophy is concerned with truth. Plato insists on a sharp divide between philosophy and art on this basis, expelling the poets from his ideal Republic. The cave myth presages this, telling us to beware of being taken in by unreal appearances. Philosophy requires us to turn away from the shadows on the cave wall in order to become acquainted with the true reality outside the cave. Meanwhile, as Murdoch puts it, “art and the artist are condemned by Plato to exhibit the lowest and most irrational kind of awareness . . . in terms of the Cave myth this is the condition of the prisoners who face the back wall and see only shadows cast by the fire.”13 Once again the repudiated other appears within that which defines itself through the repudiation. Plato, who expels the artists, is himself a great artist. Even his favored dialogue form is “artful and indirect and abounds in ironical and playful devices.”14 And a striking narrative, the cave myth, figures in the condemnation of those who employ such narratives. More positively, the cave myth offers its own insight into reality. If it is a fiction, it is in the sense not of being false but fictioned or constructed, a

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 163 hypothetical, experimental, what-if situation that allows us to illuminate and explore our assumptions about the world and how we understand it. In this manner, film receives legitimation as able to engage in critical reflection akin to that practiced in philosophy, in virtue of being like a philosophical thought experiment. However, this understanding also opens the way to the argument that there are too many disanalogies between film and philosophy for film to be understood as philosophizing in this way.15 There are certainly some obvious differences between films and philosophical thought experiments. Where philosophical experiments focus on concepts rather than people and don’t engage the audience, cinematic narratives give access to conduct, characters and extended stories, involving the audience in their characters’s lives and fate. And unlike literary narratives, films don’t merely describe but show things in detail, especially faces, gestures and conduct, communicating their significance directly to the audience.16 Once again, certain ways in which film “goes beyond” or differs from philosophy are taken to be inimical to film’s engagement in philosophical reflection, which is best served by the austere, abstract thought experiments to be found in the literature. Again, it is not clear that this necessarily follows. More positively, the differences might enhance the capacity of films to engage in such narrative experimentation. Many of the differences cited reflect the circumstance that film narratives are portrayed through cinematic images, the combinations of moving image and sound specific to the film medium. The images are marshaled, organized and constructed, in order to tell the story, and to that extent the images are subject to the requirements of story progression. At the same time, the story is made manifest only through those images, by way of the filmspecific devices of framing, editing, the close-up and tracking shot, sound and music and so on. These are the devices through which the story can be told cinematically, as distinct from through a written text. So understood, the film can both richly evoke visual experience, showing rather than telling, and do so in a directed way, insofar as that experience is organized through the film’s narrative. That film engages intensely with experience suggests that it is an artform particularly well-placed to conduct these thought experiments. In a basic sense experiment is the putting of a position, a view, to the test of experience, putting it on trial. It is worth noting that experience and experiment once meant the same and that they share the Latin root expereri (to try, to test).17 Obviously, cinematic experiments are much removed from the austere thought experiments to be found in philosophical texts. But there is a bias involved in supposing that any departure from the philosophical text is to the detriment of this form of reflection. On the contrary, the differences that film as film brings to the table, particularly the ability to present experience in a richly detailed way, may

164  Christopher Falzon very well enhance its capacity to engage in narrative experimentation, to invoke challenging experiences, allowing it to do this in ways that go beyond what is possible within the philosophical text. This is what I take Cox and Levine to be pointing out—that through its relative richness of detail, film can “sometimes provide nuanced investigation of fundamental features of experience well beyond the ordinary achievements of written philosophical texts and in doing so robustly refute hollow and simplistic ways of understanding life.”18

Philosophical Experience For all its advantages, however, the question might now be raised as to whether, in comparison to the philosophical thought experiment, cinematic experimentation is lacking in one important respect. Thought experiments in written philosophical texts have the advantage that they are located in the context of an argument. They typically involve both a narrative and an explicit argument that makes use of that narrative, giving the narrative its precise philosophical meaning. But if nothing in film corresponds to an explicit argument, aren’t we just left with a narrative that has no particular philosophical significance? This is a question that has been posed by Tom McClelland. It may certainly appear to the interested onlooker that a film narrative poses what amounts to a provocative thought experiment, but film itself usually does not provide explicit directives as to how to interpret its narrative as a philosophical thought experiment. In film “there is no philosopher-guide telling us how to deploy the narrative as part of a philosophical argument.”19 There is another alternative, however, which Tom McClelland himself suggests, that while film may not be able to function as autonomous, full-fledged philosophy, it can play a more modest role in philosophical reflection: “Perhaps a film can behave as an invitation for its audience to engage in a philosophical inquiry that treats events in the film like thought-experiments.”20 Here, the film provides a narrative that sheds light on some philosophical issue, and the audience provides the argument and conclusion that incorporate the narrative into a full philosophical exercise. So, although film cannot autonomously philosophize, it can contribute to wider philosophical activities in this way. It offers a narrative scenario that is an invitation to the audience to think for themselves, to achieve their own insights. However, it might be argued that this line of argument once again views cinematic experimentation on the model of the philosophical thought experiment, rather than as potentially having its own distinct character. A  philosophical thought experiment certainly presupposes a discursive context of argument that seeks to justify a position in a principled way. The aim of such a discourse is to convince the reader of a truth through the force of better argument. However, the lack of such

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 165 a context of argument might be precisely one of the things that marks the cinematic experiment’s difference from the philosophical thought experiment. More positively, it might be argued that film as experimental can provide an avenue for a form of critical reflection distinct from the argument-based approach typically found within philosophy. It seeks to bring about a transformation in thinking, not through the force of the better argument, reasons justified by foundations, but by invoking experiences that change one. To support this view, we can return to an earlier line of argument. To the objection that narrative films are the wrong sort of medium to embody philosophical reflection, Wartenberg points out that film is able to contribute to history because one method that historians use is the narrative, and that films are similarly capable of screening philosophy, because philosophy also makes use of narratives, in the form of thought experiments. However, consider the idea that a historical narrative might itself serve as a means of philosophizing, a historico-critical reflection distinguishable from more traditionally argument-based ways of doing philosophy. A film able to screen a narrative of that sort would presumably be able to engage in that form of critical reflection. This, I want to suggest, gives us a way of thinking about the enhanced narrative experimentation that, it has been argued, can be undertaken within film. First of all, the idea of historico-critical reflection itself can be fleshed out through a quick consideration of the work of Foucault, one of its best-known exponents. Many of Foucault’s books are histories, but they are not simply histories for the sake of doing history. Foucault uses history to do philosophy. This historicizing approach is contrasted with the more traditional, Platonic notion of philosophy as concerned with identifying timeless, unchanging and universal truths, the fundamental presuppositions of our thinking. For the latter, history, mired as it is in change and particularity, is inimical to philosophy, this in turn becoming an a priori objection to a historicizing approach like Foucault’s having philosophical relevance. Nonetheless in reflecting on the nature of knowledge or subjectivity by looking at how they have arisen in specific historical contexts, Foucault can be seen as pursuing, in a new way, a quite traditional philosophical task—that of interrogating the presupposed or taken-for-granted in our thinking. By grasping the historicity of ruling forms of thought, Foucault aims to separate out “from the contingency that has made us what we are, the possibility of no longer being, doing, or thinking what we are, do, or think.”21 In other words to encourage the possibility of going beyond existing limits of thought, of thinking differently. This historicizing reflection also involves a specific understanding of history. Foucault does not turn to history in order to discover patterns of development that presuppose some timeless, unchanging principle. His rejection of timeless essences is also a rejection of Hegelian-style

166  Christopher Falzon philosophical history, an unhistorical history in which all historical events become mere means to the self-realization of the Absolute Subject. In this, Hegel, one of the most historically minded of philosophers, invokes history but only to subordinate it to a very strong narrative. Everything that happens is to be comprehended as part of the drama of Geist’s journey through self-alienation and its overcoming. It is not clear whether such an all-embracing historical narrative could ever be screened, films remaining stubbornly invested in particular, changing events even as they narratively organize them. But at the very least, history so understood is like an epic film with a single, all-enveloping plot, in which everything that happens serves in the end only to advance the agenda of the heroic central character. And a narrative film might be viewed as being “Hegelian” to the extent that every development in the story only confirms or reinforces a position, agenda or point of view that is present from the start. Foucault wants to avoid interpreting history through the prism of a metahistorical framework, without turning to an uncritical empiricism devoted to documenting the facts, reconstructing the past using existing historical records. He insists that there is no fact that is not already an interpretation.22 Historical records themselves have already been selected and organized through practices of conservation and organization undertaken in the present, in accordance with the ruling interests and categories of that present. It is then but a short step, under the illusion of “objectivity,” to formulating a history that “gives support to the present by collecting all the meanings of the past and tracing the line of inevitability through which they are resolved in the present.”23 Such an approach reads the past as a continuous narrative of progress culminating in the present. In historical terms, this is the fallacy of “presentism”; in philosophical terms, it is the circular thinking that only serves to confirm one’s initial presuppositions. In connection with the screening of history, it is easy enough for a film to portray a history with this sort of progressivist narrative. It is once again a portrayal of events in which every development in the story only serves to confirm one’s starting point. In contrast to presentist history, Foucault insists he is not seeking a “history of the past in terms of the present,” but a “history of the present.”24 This involves turning to the past precisely insofar as it is not reducible to a function of the present, insofar as it resists containment in a continuous narrative culminating in the present. In his histories Foucault looks to that which is unfamiliar, different, strange, surprising and discontinuous.25 In an early methodological text, he characterizes himself as attempting to “conceive of the Other,” the otherness of the past, “in the time of our own thought,” rather than bringing history under the sign of the “Same.”26 A  Foucauldian history is thus a “counter-memory,”27 recalling that which does not fit into the official story of progress and thus challenging that story. We might also think of it as a “counter-narrative,”

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 167 one that foregrounds difference and discontinuity. This is not a narrative that comfortably confirms the preconceptions of one’s starting point. Rather, by disrupting the narrative of progress, it deprives present forms of thought and action of any necessity or inevitability, showing them to be “historically singular,” contingent and potentially changeable. At the very least, it is no longer possible to continue thinking in quite the same way as before. In his later work, Foucault comes to identify this historicizing reflection as an exercise in philosophy, understood as an experimental practice of thought that changes the thinker. The disturbing otherness invoked through historical counter-narratives comes to be characterized as a certain kind of experience that “has the function of wrenching the subject from itself, of seeing to it that the subject is no longer itself.”28 O’Leary identifies two notions of experience in Foucault’s work. There is experience in the mundane sense of the “long term, background experience that we share with our culture and our time.” Experience of this sort embodies the presuppositions we share with others in a particular time and place, through which we collectively make sense of the world. This is contrasted with transformative experience, the kind of experience referred to when one speaks of “having an experience.” It is experience as a singular, “limit-transcending, challenging event,” which conflicts with and disrupts our familiar ways of viewing the world, changing experience in the first sense, the background experience we share with our culture.29 It is in bringing to the fore such singular, challenging experiences that Foucault’s histories are philosophical exercises. One’s fundamental presuppositions are put on trial, interrogated, in the light of these philosophical experiences. This is not the thought experiment that proceeds within a framework of principled argument. It is rather a practice of thought that transforms the thinker and not through the force of better argument but through experiences that call one’s foundational principles into question and make it impossible to continue thinking in the same way. It follows that were a film to screen such Foucauldean histories, their narratives foregrounding events that have been marginalized or suppressed in the official historical story, they would be engaging in that historicocritical form of philosophical reflection. And more generally, insofar as a film can screen that sort of narrative, a counter-narrative that invokes challenging experiences, it can engage in that form of critical reflection. It can potentially bring about the transformative effects that Foucault sought to provoke through his histories.

Philosophical Experience Through Experimental Film This brings us back to narrative fiction film, which has been characterized not only as an artform that engages intensely with experience, but more importantly, as able to invoke the kind of experience that is able to

168  Christopher Falzon challenge and refute simplistic ways of understanding life. In the light of the preceding, it is possible to see this sort of cinematic experimentalism in broadly Foucauldean terms, as the screening of a counter-narrative, the invoking of a singular, “limit-transcending, challenging event,” that conflicts with and disrupts familiar ways of viewing the world. A recognized feature of the cinematic medium is its capacity to invoke otherness. If one of the strengths of film is its ability to evoke subjective experience, a personal point of view, film also has the capacity to “open up a sense of otherness in a broad sense, bringing us into sometimes intimate contact with realities we could not otherwise conceive.”30 Indeed, as the film critic Pauline Kael notes, it is precisely “the opening into other, forbidden or surprising kinds of experience” that draws viewers to the movies in the first place.31 In foregrounding such limit-transcending experiences, narrative film has the potential to challenge standard forms of understanding and to bring about transformative effects in the viewer. This does not mean that a particular film will necessarily produce such effects. A  good deal depends on what the viewer themselves brings to the film, since the experience is only limit-transcending relative to the framework of presuppositions constitutive of one’s background experience. Also, there needs to be a certain openness to the experience on the part of the viewer, who may just take the opportunity to experience the other, forbidden or surprising from a safe distance, remaining essentially untouched by it. What does not seem plausible, however, is that a film can be viewed any way the viewer wants. Even if there is no “philosopherguide” telling us how to interpret a film, films make their own demands on the viewer. The most basic level of filmic communication involves the filmmaker getting the viewer to interpret what is being presented in a certain way. Such communication relies on the viewer having certain presuppositions in common with the filmmaker, even if the filmmaker is interested in challenging those presuppositions. And it may be that with some films, the viewer can only be said to have fully appreciated what the film has to offer to the extent that their presuppositions are challenged or disturbed, the very presuppositions they have been drawing on in order to make sense of the film. At a certain level, a challenging of the viewer’s presuppositions has arguably been going on throughout the history of film. The limit-transcending experience of cinema itself, an artform that burst upon consciousness a hundred years ago, has transformed cultural experience. After initial incomprehension, if the (possibly apocryphal) stories of audiences being terrified by visions of approaching trains or close-ups of bodiless faces are to be believed, we have learned to watch films, to understand film language, to see things with a cinematic eye. Film that is experimental in the traditional sense continues to challenge the limits of film form. The idea being pursued in this chapter is that film can be experimental in another way, offering the possibility of experiences capable of challenging and

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 169 transforming the cultural presuppositions and ways of thinking we bring to bear in making sense of what the film presents. Not that all films are of this critical sort. Indeed, films are far more likely to support and reinforce prevailing forms of thinking, presenting a familiar world that confirms one’s existing preconceptions. To a certain extent this is inevitable. If the film did not share any of the presuppositions through which we collectively make sense of the world, it would be unintelligible. As Perkins puts it, “[i]f we could rid ourselves of knowledge and our customary patterns of thought, we could not make sense of a movie.”32 This does not mean, however, that a film can do no more than reproduce a culture’s background experience. There are certainly films that do little more than promote a prevailing social orthodoxy or way of thinking. However, as noted earlier, it is not possible to dismiss all films as being of this sort. There are more or less reactionary films, and one way that films can be less reactionary is by reminding us of aspects of experience that conflict with and disrupt our familiar ways of viewing the world. In so doing film is able to challenge not only these forms of thinking but also film’s complicity in perpetuating them. This is the experimental film as making possible both cultural critique and cinematic self-critique. A useful example to consider in this connection is Jonathon Glazer’s 2013 science fiction film Under the Skin. This film belongs to a genre that is constitutionally drawn to envisaging hypothetical scenarios, often features experience of the alien, of otherness, and deliberately sets out to challenge familiar categories. The film is itself already distinctive in departing from the effects-heavy style of many recent science fiction films, opting for a spare, austere style with minimal special effects. In telling the story of an alien who takes the form of a woman in order to hunt men in Scotland, the film provides an opening into the radically other, nonhuman experience of the alien herself, through whose viewpoint at least part of the film’s story is told. Trying to portray an alien view of the world cinematically comes up against the fundamental physical limitation that a film is only going to be seen through human eyes. Nonetheless the film gives a strong sense of a nonhuman, alien perspective by portraying the world from a completely amoral point of view that is very much at odds with ordinary experience. It is one thing to entertain such a view in an abstractly theoretical way, another to be confronted with the experience of it. The force of this experience is perhaps best exemplified in the scene at the beach. At a bleak, almost deserted beach, the alien strikes up a conversation with a potential victim, a swimmer. The camera looks distractedly off to a woman swimming out further down the beach, then to her husband running into the water. The woman has gone into the heavy surf to rescue their dog, only to herself get into trouble. The swimmer runs off to try to help, but only manages to rescue the husband, who immediately goes

170  Christopher Falzon back into the surf and meets the same fate as his wife. When the swimmer falls exhausted on the beach, the alien strikes him with a rock and drags him off to her van. This scene is disturbing, not merely because throughout the drama, the alien looks on impassively, but because it is shot in a flat, matter-of-fact way. It is not shot with any sense of drama, which would reflect some concern for the couple’s fate. They are just tiny figures in the midst of the waves, their life and death struggle little more than a detail in the distance. On the soundtrack there are only their faint shouts and the natural sounds of the ocean, intermingled with the unearthly music that signifies the presence of the alien. The drowning couple and the swimmer’s attempts to save them are thus presented from the viewpoint of the observing alien, who is indifferent, or at most, mildly curious. This is distant from anything like an ordinary human response, and this distance is reinforced when, as the alien drags the swimmer along the beach, we hear crying and the couple’s baby comes into view. The alien pays it no attention, and the film follows suit, leaving the child as just a detail in the background, without any particular emphasis or significance. On the one hand this amoral experience of the world, so at odds with ordinary human experience, serves to reinforce the idea that this is a nonhuman, alien protagonist. On the other, it serves to highlight the manner in which experience is ordinarily morally infused, guided by concern for those we are looking at. It is experience as a limit-transcending event that challenges our ordinary, morally infused way of experiencing the world and in so doing sheds light on its character as not merely culture- but species-specific. This challenge is not likely to lead to a transformation of ordinary experience, but it nonetheless introduces a note of contingency with its intimation that the world could be seen differently and implicitly raises the question as to why we see it the way that we do. Essentially, this is to pose in cinematic form the old philosophical question—why be moral? The alienness of the experience portrayed in the film is further underscored in sofar as it is presented as the experience of an alien who has taken the form of a woman. Early scenes in particular feature extended point of view shots in which men appear as the objects of a predatory female gaze and cast as potential prey. This objectification of men under a female gaze is at odds with ordinary experience, insofar as that experience is characterized by the relative dominance of the male gaze, in relation to which it is more likely to be women who are objectified and cast as potential prey. On the one hand the experience that the film presents is sufficiently at odds with ordinary experience to reinforce the idea that it is the perspective of an alien. On the other, it serves to call attention to the gendered character of ordinary experience and the kind of asymmetry in gender relations analyzed so decisively by de Beauvoir in The Second Sex. To that extent, the film is also offering an ironic comment on

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 171 those relations. Its double-edged message, as Byrnes puts it, is that “for a woman to act in this way (and get away with it), she must be alien.”33 This is also a comment on film’s own complicity in perpetuating these dominance relations, insofar as cinema itself tends to privilege the male gaze. The other, disturbing experience that the film foregrounds can thus figure in cinematic self-critique as well as cultural critique. Once again, the film introduces a note of contingency into our ordinary experience with its intimation that the world could be seen differently. In this case, it is more plausible to imagine that the ordinary experience is culturerather than species-specific and that the world could be seen differently without the viewer ceasing to be human. At the very least, Under the Skin is a film that haunts the viewer, which is to say that once it is seen, it is no longer possible to think in quite the same way as before. There is much more that could be said about it, but the main point to bring out here is that the film achieves critical effects through its capacity to invoke a limit-transcending experience that challenges one’s presuppositions, one’s ordinary way of viewing the world. In this it exemplifies the idea of philosophical experience through experimental film.

Notes 1 Jean-François Lyotard, “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde.” in The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 89–107. JeanFrançois Lyotard, “Presentation, Representation, Unpresentable.” in The Inhuman: Reflections on Time (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 119–28. 2 Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (New York and London, Routledge, 2007), 117ff. 3 Thomas E. Wartenberg, “On the Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy.” in New Takes in Film-Philosophy, ed. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 9–24. 4 V. F. Perkins, Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 69. 5 See, e.g., Murray Smith, “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 33–42. 6 Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction (Malden: Blackwell, 2000), 139. See also, George Wilson, Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 13. 7 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 21. 8 Ibid., 21–24. 9 Ibid., 24. 10 See Jacques Derrida, “Circumfession.” in Jacques Derrida, ed. Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 3–315. 11 Ian Jarvie, Philosophy of the Film: Epistemology, Ontology, Aesthetics (New York, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 48. 12 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen, 67. 13 Iris Murdoch, The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 5.

172  Christopher Falzon 14 Ibid., 87. 15 See Wartenberg, “On the Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy.” in New Takes in Film Philosophy, ed. Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 19–21. 16 Damien Cox and Michael P. Levine, Thinking Through Film: Doing Philosophy, Watching Movies (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 11–12, 88. 17 Timothy O’Leary, Foucault and Fiction: The Experience Book (London: Continuum, 2009), 7. 18 Cox and Levine, Thinking Through Film, 12. 19 Tom McClelland, “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2 (2011): 19. 20 McClelland, “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” 20. 21 Michel Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment.” in Ethics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1982, vol. 1, ed. Paul Rabinow (London: Penguin 1997), 315–16. 22 Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx.” in Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1982, vol. 2, ed. James Faubion (London: Penguin 1998), 275. 23 Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), 74. 24 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991), 31. 25 See Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984), 74–76, 78. 26 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972), 12. 27 Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” 385. 28 Michel Foucault, “Interview with Michel Foucault.” in Power: Essential Works of Foucault, vol. 3 (London: Penguin 2000), 241. 29 See O’Leary, Foucault and Fiction, 6–7. 30 Michael Richardson, Otherness in Hollywood Cinema (New York, London: Continuum, 2010). 31 Pauline Kael, Going Steady (Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 105. 32 Perkins, Film as Film, 72. 33 Alice Byrnes, “Alienating the Gaze: The Hybrid Femme Fatale of Under the Skin.” Deletion, accessed in May 14, 2015, www.deletionscifi.org.

References Byrnes, Alice. “Alienating the Gaze: The Hybrid Femme Fatale of Under the Skin.” Deletion. Accessed May 14, 2015. www.deletionscifi.org. Cox, Damien and Michael P. Levine. Thinking Through Film: Doing Philosophy, Watching Movies. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983. Derrida, Jacques. “Circumfession.” In Jacques Derrida, edited by Jacques Derrida and Geoffrey Bennington, 3–315. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991.

Philosophical Experience and Experimental Film 173 Foucault, Michel. “Interview with Michel Foucault.” In Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1982, Volume 3, edited by James Faubion, 239–97. London: Penguin, 2000. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx.” In Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1982, Volume 2, edited by James Faubion, 269–78. London: Penguin, 1998. Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Aesthetics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1982, Volume 2, edited by James Faubion, 369–91. London: Penguin, 1998. Foucault, Michel. “What Is Enlightenment.” In Ethics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1982, Volume 1, edited by Paul Rabinow, 303–19. London: Penguin 1997.Jarvie, Ian. Philosophy of the Film: Epistemology, Ontology, Aesthetics. New York and London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987. Kael, Pauline. Going Steady. Boston, Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1970. Lyotard, Jean-François. “Presentation, Representation, Unpresentable.” In The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, 119–28. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Lyotard, Jean-François. “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde.” In The Inhuman: Reflections on Time, 89–107. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. Mandelbaum, Maurice. History, Man and Reason: A Study in Nineteenth- Century Thought. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. McClelland, Tom. “The Philosophy of Film and Film as Philosophy.” Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image 2 (2011). Murdoch, Iris. The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. O’Leary, Timothy. Foucault and Fiction: The Experience Book. London: Continuum, 2009. Perkins, V. F. Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1972. Poster, Mark. Foucault, Marxism and History. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984. Richardson, Michael. Otherness in Hollywood Cinema. New York, London: Continuum, 2010. Smith, Murray. “Film Art, Argument, and Ambiguity.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64, no. 1 (2006): 33–42. Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. Malden: Blackwell, 2000. Wartenberg, Thomas, E. “On the Possibility of Cinematic Philosophy.” In New Takes in Film-Philosophy, edited by Havi Carel and Greg Tuck, 9–24. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011. Wartenberg, Thomas, E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. New York, London: Routledge, 2007. Wilson, George. Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.

10 Filmmaking as Self-Writing Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) Roberto Mordacci

Introduction This chapter illustrates and applies a method for the philosophical analysis of films that seems to have been overlooked by the current literature on film and philosophy. According to Thomas E. Wartenberg, films can philosophize in at least four ways:1 (1) they can illustrate a philosophical thesis (as Charlie Chaplin does in Modern Times, 1936); (2) they can make mental experiments (as the Wachowski brothers—now sisters— do in The Matrix Trilogy, 1999–2003); (3) they can elaborate counterarguments, through narrative examples, against philosophical theories (as Michel Gondry does in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004); (4) they can do all these three things together (as Carol Reed does in The Third Man, 1949). I would like to suggest that there is at least one more way in which (at least some) films can make philosophy, along the lines of a long tradition of thought called “self-writing.” This tradition practices philosophy as a way of shaping one’s personal identity through the sincere and unfiltered exposition of oneself to scrutiny by oneself and others. This is not simply autobiography, but rather the examination of one’s actions and thoughts in a constant imaginary discussion with an observer: a critical eye who sympathetically but straightforwardly declares the faults of the subject in her everyday life. This self-criticism is achieved through the honest exposition of one’s deeds, usually in writing and reflecting through short essays, as Michel de Montaigne did in his Essais. The very exercise of self-writing constitutes a way to define a personal identity based on real experiences and honest self-examination, with the result that the written testimony is not so much a diary but an instrument of the shaping of the self. Now, my thesis is that the same exercise of self-writing is often (though obviously not always) done in films. The director or the author (often the same person) depicts herself in the midst of a crisis, the only way out of which is to rewrite and thus reshape oneself in a more honest identity.

Filmmaking as Self-Writing Fellini’s 8½ 175 I will first sketch the idea of personal identity as a practical construction in the recent philosophical debate; then I will show how Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) can be seen as an exercise of philosophical selfwriting in film; then I will conclude that films can philosophize not only by illustrating or elaborating arguments, but also by being exercises in the self-writing of one’s personal identity.

1.  Personal Identity as a Practical Construction Recent debate on personal identity from the moral point of view has highlighted the importance of the notion of practical identity and selfconstitution.2 Personal identity is conceived of as a practical enterprise in which the subject defines a way of being herself. Now, the consideration of moral reasons is an essential element in this endeavor: being a person implies the effort of making choices and performing actions over the course of a lifetime, through which an irreducibly individual identity is formed. In a more precise definition, being a moral subject means being an intentional agent engaged in the construction of personal identity on the basis of good reasons.3 This task can be performed only by a practical subject who can examine personal reasons in terms of a criterion enabling her to see whether they can also be thought to be good reasons.4 Such a criterion is, for example, the Kantian principle of non-contradiction in the will5: you cannot will at the same time and under the same respect an action and its contrary. This principle does not imply logical contradiction, but its violation brings the agent into a practical contradiction, i.e., an inability to act according to her maxim (since the maxim says that she wants the action and its contrary as a universal law). Facing these contradictions is often a matter of finding oneself in a critical position, for example, experiencing a personal crisis resulting from an ambiguous behavior. Practical contradiction is not a matter of a single action: it often results from a series of choices that lead the identity of the subject to a risk of general failure. Now, one of the fundamental requirements of any personal identity is the ability to face these shortcomings and failures. We often act contrary not only to a standard code of behavior, but also to our best reasons. This behavior can be called “immoral” in the simple sense of not being justifiable according to our best reasons. It happens, and we have to cope with it by finding a way out of our presently unacceptable condition. Hiding our immoral features from view reflects a hypocritical attitude that arises from a moralistic view of personal identity. Overcoming this moralism and reaching a more honest understanding of oneself is a necessary prerequisite for the building of a critically coherent and authentic morality.

176  Roberto Mordacci This idea is one of the teachings of the tradition of epimeleia heaoutou, the Stoic tradition of “taking care of oneself” studied among others by Michel Foucault.6 The main character trait needed for such an approach is the Stoic virtue of parrhesia, i.e., the ability to speak frankly and to be honest with oneself and others. So, a personal crisis is an occasion to reform one’s personality and reconstruct oneself, but this requires the honesty of declaring one’s moral faults and the willingness not to pretend to be different from whom one may be. A classic example of this kind of research concerning oneself is the work of Michel de Montaigne. His Essais7 are a mix of self-confession, meditation upon the Latin classics, inquiry into human nature and skeptical remarks on knowledge and morality. He opens his books with the declaration that “I will avoid, if I can, that my death will say something which my life has not already said before”  (I, VII): what I  am should be visible, without hypocrisy. “In that last part of death and of us, one should stop pretending, one should speak French (synonymous for speaking frankly), one should show what is good and clear at the bottom of the pot” (I, XIX). In his reflection, Montaigne considers himself free to follow different paths of reasoning, even though they yield different conclusions: notoriously and as clearly endorsed in the Apologie de Raimond Sebond, Montaigne adopts a skeptical attitude towards reason, in both knowledge and morality, although in other places he clearly seems to believe in the powers of reason. In reasoning, says Montaigne, “I let myself be pulled where I incline to, as it happens and let myself be driven by my weight” (II, XII). Philosophy was not able to find a way to tranquility for everybody, so that everyone should look for it by themselves (II, XVI). Speaking about himself, Montaigne says: “Others found it pleasant talking about themselves because they found in them a worthy and copious subject; as far as I am concerned, on the contrary, because I found myself so sterile and poor that there could not fall any suspect of pretence” (II, XIII). “I declare frankly my limits to the Princes; since I must not be slave of anyone but of reason and yet I still cannot be clearly set on that” (III, I). Following Seneca, Plutarch and Cicero, Montaigne distinguishes between the useful and the honest, and he would rather act honestly than usefully, but unjustly. The most relevant passage for our topic is a long remark on repenting (III, II), where he writes: “Others mould the man: I tell the story and show one very badly formed, whom, were I to mould him anew, I would make very different from what he is. But now he’s done . . . I cannot stop my subject. He wanders and wavers for a natural inebriation. I take him at that point, as he is, in the moment I am interested in him. I do not paint the essence, I describe the passage. . . . So that I very much contradict myself, by chance, but the truth I never contradict . . . I am always learning a proof.” In III, IX, he says that he deals not with the eternal essences,

Filmmaking as Self-Writing Fellini’s 8½ 177 but only with this man, Michel de Montaigne, and yet “I do not know whether I will ever unravel it.” Within the contradictions of his life, Montaigne considers true wisdom the ability not to hide from oneself and to maintain a firm attitude of honesty through the changes of time. The most celebrated virtue of the Renaissance, the ancient Stoic ideal of parrhesia, is implicitly endorsed here. Being earnest makes a person critically conscious of the possibility of more authentic relationships. The very writing of the Essais is a way to keep a direct and reflective attention on oneself. What he calls “la forme maîtresse” is his “governing power,” which forms the whole of his life: letting one’s personal identity be molded by this unmasking and honest mode of the will, characterized by sincerity and individuality, is the way to wisdom. A wise man is the one who does not hide from himself. “In the end,” Montaigne says, “I did not make the book, rather the book has made me”: the narrative of his life and thought and convictions, of his virtues and vices, has created a personality capable of facing the truth about himself and some truths about the world and men. This has been a lifelong experience and exercise. The concept of epimeleia heautou, the notion of forme maîtresse and recent theories of personal identity as self-constitution based on good reasons belong to a common tradition of moral reflection, which we consider a useful method of analysis for personal lives and narratives.

2.  Federico Fellini’s 8½ (1963) I propose keeping this tradition of moral reflection in mind while one watches Federico Fellini’s masterpiece 8½ (1963). My thesis is a methodological one: some films at least should be read as attempts to “write oneself,” not simply in an autobiographical vein, but rather in a specific moral attempt to shape or repair a personal identity in the midst of a crisis. The film portrays the artistic and moral crisis of a film director (Guido “Snaporaz” Anselmi, an alter ego for Fellini). Guido is involved in the making of a new film: a number of commitments have been made, the producer is waiting for a new opera by the filmmaker and the actors have been conveyed to the location, a luxury hotel at a thermal station where Guido is undergoing a cure. There is an air of anxiety: all the actors ask for clarifications regarding their parts, and the producer wants to see how his money is being spent. It is not just a professional crisis. Guido has had his lover join him at the location, but he feels entrapped, and in a moment of nostalgia he asks his wife to come and join him as well. The result will, unavoidably, be a disaster. Memories from infancy, in an oneiric atmosphere and with a symbolic tone, cross his mind, mixing with reality and thereby bringing the whole of his life before the present challenge: his relationship with his family of origin, with women

178  Roberto Mordacci in general and with his artistic work is called to the bar of the present experience. A  moralistic conscience, embodied as usual by a Catholic priest (a cardinal), condemns his behavior. The intellectual world, embodied by a film critic, criticizes his lack of ideas and his desultoriness. His affections, embodied by his wife and his lover, want clear answers. Various lies and escape strategies keep Guido floating in surrealistic suspension until the whole castle of fictions (pretending to have a story to tell, pretending to be trustworthy) crumbles to the ground. The producer discovers that he has no clear ideas about the film; the wife soon discovers the love affair; the actors understand he has no parts for them and that he is escaping every responsibility. In the final part Guido has a vision of himself being chased by journalists at a press conference, without the least idea of what to say about the non-existing film. In this nightmarish vision, he hides under the table and shoots himself. In his real life, he declares his failure, dismisses the actors, has the set dismantled and begs his wife for forgiveness, although it is clear that he will not change his ways. Yet, quite surprisingly, the final scene is a frank admission of all his frailties and a reconciliation with the persons who make up his history and identity. Guido dances with the characters, loses his aura of auteur and good husband, but manages not to lose contact with his world, his friends and lovers, his art. Life appears to accept his limits, although what is required is an effort to unify oneself without hypocrisy. Fellini is clearly overindulgent with his character, but it is clear that this is not just an absolution and acquittal; everything is forgiven, but not everything is allowed. Guido has to be one with his frailties, governing his life in a unified manner, through honesty with himself and with others. The film has been both celebrated as a masterpiece and considered “a structural disaster” (Pauline Kael). It has been defined “a report of an existential jam” and “a film on the confusion and the disorder of life” (Morando Morandini). There is a clear reprise of the story in Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories. Fellini himself has tried to give this semiautobiographic film a cultural and universal meaning. He says that this film is a journey inside the crisis of contemporary man, who cannot avoid going into the depths of his present confusion, confronting all the parts of himself and all the characters, the ghosts and the monsters inside and outside of him, to come to accept them, to love them, to give everyone a place and a role, until they are unified in a creative synthesis that represents the new equilibrium reached by his evolving personality.8 Apart from psychoanalytical suggestions (Fellini in this period discovered Jungian psychoanalysis and was influenced by Ernst Berhnard), the technique used in the process of analyzing oneself also inadvertently follows the “techniques of the self” of the Stoic tradition that Seneca recommended to his friend Lucilius in his moral letters. Selfexamination, especially in the form of self-writing (what Foucault called

Filmmaking as Self-Writing Fellini’s 8½ 179 écriture de soi), was a common practice in the building of moral identity according to the Stoic tradition. Now, Fellini seems to apply this technique to himself, through filmmaking. This activity is an essential strategy in the building of his identity. He is clearly facing a personal crisis, but he feels that his experience is common to that of every contemporary man. This awareness gives the film its artistic value. Before this film, Fellini’s style constituted a personalized and atypical version of Italian neorealism (one can think of I vitelloni, 1953, or La strada, 1954): the portrayal of characters and situations in a clear historical context, with the aim of social critique and realistic narrative. Also La dolce vita (1960) can be read as a description, in a critical vein, of the real world of cinema stars in a decadent Rome. On the contrary, starting with 8½, the techniques and the narrative structure of Fellini’s and other directors’ films change radically (as one can see in the work of Giuseppe Tornatore, Nanni Moretti and Roberto Benigni).9 The plot is deconstructed into a series of sequences of a different nature: dreams (the first sequence, a dramatic nightmare), memories (Guido’s remembering of his life as a child in the country), wishful thinking (seeing Claudia coming towards Guido at the baths), real episodes, casting sequences, scenes portraying the set under construction. Fiction, psychological experience and reality are mixed without neat divisions. What unifies all this (and what will often be missing in Fellini’s following films) is the unity of experience of the main character, the continuous thread between his conscience, his imagination, his film and his life. Without this, the film itself would lose its unity, which makes it a real work of art. The idea is still to report a reality without fictions, but in this case, what is reported is an inner struggle, not a social or political situation. One could think, at least in the case of Fellini, of an “Inward Neorealism” that combines social criticism and a moral search for personal unity through the art of filmmaking.

3.  Moral Crisis and Honesty Each character of 8½ has a specific meaning and a peculiar role in Guido’s evolution from hypocrisy to reflective self-understanding. They all represent the instances to which Guido’s identity tries to respond without finding a way to unify himself. The main characters, apart from Guido himself, have both an active and passive role in his crisis. It is clear that the wife (Anouk Aimée) and the lover (Sandra Milo) are two icons of femininity, the adult-motherly woman and the infantile-voluptuous woman. They reflect respectively the responsible person’s side and the irresponsible male side of Guido, who clearly has a kind of relationship with women that ends up in constant contradiction. Guido tries to escape from them but is very ambiguous towards both.

180  Roberto Mordacci The juvenile old friend and his too young lover, apart from probably being an allusion to Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren, reflect the brilliant and somewhat corrupted jet set of Cinecittà already shown in La dolce vita. The cardinal is a usual figure in Fellini’s films: Fellini’s relationship with the Catholic tradition is usually one of stern critique, but in this film, it is connected with the memories of his education in a religious college and with the first breaking of the rules (the symbolic and sexually exuberant figure of “La Saraghina” on the beach). The producer is a friend and a source of pressure: he represents not only his expectations concerning the work of the “master,” but also the sense of responsibility for his artistic work. Apart from personal memories, the relation with these figures recalls the thread of the individuality of each person in general: personal identity is defined by the relationship with feelings, job responsibilities, the family of origin, religion, education and culture. When all of these relationships are threatened, personal identity is on the verge of an abyss. When all attempts to escape responsibilities fail, Guido confronts his inability to correspond to multiple expectations. Two characters are particularly relevant to our purposes: the film critic, i.e., the symbol of the intellectual conscience of the artist, and Claudia, a beautiful and angelic female figure interpreted by Claudia Cardinale (actually, she is playing herself). The dialogues with these two characters bring Guido to a resolution of his crisis. The film critic, whose name is Carini, is the first to diagnose Guido’s crisis (in a parallel with his role as patient at the thermal baths). Some sentences are particularly significant: Carini At first sight it is evident that the lack of a precise problem, or, if you will, of a philosophical premise, makes the film a succession of completely random episodes, which are probably . . . amusing in their ambiguous realism. One asks in fact what the authors aim to: do they want to make us think? Do they want to make us afraid? This play reveals, from the beginning, the lack of a poetic inspiration.  .  .  . Forgive me, but this may be the most pathetic evidence that cinema will always be 50 years behind all the other art forms. Besides, the story does not even have avant-garde merits, although it has all its shortcomings. Guido listens and is perfectly aware that the critic is right. But he is distracted, as he is continuously during all the film: distracting oneself, since living in a continuous divertissement is a way not to face reality.10 Claudia is the symbol of the possibility of starting anew: a fresh, beautiful young girl, completely distant and different from all the commitments of the past. Yet, the attempt with her is just an illusion. After a kind of declaration of love and a dialogue in a car, Guido says that he is not going to realize her part, or the film at all. As an answer she says

Filmmaking as Self-Writing Fellini’s 8½ 181 three times that, perhaps, the problem is just that he is not able to love. In the sequence, Guido presents Claudia with the idea of the film: a man who could make a change in his life but is blocked in his contradictory commitments. Claudia comments: CLAUDIA:  I don’t

get it: this girl could change his whole life, he would be reborn . . . and he rejects her? GUIDO:  Because he has lost faith CLAUDIA:  Because he is incapable of love GUIDO:  Because it is not true that a woman can change a man CLAUDIA:  Because he is incapable of love GUIDO:  And because, first of all, I don’t want to tell another story that is all a lie CLAUDIA:  Because he is incapable of love Guido knows (as Fellini knows as well) that any new start is bound to become a repetition of past errors, a kind of a pretense that anything can change, while it is clear that Guido will not change and that this is a returning path of his life. Fellini never loses sight of the reference to contemporary society and the present state of culture, so Guido’s experience is also meant to be a symbol of the condition of the adult male in a society without a clear direction. As is well-known, the script is very different from the film itself. It seems clear that Fellini did really improvise a great part of what he filmed (Kezich, 2002).11 His search for a form, a structure and a way out of the situation he is trying to describe is an ongoing work. The last scene in the final version of the film, in particular, is completely changed from the script: Fellini transformed a dialogue in a train wagon between Guido and his wife (an idea taken up by Woody Allen at the beginning of Stardust Memories) into a strange scene on the set, with all the characters gathering together in a kind of a circus feast. A clue to this feast is already in the script, but the filmic realization is completely different. Here, in fact, Fellini is giving his quasi-philosophical answer to the question concerning personal identity, and he is doing it on the screen, not in a script nor in an essay on his life or his cinema. This is an illustration of the thesis that, as Thomas E. Wartenberg has argued, films can philosophize,12 but in a rather different way. Here we have no attempt to build up an argument, no counterexample and no thought experiment. Fellini’s film is (moral) philosophy in much the same way that Montaigne’s Essais are: an exercise of self-clarification and of self-construction with a potentially universal value. Filmmaking is an exercise of “writing of the self” (or self-writing), of écriture de soi, as were Montaigne’s Essais and, to make another example, Seneca’s letters to Lucilius. The final word of this self-writing is an appeal to forgiveness and acceptance, a declaration of impotence, but at the same time a refusal

182  Roberto Mordacci of desperation. Although Fellini shows self-indulgence, the work of selfclarification shows the need for a fundamental honesty. And this work is effective: writing oneself on screen is a way to exercise a critical reflection that has not a moralistic but an honestly moral intent. Overcoming contradictions requires an effort towards unity that cannot even start without such a confession to oneself. The last scene shows this admission, acceptance and forgiveness in a symbolic and complex way: all the characters dance together with Guido, led by a kind of a presenter-magician who creates a long chain of persons who hold each other hand by hand. They do not speak any more, they do not judge, they do not criticize. They simply dance, everyone with his or her faults, but all connected and reconciled.

4.  Filmmaking as the Construction of Identity Fellini notoriously used only his world as the source of materials and ideas for his films. His works are his Essais: as Montaigne looked around himself and wrote his short essays without pretending to create a philosophical system, so Fellini reflected in his films the reality he experienced, in particular that of his younger years. Yet, both of them tried to tell a universal story, that of a man trying to shape himself through his actions and his thoughts, though they can be very faulty ones. Each of them tried to tell stories in which their understanding of that world was visible to the audience and understandable as a human effort, i.e., the effort to be a person. Amarcord (1973) is a film strikingly similar to 8½, and one could even dare to say that Fellini has more or less repeated the same film over and over during the years following 8½. Many of his later efforts were in fact too scattered in plot and of too low an artistic level to be considered “good films.” His artistic personality seemed to have faded into repetition, but his critical eye and his attempt to interpret reality through dreams have remained his mark, the result of his artistic personality. Sincerity and also a kind of embarrassing candor concerning the contradictions of contemporary human life have remained his forme maîtresse, as it happened in the case of Michel de Montaigne with his candor and honesty. In the end, we could repeat Montaigne’s sentence at the end of the Essais: Fellini has made the film, but, at the same time, the film has made its author. The effort and the suffering (8½ really was a very hard film to realize) of putting on the screen the contradictions of one’s personality and the variety of human characters radically change the author himself and his way of making films. Fellini was looking for a sincerity of the narrative that suggests not only the telling of the story of his artistic and personal difficulties. It forces the real director into experimentation with new filmic language, deeply embedded with Jungian suggestions and oneiric memories that break the realistic narrative line usually followed in Fellini’s previous works.

Filmmaking as Self-Writing Fellini’s 8½ 183 In this perspective, we might agree with Italo Calvino’s remarks on the contemporary role of cinema in today’s formation of conscience: Today the cognitive function of cinema . . . is that of coercing us to see ourselves and our everyday existence in a way which somehow changes our relationship with ourselves. For example, the work of Federico Fellini is what comes closer to this biography of a spectator . . . but in him, the biography has become itself the film: the outside invades the screen, the darkness of the theatre revolves itself in the cone of light.13 Calvino’s observations also suggest the philosophical importance of this kind of cinema: the story told is not a confession by a celebrated author, but it is a challenge for the audience, an invitation to practice one’s own “self-writing” in a totally honest way. The philosophical thesis elaborated by Fellini through the making of the film is that every personal life is a construction of oneself, based on the experiences, the dreams, the deeds and the faults and that that construction is always under the threat of falling into pieces. In order to avoid such a crash, no engineering method will help. Rather, a radical transparency of the self is needed, one that also includes projecting oneself and one’s failures on the giant white screen of thousands of cinemas, as one might do with a book. The audience might not welcome the narrative and the author, or even recognize him or her. But the opposite is more likely to happen when the struggle is sincerely portrayed and lived in the film itself, since in that case the film is a “work of art” in the sense of the place where the shaping of something real and authentic happened. And that real thing is the struggle for a personal identity of every one of us. This exercise is called philosophy in a long and revered tradition. It should be no surprise that it might be called philosophy even when the exercise is practiced in film rather than on printed paper.

Notes 1 Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen. Film as Philosophy (London: Routledge, 2007). 2 Christine Korsgaard, Sources of Normativity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Korsgaard, “Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant.” The Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 1–29. 3 Roberto Mordacci, Ragioni personali. Saggio sulla normatività morale (Roma: Carocci, 2008). 4 Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View. A Rational Basis of Ethics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958). 5 Onora O’Neill, Acting on Principle (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975). 6 Michel Foucault, Le souci de soi (Paris: Gallimard, 1984). 7 Michel de Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. J. Céard, D. Bjaï, B. Boudou, I. Pantin (Hachette 2001).

184  Roberto Mordacci 8 See Tullio Kezich, Federico. Fellini, la vita e i film (Milano: Feltrinelli, 2002). 9 Millicent Marcus, After Fellini. National Cinema in the Postmodern Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 10 There is another resemblance here with the work of Woody Allen: one of the theses commonly attributed to him is that life is unbearably void and meaningless unless one finds a kind of a distraction in the arts or in human relationships. Yet, Fellini’s characters’ distraction is of a different kind: they do not consciously look for a fictitious world to live in through artistic or emotional distraction; they are rather “attracted into distraction” by the occasions, the meetings, the situations. Any possible experience is a good excuse not to think about one’s task of constructing oneself. See Conard and, Skoble eds., Woody Allen and Philosophy (Chicago and Lassalle: Open Court, 2004). 11 Kezich, Federico. Fellini, la vita e i film. 12 Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen. 13 Italo Calvino, Autobiografia d’uno spettatore, introduction to F. Fellini, Quattro film (Torino: Einaudi, 1974).

References Baier, Kurt. The Moral Point of View. A Rational Basis of Ethics. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, 1958. Calvino, Italo. Autobiografia d’uno spettatore. Introduction to F. Fellini, Quattro film. Torino: Einaudi, 1974. Conard, Mark T. and Aeon Skoble J., eds. Woody Allen and Philosophy. Chicago and Lasalle: Open Court Publishing, 2004. Foucault, Michel. Le souci de soi. Paris: Gallimard, 1984. Kezich, Tullio. Federico. Fellini, la vita e i film. Feltrinelli: Milano, 2002. Korsgaard, Christine. “Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant.” The Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 1–29. Korsgaard, Christine. Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Marcus Millicent. After Fellini. National Cinema in the Postmodern Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Montaigne, Michel. Les Essais, edited by J. Céard, D. Bjaï, B. Boudou, I. Pantin, Hachette, 2001. Mordacci, Roberto. Ragioni personali. Saggio sulla normatività morale. Roma: Carocci, 2008. O’Neill, Onora. Acting on Principle. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen. Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007.

11 Film and Ethics Robert Sinnerbrink

Introduction Moral questioning of the ethical values and dangers posed by the cinema is as old as the medium itself. Hugo Münsterberg, for example, one of the founding figures of film theory, raises the issue in his essay “Peril to Childhood at the Movies” (2002 [1917]), noting the “danger” posed by “the gaudy cinematograph,” especially for children exposed to images of sex and violence, while defending its contribution to knowledge and to the learning of aesthetic and moral ideals.1 Film theory traditionally has been wary of cinema’s ethical potential, treating it as a fascinating yet deceptive medium requiring theoretical analysis, demystification and ethico-political critique. As is well known, theoretical claims about the ideological power of the “apparatus” and its pernicious capacity for the manipulation of audiences through visual identification and narrative pleasure fueled the development of a powerful research paradigm in film theory that began to wane only in the 1990s.2 Although philosophers of film have begun exploring the question of ethics and cinema, there is surprisingly little consensus on what this means. How do movies express ethical ideas? How can they reveal the complexities of a moral situation? What kind of ethical experience can cinema evoke? These questions have gained a renewed urgency with the shift to digital images and with the globalization of cinema across diverse cultural and social contexts. I  explore these questions in what follows, outlining some of the theoretical approaches evident in recent work dealing with this topic and examining some of the methodological issues raised by the relationship between cinema and ethics. I turn then to a discussion of the idea of cinematic ethics, which acknowledges cinema’s power to mesmerize and manipulate, but also offers a way of thinking about cinema’s ethical potential as a medium of transformative ethical experience.

Cinema and Ethics: A Brief History Some of the earliest philosophical reflections on cinema remarked on the ethical issues raised by the new medium. From its inception as a popular but

186  Robert Sinnerbrink ambiguous form of entertainment, cinema has been regarded, on the one hand, as a trivial entertainment with the potential to erode the repressive self-discipline of the toiling masses and, on the other, as opening up new horizons and possibilities of aesthetic experience with the potential to transform modern culture or even to mobilize people politically.3 Popular discourse on cinema thereby swung between alarm over its potential for morally corrupting viewers with its distracting or immoral spectacles and praise for the rejuvenating pleasures of escapist entertainment and leisure culture made democratically available for all. Hugo Münsterberg’s work on cinema is a case in point, combining advocacy for the cinema as a medium that outstrips theater in its power to emulate the perceptual and cognitive processes of the mind and criticism of the morally pernicious effects of unsupervised cinema viewing on impressionable young minds (2002 [1917]). Münsterberg’s praise for the aesthetic power of the medium was countered by sociologist Thorstein Veblen’s 1919 attack on cinema as a manipulative medium that would rob the masses of their critical awareness. Indeed, the movie business itself, Veblen argued, had become an instrument of bourgeois social control recalling the “bread and circuses” of Imperial Rome.4 On the other hand, William de Mille, brother of famous director Cecil B., praised the morally elevating value of the cinema and its power to entertain a mass audience. He celebrated cinema’s humanistic potential, recalling Schiller’s idea of an aesthetic education of humanity: Its power to convey information, to reveal humanity to the human race, to make the people of the world know and even understand one another, to set ideals and ideas before the public in a way that may be comprehended by all marks the beginning of a new turn in the artistic education of mankind.5 This ambivalent attitude towards cinema as potentially manipulative medium, source of moral panic, or medium for moral and aesthetic education, continues today in the digital age. On the one hand, digital media represent a moral threat to the psychological and social development of our youth and, on the other, a utopian space for imaginative exploration, dynamic interaction and immersive role-playing experience.6 These polarized responses capture, again, the fundamental ambiguity of digital media, which also manifests the ambiguity of modern technology more generally. We are familiar with the frequent comparison drawn between the cinema and Plato’s cave—whether from Jean-Louis Baudry’s famous essay “The Apparatus” (1975) or from Bertolucci’s earlier film The Conformist (1970)—a comparison originally meant as a skeptical critique of the illusory and coercive ideological effects of cinema to be countered by emancipatory film theory. The Plato-cinema analogy, however, pre-dated

Film and Ethics 187 Baudry by some five decades and was discussed already during the silent movie era. In 1926, Frank Cole Babbit, a Harvard professor of classics, penned an article entitled “Plato and the movies,” which makes explicit the connection between the experience of watching movies and the benighted prisoners in Plato’s cave.7 As Dana Polan explains, Babbitt’s “little tale” anticipates Baudry’s comparison and even draws similar conclusions. For Babbitt, the visual power and immediacy of film have, as Polan puts it, “the power to insinuate itself deep into the psyche and thereby substitute seductive, misleading fantasy for a profound and meaningful engagement with reality.”8 As Polan recounts, for Babbitt, the movies “work their magic at the level of the unconscious, rather than in a rational sphere where they could be held at a distance and judged rationally.”9 Interestingly, Babbitt casts his account as a philosophical dialogue with his daughter Margaret on why he avoids the cinema. In a manner recalling the Platonic dialogues, Babbitt’s daughter accepts his analogy with Plato’s cave and agrees that it would be morally preferable for society to join him in avoiding the movies. As she concludes: Plato means that if we could drag people away from the movies. . .  [t]hey might go on to understand something about life, and people’s relations and duties towards each other, which they never seem to think of now except in the narrowest sort of way.10 We find in Babbitt’s remarkable dialogue many of the essential elements of the moral-political suspicion of film: acknowledgment of the visual power of movies to engage us emotionally at a deep level of our psychic life; to substitute seductive fantasies for meaningful realities; and to work its pernicious ideological effects on viewers without our conscious consent. In different ways, much of subsequent film theory in the twentieth century took these claims for granted. This endemic suspicion of the ethico-political menace of movies contributed to what we might call the philosophical disenfranchisement of film as a medium that was both epistemically suspect (substituting fantasies for realities) and morally pernicious (stimulating our emotions, clouding our judgement, promoting ideology and removing us from a morally autonomous relationship with others). Classical film theory was clearly occupied with the ethical-moral dimensions of cinema, particularly with regards to the question of realism. While early film theorists waxed lyrical on the aesthetic and cultural potentials of the new medium, including the possibility that it could serve as a means of communicating thought, it was only with Andre Bazin and Siegfried Kracauer that the ethical dimensions of cinema, communicated by aesthetic means, were given explicit attention.11 Both theorists identified cinema as a medium with the power to reveal reality, to bring it closer to the viewer, to renew our engagement with the world, even to redeem our

188  Robert Sinnerbrink alienation from the physical and spiritual worlds. Bazin’s championing of aesthetic realism, with its moral virtue of presenting us with a renewed vision of reality, opened up a long tradition in film theory of equating aesthetic realism with moral edification: the power of cinema, with its commitment to realism, was to reveal the world anew and thus wipe “that spiritual dust and grime” from our eyes in our perception of reality.12 For Kracauer (1960), the alienating experience of modernity, with its mechanization, estrangement from nature, anonymous mass existence and dehumanizing reduction of social relations to economic exchanges, could be countered by the realism of cinema—the promise of an aesthetic redemption of reality in a world that appeared ever more alienating, artificial and unreal. The cinema verité movement of the 1960s, with its adoption of the claim that aesthetic realism equates with veridical representation of social reality and thus with moral truth-telling, has had an enduring impact on the ways in which documentary filmmaking has been understood. It is only in recent decades that the “constructed” character of documentary—its use of fictional, aesthetic, dramatic and cinematic techniques in the service of presenting a case, argument or story—has been recognized and begun to challenge the assumption that realism is a condition of morality in cinematic representation.13 With the emergence of psycho-semiotic film theory in the 1960s and the consolidation and development of Anglophone film or screen theory during the 1970s, the link between the aesthetics of cinema and its moralethical significance came to be viewed with skepticism. Far from providing viewers with a revelatory, refined or renewed sense of reality, the cinematic apparatus, in all its technological, social, economic and historical complexity, was regarded as capturing and manipulating audience attention and promulgating a pernicious set of ideological representations— mystifications concerning gender, race, class and national identity—that distorted our grasp of social reality. Popular film, with its recognizable genres, stock characters, character-based narrative drama and “transparent” editing and montage techniques, created an illusionary and idealized vision of the world that at once enchanted and enchained its unsuspecting audience. The task of critical film theory, therefore, was to unmask the mechanisms of cinematic representation that allowed it to serve the hegemonic ideological agendas of the dominant class, gender or nation. Ethics, insofar as it could be communicated via aesthetics, was subsumed under (bourgeois) ideology; radical film theory and practice involved disrupting established codes, violating genre expectations, subverting dominant ideologies and exposing the social, historical, economic or political forces shaping cinema’s fictional worlds. Film theory was politics pursued by other means. Practitioners therefore had to engage in a strategic practice of cultural-theoretical intervention aiming at deconstructing or subverting dominant codes of representation, ideological consensus and dogmatic moral convictions.

Film and Ethics 189 An obvious but intriguing question is to explain why this suspicion of the morally suspect character of movies has been so pervasive and what forms this theoretical suspicion took in the development of film theory. From a cultural and societal point of view, the power of cinema to persuade or manipulate is undeniable: here we need only consider the role of cinema in the development of twentieth-century propaganda and the commodification of art within mass culture.14 Here too, however, we find an ambiguous picture. Consider the great Soviet filmmakers of the 1920s (Vertov and Eisenstein), exploring the aesthetic possibilities of film to reflect post-revolutionary communist society or to raise the revolutionary consciousness of the masses. There are Leni Riefenstahl’s infamous propagandistic paeans to Hitler’s Third Reich during the 1930s; or, more recently, Hollywood’s ongoing “soft power” contribution to the global cultural promotion of the American way of life (Williams, 2000). Or, alternatively, we can look to the work of Latin American Third Cinema filmmakers in the 1960s and 70s, whose radically anti-colonialist, anticapitalist work challenged both the bourgeois “First Cinema” of Hollywood with its escapist fantasies and individualist narratives and the “Second Cinema” of the European art film tradition with its aesthetic focus on cinematic auteurs (Solanas and Octavio, 1976). It is undeniable that cinema has an aesthetic power to grip imaginations, engage emotions and change minds, which makes it a medium that can be used for propaganda and proselytizing, mass marketing and media manipulation, as well as for moral edification, ethical questioning or political persuasion. So, what is this ambiguous power of the cinema? The simplest response to this question is to point to what philosophers like Noël Carroll have described as the cognitive and affective “power of movies.”15 Consider cinema’s powers to capture our cognitive attention, to emulate visual perception, to fascinate through spectacle, to engage our emotions, to stimulate our imaginations, to present narrative scenarios that reveal fictional worlds of remarkable complexity. Movies are audiovisual spectacles that elicit forms of immersive sensorial experience that captivate our attention at both conscious and unconscious levels of experience. Cinema thus seems to have fulfilled Plato’s anxieties about the poets stimulating our senses and emotions with illusory representations, offering morally dubious images of flawed characters engaging in ignoble actions and presenting captivating perspectives on reality that do not necessarily appeal to our desire for truth or capacity for reason.16 Given the sheer aesthetic power of movies to captivate and engage our attention, it is little wonder that cinema, since its inception, has generated succeeding waves of “moral panic” as the disreputable “other” of drama, painting and literature. Yet despite the suspicion towards cinema as a manipulative medium, it also has the potential to be ethically transformative, even if this remains a neglected possibility within the history of film theory.

190  Robert Sinnerbrink To sum up, this brief historical survey suggests that there are three main challenges to thinking about cinema and ethics: 1. The idea of cinema as illusion (offering illusory images, seductive fantasies, that mislead or distract us from reality) 2. The view of cinema as artistically trivial (as offering debased, vulgar or dubious images of life that lack complexity or moral seriousness) 3. The claim that cinema is a vehicle of ideology (reflecting false or distorted social beliefs and cultural values that serve vested interests and masking these vested interests by way of persuasive or seductive images that distort our sense of social reality) In many ways these ideas are related: the illusory character of cinema is regarded as intrinsic to its ideological function, while the seductive, “trivial” character of its entertainments facilitate its subtle but effective conveying of ideological meanings. As Arthur Danto observed of modern art, popular cinema too appears to be in the contradictory position being at once dangerous and trivial: dangerous in its capacity to seduce and captivate via illusory images, trivial in its eschewal of serious moral, social or political matters in favor of spectacle, entertainment and sensation.17 This unstable combination of ideas concerning cinema as at once illusory, trivial and ideological left it in a difficult position with regard to ethics and politics. Cinema’s capacity for visual fascination, sensory immersion and imaginative-emotional engagement meant that it was devalued as mere entertainment, technical gadgetry or immoral spectacle. Add to this the persistent concerns over the “illusory” character of narrative cinema; its presentation of a distorted, misleading picture of (social) reality in a captivating, edifying manner; its substitution of a fantasy world—or ideologically slanted image—for reality; its capacity to stimulate sensation, activate affect, elicit emotion and seduce through spectacle: all of these anxieties and doubts contributed to the skeptical light in which cinema was taken up as an object of theoretical inquiry.18 In presenting gratifying illusions in place of harsh realities, seductive images in place of truthful representations, in appealing to a mass audience rather than an esoteric elite, cinema remained, in good Platonic fashion, a suspect artform in need of critical analysis, theoretical comprehension and ideological correction. Cinema’s power to manipulate and mislead, in short, needed to be tempered by critical reflection and theoretical demystification. These doubts about the medium—its ambiguous capacity for moral edification, social pedagogy and political enlightenment—have receded to an extent, though it is not clear that the ambiguity surrounding cinema’s ethical potential for both manipulation and emancipation has disappeared. Rather, it persists as an implicit background of assumptions informing many contemporary theoretical inquiries into the moralethical dimensions of film.

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Cinema and/as Ethics Although the philosophy of film or philosophical film theory has flourished in recent decades,19 there have been few explicit investigations of the relationship between ethics and cinema in the history of film theory. It is clear, however, that film has an ethical potential for exploring moral issues, ethically charged situations or moral “thought experiments” and that this has been taken up by film theorists and philosophers from a variety of philosophical perspectives.20 More recently, theorists have elaborated the ways in which cinema can be read alongside philosophical approaches to ethics, or how certain filmmakers can be understood as engaging in ethics through film.21 Indeed, film theory and philosophy of film/film-philosophy not only have become increasingly engaged by the question of ethics and cinema, but could be described as having undergone an “ethical turn” over the last decade, reflecting upon cinema as a distinctive way of thinking through ethical concerns or even exploring the idea of cinema as ethics.22 This “ethical turn” in film theory/philosophy of film is an important development that enables the tradition of film theory concerned with politics and ideology to be reappropriated in new ways. It also broadens the reach of philosophical engagement with film beyond abstract questions of ontology and metaphysics as well as more technical and formal questions concerning epistemology and film aesthetics. Indeed, it would be fair to say that “film ethics” captures the more culturally familiar sense in which moviegoers might think of cinema as having philosophical significance. Philosophers and film theorists are now finally giving the question of ethics and film due attention, within aesthetics, philosophy of film, as well as film theory, although most approaches still remain concerned with ethical themes or else applying ethical theories to cinema. As a response to this trend, in what follows I analyze some of the ways in which cinema can be related to ethics, map conceptually the film-ethics relationship and explain how particular films might both express and evoke moral reflection. This kind of inquiry into cinema and ethics, as I shall argue, opens up the possibility that cinema can be understood as a medium of ethical experience: a “cinematic ethics” that brings film and philosophy together in order to cultivate an experiential approach to ethical understanding and philosophical reflection. It can not only stage moral thought experiments, thematize moral problems or pose ethical questions, but expose us to morally confronting, ethically estranging and emotionally challenging forms of experience that demand some kind of philosophical response on our part. It is in this latter sense, I suggest, that we can approach certain kinds of cinema as engaging in ethical thinking, both expressing and soliciting varieties of ethical experience, hence prompting critical engagement on our part—or what we might call the idea of cinema as ethics or cinematic ethics.23

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Cinema and Ethics: Mapping an Encounter To explore this idea of cinematic ethics, let us map some of the ways in which cinema and ethics have been related. We can describe ethical approaches to cinema as tending to focus on one of three aspects of the relationship between film, spectator and context. The most familiar example is (1) ethics in cinema (focusing on narrative content including dramatic scenarios involving morally charged situations, conflicts, decisions or actions). Many analyses of particular films or individual auteurs will explore cinematic works in terms of their narrative content, moral thematics or interplay between cinematic, dramatic and moral-ethical concerns. The other influential approach, spanning both fiction and nonfiction film, concerns (2) the ethics (and politics) of cinematic representation (focusing on the ethical issues raised by elements of film production and/ or audience reception, for example, studies on the ethics of documentary representation concerning issues of consent or truthful depiction, or the ongoing debates over the effects of screen violence in narrative film and computer gaming). This can be broadened out into the cultural-ideological domain, which tackles (3) the ethics of cinema as a cultural medium expressing moral beliefs, social values or ideology (such as feminist film analysis of gender representations, Marxist analyses of ideology or critical theory analyses of race and ethnicity in popular cinema). To this we could add recent interest in ecocritical approaches to the question of cinema and the environment, the depiction of animals, ecological themes and the question of the “Anthropocene” in regard to cinema. Each of these three aspects of the film-spectator-context relationship has spawned a distinctive approach to the question of cinema and ethics.24 At the same time, few theorists have attempted to articulate the relationships between these aspects with a view towards their ethical significance, conceptual connections and theoretical implications. A common approach in much recent philosophy of film is (1) to focus on ethics within cinematic representation (morally relevant themes, problems and scenarios within the narrative or approaching film as a moral “thought experiment”). To cite an example, consider Cavell’s “moral perfectionist” reading of the melodrama Stella Dallas (1937),25 according to which brassy Stella comes to a greater understanding of herself and makes an ethical decision to give her daughter Laurel a chance at marital and social happiness by deliberately withdrawing herself from her daughter’s life (Cavell 1996, 197–222). Or take Alejandro Amenábar’s The Sea Inside (Mar adrento) (2004), based on the true story of Ramon Sampredo (Javier Bardem), who became a quadriplegic at age 28 and campaigned for the rest of his life in support of euthanasia and the right to die with dignity—a film notable for Bardem’s performance and for its innovative

Film and Ethics 193 cinematic composition to provide a powerful ethical experience for the viewer as a kind of cinematic “argument” for assisted euthanasia. Film theorists have often focused on (2) the ethics of cinematic representation, whether from the filmmaker perspective (production) or from the spectator perspective (reception). Consider, for example, debates over objectivity and truth in documentary representation, or whether a filmmaker can use elements of fiction in the presentation of what purports to be fact (Michael Moore’s creative reorganization of dates implicating the role of General Motors in the decline of the Detroit automotive industry in his documentary Roger and Me (1989), or Errol Morris’ use of fictional techniques, poetic imagery, evocative music and dramatic reenactment in The Thin Blue Line (1988)). Or we might ponder the ethics of how a filmmaker treats cast and crew (Werner Herzog’s filming of the epic Fitzcarraldo (1982) in the jungles of Peru, which was notoriously risky and resulted in an accident in which indigenous workers were seriously injured). Or we might be drawn to debates over how spectators respond to images of sex and violence—depictions of rape in “new French extremity” cinema (see Horeck and Kendall, 2011), for example, or the use of non-simulated sex scenes in von Trier’s Antichrist (2009) and Nymphomaniac (2014) (see Frey 2014). The ethics of cinematic spectatorship remains a central concern in recent film theory, an approach that attracts much attention in research on the relationship between film and ethics.26 Film theory, moreover, has also been long concerned with the broader social, cultural and political implications of cinema. Since the 1970s it has emphasized (3) the ethics (and politics) of cinema as a medium symptomatic of broader cultural-historical or ideological perspectives (such as feminist analyses of gender and Marxist analyses of ideology). Among many possible examples, let us take Kathryn Bigelow’s two films on the Iraq war, The Hurt Locker (2008) and Zero Dark Thirty (2012). These films were both celebrated for their cinematic accomplishment as powerful and suspenseful action/war movies, but also criticized for offering ideologically slanted depictions of American soldiers fighting an “irrational” enemy in Iraq. Zero Dark Thirty, for example, implies that the “heightened interrogation techniques” deployed by the CIA ultimately led to the capture of Osama bin Laden. It thus offered a dubious utilitarian “moral” justification (the “ticking bomb” scenario) for the use of torture in prosecuting the so-called “War on Terror.” (see Westwell 2014). At the same time, Bigelow’s focalizing of the narrative through female CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain), who doggedly pursues bin Laden when her male peers have given up (reminiscent of Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in Silence of the Lambs (1991)), lends this film an interestingly “feminist” slant that complicates—generically and dramatically— the straightforward “ideological” critique of the film as an apologia for American militarism. Much recent work in film theory continues the

194  Robert Sinnerbrink cultural-political critique of cinema as a medium of ideological communication and manipulation, shaping emotional responses, beliefs and attitudes towards an array of social-cultural identities, moral issues or cultural-political problems. What are the dominant ways in which cinema and ethics are being explored today? We can identify the following theoretical approaches, which also span the continental philosophy/analytic-cognitivist film theory divide. From a philosophical perspective, we can point to the Cavellian approach (cinema as exploring skepticism, philosophy and the everyday and moral perfectionism), which Cavell first introduced in the 1970s, during the highpoint of so-called psychoanalytic-semiotic film theory, but which has only recently been taken up within the film as philosophy/film-philosophy approach (see Sinnerbrink 2014). Since the retreat from so-called “Grand Theory” (during the late 1990s and 2000s), the Deleuzian perspective has gained traction and become highly influential in film theory (cinema as exploring what Deleuze calls immanent “modes of existence,” as communicating thought or as giving us “reasons to believe in this world” through new forms of movement- and timeimage cinematic narration and style). More recently (since the 2010s), phenomenological and post-phenomenological film theory (focusing on subjective and intersubjective experiences of affect, perception, emotion, embodiment and how these relate to moral-ethical experience in cinema)27 has become increasingly prominent, with numerous studies focusing on the ethical dimensions of cinematic affect and embodied spectator engagement with cinematic worlds.28 Finally, cognitivist film theory has emerged as an alternative paradigm to theorizing cinematic experience, focusing on emotional engagement, moral imagination and the ethical evaluation of cinema.29 Cognitivist film theories tend to adopt “naturalistic” accounts of cognition in order to theorize our affective and emotional response to film, along with more reflective, higher-order cognition, which taken together provide an account of moral allegiance with character and broader ethical evaluation in response to narrative cinema. All of these approaches offer valuable theoretical insights for understanding cinema and ethics. All sorts of “crossovers,” moreover, are possible between these approaches—for example, Cavellian-Deleuzian, phenomenological-cognitivist, Deleuzian-phenomenological, Deleuziancognitivist approaches and so on.30 At the same time, each approach foregrounds a different aspect of the film/screen/spectator/context relationship, sometimes emphasizing thematic concerns within the narrative, sometimes the spectator’s response, sometimes a conceptual framework applied to the film, sometimes the significance of our affective or emotional engagement with it. What is less common is thinking through these distinctive but interrelated dimensions of ethics in cinema, which is what I shall explore via a brief discussion of the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience.

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Cinema as Medium of Ethical Experience What is the significance of the “ethical turn” in recent film theory? One response is to point out that cinema has always been concerned with ethics, or that moral concerns have always been brought to the study of cinema. As earlier remarked, early film theorists, for example, were concerned with the ethical potential of cinema, either as an aesthetically powerful way of cultivating moral sensibilities or as a pernicious, morally corrupting form of mass distraction.31 These ethical and moral concerns were displaced during the 1960s and 70s by a turn towards more explicitly political and ideological agendas, a tendency manifested by the rise of Lacanian-Althusserian “psycho-semiotic” and feminist film theory. With the historical collapse of communism and decline of Marxism as a theoretical paradigm during the 1990s, a renewed focus on ethics— on questions of human rights, democracy, concern for the Other and our responsibilities towards nature and the environment—became a distinctive feature of many forms of social, cultural and political discourse. Within the academy, the reigning paradigm of film theory came under attack during the 1980s and 90s, being subjected, as Rodowick remarks, to “a triple displacement—by history, science and finally by philosophy” (2015, 6). At the same time, however, ethical questions concerning cinema became more prominent and continued to reverberate with the emergence of film-philosophy, most notably in the work of Cavell and Deleuze.32 It is hardly surprising that such a shift could also be discerned in contemporary cinema across the globe, which is rife with films dealing with ethical issues, moral problems or cultural-political concerns. Indeed, contemporary cinema is where many socially charged ethical problems and cultural-moral debates today are most creatively explored; it is where cultures across the globe can find imaginative narrative ways to address, reflect upon, question and explore some of the most important moralethical and cultural-political issues of our times. This is evident in the rise of new ethically and politically engaged cinema, particularly within diverse cultural traditions and social contexts, amidst the dissemination of what is often loosely called “world cinemas.”33 The idea of cinema as medium of ethical experience offers a way of understanding what cinema can do: its transformative potential to sharpen our moral perception, challenge our beliefs through experiential means and thus enhance our understanding of moral-social complexity. It can also, in some cases, provoke philosophical thinking through morally confronting or provocative forms of ethical experience conveyed and evoked through film. In this way it can bring together the three important aspects of the cinema-ethics relationship: ethical content in narrative cinema; the ethics of cinematic representation (from filmmaker and spectator perspectives); and the ethics of cinema as symptomatic of broader

196  Robert Sinnerbrink cultural, social and ideological concerns. To these three dimensions we can add a fourth: the aesthetic dimension of cinema—in particular the role of aesthetic form in intensifying our experience, refining and focusing our attention and thus conveying complexity of meaning through manifold means—as a way of evoking ethical experience and thereby inviting further ethical-critical reflection. The relationship between aesthetics and ethics in cinema, from this point of view, is recognized as an intimate and expressive one. The question of ethics in cinema, or of cinema as ethical, is not exhausted by narrative explorations of ethics, or questions of production and consumption, or the ethics of spectatorship, or the ideological-political dimensions of cinema. Rather, it is important to understand how aesthetics and ethics are productively related: how the particular aesthetic elements and features of a film are articulated with each other and how these together serve to communicate ethical meaning via aesthetic means. The concept of cinema as a medium of ethical experience is one way of trying to articulate these elements—from the singular to the universal, from the embodied spectator to the cultural-historical world—so as to open up new ways of thinking and thus of realizing cinema’s ethical (and political) potential. It is a concept that links creation and reception, context and interpretation, image and world, so as to realize cinema’s ethical potential. For cinema is a medium with the power to project and disclose virtual worlds, to engage our emotions, exercise our moral imaginations and question our beliefs. As the technological artform par excellence, it offers the creative possibility of engaging ethically with our technologically mediated world, but also of recognizing and responding to the ethical challenges that such a world poses, indeed via the very medium of cinema itself. At the same time, it enables an experientially “thick” exploration of subjectivity, memory and historical experience, all of which contribute to the kind of integration of ethical responsiveness and philosophical reflection that characterize what I am calling cinematic ethics.

Ulysses’ Gaze: The Blue Ship By way of a brief example let us turn to a film exploring the nexus between history, memory, cinema and ethics. The Prologue to the late Theo Angelopolous’ remarkable film Ulysses’ Gaze (1995), a fourminute sequence immediately after the credits, is a powerful example of how cinema can serve as an ethical medium, in this case through a film dedicated to exploring historical memory.34 The film begins with a personal dedication and a philosophical quotation from Plato’s Alcibiades: “And, if the soul is to know itself, it must gaze into the soul,” an indication that the film itself will explore the possibility of how cinema itself might be a means of critical self-examination, of contemplating historical

Film and Ethics 197 experience and shared social memory. The opening images are from the Manakis brothers’ two-minute silent film The Weavers (1905), which features the brothers’ 114-year-old grandmother weaving at her loom while glancing furtively towards the camera. As we watch this historical time capsule, the sound of a film projector can be heard in the background. Philosophical contemplation and historical recollection clearly frame this cinematic odyssey. A voiceover, by the filmmaker A. (Harvey Keitel), comments on the footage, in quasi-documentary mode: “Weavers, in Avdella, a Greek village, 1905. The first film made by the brothers Miltos and Yannakis Manakis. The first film ever made in Greece and the Balkans. But is that a fact? Is it the first film? The first gaze?” The silent footage dissolves to a greyish black-and-white image of the sea and horizon, merging in the distance. The camera pulls back to reveal an old man operating a photographic camera, as a man’s voice narrates, in Greek, how back in 1954, when he was Manakis’ camera assistant, Manakis (Thanos Grammenos) wanted to photograph a beautiful blue ship, here in the port of Thessaloniki. The image slowly turns from black and white to color as we see the narrator, Manakis’ assistant, in modern dress and the old man, in older costume, manipulating the camera as the ship sails by in the distance. Suddenly, the old man reels backwards, struck by a heart attack, and slumps back onto his chair. The assistant tends to the dead man, settles him in his chair, then walks slowly back towards the right of the screen, the camera following him in a long shot. The assistant, an old man himself, narrates how Manakis had kept “rambling on about three undeveloped reels,” a film from the turn of the century. The filmmaker A. now comes into view, also in contemporary dress; it becomes clear that the assistant has been telling A. the anecdote about Manakis as they both stand together by the port of Thessaloniki. Forty years ago, on this very spot, he was with Manakis before his death; and now, 40 years later, he is with the filmmaker A., explaining how Manakis died after attempting to photograph the mysterious blue ship. The camera then pans slowly back to the left, following A. as he walks back to the spot where we saw the old man die moments before. These camera movements, from left to right and back again, are also temporal movements, from the present to the past and from the past to the present, which coexist within the one extended sequence shot. As A. walks, moving across time and entering an inner world of cultural memory, we hear his thoughts, in voiceover, confirming his commitment to a cinematic quest: “The three reels; the three reels; the journey. . . .” As A. approaches the same spot where we saw the old Manakis collapse, where there is nothing now to be seen, a musical theme begins to play, a leitmotif that will recur throughout the film. A. pauses and gazes off into the distance, the camera perched behind his shoulder, from which point the ship can be seen sailing serenely from right to left, continuing its mythic journey through time and memory. As the camera zooms slowly towards

198  Robert Sinnerbrink the ship, its soft blue sails and hull gradually filling the frame, the music swells, expressing a contemplative mood anticipating the journey to come. The simultaneously “Odyssean” and romantic image of the blue ship sailing slowly out of frame, accompanied by Eleni Karaindrou’s melancholy score, holds long enough for the vessel to disappear from view. A.’s historical-ethical quest has been defined: to retrieve this cinematic memorialization of historical experience in the hope that this “first gaze” will shed light on the tragedies of twentieth-century history and the ongoing conflicts defining a contemporary Europe in crisis. This sequence from Ulysess’ Gaze foregrounds the role of cultural and historical memory in the formation of personal and social identity through historical-memorial images that evoke the traumatic suffering of the past and render it intelligible through time, memory and affect. More broadly, within the context of the film as a whole, they also evoke the situation of marginalized subjects (minorities, wanderers, refugees, those “without a place” in the new social orders) through a cinema of temporal duration, cultural memory and ethical contemplation. One could thus describe Angelopolos’ sequence not only as an attempt at memorializing the history of the present but as a mode of enacting a cinematic ethics: creating cinematic works that depict historical memory as a collective experience and that thereby retrieve the fragile possibility of an ethical cinema capable of transforming our horizons of meaning. Cinematic ethics, in this context, means showing, rather than telling, what ethical experience means, exploring what such experience reveals about the complexity of a character’s historical world, where this historical world is disclosed through cinematic composition and dramatic action. It examines how cinema can attune our aesthetic and moral sensibilities to the experience of historical memory and brings us to a deeper understanding of the cultural and historical background that shapes these characters’ worlds—and, by extension, reveals the historical and ethical meaning of our own. This brief discussion of a scene from Ulysses’ Gaze can help us understand the idea of cinema as a medium of ethical experience. This idea has three interrelated aspects: 1. The depiction of ethical experience undergone by characters within a film narrative, typically in the form of decisions, choices and actions within morally charged dramatic situations 2. The reflexive presentation of ethical experience in the filmmaking process or that distance the spectator from what they are viewing or challenge his or her assumptions or expectations (for example, the devices of reflexive documentary) 3. The intentional effort to evoke the ethical responses of the spectator (ethical spectatorship) via a variety of cinematic devices and aesthetic strategies in film, including camera placement, mise-en-scène, lighting,

Film and Ethics 199 sound and music, framing and shot length, montage combinations and rhythms and so on (such as those used in the Ulysses’ Gaze sequence) All three aspects of this relationship are related: the depiction of ethical experience within narrative film is aimed at eliciting an ethical response from the viewer, but also raises questions about the filmmaking process or about both filmmakers’ and viewers’ relationships with the image. All three aspects, it is important to note, are elicited or expressed by aesthetic means: ethical experience in the cinema does not generally involve an intellectual or abstract reflection on moral problems or ethical dilemmas but unfolds, rather, through a situated, emotionally engaged, aesthetically receptive response to images that work on us in a multimodal manner, engaging our senses, emotions and powers of reasoning. It involves cinema’s power of stimulating sensation, affective response, emotional engagement and cognitive understanding, all of which work together to elicit ethical experience via aesthetic means. Cinema can thus harness the aesthetic possibilities of the medium in the service of either an enlightening ethical responsiveness or an unethical ideological manipulation. The latter has received far more attention in the history of film theory than the former, even though the potential for cinema to evoke ethically significant experience has been assumed since the early days of the medium. Indeed, the politically emancipatory potential of the cinema, as envisaged by Eisenstein (1977 [1949]) or Benjamin (2006 [1938–39]), for example, is difficult to conceive without it. Yet philosophical film theory has tended to ignore this potential in favor of a critical focus on cinema’s manipulative power; or it has focused on questions of ontology, epistemology and aesthetics at the expense of inquiring into moral perception, emotional evaluation, moral psychology and ethical experience. From this point of view, philosophy can work together with film to describe, analyze and conceptualize the kind of ethical experience that cinema can evoke. Cinematic ethics, the capacity of cinema to evoke ethically significant experience, can be complemented, comprehended and completed by philosophical reflection. In this way, cinema contributes to ethical understanding, while philosophy can be extended, even transformed, by its engagement with “non-philosophical” (aesthetic) modes of ethical experience. Cinematic ethics, from this perspective, involves an education of our senses and exercise of our moral imaginations that require not only an acknowledgment of, or responsiveness to, ethical concerns but careful attention to aesthetic composition and sensitivity to cinematic technique. It incorporates a form of collaborative ethical inquiry that proceeds by the careful description and interpretation of ethical experience in the cinema evoked by aesthetic means. Cinema can provide “thick” descriptions of complex moral situations or forms of

200  Robert Sinnerbrink ethical experience that might otherwise escape our notice or be prone to misrecognition or that require philosophical reflection in order to be understood (or that, in some cases, resist such philosophical reflection and moral understanding and thereby provoke a distinctively cinematic kind of ethical responsiveness). In this way, we might think of cinematic ethics as making a contribution to restoring the attenuated or damaged link between philosophy and the everyday. Film and philosophy can thus mutually interact to the benefit of both thanks to the concept of ethical experience.

Notes 1 See Passi Nyssonnen’s “Film Theory at the Turning of Modernity.” FilmPhilosophy 2, no. 31 (1998). 2 See Allen and Smith’s Film Theory and Philosophy (1999); Baudry’s “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus” (2004) and “The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality of the Cinema” (2004); Bordwell and Carroll’s Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996); Comolli and Narboni’s “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism (1)” (1977) and Comolli’s “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism (2)” (1977); Heath’s Questions of Cinema (1981); Metz’s Language and Cinema (1974) and The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (1982); and Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975). 3 Francesco Casetti, Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008); Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays on Film Theory, trans. Jay Leyda (Orlando: Harcourt and Brace, 1949/1977). 4 Thorstein Veblen, “The Breadline and the Movies.” The Dial (1919), quoted in Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007). 5 William DeMille, “Bigoted but Better Pictures.” Scribner’s, September 1924, quoted in George Mitchell, “Münsterberg and the Movies.” Jump Cut 27 (1982): 57–60. 6 See Patrick Crogan, Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation, and Technoculture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and Torben Grodal, Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 7 Frank Cole Babbit, “Plato and the Movies.” The Harvard Graduate’s Magazine 35, no. 137 (September 1926): 20–25. 8 Dana Polan, Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 121. 9 Ibid. 10 Quoted in Ibid., 122. 11 See Kracauer’s Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (1960), and Bazin’s What Is Cinema? (vols. 1 and 2, 1967 and 1971). 12 André Bazin, What is Cinema? Vol. I, trans. Hugh Gray (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1967), 15. See also Lúcia Nagib, World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (New York and London: Continuum, 2011). 13 See Bruzzi’s New Documentary: A  Critical Introduction (2000), Nichols’ Introduction to Documentary, 2nd ed. (2010) Renov’s The Subject of Documentary (2004) and Winston’s Lies, Damn Lies and Documentary (2000).

Film and Ethics 201 14 See Beller’s The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle (2006), Debord’s Society of the Spectacle (1983), Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (2007) and Jameson’s “Reification and Mass Utopia” (1979). 15 Noël Carroll, “The Power of Movies.” Daedalus, The Moving Image Issue 114, no. 4 (1985): 79–103. 16 See Plato’s famous critique of poetry in Book X of the Republic. 17 Arthur C. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 172–74. 18 See Rushton’s The Reality of Film: Theories of Filmic Reality (2011) for an illuminating critique of reality/illusion distinction in film theory. 19 Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener, Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2010), 185–87. 20 See Choi and Frey’s Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship (2014), Flory, Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir (2008), Jones and Vice, Ethics at the Cinema (2011), Mulhall’s On Film (2008), Shaw’s Morality at the Movies (2012), Sinnerbrink’s “FilmPhilosophy” (2014), Terman’s “Ethics” (2009), and Wartenberg’s Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy (2007). 21 Cooper’s Selfless Cinema? Ethics and French Documentary (2006), Downing and Saxton’s Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (2010), Stadler Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and Ethics (2008), Sinnerbrink’s Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (2016) and Wheatley’s Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethic of the Image (2009). 22 See Chauduri’s Cinema of the Dark Side: Atrocity and the Ethics of Film Spectatorship (2014), Choi and Frey’s Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship (2014), Downing and Saxton’s Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (2010), Grønstad’s Film and the Ethical Imagination (2016), Jones and Vice’s Ethics at the Cinema (2011), Sinnerbrink’s Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (2016) and Stadler’s Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and Ethics (2008). 23 Robert Sinnerbrink, Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016). In what follows I draw on material from Chapter 1 of this book. 24 See Choi and Frey (2014), Downing and Saxton (2010), Jones and Vice (2011), Shaw (2012), Stadler (2008), Wheatley (2009). 25 Stanley Cavell, Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 26 See Choi and Frey (2014), Stadler (2008), Wheatley (2009). 27 A related strand concerns the Levinasian ethics of responsibility towards the “alterity” of the Other as applied to our experience of cinema. 28 See Barker’s The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience (2009), Marks’ The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (2000) and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (2002), Pisters The Neuro-Image: A  Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (2012), Shaviro’s The Cinematic Body (1993), Sobchack’s The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience (1992) and Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture (2004). 29 See Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham, Cognitive Media Theory (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014). 30 See Brown’s Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (2013), Laine’s Feeling Film: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies (2011), Marks’

202  Robert Sinnerbrink Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (2002), Pisters (2012), Rushton’s The Reality of Film: Theories of Filmic Reality (2011), Sinnerbrink’s New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (2011), and Stadler (2008). 31 See Robert Sinnerbrink, “Early Film-Philosophy: A  Dialectical Fable.” Screening the Past, Special Dossier: Thinking Cinematically 38 (2013). 32 See Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London and New York: Continuum, 2011) and D. N. Rodowick, Philosophy’s Artful Conversation (Cambridge MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2015). 33 See Lúcia Nagib, World Cinema and The Ethics of Realism (New York and London: Continuum, 2011), David Martin-Jones, Cinema against Doublethink: Ethical Encounters with the Lost Pasts of World History (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018) and David Martin-Jones, Deleuze and World Cinemas (New York: Continuum, 2011). 34 The sequence in question can be viewed on YouTube (with subtitles): www. youtube.com/watch?v=St4Okk4OeQ4. I discuss this example in Sinnerbrink 2016, 17–19.

References Allen, Richard and Murray Smith, eds. Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Babbitt, Frank Cole. “Plato and the Movies.” The Harvard Graduate’s Magazine 35, no. 137 (September 1926): 20–25. Barker, Jennifer M. The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. Baudry, Jean-Louis. “The Apparatus: Metapsychological Approaches to the Impression of Reality of the Cinema.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 6th ed., edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 690–707. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematic Apparatus.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 6th ed., edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 355–65. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Bazin, André. What is Cinema? Volume I. Translated by Hugh Gray. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1967. Bazin, André. What is Cinema? Volume II. Translated by Hugh Gray. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1971. Beller, Jonathan. The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2006. Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility, Third Version.” In Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 4: 1938–1940, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press, 2006. Bordwell, David and Noël Carroll, eds. Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Brown, William. Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age. New York: Berghahn Books, 2013.

Film and Ethics 203 Bruzzi, Stella. New Documentary: A Critical Introduction. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2000. Carroll, Noël. “The Power of Movies.” Daedalus, The Moving Image Issue 114, no. 4 (1985): 79–103. Casetti, Francesco. Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Chauduri, Shohini. Cinema of the Dark Side: Atrocity and the Ethics of Film Spectatorship. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Choi, Jinhee and Mattias Frey, eds. Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014. Comolli, Jean-Louis. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism” (1969). In Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics, edited by John Ellis, 36–46. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1977. Comolli, Jean-Louis and Jean Narboni. “Cinema/Ideology/Criticism.” In Screen Reader 1: Cinema/Ideology/Politics, edited by John Ellis, 2–11. London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1977. Cooper, Sarah. Selfless Cinema? Ethics and French Documentary. London: Legenda, 2006. Crogan. Patrick. Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation, and Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Danto, Arthur C. The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. Rebel Press, 1983 [1967]. DeMille, William. “Bigoted but Better Pictures.” Scribner’s, September  1924. Quoted in George Mitchell, “Münsterberg and the Movies.” Jump Cut 27 (1982): 57–60. Downing, Lisa and Libby Saxton. Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters. Abingdon and London: Routledge, 2010. Eisenstein, Sergei. Film Form: Essays on Film Theory. Translated by Jay Leyda. Orlando: Harcourt and Brace, 1949/1977. Elsaesser, Thomas and Malte Hagener. Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2010. Flory, Dan. Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008. Frey, Mattias. “The Ethics of Extreme Cinema.” In Cine-Ethics: Ethical Dimensions of Film Theory, Practice, and Spectatorship, edited by Mattias Frey and Jinhee Choi, 145–62. Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2014. Grodal, Torben. Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Grønstad, Asbjørn. Film and the Ethical Imagination. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Heath, Stephen. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. Horeck, Tanya and Tina Kendall, eds. The New Extremism in Cinema: From France to Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.

204  Robert Sinnerbrink Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Gunezelin Schmid Noer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Jameson, Frederic. “Reification and Mass Utopia.” Social Text 1 (1979): 130–48. Jones, Ward E. and Samantha Vice. Ethics at the Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Laine, Tarja. Feeling Film: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies. New York and London: Continuum, 2011. Marks, Laura U. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Marks, Laura U. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Martin-Jones, David. Cinema against Doublethink: Ethical Encounters with the Lost Pasts of World History. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2018. Martin-Jones, David. Deleuze and World Cinemas. New York: Continuum, 2011. Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Translated by Ben Brewster, Celia Britton and Annwyn Williams. Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1982. Metz, Christian. Language and Cinema. Amsterdam: De Gruyter, 1974. Mitchell, George. “Munsterberg and the Movies.” Jump Cut, no. 27 (July 1982): 57–60. Mulhall, Stephen. On Film, 2nd ed., Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2008. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18. Münsterberg, Hugo. “Peril to Childhood at the Movies.” (1917) In Hugo Münsterberg on Film, edited by Allen Langdale, 191–200. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Münsterberg, Hugo. The Photoplay: A  Psychological Study [1916]. In Allen Langdale (ed.), Hugo Münsterberg on Film. New York and London: Routledge, 2002. Nagib, Lúcia. World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism. New York and London: Continuum, 2011. Nannicelli, Ted and Paul Taberham. Cognitive Media Theory. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014. Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, 2nd ed. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010. Nyssonnen, Passi. “Film Theory at the Turning of Modernity.” Film-Philosophy 2, no. 31 (1998). Pisters, Patricia. The Neuro-Image: A  Deleuzian Film-Philosophy of Digital Screen Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012. Polan, Dana. Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Renov, Michael. The Subject of Documentary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Rodowick, D. N. Philosophy’s Artful Conversation. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Film and Ethics 205 Rushton, Richard. The Reality of Film: Theories of Filmic Reality. Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2011. Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Shaw, Dan. Morality at the Movies: Reading Ethics through Film. London and New York: Continuum, 2012. Sinnerbrink, Robert. Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience through Film. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2016. Sinnerbrink, Robert. “Early Film-Philosophy: A Dialectical Fable.” Screening the Past, Special Dossier: Thinking Cinematically 38 (2013). Sinnerbrink, Robert. “Film-Philosophy.” In The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory, edited by Warren Buckland and Edward Branigan, 207–13. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2014. Available at: http://www.screeningthepast. com/2013/12/early-film-philosophy-a-dialectical-fable/ Sinnerbrink, Robert. New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images. London and New York: Continuum, 2011. Sobchack, Vivian. The Address of the Eye: A  Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Sobchack, Vivian. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Solanas, Fernando and Octavio Getino. “Towards a Third Cinema.” In Movies and Methods. An Anthology, edited by Bill Nichols, 44–64. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Stadler, Jane. Pulling Focus: Intersubjective Experience, Narrative Film, and Ethics. New York and London: Continuum, 2008. Terman, Folke. “Ethics.” In Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, 111–20. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2009. Veblen, Thorstein. “The Breadline and the Movies.” The Dial (1919). Quoted in Wartenberg, Thomas. E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007. Wartenberg, Thomas. E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007. Westwell, Guy. Parallel Lines: Post-9/11 American Cinema. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Wheatley, Catherine. Michael Haneke’s Cinema: The Ethic of the Image. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2009. Williams, T. A. “Selling America on the Silver Screen?” In Here, There, and Everywhere: The Foreign Politics of American Popular Culture, edited by Reinhold Wagnleitner and Elaine Tyler May, 48–85. Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 2000. Winston, Brian. Lies, Damn Lies and Documentary: London: BFI Books, 2000.

Part IV

Cinematic Experience

12 Movies, Narration and the Emotions Noël Carroll

Throughout my career of writing about movies, I have been involved in theorizing about narrative, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, theorizing about how movies engage our emotions. In this article, I would like to integrate those two discussions—to show how the narrative address of the movie and its emotional address are typically interconnected or coordinated. I am motivated to undertake this task not only in order to render my theorizing more complete, but also to dispel the suspicion that cognitive theorizing about the movies, inasmuch as it is concerned with narrative comprehension, has little to say about the affective dimension of the movies. In contrast, I will attempt to propose an account of the way in which narration and emotion are typically coordinated from a cognitive perspective. In the past, the approach that I have developed towards movie narrative has been labeled erotetic narration. On the other hand, I have called my approach to the emotional address of the arts criterial prefocusing. In terms of that jargon, the aim of this article is to demonstrate how the criterial prefocusing model can be integrated with the erotetic narration model. In order to do this, I will first review the idea of erotetic narration. Then I will introduce the notion of criterial prefocusing, with an eye to showing how it fills in the erotetic system. So, let me begin with erotetic narration.1

Erotetic Narration The notion of erotetic narration is meant to explain several things about movies. I stress that here I am talking about mass market movies and not about all cinema or even all narrative cinema. Moreover, I am speaking about the way in which such movies typically proceed. By “typically,” I am acknowledging that there are several types of standard deviations, such as the recent film Split exemplifies. But with respect to typical movies, the idea of erotetic narration attempts to explain, among other things, (1) how a movie holds our attention, how it, as they say, grips us; (2) how spectators are able to follow its unfolding; (3) how it succeeds in making

210  Noël Carroll us feel that it is unified; and (4) how it engenders a feeling of closure— i.e., the sense of finality, the sense that it is over, that it has ended precisely where it should have, with nothing else to say. Beginning with the matter of holding the audience’s attention, a very useful starting point is this observation from David Hume’s essay “On Tragedy.” There Hume writes Had you any intention to move a person extremely by the narration of any event, the best method of increasing its effect would be artfully to delay informing him of it, and first excite his curiosity and impatience, before you let him into the secret.2 That is, for a narrative to be gripping—for it to hold our attention, for it to incite the audience’s curiosity about the way in which the event in question concludes—it should delay delivering its outcome or what Hume calls its secret. Will the protagonists in Rogue One gain access to the vital information about the hidden weakness in the Dark Star? The audience will remain in the grip of the narrative, until that is revealed. Hume calls this “a secret.” A less obscure way of describing it is to call it “a question.” His point is that a story sustains the audience’s attention, often irresistibly, by presenting us with questions that we want answered— questions that the movie narrative implicitly promises to answer and that we expect will be answered. Moreover, this conception of a movie narrative—as posing questions that it goes on to answer—enables us to explain the phenomenon of closure—the sense of finality that the movie has ended precisely where it should end with nothing else to say. For closure obtains when all the saliently posed questions that the narrative has raised are answered. That is, the movie narrative has “nothing else to say” BECAUSE it has answered all of our questions. For instance, recall this archetypal plot: boy meets girl, and they are attracted to each other; enter some oily Lothario bent on seducing the girl—will the boy be able to unmask his rival and regain the girl’s affection? This is what the audience wants to know. And finally, the boy gets the girl. The End. Closure. The movie does not go on to tell us that the couple then bought car insurance, because that was not part of the story. That is, whether or not the couple bought an insurance policy is not a question about which the movie has encouraged us to be curious. Were this episode to be added to the movie, the feeling of closure would be diluted; the movie would not strike us as having ended at the right spot. It would have gone on beyond the point where closure would obtain. On the other hand, if after establishing the existence of a happy family, their beloved infant is abducted, the audience will want to learn whether the child will be rescued. The complications that unfold contribute to

Movies, Narration and the Emotions 211 sustaining or answering this question. The movie, then, is over when that question is answered one way or another. Suppose, as is usually the case, we learn that the infant has been saved. The impression of closure will correspond with that revelation. In ordinary suspense movies, we will feel frustration rather than closure if that answer is not forthcoming. And if the movie goes on to show the child getting a flu shot, that will feel like a narrative non sequitur, since whether or not the baby needed a flu shot is not part of the story—not one of the forcefully advanced questions that have come to preoccupy our attention as spectators. That is, were the scene with the flu shot added, rather than things being wrapped up, a loose end would dangle. We can call this sort of narrative—where questions are generated to be answered subsequently—“erotetic” from the Greek, which means “of or pertaining to questioning.” This is narration that proceeds by prompting the audience to form questions, if only subliminally, about the actions and events being represented that the narrative then goes on to answer. Movie narration is typically, though not always, of this sort. Closure occurs when all the pronounced questions the movie has elected to put emphatically before us have been resolved. Jaws prompts us to ask if the shark can be destroyed and then finally rewards our curiosity. Erotetic narration also accounts for why movies appear unified. Because all our questions are answered, the movie seems complete. Moreover, the evolving network of questions and answers holds the story together— renders it coherent—insofar as scenes and sequences are connected intelligibly to other scenes and sequences by a skein of questions and answers. Furthermore, movie narratives not only hold our attention by posing questions. Inasmuch as those questions are pronounced, they help us follow the film because those questions help us organize incoming information in terms of its relevance to answering the questions that occupy us. In Torn Curtain when Hitchcock shows us the real passenger-bus gaining ground on the fake one, carrying Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, we are able to assimilate that fictional fact in terms of its contribution to answering the question of whether Newman and Andrews will get past roadside security without incident. As the passenger bus closes in, we surmise that it is unlikely, which heightens suspense. Nevertheless, the appearance of this information is easy to understand, because it is relevant to a question that, in this case, dominates our attention. So far, I have been talking rather broadly about questions. But different kinds of questions come into play in erotetic narration, and it pays to differentiate between some of them. A movie standardly begins by answering the kind of questions we automatically ask whenever we are introduced to a novel situation. We want implicitly to know: where the action is set and when; who are these people; what do they want and why are they acting like this. The opening

212  Noël Carroll of the typical motion picture will answer these basic questions at least to the extent that we have enough information to understand the further questions that the subsequent changes in the initial states of affairs and their accompanying complications elicit. Some scenes and sequences simply raise questions to be answered down the line by other scenes and sequences. In early American cinema, two-shot films, involving stories of kidnapping, began with an opening shot in which a child was kidnapped, thereby raising the question of whether he or she could be recovered; and then the second shot delivered the answer, as the child was rescued from the clutches of some stereotypically swarthy immigrant. In other, more complex motion pictures, scenes and sequences may function in order to prolong, as Hume advised, the delivery of the answers to our questions. This may be the result of a subsequent scene only partially answering an ongoing question. For example, once we learn the child has been kidnapped, part of what we are apt to want to know, if we haven’t witnessed the abduction, is, “by whom?” This may be partially answered by learning that the kidnapper is a woman with a limp, but exactly which woman with a limp remains a live question. Likewise, a later scene may sustain an earlier question by keeping our questions aloft. For instance, the escaped convict eludes apprehension in one scene, thereby iterating the question of whether he will be caught in the next scene or a subsequent one. Or, the fearless vampire killers close in on Dracula’s lair, but he transforms himself into a bat and flies away, leaving us wondering if they will be able to stake him another day. Sometimes when scenes answer one of our questions, they will replace one question with another. When King Kong is subdued on Skull Island, the inquiring minds in the audience want to know what Carl Denham intends to do with him. And, of course, new characters, forces and situations can be established at any point in the diegesis, bringing in their own new questions to be answered as they interact with what has already been given about the storyworld up to that point. Scenes and questions in erotetic narratives function to raise and/or answer questions, to answer questions partially, to cause questions to be iterated and to answer some questions in a way that opens onto others. Because scenes and sequences are bound together by this network of questions and answers, unified narratives give the appearance of coherence— everything seems to belong or to fit, specifically to fit into the network of questions and answers. The questions and answers that hold together the typical motion picture narrative come in hierarchically differentiated orders of magnitude. For convenience’s sake, we can make the following rough distinctions. First, there are presiding macro-questions. These include the question that dominates the motion picture globally from one end to the other.

Movies, Narration and the Emotions 213 Will the boy be able to get the girl? Can Goldfinger have his way with Fort Knox? Will the village survive in Seven Samurai? Of course, a film may have more than one presiding macroquestion. Buster Keaton’s The General has several, including: will Johnny be able to enlist in the Southern army? Will Johnny be able to recover his locomotive, The General? Will he be able to rescue his love, Annabelle Lee? Will he be able to alert the Confederates of the encroaching Union attack in time? These are the interlocking, indeed, in this case, piggy-backed, macro-questions that keep us riveted to the story in the expectation that they will be answered. When they are answered, The General is effectively finished. We do not ask what Johnny will do after the Civil War, because that is not one of the presiding macro-questions that we have been invited to entertain. When all of the presiding macro-questions in a unified movie narrative are answered, closure is usually secured, and we feel that Keaton’s movie has been completed and is complete.3 However, motion pictures are not merely unified by overarching or presiding macro-questions. There are also more localized questions that call forth or propone answers of a more limited scope. In The General, in one scene, Union hijackers pile debris on the rail tracks in order to derail Johnny, who is in hot pursuit. These activities raise the question of whether or not Johnny will be derailed in a subsequent scene or sequence. And, of course, subsequent scenes or sequences answer such questions. Johnny doesn’t get derailed. We may call these local erotetic networks micro-questions and micro-answers. These generally provide the glue that holds the trail of scenes and sequences together on a local basis, while, at the same time, also not letting go of our attention. Moreover, these micro-questions and answers are typically hierarchically subordinated to the presiding macroquestions that animate the narrative. For example, the question/answer network involving Johnny’s possible derailment in The General provides information in the direction of answering the presiding macro-questions of whether he will save his engine, his love, the Confederacy and, ultimately, whether he will win his uniform and enlist. Finally, it should be added that there are erotetic structures that are neither presiding macro-question/answer networks nor micro ones. These are question/answer complexes that span large parts of a motion picture, but not the entirety of the work. For example, the question of what is going to happen to Marion in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho dominates the opening of the film but is resolved once Norman Bates kills her. The macro-questions about her fate organize a large part of the film, but not the whole of it, since once she is eviscerated in the shower sequence, questions about Marion’s future are replaced by questions about whether her murder and her murderer will be discovered.

214  Noël Carroll Since the question about Marion is sustained over many microquestions/answers—like: will the suspicious-looking cop further investigate her?—it is a macro-structure, but since it is not sustained across the entire film, it is not a presiding macro-structure. It does not provoke closure. Answering presiding macro-questions is what educes closure. Question formation is a natural human mental propensity. Questioning is not just a linguistic practice. It is a thought process, an essential feature of cognition. Movies and popular narratives in general exploit this natural propensity by presenting us with situations that dispose us to formulate certain questions, if only tacitly. The promise of those questions being answered sustains our interest in the story, guides our tracking of the flow of information, imbues the story with a feeling of unity and coherence and, typically, ultimately secures the impression of closure. Although processing of the movie narrative has been characterized as primarily a cognitive affair, it clearly also has an affective dimension insofar as curiosity, including narrative curiosity, is arguably, as Hobbes would contend, an emotion.4 It is underwritten by a desire, has an object—the unknown—and can be experienced phenomenologically by a feeling of suspense that is physiologically urgent. Nevertheless, our emotional engagement with movies is not solely a function of the rhetoric of the erotetic structure of narration. So, in order to explain how that engages the audience affectively, let me turn to my theory of criterial prefocusing.

Criterial Prefocusing5 Of course, any account of how the movies engage the emotions must rest on a conception of the emotions; so, let me put my cards on the table. On my view (which is hardly originally mine), broadly speaking, emotions are processes involving mental states that cause internal bodily states that typically prime behavioral states. Specifically, emotions comprise evaluative mental states that involve appraisals of our circumstances in terms of whether those circumstances will enhance or impede our vital human interests. Fear assesses a present situation as dangerous. That alerts us in a bodily manner by quickening our pulse physiologically and/or sending a chill down our spine phenomenologically. Once this bodily fright alarm is triggered, we are ready to fight, flee or freeze. The emotions are psycho-physical mechanisms that we use to negotiate the environment. They pick out those features of the environment that will help or hinder us. In particular, they are fast mechanisms for sizing up the environment quickly—that is, in comparison with slower ways of assessing the environment, such as deliberation or reasoning. Evolution has endowed us with these means of rapid appraisal, since it is adaptive to respond quickly to environmental stimuli, for even if the emotions

Movies, Narration and the Emotions 215 sometimes mislead, for purposes of survival, it is better to be safe than sorry. Crucially, the emotions protect our vital interests. Fear alerts us to danger; anger to injustice; jealousy to loss of affection; and so on. In the current psychological and philosophical literature, there is some debate about whether emotive appraisals are cognitive versus completely affective—this is sometimes framed in terms of whether they can be initiated by the frontal cortex or are exclusively an affair of the amygdala. For my own part, I maintain that emotional processes can sometimes be initiated cognitively, even if in the normal run of affairs, the appraisals are most often affective. Moreover, for the purposes of motion picture theory, I  think that the question of whether the appraisal is primarily cognitive or affective is less important than the fact that either way they are appraisals—appraisals of features of the environment in terms of what advances or imperils our interests. The emotions are mechanisms of selective attention—they organize or gestalt the environment by picking out that which will help or hinder us. The selectivity of the emotions is grounded in the fact that they appraise the environment and/or elements thereof, either positively or negatively. Moreover, insofar as they evaluate or appraise the environment, they are governed by criteria. They size up the environment against certain standards of evaluation—they determine whether it is dangerous in terms of fear, or whether it is unjust in terms of anger. Thus, the emotions have certain criteria of appropriateness. That is, a stimulus has to be perceived as possessing certain features in order to call forth a certain emotional response. For example, the situation has to be perceived as dangerous (even if it is not) in order to call forth the emotional response of fear. An emotional response can be called irrational if it is an inappropriate response to its intentional object as would be any response of terror to SpongeBob SquarePants, whom I know to be harmless. With this sketch of the nature of the emotions, let us see what it can tell us about the movies. But first, let me briefly characterize the way in which the emotions function in everyday life in order to draw a contrast with the way in which they function in response to the movies. In everyday life, the emotions function as searchlights. They scan the environment in order to selectively pick out features of situations that will enhance or impede our vital interests, and, when they appraise items as such, they sound the bodily alarms that rivet our attention upon the pertinent features of our situation. The emotions are selective—they hone in on elements in the environment that are relevant to our vital interests. The emotions focus our attention—they direct us to what we are to attend to and to how (evaluatively) we are to attend to it. The emotions are natural endowments, albeit culturally calibrated, that function as our

216  Noël Carroll first line of response to the environment in advance of and often in place of deliberation. But things stand somewhat differently in the movies. With respect to movies, the onscreen environment has already been designed to make certain emotional themes such as, for instance, danger or injustice stand out. Elements of the shot, scene or sequence have been preselected and made salient by the moviemaker by means of visual devices, such as scenography and variable framing, aural effects including offscreen sound and music, along with various narrative and dramaturgical structures. Whereas in nature, so to say, our emotions do the filtering, in mass market movies, the scenes and sequences have been predigested or prefiltered for us by the moviemaker. This guides our attention to the elements of the scene that call for an emotional response, an emotional response that the moviemaker has already primed by selecting and making prominent an object appropriate to the emotional response the moviemaker intends to elicit. For example, when Lana Turner makes her first appearance in Tay Garnet’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, we are treated to a tight shot of her shapely bare legs, from the top of her thighs to her toes, inviting—no, nudging, as Cass Sunstein would say—lubricious feelings in certain segments of the audience. Moviemakers design their images and events with an eye towards eliciting pre-ordained affective responses by directing our attention to those elements in the situation that are criterially appropriate to the desired emotional response. In Dawn of the Dead, either version, the broken, incomplete and suppurating bodies of the zombies are prominently displayed in order to engender our disgust— a central component of horror—by focusing our attention irresistibly on these features. I call this process criterial prefocusing. It is a matter of prefocusing inasmuch as the moviemaking team has pre-arranged the scenes in their motion picture—visually, aurally, narratively and dramaturgically—so as to guide or lead our attention forcefully to certain aspects of the environment that are pertinent to the emotion the moviemakers intend to provoke. This prefocusing, moreover, is criterial because the selected objects of attention are criterially appropriate to the intended emotion. That is, they satisfy the criteria of appraisal for that emotion type. For example, the themes of impurity and incompleteness meet the criteria for appraising a human body as disgusting. So, in order to elicit the feeling of disgust in response to the zombies in Dawn of the Dead, the moviemakers arrange scenes in which we can hardly avoid attending to these features of the zombies, save by closing our eyes or leaving the theater. Similarly, suspense involves presenting a situation in which an unwanted outcome seems likely to obtain—e.g., the heroine appears doomed to go over the treacherous waterfall. Thus, to elicit suspense the moviemakers need to craft a sequence in such a way that the unwanted event—the

Movies, Narration and the Emotions 217 death of the heroine—appears inevitable, which the moviemakers might imply by incessantly cutting to shots of water inexorably speeding to the crest of the waterfall, thereby saliently criterially prefocusing the theme of relentless danger. Such will call forth an affective appraisal or emotional evaluation or suspense on the part of the moviegoers. In short, criterial prefocusing involves foregrounding or making salient those features of onscreen events and states of affairs that satisfy the condition or conditions relevant to the activation of the intended emotional response in the audience. It is my contention that criterial prefocusing is the leading way in which movies engage our emotions. This hypothesis, I  maintain, is superior to the common idea that identification is the primary way in which movies engage the audience. I reject the claim of identification—understood as engendering the selfsame emotions in viewers as are undergone by the characters they are viewing—for several reasons, including: 1. Its empirical inadequacy. That is, generally viewers are not in the same states as the relevant characters. The young woman swimming with abandon at the beginning of Jaws feels no anxiety, though we do, since we are aware that a shark is stalking her. 2. Its conceptual inadequacy. Typically, the object of the audience’s emotion is different than the character’s. When the mother on screen is sad for the loss of her son, we are not sad for the loss of our son, but rather, feel pity for a mother who has lost her son. However, although the notion of identification is inadequate in several respects, I do think that it gets things right in at least one respect, namely that with movies our relationship with characters is the most important element in our emotional engagement with the movie as a whole. This is not to say that this is the only way in which movies engage the audience’s emotion. Composition, including among other things, landscape, scenography, architecture, costumes, camera placement, editing and camera movement as well as music and so forth, also shapes the viewer’s affective engagement with the screen. Nevertheless, it does appear that our engagement with characters is the central channel of affective engagement with mass market movies. So, in what remains of this essay I will attempt to show how criterial prefocusing structures our engagement with characters in a way that, as promised, also shows the way in which criterial prefocusing advances erotetic narration. The reason characters are typically the emotional center of movie narrators is that once viewers align themselves as for certain characters and against others their interests in terms of whether they are advanced or impeded, facilitated or threatened become the source of our emotional responses. The protagonist has a project. If obstacles block her success,

218  Noël Carroll I feel frustrated. If that obstacle is the underhanded work of some villain, I feel anger towards the villain and perhaps even hatred. This can then generate a narrative question about the villain. Will he get his just deserts? Similarly, as obstacles are removed from the protagonist’s path to success, we feel joy or exhilaration. Our pro-attitude towards the protagonist’s project, of course, not only generates a narrative question about whether or not she will succeed but changes that question emotionally insofar as we have an affective stake in a positive answer to that question. Our emotions function not only to raise narrative questions but to intensify them—to make our desire for an answer, an answer in accord with the protagonist’s interests and/or in discord with the antagonist’s, urgent. In the course of a movie many different emotions are generated in response to various characters. In each case, criterial prefocusing, I believe, provides the best model for explaining how our emotions have been elicited. The movie, through a repertoire of devices, criterially prefocuses the extraterrestrials’ virtually indomitable power and their thirst for human blood, thereby eliciting fear from the audience predisposed towards the human protagonists and a protective wish for their survival. Scene by scene and sequence by sequence, criterial prefocusing elicits emotions keyed to the circumstances of the scene, which emotions themselves often elicit micro-questions—will she escape?—and even macro-questions—can the extraterrestrials be destroyed? However, there is an even more comprehensive way in which criterial prefocusing functions to support erotetic narration. As noted in passing, the source of the various occurrent emotions that we have in response to characters from scene to scene in a movie ultimately depends upon our alignment to characters—to our pro-attitude towards or sympathy for or emotional attachment to the protagonists and our aversive attitude or antipathy towards the antagonists. That is, our episodic emotional responses to the plights of the characters depend upon our underlying emotional attachment or detachment from the characters. We are indignant when Maximus is betrayed in Gladiator because we have a pro-attitude or emotional attachment to him. Likewise, when the Emperor Commodus is destroyed, in the same film, our spirits leap because we have come to hate him. Moreover, our emotional attachment towards Maximus and our aversion for Commodus have been engendered by the way each of these characters has been criterially prefocused. What I have in mind here can be illuminated by what Aristotle says about the construction of tragic characters in his Poetics.6 In order to elicit pity and fear, the tragic character should not be a saint; his destruction would cause outrage rather than pity and fear. Nor should the tragic character be evil. His destruction would elicit gratification rather than pity and fear. Instead he should be morally like the ordinary viewer,

Movies, Narration and the Emotions 219 morally upright but not perfect, because that will induce fear in the ordinary viewer that if tragedy could befall a generally good person, like Oedipus, it could befall them as well. So, in my terms, the tragic character has to be criterially prefocused as morally upright but not perfect in order to elicit tragic fear. Turning from tragedy to movies, the protagonists also have to be constructed in a certain way. They must be worthy of our allegiance. This is a design problem for moviemakers. How will they activate our emotional attachment to the protagonists? How must the pertinent attributes of the protagonists be criterially prefocused in order to claim our allegiance? And contrariwise, how must the relevant features of the antagonists be criterially prefocused in order to ignite our aversion? As a matter of empirical conjecture, my short answer in the main is morality.7 Protagonists have to be criterially prefocused in terms of their virtues and the ultimate justice of their cause.8 They need to be presented in such a way that their very broadly shared moral interests with the audience are made salient, if not from the beginning of the movie, then sometime later, perhaps at a crucial turning point. In parallel fashion, the antagonists should be criterially prefocused as morally defective. Whereas the protagonists are criterially prefocused as pro-social, at least eventually, the antagonists are typically criterially prefocused as anti-social, often from the beginning onwards, but sometimes it is only so revealed eventually. This is the reason that we naturally and colloquially refer to the protagonists and the antagonists as the “good guys” and the “bad guys.” Even supposed anti-heroes typically reveal themselves and are criterially prefocused as pro-social somewhere along the line. The moviemaker, then, secures our emotional alliance with the protagonist that will not only generate the presiding—macro—narrative question of whether the protagonist or protagonists will prevail but also whether or not from scene to scene they will be able to overcome the local obstacles on their way to success, where this question is frequently a matter of high emotional suspense. Thus, criterially prefocusing the protagonists as morally admirable or worthy secures our emotional attachment to them, which invests us with not only intensely felt presiding macro-questions about the prospects for the success of their projects or the satisfaction of their desires, but also affectively driven micro-questions from scene to scene concerning whether or not the protagonists’ actions will advance or set back their final aims. Likewise, the criterially prefocused moral unworthiness of the antagonists raises emotionally charged questions about whether they will succeed in their overall designs, as well as their local efforts from sequence to sequence—questions tinged by the wish that they fail and that the protagonists prevail. As the antagonists block our heroes, we unleash our

220  Noël Carroll anger towards them asking whether and hoping retributively they will have to pay for it. As this brief sketch indicated, the phenomenon of criterial prefocusing serves the purposes of erotetic narration primarily by securing our emotional attachment to the protagonists and our affective aversion or antipathy to the antagonists, which invests us with macro-questions about their overall prospects for success and micro-questions from scene to scene on their way to their goals, as well as engendering a range of episodic emotions keyed to their moment to moment behavior.

Conclusion To conclude, let me summarize what I  have tried to do in this article. I  have sketched my theory of typical movie narration in terms of the notion of erotetic narration. I have presented my account of the way in which movies typically engage our emotions, a process that I  call criterial prefocusing. And finally, I  have tried to show how the two processes can function together or interact. Specifically, criterial prefocusing encourages our own emotional attachment to some characters and our antipathy towards others, which generates macro- and micro-questions, intensified or underwritten by emotionally charged wishes and desires regarding the answers to those questions.

Notes 1 See Noël Carroll, “Narrative Closure.” in my Art in Three Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 355–72. 2 David Hume, “Of Tragedy.” in Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 130. 3 See Noël Carroll, Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor and Bodily Coping (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 158–74. 4 There are cognitive emotions, despite Plato and his influence. 5 See Noël Carroll, “Art. Narrative and Emotion.” in my Beyond Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 215–34. 6 Aristotle, Poetics, The Complete Works of Aristotle (vol. II), ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2325. 7 See Noël Carroll, “The Ties that Bind: Characters, Emotion and Popular Fictions.” in my Minerva’s Night ut: Philosophy, Pop Culture and the Movies (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013), 40–63. 8 This is not to deny that other factors, such as their looks, may come into play in eliciting our allegiance. But, I suspect, that morality may be an even more decisive factor, since the villain can be very attractive and yet we still despise him. Think of Gregory Peck in Duel in the Sun.

References Aristotle, Poetics, The Complete Works of Aristotle (vol. II), edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

Movies, Narration and the Emotions 221 Carroll, Noël. Art in Three Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Carroll, Nöel. Beyond Aesthetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Carroll, Nöel. Comedy Incarnate: Buster Keaton, Physical Humor and Bodily Coping. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Carroll, Noël. Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture and the Movies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2013. Hume, Hume. “Of Tragedy.” In Selected Essays, edited by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.

13 Predictive Processing and the Experimental Solution for the Paradox of Fiction Dina Mendonça

The chapter explores how the predictive mind hypothesis provides an ideal ground for an original answer to the two paradoxes of emotional response to fiction: the Experimental Solution. The first part puts forward how the predictive processing hypothesis gives rise to a new explanation for understanding the emotional response to fiction, because it provides an added explicit understanding of the connection between emotions in the face of fiction and those within daily experience. Using Ronaldo de Sousa’s notion of paradigm scenarios, the Experimental Solution argues that fiction functions as a type of emotional laboratory where emotions are explored and tested for better prediction. The second part elaborates on some of the consequences of taking fiction as emotional laboratories, by showing how emotional learning occurs in emotional response to fiction so as to provide a privileged space for emotional growth. Finally, the paper presents some of the ways in which the Experimental Solution, while agreeing with many of the insights of the make-believe theory, adds two important modifications in line with the predictive hypothesis of the mind.

Predictive Processing Mind Predictive processing puts forward a hypothesis about the functioning of the brain, which turns the traditional picture of perception upside down,1 and advances that the brain is not a passive organ assimilating whatever information it receives from the world but that it plays an active and decisive role for survival by generating predictions that enable the future activity of the organism. That is, the brain fulfills an ongoing predictive activity identifying regularities of situations and events and thus enabling the organisms to engage in the most appropriate action based on the overall prediction mode. The details of this proposal are far more complex than this short introduction can provide because “the prediction machinery needs to operate in a distinctively complex, multilevel, variegated internal environment,”2 and though it is not possible to offer the full account3 the chapter introduces a further qualification of the

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 223 predictive processing hypothesis by describing the role of fiction as one of increasing accuracy of the predictive activity. This predictive activity “optimizes energy efficiency by anticipating your body’s need in a situated fashion and attempting to meet those needs before they arise,”4 and fiction increases the amplitude of the predictive power. The pertinent theoretical link of predictive brain theory and emotions has already been put forward, showing that emotions are a part of how the brain’s prediction reaches better guesses and how it makes continuous and context-sensitive prediction, integrating prediction errors within its activity.5 Namely there is an interesting link to surprise because since the brain is always in activity “busily predicting its own states at many levels, all that matters (that is, all that is newsworthy and thus ought to drive further processing) are the incoming surprises: Unexpected deviations from what is predicted.”6 It is important to acknowledge that the brain is not diminishing the possibility of experience of surprise in its phenomenological sense; the predictive attitude diminishes what has been termed “surprisal,” which stands as a theoretical notion that is based on the negative logarithm of an event’s probability and refers to the unlikelihood of an event. Thus, Wiese and Metzinger remind us that “[i]t is important not to confuse this subpersonal information theoretic concept with the personal levels phenomenological notion of ‘surprise.’ ”7 In fact, the concept of surprisal may very well help us to obtain a better understanding of surprise because it might make it clearer by linking it to how prediction, surprisal and surprise are interrelated. As Andy Clark explains in Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind (2016), we are not slaves to our expectations. Successful perception requires the pain to use stored knowledge and expectations (Baeysian priors) to minimize prediction errors. But we remain able to see very (agent-) surprising things, in conditions where the brain assigns high reliability to sensory prediction error.8 To illustrate this point Andy Clark describes how when a magician promises the appearance of an elephant, making a detailed description of how it will appear in a room, the magician is minimizing the sensory prediction error, showing the audience how the elephant will visually appear and giving a “high-precision confirmation of that very hypothesis”9 If the elephant magically appears in the room the people will feel that their expectation and prediction given the hypothesis were very accurate because they commanded a “reliable model that has survived the acid test of high-precision prediction error.”10 And the audience would not be taken by “surprisal,” though they might still be taken by the “feeling of surprise, that is to say, might be a way of preserving useful information that would otherwise be thrown away.”11

224  Dina Mendonça Taking up the predictive hypothesis provides a new ground for thinking about the paradoxes concerning the emotional response to fiction and opens the opportunity for a novel answer to the two paradoxes of emotional response to fiction. One is the paradox of fiction, first stated by Colin Radford in 1975, which exposes an inconsistency in our emotional response to fiction, namely that we do not think fictional characters exist and, consequently, it is strange that we have feelings for them. It can be formulated as a set of three propositions impossible to maintain coherently: (a) we often have emotions for fictional characters and situations known to be purely fictional; (b) emotions for objects logically presuppose beliefs in the existence and features of those objects; and (c) we do not maintain beliefs in the existence and features of objects known to be fictional. Since Radford’s 1975 article, “How Can We Be Moved by the Fate of Anna Karenina?,” until now, almost every possible solution has been offered to the paradox, and a long discussion has taken place, usually denying one of the three preceding statements. Jerrold Levinson provides an excellent summary of the several solutions that have been offered to solve the paradox.12 The other paradox, which goes back as far as Plato and can be seen clearly discussed in Hume’s treatise “On Tragedy,” is the paradox of tragedy, which highlights the issue of enjoyment of negative valence in the face of fiction. That is, it points out that people seek and enjoy sad and scary stories, though we should expect people to avoid them, because the emotional negative valence of stories elicits parallel responses in readers. Similarly, to the paradox of fiction, several solutions have been given.

Fiction as Emotion Laboratory Spaces The present proposal is to see fiction (literature and cinema) as taking the role of the magician described by Andy Clark since in emotional activity not everything can be verbally described like an elephant in a room and the complexity of emotional experiences requires an amplitude that can take a more multi-dimensional and refined method of prediction. Thus, similarly to thinking of films as thought experiments, as Thomas E. Wartenberg suggests,13 the idea is to take films (and fiction more generally) as a type of laboratory space for emotional experiences where emotions are explored and tested for better future prediction. This Experimental Solution explains the paradoxes by showing how emotional response towards fiction is a crucial part of the way we learn, refine and maintain our ability to be emotional and points out that it is not so much a matter of denying one of the statements given in the formulation of the paradox of fiction but of rewording it in light of the continuity between emotional response to fiction and emotional response to real-life events. The rewording of the paradox suggests that we learn to feel also by feeling in the face of fiction14 because it is part of the predictive machinery and the

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 225 collection of predictions “is created with preexisting accumulations of experience, whether directly lived or indirectly acquired from the stories of others (including TV shows, movies and books).”15 In The Rationality of Emotion, Ronaldo de Sousa introduces the notion of paradigm scenarios, stating that it is through them that we are introduced to the vocabulary of emotion and that these paradigm scenarios are later on supplemented and refined by literature,16 making a clear connection between emotional experiences of daily life and fiction. He writes, My hypothesis is this: We are made familiar with the vocabulary of emotion by association with paradigm scenarios. These are drawn first from our daily life as small children and later reinforced by the stories, art, and culture to which we are exposed. Later still, in literate cultures, they are supplemented and refined by literature. Paradigm scenarios involve two aspects: first, a situation type providing the characteristic objects of the specific emotion-type (where objects can be of the various sorts identified in chapter  5), and second, a set of characteristic or “normal” responses to the situation, where normality is first a biological matter and then very quickly becomes a cultural one.17 Besides the way in which paradigm scenarios make us acquainted with the vocabulary of emotion it is important to recognize that the story of how these paradigms are drawn is more complex than the quotation suggests. Though the experience before storytelling is certainly crucial for the emotional relevance of stories, they do more than simply reinforce paradigm scenarios. The constitution of the paradigm scenarios is more likely a complex and creative process between stories and daily life events. Stories, along with daily life events, help us to construct paradigm scenarios by structuring and naming emotions, while the paradigm scenarios remain open to revision and to obtaining further complexity with future stories and future life events. Only this can explain that, as De Sousa writes, “[a] paradigm can always be challenged in the light of a wider range of considerations than are available when the case is viewed in isolation.”18 That is, stories increase complexity in already existing paradigm scenarios, but they can also point out new possible paradigms. The Experimental Solution retains an insight of the Make-Believe Solution: that stories are a form of playing. While it simultaneously reminds us that playing is necessary for both children and adults, and it implies that the playing that occurs in the face of fiction gets more and more complex in refinement as the infant becomes a child, later an adolescent and even later an adult. For as one grows older there is more information available both from daily life experience and from knowledge of fiction, as films, novels

226  Dina Mendonça and stories become part of one’s emotional references. In addition, the Experimental Solution introduces an important element to the answer because it shows that when we take on board the predictive processing hypothesis it becomes clear that a prediction is completed when “sensations have been processed and categorized,”19 which means that the information obtained is either refining a similar type of pattern of prediction or modifying the prediction at stake, giving guidance and direction to the activity of make-believe. The Experimental Solution to the paradox of fiction also solves the paradox of tragedy. If fictional stories are a type of emotional laboratory, then it is reasonable that we would give a privileged place to emotions with negative valence. For though we do not want to live them, they represent a crucial part of emotional growth, just as it is crucial to study controlled explosions in the laboratory when one studies Chemistry. However, in order to properly understand models, we need to understand how they are used in laboratory practice and how these practices are connected to life occurrences. As opposed to the study of Chemistry, for instance, the rules and methods of “experimenting with our emotions” are not taught to us in a deliberate and organized fashion. Nevertheless, we learn to guide and profit from these laboratories of emotions. For instance, we choose to enter them, by reading a novel of a certain type and finishing it. Also, we develop a sort of sensibility for what we want to experience by choosing which type of experiment we feel like experiencing in fiction, as is expressed by statements such as “I do not feel like a superficial story,” or “I  feel like a drama.” Therefore, to know how these emotional experimental spaces function we need to analyze in more detail how these laboratories of emotion work.

Emotional Experience in Daily Life and Fiction An explicit understanding of the connection between emotions in the face of fiction and those in daily life experience is necessary to fully understand the proposal of the Experimental Solution. Humans react emotionally to lots of things: events, mental images, possibilities of future events, reinterpretation of past events, paintings, novel ideas, emotions, other people, toys, machines and everything else we encounter in our lives and the things we can imagine encountering in our lives. There is not a single different apparatus to respond emotionally to each of these different entities and realms, and, consequently, there is a continuum in our emotional responses. Accordingly, stating that people respond emotionally to fiction is just a commonplace about emotional functionality, and the continuity of emotional response between fiction and daily life is a repetition of that commonplace. However, the paradoxes described question how exactly this emotional response to fiction works, suggesting that there is something

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 227 important about this specific type of continuity of emotional response found in the face of fiction. The proposal of the Experimental Solution says that while we react emotionally to a lot of things (fiction being one of these), fiction enables us to maneuver and further explore emotional response to such an extent that our paradigm scenarios can be refined, attuned, reorganized and recreated for further and better prediction purposes. This ability granted to us by fiction establishes a different kind of continuity between emotional response to fiction and emotional response to real-life events, such that the continuity of emotional response appears more puzzling than it is with other entities. The proposal of the Experimental Solution is one of genealogy: we learn to feel and maintain the ability to feel also by learning to feel in fiction and maintaining our emotional response in the face of fiction, similar to the way one learns to exercise the body in a specific way in a gym and one continues to go to the gym to keep fit. It is important to note that while we refine, attune and increase the complexity of our paradigm scenarios, we simultaneously exercise our ability to feel. Just as when one goes to the gym to keep the muscles fit, one goes to see love stories to keep the ability to feel all the ridiculous pleasures and the not so pleasurable emotions that make up falling in love, actualizing the fictional and make-believe experience with all the new sensory inputs that have been experienced meanwhile in daily life experience so as to make prediction as accurate as possible given that in the face of fiction people are not experiencing exactly like they do in daily life events. In sum, the suggested continuity between the emotional response to fiction and emotional response to daily life events may mean that we learn to fall in love and love people by being loved by others and by watching how others love and also by experiencing love stories and watching fictional presentations of how to love. And once one has acquired a sense of knowing what it is to fall in love, one continues to want to read and experience love stories, so as to ensure the ability to feel love is maintained, fit, alive and functional, updated with adequate categorized sensory information. However, there is not just one story to be told about one specific emotional situation: there are many because “emotional events correspond to complex situations that can be apprehended from multiple dimensional and temporal vantage points.”20The engagement with fiction can fully be accounted for only by a pluralistic account that provides room for and explains the wide variety of emotional experiences that people have, namely in the face of fiction,21 for the reader of a book or viewer of a film is neither fixed nor forced to adopt one specific perspective (be it from one of the characters or from the narrator’s perspective), nor to have the same perspective when rereading or watching another time a story, and stories are always open to further and different interpretations. The fact

228  Dina Mendonça that fiction can be reinterpreted in terms of emotional response mimics the relationship between paradigm scenarios and real-life events. That is, given that a story can have an indefinite number of readings and that there is always the question of which reading is the privileged interpretation,22 the need to continue to reflect and revise them for better prediction is a never-ending task. That is, the continuity between emotions in the face of fiction and emotions in daily life is an ongoing complex occurrence in which the paradigm scenarios are continually open to revision or reinforcement through experience and also open through the process of interpretation. However, the recognition of the complexity described under the Experimental Solution requires the addition of some modification to De Sousa’s paradigm scenarios, namely that the two crucial aspects of a paradigm scenario are incompletely described. First, the situation type provides, in addition to the object of the emotion type, the subject of an emotion type. Second, the set of characteristic responses in a situation are various and should include different levels of response, such as biological, social, cultural, in illness, before 10 years old, after 40 years old and so forth. These modifications are important to better understand the malleability of paradigm scenarios as tools of interpretation and how they stand as the base for predictive models of emotional life. The emotional continuity of fiction with daily life events at the base of the Experimental Solution suggests that the emotional response to fiction is part of the way we learn to feel. Unfortunately, the fact that there is literature and cinema is not enough to grant us its emotional experimental space: the need to be educated, to read literature and to see films is a crucial part of making the experimental space take its proper form. Consequently, in order to fully understand the suggestion, it is crucial to more clearly identify in which way fiction grants us emotional learning.

Emotional Learning and Emotional Growth The fact that emotions in response to fiction have an important educational role is not a novelty. Martha Nussbaum, for instance, stresses the instrumental role of fictional emotions in the cultivation of moral and intellectual character.23 Also, Gendler and Kovakovich state that, “by engaging emotionally with fictional characters and situations, we broaden our range of simulated encounters, gaining insights about others’ experiences that are processes much as if they had been our own. Without such a capacity, actual experience would be our only source of such emotional encounters, severely limiting the range of our reactive possibilities.”24 Yet these statements always require further explanation, as we can easily imagine a cruel and mentally disturbed person to be totally capable of enjoying and appreciating the most complex works of literature from the emotional point of view.25 And consequently, being

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 229 able to emotionally relate to literature requires that we further our understanding of how emotional responses to fiction help us to become emotionally mature and capable of experiencing and using our emotions well. The first point to make clear is that emotional learning is not something that happens only until a certain age. Granted that learning occurs differently at different ages, emotional education is an ongoing affair that requires continuous training like the description of the experiential emotional space pointed out.26 The description of how the different ages modify the way the exploration and exercise occur in the emotional laboratory of fiction demands a paper of its own.27 Second, we want to learn about emotions because they have the power to tell us what type of situation we are facing. And though it is crucial to both learn to recognize and accept our feelings, we also learn that emotions can overcome us. For example, when we are afraid, the emotion tells us that we are facing a dangerous situation, but unfortunately it may simultaneously skew our perception of the situation. Goldie points out that “emotions have the power to distort practical reasoning in a variety of ways. Emotions can distort practical reasoning by distorting perception. For example, when we are afraid, things look more frightening than they in fact are.”28 Consequently, one of the important processes of emotional education is to learn to use the informative aspect of emotional response and yet become aware of the distorting power of emotion, recognizing the impact of that specific emotion in perception and imagination. As Goldie explains in “Imagination and the Distorting Power of Emotion,” the imagining from the inside presents difficulties for understanding the distorting power of emotion because the distorting of emotions is hard to foresee ahead of time29 and emotions can distort the process of imagination. However, fiction provides a place for imagining situations both from the inside (first person perspective) and from an external perspective (second person perspective) and obtaining double emotional insight accordingly. Goldie writes that “it may be psychologically possible to oscillate between taking a sympathetic perspective on the infant prince and, on the other hand, imagining from the inside his experiences in his blissful ignorance.”30 The oscillatory movement described by Goldie constitutes the dramatic irony in which each position calls for the other in the face of the fictional format. The advantage of imagining both ourselves and others from an external perspective, which is given to us by fiction, allows each one of us to better know ourselves and how emotions take over our personalities, so that we acquire much more insight about emotions themselves, about others and about our own personalities. Goldie writes that there is a psychological advantage in imagining oneself from the outside because we are less prone to the pitfalls of emotional bias.31 In sum, fiction helps us to develop and refine our sense of empathy by allowing us to better understand things from the first person perspective of others

230  Dina Mendonça and also by developing our capacity to imagine things from the external perspective, which is a crucial and important part of understanding ourselves. In addition, the learning experience provided by fiction is not given simply by the fact that we are told a sequence of events, but also by the way that reading or seeing a story forces us to endure the sequence of events. By providing us with the set plot, the fictional story forces us to undergo the experience until the end, leading us to experience the emotion so as to really show us, for example, what it is to feel frustration right to the core of the experience. In sum, the fact that fiction forces the experience of emotions, allowing for imagination from the inside and from the outside, enables us to better understand others and empathize better with others. Simultaneously, it allows a better understanding of ourselves as it reveals things about our personalities that without such double perspective of imagination would not be available to us. Finally, fictions provide emotional learning because they allow us to refine and further construct paradigm scenarios in a wholesome way. As De Sousa remarks, “we can’t learn only our own parts. Most likely we learn all the parts of a whole script.”32 It should be clear by now that learning to feel and understand the logic of the emotional world is a lifetime task and requires a more complex experience than simply being able to understand that fear is due to a perception of danger. To fully understand fear one needs to understand the role of desires, the conflicts between beliefs and desires and the variety of different types of interferences from one emotion to others as well as many other aspects of the situational whole (e.g., actions, personality, other persons affected by the situations, implicit memory of life events), such that one story about fear cannot do justice to the complex world of that emotion. This means that emotional learning requires a sense of emotional growth that is more than the acquisition of information about emotions or knowing how to control them. De Sousa grasps this subtlety of emotional learning when he writes, “[m]y own speculation is that emotional learning is indeed structurally like, as well as being affected by, aesthetic development. We learn to feel new emotions much as we learn to experience new art.”33 What is implicit in the quotation from De Sousa is that emotional learning requires a type of growth, just as taste requires growth to become refined. There are two reasons why fiction and our emotional response to fiction promote emotional learning so as to contribute to emotional growth: emotional laboratories promote experience of emotions at various levels, and they promote emotional distance without indifference.34 Fiction promotes experience of emotions at various levels because it teaches us how to feel by testing and retesting, but also because it shows us how we feel about how we feel. To fully understand the reach of the experimental space offered by fiction it is necessary to recognize the

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 231 existence of second order emotions. In an essay called “The Pleasures of Tragedy,” Susan Feagin writes, It should be noted that in ordinary as well as aesthetic contexts the two kinds of responses cannot be distinguished merely by what words are used to describe them. “pleasure,” “shock,” “melancholy,” and “delight” may all describe direct or meta-responses, and the two are not always clearly distinguishable from each other. A blush of embarrassment may be intensified by embarrassment over the blush. That two things being distinguished cannot be infallibly distinguished, and that there are unclear cases of how and even whether the two are distinguishable, does not necessarily undermine the utility of the distinction.35 Consequently, when we undergo the experience of watching a film or reading a novel, we do not simply respond emotionally to the events given to us by fiction; we simultaneously respond emotionally to our emotional response. So, we feel sad, and we will also feel quite pleased that we are sad, or when we feel similar to a mean and horrible character of the story and feel “not right” about it and so on. It is by allowing the experience of first and second order emotional response that we learn further about our emotional response so as to provide the possibility for growth. That is, fiction teaches us to endure our emotional reactions without running away from our own feelings, so we experience as much as possible how we feel in the face of certain situations. And, in addition, when we endure how we feel in the face of certain situations we are more capable of feeling how we feel about our feelings so that the endurance forced by fiction occurs at two levels: feeling with the story and feeling how we feel meta-emotions, that is, how we feel about our feelings and emotions.36 However, the endurance of emotional response in fiction is less demanding because when we emotionally respond to fiction we do not have to act or make up our mind, there and then, in a decisive way. All we have to do is feel. In addition, emotional experiences can sometimes be tiresome, but in the face of fiction one can even relax while simultaneously experiencing feeling. The experimental space of fiction becomes a privileged space for emotional growth because the learning provided by fiction fosters future learning by allowing us to continue to learn how to feel, to further explore empathy and to further understand others and our own person. Fiction also provides emotional experience to gain a certain type of distance. Perhaps the most challenging part of emotional growth is to learn to feel emotions (and not run away from experiencing them), while at the same time not be totally consumed by them. Thought emotions have a passive character because they assault us and we have little control

232  Dina Mendonça over which ones we will experience, there is a sense in which we are also responsible for our emotions. The fact that we are responsible for things (emotions) we do not fully control requires a different type of attitude than the one we have towards things we control. One way to assume the responsibility about our emotions is to learn to create a distance about what we feel, without becoming detached or indifferent to them. This attitude towards our emotions allows us to absorb the information emotions provide and simultaneously not be taken by them. Because we are not detached nor indifferent, we can experience our emotions and know ourselves, but the distance grants us some control over expression of emotion because we know that the value of what is being felt right now, no matter how intense it is, depends on what subsequently happens. For example, a person who is fired and has felt the difficulty of being fired before knows that, though being fired is devastating and really horrible, life continues to happen and the experience of losing a job may end up not being really determinant of our happiness in the long term, though is highly revealing to whom we are and whom we want to become. However, it is really hard to know how to explain that to someone that has not gone through that experience. Telling them directly does not do the trick. However, we can imagine the unemployed person watching a film or reading a novel about being unemployed, which portrays the impact of time in that situation and relativizes the feelings and emotions of that precise period they are living. Therefore, one of the reasons why emotional response to fiction teaches wise distance without indifference is because emotional laboratories can manipulate time, thus granting a proper understanding of the temporal dimension of emotions. Time is necessary for emotional processes because emotional processes take time not only because an emotion takes time to fully manifest itself, but also because the second order emotion requires waiting for the manifestation of the first order emotion in order to be properly set in motion. Becoming aware of the temporal dimension of emotional processes provides distance because it enables us to see “the whole picture.” In life the picture is never completely given, for it is of the nature of emotional experience to be always on the go and of life to be open. However, stories have a beginning, a middle and an end, providing a complete experience that allows for one of the special emotional traits of fiction: enabling us to distinguish more clearly the difference between first order and second order emotions.37 Of course, everybody wants to feel well, but sometimes feeling not so well now may mean feeling really well in the long run. That is, knowing that the value of what we feel now may not be the value of the entire emotional experience requires a good understanding of the relation of emotions with time. In fiction, time takes a different duration than chronological time, while it simultaneously imitates some of the real-life outcomes of temporality.

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 233 The manipulation of time in fiction can be done directly or indirectly. It is done directly by stating temporality within the story itself, such as when it is said “Last Sunday,” or when stories state that another year has passed, and also by providing references of repetition and temporal cyclical events. In addition, stories manipulate time indirectly by the use of tools of style that provide a sense of rhythm and temporality within the story, such as by the repetition of a word or a sentence (e.g., the use of “and then,” “and then,” “and then”). Though the manipulation of time in fiction may be done directly or indirectly, the outcome is always to provide the experience of how emotions need time to unfold, offering an insight into their nature and their effects.

Beyond the Emotional Laboratory The first part of the conclusion rewords the paradox of fiction, showing that its simplistic formulation is a consequence of missing the complexity of emotional processes. Given what has been said the statements of the paradox should more properly be written in the following way: 1. We have emotional responses in the face of stories (organized sequence of events with situations—characters and objects—and various kinds of components (e.g., images, style, patterns) forming a concrete whole). Our emotional response consists at least in two levels—response and meta-response. 2. Emotions for objects logically presuppose beliefs in the existence and features of the objects in question. Clearly, emotion processes require something cognitive, but what is cognitive is not as clear to identify.38 Nevertheless, whatever the cognitive requirement is, it is nurtured also by fictional realities and needs to be actualized with the process of categorization for the conceptual knowledge to be completed. 3. We do not harbor beliefs in the existence and features of objects known to be fictional as if they were real, but we harbor beliefs in certain features of fictional objects as such as part of the predictive machinery. That is, the fact that something is fictional does not mean there are no rules and boundaries. The connection of fiction with real-life events is necessary for the relevance of fictional space, but this connection of relevance is not given by the realistic mark of being close to daily life events in a factual fashion. In fact, the closeness of fiction to real-life events and why certain fictional works are grand and others fail may be explained by their emotional impact. This suggests that it may be the case that the secret of the cognitive element of emotional processes may lay in understanding why certain fictional works succeed and others do not (reasonableness of character description, logic of the plot, sequence of emotional marks, deliberate relevance of details and so on). Nevertheless, it is

234  Dina Mendonça important to note that the need for the reformulation of the paradox points out that the paradoxes we face are intimately tied to the way we interpret and understand the world and that they are a symptom of the inadequacy of our conceptual frame of work about how the mind functions. The Experimental Solution to the paradoxes proposes that stories function as a type of laboratory for emotions, just as we have laboratories to conduct experiments in Physics and Chemistry. This solution suggests that maybe emotions would be a totally different affair if it were not for the fictional emotional response. Of course, it is hypothetically possible to learn Physics or Chemistry without using laboratory simulation. Similarly, it is possible to respond emotionally without ever experiencing fiction. However, if the Experimental Solution is right, then emotion theory needs to fully understand the impact of emotional response to fiction on the nature of emotion. Namely emotion theory needs to integrate how learning and refinement modify emotional experiences. When emotion theory takes emotions as innate, stable and immutable mechanisms that once learned are simply used, then not only emotions in the face of fiction and art in general become odd, but theory is only capable of dealing with emotional processes that fit that description and will more likely miss the point of certain complexities of the emotional world such as the impact of meta-emotions upon emotions.39 Finally, the chapter presents some of the ways in which the Experimental Solution makes a little step forward compared to other solutions to the paradoxes.40 Though the Experimental Solution agrees with many of the explanations and descriptions of the Make-Believe Solution, it makes two important changes: first, it makes emotions in the face of fiction (or for that matter emotions in the face of all imaginary entities) a fundamental part of learning to feel, thus powerfully explaining the crucial importance of looking for experience of negative emotions in a safe experiential space41 because it integrates this activity within the predictive machinery. This first modification also indicates that dismantling the paradox of fiction by introducing the notion of quasi-emotion is similar to saying that chemical experimentations in laboratories are not like the chemical interactions in Nature but quasi-reactions. That is, by dismantling the paradox with such a distinction between real and quasi, the Solution misses the target and fails to explain why emotions in the face of fiction have fundamental and relevant connections for emotions in the face of daily situations, as well as it misses how the well identified difference requires extra work from the predictive machinery. That is, it is not enough to explore make-believe situations because it is necessary to actualize accumulation of prediction by completing them with processed and categorized sensations.

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 235 The second modification is much subtler and requires looking at the assumptions and the conceptual background behind the proposal. The make-believe theory assumes a certain definition of emotion in order to clarify the paradox. This makes it ignore the complexity of emotional processes and the many issues that are still to be solved and investigated about the nature of emotions and their taxonomy.42 The Experimental Solution opens the scope of accepted emotional responses to fiction to include both more general feelings and sensations of emotional tone, as well as moods and background emotional impact. The Experimental Solution clearly takes up the claim that emotional processes are complex43 and failure to reach a consensus about the taxonomy for emotional life is part of the rich data that needs to be explored in order to reach the simplicity for explanation. Thus, the Experimental Solution prefers to address emotions in the face of fiction as a group of complex phenomena in which the isolated emotions such as fear or pity are presently a more easily identifiable part. The inclusion of vaguer and looser emotional reactions to fiction, such as moods, feelings, and general affect response also diminishes the strength of the paradox of fiction, as an important aspect of it is the identification or denial of the cognitive or rational element of emotional reactions and the other emotional categories are not so clearly linked to cognitive elements and sensitive to rationality. Finally, the Experimental Solution reinforces the reasonableness of the bold predictive processing mind hypothesis, showing that fiction, that is, literature and movies, provides an external way to amplify the predictive machinery of the brain.

Notes 1 Andy Clark, “Embodied Prediction.” in Open MIND, ed. Thomas Metzinger and J.M. Windt (Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2015), doi: 10.15502/9783958570115. 2 Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 12. 3 For further reading see, for example: C. D. Frith, Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007); M. Bar, Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jacob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Andy Clark, Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Thomas Metzinger and Wanja Wiese, eds., Philosophy and Predictive Processing (Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2017). 4 Katie Hoemann, Maria Gendron, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Mixed Emotions in the Predictive Brain.” Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 15 (2017): 51. 5 Clark, Surfing Uncertainty; Hoemann et al., “Mixed Emotions in the Predictive Brain”; A. K. Seth, “Interoceptive Inference, Emotion, and the Embodied Self.” Trends in Cognitive Science 17, no. 11 (2013): 565–73; Sander Van de

236  Dina Mendonça Cruys, “Affective Value in the Predictive Mind.” in Philosophy and Predictive Processing, ed. Thomas Metzinger and Wanja Wiese (Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2017). 6 Clark, Surfing Uncertainty. 7 Thomas Metzinger and Wanja Wiese, “Vanilla PP for Philosophers: A Primer on Predictive Processing.” in Philosophy and Predictive Processing, ed. Thomas Metzinger and Wanja Wiese (Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2017). 8 Clark, Surfing Uncertainty, 79. 9 Ibid., 78. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 79. 12 Jerrold Levinson, “Emotion in Response to Art.” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (London and New York, 1998), 274. 13 Thomas E. Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen. Film as Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 134. 14 Given that the rewriting of the paradox requires understanding some of the points made later in the paper I take up this task at the end of the paper. 15 Hoemann et al., “Mixed Emotions in the Predictive Brain.” 52. 16 Ronaldo De Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987),182. 17 Ibid., 182. 18 Ibid., 187. 19 Hoemann et al., “Mixed Emotions in the Predictive Brain.” 52. 20 Ibid., 54. 21 De Sousa, The Rationality of Emotion, 146. 22 “What then determines the privileged interpretation? There is an essential ambiguity—a potential multiplicity of meanings—as well as an essential ambivalence—a potential multiplicity of values—in paradigm scenarios.” Ronaldo De Sousa, “Emotions, Education and Time.” Metaphilosophy 21 (1990): 434–46, p. 437. 23 Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 428. 24 Tamer Szabó Gendler and Karson Kovakovich, “Genuine Rational Fictional and Kovakovich.” in Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 241–53. 25 Thanks to Vítor Moura for pointing this out in a question at ESA 2012. 26 Thanks to Erin Flynn for questions and discussion at ESA 2012 regarding an earlier version of the paper showing how the fact that the emotional experiential space of fiction provides both exploration and exercise-exploration of emotions. 27 The issue is also relevantly connected to moral education. As Erin Flynn suggested in conversation, the laboratory of emotions proposed would suggest that if a society wants its members to be courageous, it would have to train them in dealing with fear, but it would have to do it in a way that is both relevant to the culture and to the age targeted. 28 Peter Goldie, “Imagination and the Distorting Power of Emotion.” Journal of Counsciousness Studies 12, nos. 8–10 (2005): 130. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid., 138–39. 31 Ibid., 140. 32 De Sousa, “Emotions, Education and Time.” 439. 33 Ibid., 436.

Predictive Processing and Paradox of Fiction 237 34 Dina Mendonça, “Absolutely Positively Feeling that Way and More— Paradox of Fiction and Alexander’s Stories.” in Philosophy and Children’s Literature, ed. Peter Costello (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). 35 Susan L. Feagin, “The Pleasures of Tragedy.” in Arguing about Art, ed. Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995), 208. 36 Dina Mendonça, “Emotions about Emotions.” Emotion Review 5, no. 4 (October 2013): 390–96. 37 Feagin, “The Pleasures of Tragedy.” 208. 38 For an interesting discussion of what is cognitive in cognitive emotion theories see Robert Solomon, “Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings.” in Thinking about Feelings. Comtemporary Philosophers on Emotions, ed. Robert C. Solomon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 76–88. 39 Mendonça, “Emotions about Emotions.” 40 Thanks for the discussion at the ESA 2012 conference regarding an earlier version of the proposal and especially to Robert Hopkins and Robert Stecker for specifically pointing this out and making it clear that the paper needed to be more specific about the modifications I thought the Experimental Solution offered in face of other solutions. 41 Thanks to Robert Stecker for pointing out this was a strong aspect of the Experimental Solution. 42 See “Emotion” by Peter Goldie, where he lists a wide variety of facts that a theory of emotion needs to accommodate if it is going to be acceptable. 43 See Giovanni Collombetti, “Appraising Valence.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 12, nos. 8–10 and her claim that, “we should take complexity seriously” (Colombetti 2005, 123).

References Bar, M. Predictions in the Brain: Using Our Past to Generate a Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Clark, Andy. “Embodied Prediction.” In Open MIND, edited by Thomas Metzinger and J.M. Windt, 7 (T) 2015. Clark, Andy. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action and the Embodied Mind. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Colombetti, Giovanna. “Appraising Valence.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 12, no. 8–10 (2005): 103–26. De Sousa, Ronaldo. “Emotions, Education and Time.” Metaphilosophy 21 (1990): 434–46. De Sousa, Ronaldo. The Rationality of Emotion. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1987. Feagin, Susan L. “The Pleasures of Tragedy.” In Arguing about Art, edited by Alex Neill & Aaron Ridley, 204–17. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1995. Frith, C. D. Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007. Gendler, Tamer Szabó and Karson Kovakovich. “Genuine Rational Fictional & Kovakovich.” In Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, edited by Matthew Kieran, 241–53. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Goldie, Peter. “Emotion.” Philosophy Compass 2, no. 6 (2007): 928–38. Goldie, Peter. “Imagination and the Distorting Power of Emotion.” Journal of Counsciousness Studies 12, no. 8–10 (2005): 130–42.

238  Dina Mendonça Hoemann, Katie, Maria Gendron and Lisa Feldman Barrett. “Mixed Emotions in the Predictive Brain.” Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences 15 (2017): 51–57. Hohwy, Jacob. The predictive Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Levinson, Jerrold. “Emotion in Response to Art.” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig, 273–81. London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Mendonça, Dina. “Absolutely Positively Feeling that Way and More—Paradox of Fiction and Alexander’s Stories.” In Philosophy and Children’s Literature, edited by Peter Costello, 41–64. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. Mendonça, Dina. “Emotions about Emotions.” Emotion Review 5, no. 4 (2013): 390–97. Mendonça, Dina. “When Heads Happen—Exploring the Deweyan Conception of Mind.” presented at SIFA October, 2003. Metzinger, Thomas and Wanja Wiese, eds. Philosophy and Predictive Processing. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2017. Newirth, Joseph. Between Emotion and Cognition. The Generative Unconscious. New York: Other Press, 2003. Nussbaum, Martha. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Oathley, Keith and Jennifer Jenkins. Understanding Emotions. Oxford, UK and Massachusetts, USA and Victoria, Australia: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. Seth, A. K. “Interoceptive Inference, Emotion, and the Embodied Self.” Trends in Cognitive Science 17, no. 11 (2013): 565–73. Solomon, Robert. “Emotions, Thoughts, and Feelings.” Thinking about Feelings. Comtemporary Philosophers on Emotions, edited by Robert C. Solomon, 76–88. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Van de Cruys, Sander. “Affective Value in the Predictive Mind.” In Philosophy and Predictive Processing, edited by Thomas Metzinger and Wanja Wiese. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group, 2017. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen. Film as Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

14 The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures A Phenomenological Approach to Cinema Hanna Trindade Introduction Edmund Husserl’s initial main ambition was to reformulate the very ground upon which philosophy was being produced, for he believed that philosophy was the science of our origins and, as such, it should not take anything for granted.1 If the main focus of philosophy until then was “what” the world is, then Husserlian phenomenology proposes rather to investigate the conditions for the manifestation of the world to us in the first place. In this sense phenomenology is not concerned with reality in itself (what is reality), but with the investigation of the manner in which the world manifests itself to consciousness (how reality appears) or, in other words, the structure of the relation between object and subject. Aiming to understand how this relation occurs, phenomenology develops itself as the description and structural analysis of the manner in which consciousness lives (erlebt) the world. The thematization of this correlation between the objectivity of the thing in the world and its subjective manner of givenness to consciousness constitutes the core of Husserlian thought: The fact which is naively taken for granted, that each person sees things and the world in general as they appear to him, concealed, as we now realize, a great horizon of remarkable truths whose uniqueness and systematic interconnection never entered the philosophical purview. The correlation between world (the world of which we always speak) and its subjective manners of givenness never evoked philosophical wonder (that is, prior to the first breakthrough of “transcendental phenomenology” in the Logical Investigations), in spite of the fact that it had made itself felt even in pre-Socratic philosophy and among the Sophists—though here only as a motive for skeptical argumentation. This correlation never aroused a philosophical interest of its own which could have made it the object of an appropriate scientific attitude. Philosophers were confined by what was taken for granted, i.e., that each thing appeared differently in each case to each person.2

240  Hanna Trindade As a philosophical movement, phenomenology is not, however, unitary. Different authors share Husserl’s ambition to investigate the structure of human experience, but they also present significant differences in their respective perspectives. So, what can a Husserlian approach specifically provide us in our study of films? What films attempt is precisely to express human experiences, reproducing all their basic features, putting into evidence the relation that we, as humans, entertain with our reality.3 A film is therefore not merely a mechanical record of facts, but a visual expression of an interpretation of the world. As the film director Andrei Tarkovsky affirms in his book Sculpting in Time: “I see chronicle, the recording of facts in time, as the ultimate cinema; for me it is not a way of filming but a way of reconstructing, of recreating life.”4 Later he adds: “In cinema, works of art seek to form a kind of concentration of experience, materialized by the artist in his film.”5 As we have seen, Husserlian phenomenology establishes itself as the method that develops a structural analysis of experience. Consequently, if we take cinema to be an experience (of the spectator) of an expression (of the filmmaker) of experience,6 then phenomenology becomes a particularly suitable perspective for understanding the seventh art. Cinema and media theorist Vivian Sobchack wrote extensively on the relation between cinema and phenomenology, and she affirms as follows: “In a search for rules and principles governing cinematic expression, most of the descriptions and reflections of classical and contemporary film theory have not fully addressed the cinema as life expressing life, as experience expressing experience.”7 Therefore, phenomenology allows us to explain how this precise manner of representation creates a specific type of experience for the viewer. To put it simply: it would be a matter of investigating the (viewer’s) experience of a (cinematographic) reproduction of an experience. But whereas Sobchack’s perspective focuses mainly on the structure of the “vision” of films (which is not limited to the simple “seeing” but comprehends, on the contrary, several structures such as perception, meaning, intersubjectivity and language), Husserl’s diversified writings allow us to go beyond and deepen our investigation of each structure of our filmic experience.8 While most film theories attempt to define the function that cinema may have or should have as an art (they are normative), a Husserlian approach would instead allow us to grasp the universality of filmic experience. It is always and for every possible film a matter of consciousness (the viewer) engaged in an act of apprehension of an object with a specific form and content (the film). How is this relationship constituted? Certainly, many structures of consciousness are at stake in the cinematographic experience, but for the moment we will focus our investigation on the two acts of consciousness that make our access to films possible in the first place: perception (we see images) and imagination (these images are a reproduction).

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 241

Image-Consciousness9 in the Apprehension of Films According to Husserl the notion of imagination designates a type of consciousness that we have regarding specific types of intentional experiences such as when we envision things that are not there. This imaginative consciousness is characterized as a unique type of apprehension that makes present what is not present, or, in other words, it is the presentification of what is absent. It is therefore what we commonly call a “re-presentation” (Ver-gegenwärtigung)—by contrast to representation (Vorstellung)—for the object is “presentified” again. In the large domain of the imaginative consciousness, Husserl distinguishes diverse types of experiences, depending on the type of object that is at stake (a unicorn is a purely mental representation, whereas a painting is a physical one). What concerns us directly here, however, is the domain of the “physical imagination.”10 It is the act through which consciousness relates to absent objects that appear through images with a physical support such as paintings or photographs, “hence those remarkable presentations in which a perceived object is designed to present and is capable of presenting (vorstellig machen) another object by means of resemblance; specifically, in the well-known way in which a physical image presents an original.”11 In this sense, in the physical imagination the object appears as if (als ob) it was actually here, but it is only presentified through an image. What consciousness aims at is not the image, but the object that is represented by this image, the object itself being absent. As Husserl affirms, this form of presentification presupposes thus what the philosopher calls a pictorialization (Verbildlichung). “Phantasy presentation seems to presuppose or claim for itself a new characteristic of apprehension; it is pictorialization (Verbildlichung)”;12 i.e., the representation of an object implies an image through which this object can appear. This type of imaginative representation has a specific structure. According to Husserl there are three elements that are part of it: (a) the physical thing: the material support upon which the image appears such as the canvas or the photographic paper; (b) the image-object (Bildobjekt): the image that appears, aka the representation; (c) the image-subject (Bildsubjekt): the object that is aimed at by the image aka the represented. If we take this distinction established by Husserl, in cinema we would find: (a) the physical thing: the screen where the film is exhibited; (b) the image-object: the frames of the film with their colors, sounds, depth, sharpness, etc.; (c) the image-subject: a situation, a landscape, a feeling, a historic character, etc. In films, however, there seems to be no distinction between the image-object and the image-subject. Due to the mechanical recording carried out by the camera, what appears is what is represented: “Since the filmic representation of a random object is identical to the representation of this object ‘grasped by consciousness,’ I would perceive

242  Hanna Trindade it in the same way as the real. In other words, in films the representation identifies itself to the represented.”13 Certainly, a film is a projection of images or more precisely frames on a screen, but these images are of something real. From the point of view of the represented (imagesubject), the camera guarantees that the image reproduces faithfully all the objective characteristics of the apparition of the real thing that is represented.14 In this sense, the frame presents us the real as it gives itself. For instance, in his film Germany Year Zero (1948) Roberto Rossellini seeks to show us the conditions of people living in Berlin right after the end of World War II, and to that intent he faithfully recreated the setting of what was the actually destroyed Berlin. Moreover, beyond depicting the real, different types of framing15 can assist the filmmaker not only in capturing reality as such, but also in showing us aspects of it that are often neglected. Through the extreme close-up, for example, we see what is normally invisible to the naked eye. Thus, in formal terms, imageobject and image-subject are equalized. Consequently, if every image is characterized by its capacity for presentification of an object as if it was there, in films this character reaches its maximum power. In terms of fidelity to what appears, the image from the camera reproduces all the objective characteristics of the apparition of the real thing it represents,16 as André Bazin affirms: The objective nature of photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other picture making. In spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-presented, set before us, that is to say, in time and space. Photography enjoys a certain advantage in virtue of this transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction.17 However, this record of the real is subjectively manipulated. Each framing presupposes a choice of perspective, and this implies that every frame is the result of a personal view, as the cinematographer Philippe Rousselot affirms: The images that the brain retains are not really “objective;” each one reconstructs the world in their own manner and only sees what they want. The objective of the camera, no more so than the filmstrip, does not choose, does not select; it is important thus to do this work that the brain effectuates, to make these choices, to mark these preferences, a work of reconciliation between the mechanical image taken by the machine and our desire to see and to understand.18 From the point of view of the representation (image-object), the subjective organization of the image modifies the manner in which the real is

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 243 represented. Therefore, although on one hand the camera allows an identification between represented and representation, on the other hand this equalization remains always incomplete, since the frame is an image of the real seen and grasped by someone; i.e., it is interpreted. Each choice of each different component that composes the frame entails the selection not only of an angle of perspective, but most of all of a specific manner of capturing the real.19 The use of certain elements aims precisely at specific dramatic effects. For example, in Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) the entire narrative of the prosecution is told through closeups of a suffering Joan of Arc and of her angry accusers. This type of shot makes it possible for the spectator to grasp the sentimental and psychological aspect of the situation, rather than merely an understanding of the facts of the trial. Consequently, the image-subject in cinema cannot be understood as a raw reality recorded, since there is a signification added to the representation through the simple choice of a framing. What is aimed for is not the real object that the image-object faithfully represents, but also the manner in which this image-object appears; i.e., we also envision a characterization of the real it represents. The image-object and image-subject may be thus equalized in a purely formal manner, but the truthful image-subject of each frame is not the real “in itself,” but a real seen in such or such way. Therefore, to analyze the cinematographic image taking into consideration only one of its dimensions (the realism of the represented or the manipulation of the representation) would be to reduce cinema to only one of its capacities. The question that remains is how the spectator apprehends this image of an interpreted real. Let us take the example of the several portraits of Joan of Arc created throughout the history of cinema.20 First of all, in every case the “physical thing screen” announces to us that we envision something that is not present here, but only reproduced. Second, with regard to the “imageobject frame,” we see at each instance a woman framed within a certain depth, with certain tones, wearing certain clothes, etc. Here we perform a merely objective analysis: what do we perceive in this image? When it comes to the “image-subject interpreted real,” however, we see not only a woman in each portrait, but particular characterizations of the same person. As soon as we regard not the image, but what the image represents, we live in “the consciousness of the image character” (Bildlichkeitsbewusstsein), “a unique and absolutely primitive image consciousness, a consciousness just as primitive and ultimate as the perceptual consciousness or consciousness of the present.”21 In this case we do not focus on the image itself, but what is represented by it: towards what this image sends me. A  feeling, an idea, a place. Strictly, however, when looking at the frame we perceive only a woman; her characterization does not appear. In other words, the subjective perspective of the person “Joan” does not effectively appear on the screen; perceptually we see only features that aim at depicting “Joan” somehow: a specific lighting around

244  Hanna Trindade her body, a close shot that shows her tears falling, a warrior costume, etc. It is through the reproduction of these characteristics that a specific characterization (image-subject) is “presentified” on the frame (imageobject). As Husserl affirms regarding the physical image: What does actually exist there, apart from the “painting” as a physical thing, the piece of canvas with its determinate distribution of color pigments, is a certain complex of sensations that the spectator contemplating the painting experiences in himself, as well as the apprehension and meaning that he bases on this complex so that the consciousness of the image occurs for him.22 The image is only an objective complexion of sensations (colors, sizes, shapes, distances, costumes, etc.) that as a whole, however, guides us towards what it represents: “warrior Joan of Arc,” “saint Joan of Arc,” “human Joan of Arc,” etc. With regards to the “physical thing screen” and the “image-object frame,” therefore, we have perceptual apprehensions. We see the screen upon which images are projected, and the latter offer us sensations: we listen, we watch, we feel nauseated.23 However, the perception of the image-object distinguishes itself from the perception of the physical thing. The first concerns the apprehension of a touchable and manageable object, the screen that is located in our immediate field of perception; whereas the second directs itself to a visual object, the frames on the screen, which in turn, due to their nature, constantly appeal to another type of apprehension that attaches itself to it. The imaginative apprehension edifies itself on this perceptual apprehension and modifies it. “The new apprehension (the imaginative apprehension), however, is not something attached to the image appearance in a merely external way, not something connected with it only from without. The new apprehension permeates the old and has absorbed it into itself . . . the image object makes intuitable what, indeed, is not identical to it but is more or less like it or similar to it in content.”24 We could therefore affirm that the type of apprehension of the cinematographic image is a perceptualimaginative one, since there is something that presently appears perceptually, but through which we intuit a non-present that is there represented. This happens because the frame presents something other than itself: the “image-subject interpreted real.” Certainly, the characterization is not present here and now; rigorously only the image-object appears, but in it the represented is awoken by its representation. The image-subject thus has to be intuited from what is objectively depicted in the frames. Consequently, we can apprehend the image-subject “saint Joan of Arc” only on the basis of the image-object that appears perceptually on the screen: a woman with a humble physiognomy, wearing simple clothes and surrounded by a glowing light. Thus, if we apprehend the image-object

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 245 through perception, we apprehend the image-subject through an imagination that is born out of this perception. We perceive an image of the real, but we imagine a represented real. This intuition of a non-effectively present can be produced only due to the role of fictum played by the frames, on the basis of which a representative consciousness takes place. As Husserl affirms, “while we imagine the subject, the picture as a spatially present physical: Thing and the picture as a figment, as the bearer of imagining, in fact lie within our view.”25 This means that the image-object is an object of perception that appears as any other object in my perceptual field, but since it represents something else, it is necessarily in conflict with other objects that appear in my current present. Composition26 thus becomes of major importance since the choice of composition offers the director the possibility of controlling everything that is perceptual, as the filmmaker Robert Bresson affirms in an interview: “It seems to me that composition is a very important thing and perhaps even a film is born from the composition. . . . Indeed, we take elements that already exist; so, what matters is the closeness between things and, through it, ultimately, the composition.”27 Given that a film is primarily visual and that the viewer has access to only what actually appears in the image, it is through the organization of all the components of the frame that film directors can express their interpretations. As spectators, we can only intuit the subject through what is perceptually depicted in the frame, and consequently, to awaken our imagination and make us envision the represented that he/she intends, the filmmaker needs to organize not only the dramatic dimension (content), but also the aesthetic one (form), which gives a perceptual form to his/her personal perspective. It is thus the perception of contents with specific forms that will give birth to the imaginative apprehension of a proper characterization of the real that seeks to be expressed. We know, for instance, that different color palettes generate different sorts of sensations: light tones are most often soothing, whilst dark tones inspire gravity. “The colors are a precious help to the filmmaker. Consciously chosen according to their emotional effect and well-adjusted to one another, they can add an artistic quality to the film that it would not have without them.”28 A filmmaker can therefore use colors to guide the emotions of the spectators, as the Wachowsky sisters do in their film The Matrix (1999). A palette of greens is used throughout the entire movie whenever the characters are in the virtual and illusory reality of the matrix. These tones recreate an atmosphere reminiscent of the old monitors of monochrome computers, enhancing the virtual aspect of the matrix. The tones used in the “real world” are rather blue, blue being a reassuring, soothing color. In this way, the image-object gives us perceptual traces so that we can, as the basis of them, better imagine the absent real that it represents. It is precisely here that the fictum/imaginatum conflict of which Husserl speaks is established, i.e., the conflict between the image-object, which is

246  Hanna Trindade perceptual, but which functions as a support for the subject-image, and the subject-image, which is imaginary. Two spheres cross each other on the apprehension of the frame. As Husserl points out: Or better still: the image object appears and is the bearer of the consciousness of the subject. The apprehension contents are used up for this appearance. A second apprehension—the paper apprehension— is also there in a certain way, connected with the continuously united apprehension pertaining to our field of regard; it is excited by it. However, while the rest of the field of regard enters into appearance, the paper apprehension itself is not an appearance, since it has been deprived of apprehension contents. Its apprehension contents now function as the apprehension contents of the image object. And yet it belongs to these apprehension contents: in short, there is conflict. But in a peculiar way. The image object does triumph, insofar as it comes to appearance. The apprehension contents are permeated by the image-object apprehension; they fuse into the unity of the appearance.29 On one side we find the domain of the effective reality where perception apprehends everything that is perceptually present now in front of us on the screen. This ordinary perception includes both the fact that the film is given as a “physical thing” in our perceptual field—and thanks to that we are aware of being in the real space where our body is—and also the fact that this object presents a perceptual content, the “image-object frames,” which aims to reproduce the reality itself. Thanks to this, on the other side this perception appeals to imagination that directs us to something that is not there right now, but only represented through the frames. We find here the domain of imagination in which a non-present “appears,” but is separated from the effective space: “The following is the difference between figment and image: The genuine figment directly appears in the unity of reality, while the image does not genuinely ‘appear’ in that unity but in its own space, which in itself has no direct relation to real space.”30 Throughout the entire exhibition of the film, these two types of consciousness will remain “in conflict,” making the filmic experience ambiguous: we perceive an “object-film” before us at this precise moment, with its own perceptual content (as any other object in our environment), but it is an object that sends us to our own world recomposed into images. For this reason, the filmic experience always has a double dimension: on one hand, it is first of all always the perceptual experience of an object in the world; but on the other hand, this object has the characteristic of expressing an interpretation of the real by images in such a way that the perception of this object will always solicit an imagination that can send us back to what is expressed. This structuration is further complicated by the fact that due to the device of filmic creation, the content expressed by the

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 247 image reproduces the manner of givenness corresponding to reality’s own manner of givenness (we shall analyze this point in detail when discussing the next topic). Thus, everything seems to have already been shown and therefore apprehended by perception. This point is emphasized by Husserl himself in his writings about faithful reproductive creations: Deception and sensory illusion of the sort belonging to panorama images, cinematographic images, and the like, depend on the fact that the appearing objects in their whole appearing state are slightly or imperceptibly different from the objects appearing in normal perception. One can know in these cases that these are mere image objects, though one cannot vitally sense this. The character of perception (with respect to the object, the character of factual existence) conflicts with the character of mere imaging, which presupposes that what is depicted (in the act) does not factually exist, that there is a difference between the factually existing image and the thing itself.31 And yet an imaginative consciousness is always there, at disposal, since the purpose of an image is to give us an absent image-subject by a present image-object. As a result of this fact, we are constantly expected to recognize that despite its realism, a film is only an image, and therefore, only an imagination built on the perception of this perceptual object that will allow us to intuit the content expressed. For this reason, we say that we live in a conflict between perception and imagination, between the recognition of a present reality and the lived experience of an imaginary real. The fact that the film, as an image, involves a triple structuration, consequently, offers us the possibility to choose which dimension of our apprehension we wish to focus on: the perceptual dimension or the imaginative one. We can, for example, choose to pay attention to the fact that it is only an object in front of us, and in this case, we simply admire the television on which the film is appearing. Or we can take the film as a mere image and judge its aesthetic and/or dramatic aspect alone. (Is this composition adequate? Do the actors perform well?) It all depends on what we are aiming to achieve through our apprehension. But we can also choose to go beyond the simple image-object and focus on the image-subject expressed, and this second choice is precisely the one that the filmmaker wishes we adopt—and it is the attitude we adopt most often. The objective of the existence of a film is usually to transmit to us something beyond its compositional plans, which are only there to make our access to the image-subject possible, as the filmmaker Sidney Lumet reminds us in his book Making Movies: “The objective of films has always been to tell a story.”32 Since the objective is for the spectator to be able to envision the “image-subject interpreted real,” the spectators are invited to engage themselves in this quest. “The perceived world, as in ordinary perception, challenges the viewer, requires his/her commitment

248  Hanna Trindade to make sense.”33 To apprehend the film not as a simple image, but as the truthful representation of an interpreted real, we have to accept to “play the game” and live in the fictum/imaginatum conflict: perceive what is present and imagine what is expressed. In other words, we adopt an ambiguous attitude according to which we are aware, in an implicit manner, of being in the real world, apprehending an “object,” while simultaneously being aware of perceiving an imaginary real. And because we are tacitly conscious of this gap, the filmmaker must find ways to direct the viewer, by perception, so that he/she can easily adhere to the imagination that the perceptual content aims to activate. The major consequence of these facts is that the spectator hereby acquires an active role, since we choose to what extent we want to engage ourselves in the imaginative dimension. It is a choice on our part, because we implicitly know that it is an image, but we accept to live as if it were a plain perception: Having become a sort of perceived real, the imaginary gives itself to me as an objective reality, but as I know that this reality is imaginary, I can always refuse to submit myself to it and to participate. I have, to a certain extent, more freedom in front of it. My participation is always the result of a voluntary act, of a consent submission.34 Admittedly, this submission is relatively easy in the cinema, due to the ability of the camera to bring the object-image close to the subject-image. Nevertheless, this does not prevent the fact that the viewer must deliberately consent to accept the perceptual content that this apprehension offers, as the scholar Bruno Trentini argues: Being a spectator means already adopting a certain attitude towards the film. As the actor must see a performance on the screen, the viewer “plays the game” and, in most cases, deliberately accepts their role. A kind of cultural pact thus establishes a relationship in which the spectator watches a film precisely in order to be directed.35 To assist the spectator in this choice of living the imagination of a reality, the filmmaker makes use of movement, providing us with not only the reproduction of features of the real, but the reproduction of the movement of this real as well. Therefore, not only is our initial access to the image perceptive, but the content that it provides us with also reproduces the features of a perception of the world.

Kinesthetic-Consciousness36 in the Apprehension of Films According to Husserl the notion of (outer) perception characterizes the manner in which consciousness relates to objects called “physical.” This includes every sort of act through which we grasp these objects: touching,

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 249 feeling, hearing, tasting, etc. Through them, we access the properties of the objects in a specific manner: they appear to us as something that is present here and now, and for this reason perception is defined by Husserl as a presentation. If on one side perception is perception of something objective (Gegenständlichen), then on the other side it must always be the act of a “perceiving I” that aims at this object. Every appearance implies not only something that appears but also someone to whom the apparition manifests itself. This means that two things have to be considered in the perceptive experience: the act itself performed by a subject and the object in the flesh. Concerning the object in the flesh, there are distinctive properties that belong to it, but they appear only to subjects. This implies that to describe the apparition of an object means describing the distinctive parts and features of the perception that expose this specific object. Consequently, phenomenology does distinguish the content of a perception of an object and the content of the object itself. Although the object has particular properties, perception exposes them to consciousness in a certain manner. In other words, I perceive the object with the qualities that belong to it, but these qualities are also lived through perception or, in Husserlian words: “The sensed red is a real (reell) moment of the perception itself. The perception contains the moment red, but it is not itself red; red is not a ‘property’ or feature of perception but a feature of the perceived thing.”37 These objective features are the physical data of the object itself, its matter. How does this matter become sensation to consciousness? In reality, the properties on their own are not enough to make the object appear, since an object is not the simple sum of emitted qualities. For this reason, according to Husserl, the physical data given by the object undergo an apprehension (Auffassung) from us.38 This apprehension animates the content, which in itself is only materials, by exposing it to consciousness in the form of sensations: “The contents of sensation undergo apprehension. These contents would in themselves be, as it were, dead matter, but through the apprehension they acquire animating significance in such a way that they are able to present an object. In this regard, we name the contents presentational contents, in contrast to what is presented in them, namely the determinations of the object.”39 We therefore find a distinction between the objective determinations exposed by the object and the form through which this same content reaches consciousness, which we call exposing contents (or sensation contents). Through them, the objective world becomes accessible to us, not as an accumulation of brute matter, but rather as contents rich in color, flavor and smell. This access is, however, limited. We can perceive only one side of the object at a time. Moreover, objects always appear to a subject, which is a consciousness incarnated in a body. In this sense, there is no “pure” point of view, and there is no standpoint from nowhere; there are only incarnated perspectives, for each apparition is proffered to a subject that also occupies a place in space. This implies

250  Hanna Trindade that there is an “an essential inadequacy in every individual outer perception”40 since due to the spatiality of things and of our own bodies, we are able to grasp the entire object, but only unilaterally, one part at a time. In this regard, the camera seems to operate in a similar manner to the subject. Its function is to record what takes place in front of it in the flesh, in the hic et nunc of the recording. Furthermore, as an incarnated subject, a machine, the camera also occupies a position in space, for it has to be placed somewhere. This choice of a point of view is made by the cinematographer,41 in such a manner that although the take is captured by a machine, the apprehension of the camera is not objective as we tend to believe, but always the result of a subjective deliberation. For this reason, what we could call the “perception of the camera,” like our ordinary perception, accesses one profile of the scene at a time, and this access is produced in a certain manner, from a specific perspective selected by a subject, hence the work of framing. Besides reproducing these two characteristics of human perception, unilaterality and subjectivity, the composition appears as the organization of the manner in which this scene will be recorded (in colors, the focal distance, the scale, etc.). This implies that although the filmed thing possesses such and such physical qualities, the camera, just as a consciousness, exposes these properties to the spectator in a certain way. Thus, for each quality of the perceived thing, we find a way in which this quality is composed by the filmmaker. Through this composition, simple physical data become “sensations”; i.e., they are supposed to be felt by the spectator in a specific manner. For this reason, just as the real world is not for us a mere sum of emitted qualities, but the result of infinite subjective manners of givenness, the represented in cinema is also not a raw real, but the result of a choice of personal representation: “Rather, however mechanical its origin, the moving picture is experienced semiotically as also intentional and subjective, as presenting a representation of the objective world.”42 Through their composition, the filmmaker can show us a world that is not a simple accumulation of materials, but rich in colors, perspectives, depth, etc. Given that the manner in which the filmmaker grasps reality through images is similar to the manner in which the subject perceives the real, what we ultimately see on the shot is the reproduction of a perception of the world.43 The spatial experience that we live in cinema can first be described as similar to the one we have in the context of current perception, by virtue of the strong impression of reality constitutive of the cinematographic spectacle. The latter is due to the photographic nature of the image, to the perceptual richness of the visual and sonorous material that it contains, to the acceptable illusion of three-dimensionality associated with its perceptual code.44 How is this reproduced perception apprehended by the spectator? Here we need to remember the triple structure of the frame: physical object,

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 251 image-object, image-subject. Due to these three dimensions, different types of perception will be at stake in the cinematographic experience. The first perceptual apprehension grasps the “physical thing screen” as an ordinary object in our field of perception: we perceive the screen in the same manner that we perceive the chairs around us. The second perceptual apprehension is that of the “image-object frame”: As a fictum the image gives itself as something perceptual, as a complexion of sensations displayed on the screen. Precisely due to its role as fictum, the image appeals to something else: the scene represented or the image-subject. Being absent, this image-subject, in its turn, has to be accessed by imagination. But if the scene is represented through a copy of the features of a possible perception of this scene, then what we see is a representation of a perception of the scene. Here we find a third type of perception: it is a matter of an ordinary perception reproduced in the film. Being a representation, this “ordinary perception reproduced” is accessed by imagination, but what we aim at is still a perception: it is an imagination of a perception. Therefore, we find a triple-folded perception in the cinema: an ordinary perception of the screen (physical thing) with the perceptual content of the frames (image-object) that presents a reproduction of an ordinary perception (image-subject). Because films are inherently representational and realist, these three types of perception will play different roles in the global frame of our experience. Since the image is a representation (i.e., a presentation of something absent), we are able to perform a perceptual apprehension of the screen and the frames and simultaneously access another perception, the one reproduced in the film, of which we have no control. If in the movie theater we can choose to what extent we engage our ordinary perception regarding the film, we have no influence over the perception that is reproduced on the film. The latter is put at a distance from us by the screen, which circumscribes the world of the image and detaches it from our englobing environment. In addition, the composition and the framing chosen transform the reality captured by the camera in a plastic and autonomous configuration of the world, which acquires its own structure, folded on itself on the screen. Thus, a certain distance is always imposed on us, since we cannot detach ourselves from our ordinary perceptions, which keep us in the real space of the present moment in the movie theater. In this sense, What happens on the screen is and is not a perceptive content. On the one hand, it is truthfully what I perceive and, specifically in cinema, its content can mime the path of a mind; but on the other hand, it is only a question of an object, of configurations upon a screen, upon which I cannot act.45 But other than representational, the image is also realist. Through the movements of the camera, the film director aims at making the real visible.

252  Hanna Trindade And yet the subjectivity of the filmmaker is imprinted on the image, although due to its photographic nature, we tend to take the image as objective. From the moment the filmmaker positions the camera, it is the world with its objective characteristics that is recorded, but this is necessarily charged with subjectivity due to the choice of perspective. Precisely for this reason, the reproduced perception of the film functions as a copy of our unilateral and subjective ordinary perception. Consequently, realism inscribes itself in the frame not only through its capacity to record the real, but mainly through its capacity to reproduce a real perception, what Célia Zernik calls a perceptive realism of the image, That testifies of the impossibility of grasping the world without involving a look . . . rather than realism, we should speak of “cinematographic perceptivism,” a notion that would take into account the possibilities for cinema to reconnect with ordinary perception, precisely because it is always subjective and partial.46 This resemblance between perception in film and ordinary perception makes it possible for the spectator to enter the space of a film, since we do not merely see a separate world anymore, but rather identify a perception of our world. We are thus invited to participate in this perception with the filmmaker: It is not anymore a matter of seeing a film as an object opposed to us, but of living this reproduced ordinary perception. In this sense, the realist dimension makes us forget the distance imposed by our ordinary perception, while in the movie theater, and on the contrary guarantees our participation in the filmic space. This presence is what allows us to engage our bodies in this purely represented perception: we recognize not only a reproduced ordinary perception; we effectively feel the data that this representative perception offers us. Certainly, we still cannot interfere with the space of the image; we cannot choose which way the camera points, but we are nevertheless engaged in the filmic space. Perception is therefore our means to access the image, which is a physical object present in the flesh in front of us on the screen but is also an essential feature of the “object-film” itself. On one hand, the representative dimension imposes a distance between us and the filmic space. The screen and the image keep us in the space of our ordinary perception. On the other hand, the realist dimension invites us to participate in the film. The reproduction of the features of the act of perception allows us to immerge in the space of an ordinary perception different to ours. For this reason, the film puts our consciousness in an ambiguous position: we find ourselves in the real space of our immediate field of perception, although we immerse ourselves in a perception reproduced in a realist manner: We are conscious of being seated in a chair, of course, because our consciousness is not lost of our I, any more than our consciousness

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 253 of our body; but if we are aware of being in a movie theater, we perceive an image that substitutes every other perception and that gives us an almost total illusion of real perception. We are thus in front of a quasi-real whose mobility entices us and seems to attest of its evidence.47 As one can notice in the preceding passage, this immersion is made possible by the camera’s movements. If what the camera records is what the spectator sees on the screen, the camera functions as the eyes of the spectator in the space of the film, assuming by proxy the role of our bodies: “Cinema brings my eye right to the middle of the image. I see things from the space of the film.”48 What appears in-screen would consist thus of what Husserl calls a proper apparition. According to Husserl due to its unilaterality, perception accesses only the exposition of the complexion of physical data of a part of the object; it cannot perceive all sides at once. The apparition of the side of the object that we perceive in this instant is called a “proper apparition,” since we effectively access all the properties that are being provided right now. However, due to the unilaterality of the frame, there are always other sides of the scene that we do not access in this moment. This is the off-screen, which gives itself in an improper manner, since we do not see what is left outside the frame. Of this part we do not have any information since its contents do not appear to us. And yet the objective determinations corresponding to this hidden side are apprehended by us, albeit in an “improper” manner. On the basis of what appears in-screen we can anticipate what will appear next, in the same manner that we do not forget what has disappeared from the frame: It might be said that the front side of the house finds perceptual presentation, the other sides imaginative presentation. But then we would have to ask: what supplies the unity? The front side refers to the back side; the back side to the front. In other words, the perceptual presentation of the front side is bound up with components of apprehension, ones which refer beyond it to a back side, and the imaginative presentation is bound up no less to components which refer to the front side.49 What constitutes the perceptual process is thus a dynamic between a complex of proper apparitions and a complex of improper ones. While a certain fragment of the object appears to us properly, hidden sides appear improperly. But as we turn the object and the hidden parts start to show, we access qualities of the other side of the object, which then appears properly. As follows, for this dynamic to happen we need to be able to access different sides of the object, and this happens through mobility. In cinema likewise, this dynamic between what Antoine Gaudin calls the “permanence effect” of the frame and an “anticipation effect” makes it possible for us to always visualize more than what the frame offers in this

254  Hanna Trindade exact instant. Therefore, the space of the image extends beyond the limits of the frame, in such a manner that movements entertain this dynamic: “(In the cinema) there is a specific and mobile engagement of embodied and enworlded subjects/objects whose visual/visible activity prospects and articulates a shifting field of vision from a world that always exceeds it.”50 This constant dynamic between on-screen and off-screen produced by the camera movements makes it possible for the spatiality and integrality of the action to appear, and that is precisely the function of the shot, for a shot consists in an uninterrupted take51 of a scene, situation, action, character, etc. For this reason, through the shot a same “thing” is aimed at, but the movement of the camera offers us several perspectives of it. Here, the mobility of the camera acts as our own mobility. In this sense, the changing of the frames in the constitution of the shot works as the changing of perspective in our perception, whereas the space of the scene works as the object of our perception. The global content of the scene remains thus unchanged; its physical data is the same, but the form of its givenness changes according to the chosen movement, i.e., its position regarding the camera and consequently the spectator. This change allows us to access new relevant information of the narrative. For instance, the cinematographer might operate a close-up, revealing a specific object in the space, or a panoramic might show us the surroundings of a character. In this manner, two aspects are at stake in every shot: the content of the scene and the movements of the camera that discover this content in a specific manner. The “content” of the shot is nothing more than what we call the dramatic aspect, i.e., the mise-en-scène of the space. Strictly, we have things in the flesh (actors, settings, costumes, etc.) with their physical determinations (colors, shapes, sizes, etc.). These determinations are apprehended by the camera, which by capturing them animates them in a certain way. This manner of animation depends on the composition of the film’s aesthetic aspects (lenses, scale, focal distance, etc.). Thus, through composition, the space does not appear to us on screen as a pure sum of physical things. On the contrary, the camera exposes this space and its content in a precise way: we do not only see things, but also grasp the manner in which they appear. For this reason, we could say that the contents offered to us by the camera are, in Husserlian terminology, exposing sensations, since we do not simply grasp the raw qualities of the filmic space; we sense this space. Let us remember what Husserl says: “These contents would in themselves be, as it were, dead matter, but through the apprehension they acquire animating significance in such a way that they are able to present an object.”52 The same object can be exposed in black and white, blurred, close-up, with little light or even from far away; each representation will provide us distinct sensations, and yet in terms of physical qualities, we still aim at the same object. The spectator thus has access

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 255 to the space of the image through these exposing sensations provided by the shot. Several elements of the composition can assist in this access. By playing with the depth of field, for instance, the filmmaker can make us aware of the scope of the space of the action. This is the case of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941). Throughout an entire sequence, the depth of field is regularly changed to provide new information to the spectator, who, in contrast to the character in the foreground, hereby gains access to everything that happens in the entire framed space. This is the result of the work of the camera, which through different sorts of techniques can bring to the fore new objects, new characters or new perspectives. The sensations provided by the filmic space are constantly changing, and through it we have the possibility of exploring this space, which in the long term assists us in our understanding of the narrative. The discovery of the filmic space through camera movements can happen only because the camera functions by proxy as our eyes and takes us with it on its journey. This specific position of the camera is what determinates the apparition of the contents of this fragment of the scene and not another: “Thus the side possesses a relation not only to the thing but also to the empirical Ego and to the relation between the two. Therefore, the side is something subjective, it is ‘my perceptual appearance,’ which belongs to me insofar as I  occupy this or that position relative to the thing.”53 Therefore, through movement, new data regarding the scene is given to us, but we also have what Husserl calls movement sensations: our bodies feel that our position has changed regarding it. Given that every perception is the relation of a consciousness to an object, we need to take into account not only the exposition of the content of the scene that appears, but also the moving (or kinesthetic) sensations of the perceiving subject (i.e., the camera and by proxy the spectator) that allow the content of the scene to be exposed. Even though kinesthesis does not have the function of exposing the content of the object, it is nonetheless incorporated (eigelegt) to the subject’s body. This means that the passage of an exposing sensation to another has an effect on us, and the localization of these affections on our body characterizes what we call kinesthetic sensations: (The sensations of movement) play an essential role in the apprehension of every external thing, but they are not themselves apprehended in such a way that they make representable either a proper or an improper matter; they do not belong to the “projection” of the thing. Nothing qualitative corresponds to them in the thing, nor do they adumbrate bodies or present them by way of projection. And yet without their cooperation there is no body there, no thing.54 Through movement, thus, it becomes possible for the spectator to have kinesthetic sensations, although our bodies are not truly in the space

256  Hanna Trindade of the shot. This happens because, as we can notice in the preceding passages, a kinesthetic consciousness is nothing other than an implicit consciousness of our own movement: our body feels that our position regarding the object has changed and that through this change, we have access to new data. Thus, kinesthetic experience does not belong to the perceived object, but is felt in our body as a result of our interaction with the object. The movement of the camera offers us this feeling, since its shots offer precisely a continuous changing of perspective regarding the space of the film. The passage from one exposing sensation to another through movement has an effect on us, and this effect changes according to the chosen movement. There is therefore a direct relation between the exposing content and the movement sensations. A specific camera movement will provide specific information about the space of the image in a specific manner, producing certain sensations in the spectator: Movement is the alpha and omega of the medium. Now the sight of it seems to have a “resonance effect,” provoking in the spectator such kinesthetic responses as muscular reflexes, motor impulses or the like. In any case, objective movement acts as a physiological stimulus. . . . It is our sense organs which are called into play.55 This feeling is what allows us not only to discover the space of the film, but to live it as ours, since it enables us to feel part of this space. This feeling on our bodies generated by the shot is what enables the generation of affectivity.56 The notion of affectivity that we take into consideration here is that of Husserl’s, when he affirms: “ ‘to affect’ means . . . to attract interest to oneself.”57 In the case of films, this interest is precisely achieved through our participation in the space of the film made possible by the reproduction of a moving perception, making us feel as if we were there. We then speak of affectivity as the viewer’s capacity of “presence” in the space of the film—and consequently the possibility of our organism to respond to this space through this participation—made possible through the movements of the camera. If the scene portrays a scary situation, the filmmaker will move the camera in order to make the spectator be affected with fear, for instance, by slowly approaching a closed door behind which one can hear screams. The composition also assists in the production of affectivity here. In his most recent film, mother! (2017), Darren Aronofsky often places the camera extremely close to the main character, and as she moves around her house, we move with her. When strange events start happening in her house and unknown people start appearing in every room, we feel as lost as her, and as she turns around the house in circles and progressively discovers more unfamiliar faces, objects and situations, the movement of the camera, always following her steps closely, makes us share her dizziness and confusion regarding

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 257 the space and the narrative. Thus, the identification of the camera movements with our own makes it possible for us to live the reproduced perception of the shot as our own, and consequently we are affected by the filmic space as if we were effectively there.

Conclusion Apart from image and movement, films are composed of many other structures such as time and meaning. Nevertheless, throughout the entire history of cinema, image and movement have been the two components common to every film, which led many to define films as “moving pictures.” By taking into consideration only these two major structures of films, we hopefully have already begun to understand—although not in an extensive manner—the experience of watching a film. The phenomenological approach of the moving pictures that we have tried to outline here has provided us with two conclusions regarding the viewer’s experience: (a) that we play an active role and (b) that we are affected by film. The first is the result of the conflict that a film generates in our consciousness between our perception of the image and our imagination of the real depicted. Because the film is first of all made of images, an imageconsciousness is produced that allows us to intuit the “image-subject interpreted real” depicted through the “image-object frame.” The perception of the latter produces the imagination of the first. And yet, although the image aims at making visible something other than itself, we can choose to what extent we will concede our attention to this imaginative dimension or if we will rather focus merely on what appears perceptually. For this reason, the viewer has the choice to embrace the world represented through images, or to remain in the present reality of the movie theater. Usually our choice for the first option is facilitated by the fact that beyond being a copy of reality, due to the movement of the camera, what appears in the image is not only the real but the reproduction of a perception of this real. Consequently, the imagination awoken by the film is the imagination of a perception of the world, and for this reason the imaginative dimension resembles a perceptual one. The faithful reproduction of a perception through the shot makes it easier for the viewer to accept this imaginative dimension, for we recognize in the shot a way to grasp the world that is similar to ours. We identify the movements of the camera as our own, and as a consequence we are able to be affected by the filmic space as if we were there. We feel like we actually participate in the film, since our own bodies are affected by the things and situations portrayed. Therefore, what Husserlian phenomenology shows us is that we do not simply watch a movie; rather we feel the movie, as the simple engagement of our perception and imagination allows us. The frame demands that we deliberately choose to engage ourselves, and it does so by affecting us through movement and making us thus present in its space.

258  Hanna Trindade Here we focused on only the general perceptual and imaginative aspects of our cinematographic experience; much is still left to be said. Hopefully this brief analysis should already show us that understanding the manner in which we apprehend films is key to understanding the essence of this form of art and the uniqueness of the type of experience that it creates for us. Through Husserl’s writings we find the possibility to analyze cinema without limiting ourselves to a pure aesthetic, ontological or cognitive point of view, but rather from a phenomenological perspective, precisely. From this standpoint, the question to be raised is not “what is a film,” “how do we know films” or even “how we do evaluate/appreciate films,” but rather “how do we live them.” Since cinema provides us experiences of experiences, when we grasp a film, we are faced with a multilayered encounter. But precisely due to this complex structuration of such experience, a broader perspective on filmic experience, without the limitation to a single aspect, could also be fruitful. In other words, if we want to grasp the richness of cinema, it would not suffice to explain it through, for example, a point of view of a pure aesthetic attitude or a simple analysis of cognitive acts. We would need an approach that offers us the possibility of taking all these spheres into account, without, however, reducing cinema to only one of them. What we tried to show here is how Husserlian phenomenology could provide us this opportunity. Although in this paper we limited ourselves to a general analysis of two basic structures that are essential in our filmic experiences, we should not restrict ourselves to it, but rather see it as a starting point, since what phenomenology allows us is precisely to approach cinema as the lived experience that it is: we do not simply see a movie or judge it; we live it. After all, paraphrasing Godard, what is film other than life 24 times per second?

Notes 1 The evolution of phenomenology led Husserl and his “followers” to develop different approaches regarding the general movement that we call “phenomenology.” It becomes particularly apparent when looking at the difference between “pure phenomenology” and “phenomenological philosophy.” Pure phenomenology is concerned with the investigation of the transcendental structure of consciousness and not of factual experiences, whereas phenomenological philosophy could be defined as the philosophical perspective through which one can describe the correlation subject/object (which includes concrete instances of this correlation). This paper can be positioned between these two approaches. We seek to unfold the general (or in Husserlian terms “eidetic”) structures of consciousness in its experience of the world. But the aim of describing such structures is to allow us to understand how these structures operate in our concrete experience of films. 2 Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Northwestern University Press, 1970), §48, 165. 3 Such “reproduction of life” is most easily noticeable in the case of fictional movies that aim at telling a story through what we consider to be a logic

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 259 pattern of our reality. But this attempt to express cinematographically the relation between us and the things that surround us is valid also for the case of documentaries or even non-fictional (or non-narrative) films. Taking the example of Luis Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929), where sensu stricto there is no story, it is still nevertheless a matter of expressing an oneiric or unconscious dimension of life. 4 Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (University of Texas Press, 1989), 64/65. 5 Ibid., 85. 6 Or, as Vivian Sobchack affirms in her book The Address of the Eye: “What else is a film if not ‘an expression of experience by experience’?” Vivian Sobchack, The Address of the Eye. A  Phenomenology of Film Experience (Princeton University Press, 1992), 3. 7 Ibid., 5. 8 The Husserlian approach to films we propose here is a similar enterprise to Vivien Sobchack’s one in The Address of the Eye. According to Sobchack, cinema is not only an object of vision, but it is rather a bilateral experience that depends on two “viewers” who are both the subject and object of the experience: the spectator and the film. In this sense, our analysis is deeply inspired by Sobchack’s approach, given that we also aim to take the film as both an object for experience (for the viewer) and as an object that is an experience (in itself). However, if Sobchack draws attention particularly to the act of watching a film, a Husserlian approach would allow us to acquire a broader perspective, taking the filmic experience as an apprehension that comprehends a multitude of acts and structures, including the vision, but not limited to it (such as imagination, time, space, movement, etc.). Although in this particular article our approach will be closely related to Sobchack’s, since we will limit the analysis to only that of perception and imagination in films, we hope it will still allow the reader to envision the potential of Husserl’s writings on the understanding of filmic experiences. In the same way, it can be seen that the Husserlian approach to cinema is similar to Spencer Shaw’s perspective in his book Film Consciousness (2008). In his work, Shaw revisits the thoughts of philosophers such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bazin, Kracauer, Bergson, Deleuze and Benjamin to define what we could call a “filmconsciousness.” Also, regarding Shaw’s work, our analysis follows a similar path, since the effort to understand how consciousness is structured vis-à-vis films is alike. From this point of view, the Husserlian approach we propose could be seen as a complement to Shaw’s analysis, because Husserl’s writings allow us to be more thorough regarding specific aspects of consciousness in our filmic experience. 9 Husserl’s writings on imagination are mainly found in the collection Phantasy, Image-Consciousness and Memory. The writings date from 1898 to 1925. With such a broad time-span, the different approaches adopted in each period can be noticed; nevertheless they express the same phenomenological effort to understand the experience of the image. It is this effort that interests us, because among these investigations, we also find the description of the givenness of the so-called “physical image” to consciousness, such as the case of images in cinema. 10 The term is employed specifically in §9 entitled “Physical Imagination as a Parallel Case to Phantasy Presentation.” 11 Edmund Husserl, Phantasy, Image-Consciousness and Memory (1898– 1925), trans. John Brough (Springer, 2005), N°1, §8, 19. 12 Ibid., no. 1, §8, 18.

260  Hanna Trindade 13 Jean Mitry, Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2001), 77 (every quote from French authors was freely translated by us). 14 This faithful reproduction is furthermore reinforced when there are also sounds accompanying the visual dimension. 15 Framing is the technical procedure of choosing the angle, height, etc. according to which a scene will be recorded by the camera. But more than a mere technical work, the framing concerns the manner in which a story, an emotion and a point of view are put in images. Throughout the entire history of cinema, we find directors of photography that have revolutionized this manner of visually expressing an experience, such as James Wong Howe, Raoul Coutard or yet Jack Cardiff. 16 For Stanley Cavell, heir to André Bazin’s thought, it is the mechanicity of the camera, or what he calls “automatism,” that allows the film to eliminate the subjectivity of its representation, and to present the reality itself: see Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of Film (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), 23. 17 André Bazin, “Ontologie de l’image cinématographique.” in Qu’est-ce que le cinéma? (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2011), 13/14. 18 Philippe Rousselot, La sagesse du chef opérateur (Paris: Editions Jean-Claude Béhar, 2013), 48. 19 Rudolf Arnheim highlights this representative character of the image, which depends not only on the director’s subjective choices of perspective, but also on the limitations inherent to the cinematographic device. For Arnheim, it is precisely the insufficiency of the cinematographic technique to reproduce the reality to perfection that allows the cinema to obtain the status of art. The lack of depth, the two-dimensionality of the image and the spatial and temporal discontinuity of the narrative are examples of cinematographic characteristics that give an artistic value. Due to these technical constraints, the image of reality in the cinema can never correspond to reality itself. Art would thus be that of playing with the form properly filmic, according to a personal view of this reality. See Rudolf Arnheim, Film as Art (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957), 57. 20 Here are some examples: Cecil B. DeMille’s Joan the Woman (1916); Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928); Robert Bresson’s The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962); Victor Fleming’s Joan of Arc (1948); Luc Besson’s The Messenger (1999). 21 Husserl, Phantasy, Image-Consciousness and Memory (1898–1925), N°1, §8, 18. 22 Ibid., no. 1, §10, 23. 23 One perception interferes with the other, given that the surface upon which we watch the film can, for instance, change the intensity of the colors or the sharpness of the images, just as the sound system that we use generates different qualities of sound. 24 Ibid., no. 1, §14, 31. 25 Ibid., no. 1, §21, 48. 26 On the one side, the composition of the content (the dramatic dimension) concerns the choice of the material that will fulfill the image. It is the mise en scène, the preparation of the action, and it comprises elements such as costumes, make-up, settings, lightning and acting. On the other side, the composition of the form (the aesthetic dimension) concerns the choice of the manner in which this material will be expressed, and it comprises components like lenses, ratio of the frame, color palette, etc. 27 Mylène Bresson ed., Bresson par Bresson. Entretiens 1943–1983 (Paris: Flammarion, 201), 172.

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 261 28 Carl Th. Dreyer, Réflexions sur mon métier (Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 1997), 97. 29 Husserl, Phantasy, Image-Consciousness and Memory (1898–1925), N°1, §22, 49/50. 30 Ibid., no. 16, Appendix L, 570. 31 Ibid., no. 1, Appendix I, §12, 146. 32 Sidney Lumet, Faire un film, trans. Charles Villalon (Nantes: CAPRICCI, 2016), 69/70. 33 Clélia Zernik, Perception-cinéma. Les enjeux stylistiques d’un dispositif (Paris: Vrin, 2010), 87. 34 Mitry, Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma, 124. 35 Bruno Trentini, “Du devenir-spectateur au refus spectatoriel. A propos de la subjectivité du spectateur au cinéma.” in La Direction de Spectateurs. Création et réception au cinéma, ed. Dominique Château (Paris: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2015), 169. 36 Husserl gives a detailed analysis of the structure of perception in his work Thing and Space (Ding und Raum), where we find lessons on this theme given by the philosopher in 1907. Our description will mainly take these writings into consideration. The approach is rather structural; i.e., it is a formal and static analysis of the structures at stake in the relation between consciousness and “physical” objects. 37 Edmund Husserl, Thing and Space. Lectures of 1907, trans. Richard Rojcewicz (Springer Science+Business Media, 1997), §14, 35. 38 At this phase of his philosophy, to explain the process of “apprehension” Husserl employs a scheme called “model of apprehension/ content of apprehension” (das Modell von Auffassung und aufgefasstem Inhalt) first developed in the Logical Investigations (Logische Untersuchungen, 1900/1901). According to this scheme, we grasp an object’s properties, which in themselves are only data. But acts of consciousness transform these “meaningless” data into immanent content, i.e., contents that expose the characteristics of the object (these are the exposing sensations of which we have already spoken). The act performs an apprehension (Auffassung) of these sensations, which become contents of apprehension (Auffassungsinhalte). This apprehension functions as an “animation” of sensations, and this “transformation” allows consciousness to grasp the sense data of the intended object as having a meaning. However, this grasp should not be understood as an “action,” but rather as an opening of the possibility of an “(auto) appearance” ((Selbst) erscheinung) of the object itself. 39 Ibid., §15, 39/40. 40 Ibid., §16, 44. 41 In a strict manner, we divide the operation of framing in two major crafts: the cameraman/camerawoman, familiar with the equipment and operator of the camera; and the director of photography, who defines the image aesthetically according to the style of the film and according to the filmmaker’s vision. More commonly, though, all these crafts are taken by the same person, and for this reason we employ the terms “cameraman/camerawoman,” “cinematographer” and “director of photography” as interchangeable. 42 Sobchack, The Address of the Eye. A  Phenomenology of Film Experience, 62. 43 It is this ability of framing to reproduce a perception of reality what Deleuze calls “perception-image.” As Richard Rushton explains: “Cinema is again crucial here, for it demonstrates to us this function of perception by way of what Deleuze calls ‘perception-images’ . . . the camera ‘cuts out’ a certain part

262  Hanna Trindade of the world, and that which is framed is what is perceived. The frame cuts out a certain space and duration of perception and thus a ‘perception-image’ is created” (Richard Rushton, Cinema after Deleuze (London: Continuum, 2012), 30). 44 Antoine Gaudin, L’espace cinématographique. Esthétique et dramaturgie (Paris: Armand Colin, 2015), 55. 45 Zernik, Perception-cinéma. Les enjeux stylistiques d’un dispositif, 47. 46 Ibid., 85. 47 Mitry, Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma, 123. 48 Béla Balázs, L’esprit du cinéma, trans. Jacques Chavy (Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, 2011), 184. 49 Husserl, Thing and Space, §18, 48. 50 Sobchack, The Address of the Eye. A  Phenomenology of Film Experience, 62. 51 In general terms, a shot or take is a “homogeneous bloc of space and time” (Emmanuel Siety, Le plan. Au commencement du cinéma (Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2001), 11), but how to define this homogeneity? Initially it was common to establish the shot as “what the camera records between the moment of the ‘rolling!’ and the one of the ‘cut!’ ” (Dominique Villain, Le cadrage au cinéma: L’oeil à la caméra (Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2001), 138); i.e., the shot is the duration of the take. However, the evolution of cinema made possible the apparition of other types of shot. The composite shot, for instance, can be obtained through the juxtaposition of two distinct spaces, filmed separately and superposed afterwards. It is the case of a wide range of super-hero and action movies we find nowadays in the movie theaters. Therefore, the shot can comprehend several levels of composition. To take into account all these diverse possibilities of the shot, we should understand it as the result of an uninterrupted take where no spatial or temporal discontinuity is detectable by the spectator. Consequently, we define the shot in regard to the continuity and homogeneity of the apprehension of the spectator, and not of the production of this take. 52 Husserl, Thing and Space, §15, 39/40. 53 Ibid., §41, 124. 54 Ibid., §46, 136. 55 Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 158. 56 As Noël Carroll points out, affectivity can occur in many ways: “By ‘affect’ I  am referring to felt bodily states—states that involve feelings or sensations” (Noël Carroll, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing, 2008). Many definitions can be found regarding the notion of affectivity, from the point of view of both film studies and philosophy. However, we will not seek to validate a specific approach, but rather simply take the idea of affectivity in its most basic and broad definition. Given the limited space of this paper, we will not be able to develop an analysis of affectivity in cinema. Our aim for now is to simply hint at the fact that some kind of, what we could commonly call “affectivity,” seems to be produced when we watch a movie, and this might be seen as partly the result of the camera movement. For an in-depth analysis of affectivity in films see Carl Plantinga’s book “Moving Viewers” (2009). Or, for a more phenomenological approach on the subject, see Spencer Shaw’s “Film Consciousness” (2008). 57 Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgement (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), §7, 30.

The Lived Experience of Motion Pictures 263

References Balázs, Béla. L’esprit du cinéma. Translated by Jacques Chavy. Paris: Petite Bibliothèque Payot, 2011. Bazin, André. Qu’est-ce que le cinéma ? Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2011. Bresson, Mylène, ed. Bresson par Bresson. Entretiens 1943–1983. Paris: Flammarion, 2013. Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Motion Pictures. Hoboken, NJ: WileyBlackwell, 2008. Cavell, Stanley. The World Viewed. Reflections on the Ontology of Film. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1979. Chateau, Dominique, ed. La Direction de Spectateurs. Création et réception au cinéma. Paris: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2015. Dreyer, Carl T. Réflexions sur mon métier. Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 1997. Gaudin, Antoine. L’espace cinématographique. Esthétique et dramaturgie. Paris: Armand Colin, 2015. Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Translated by David Carr. Northwestern University Press, 1970. Husserl, Edmund. Experience and Judgment. Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. London: Routledge & Kean Paul, 1973. Husserl, Edmund. Phantasy, Image-Consciousness and Memory (1898–1925). Translated by John Brough. New York: Springer, 2005. Husserl, Edmund. Thing and Space. Lectures of 1907. Translated by Richard Rojcewicz. Belin: Springer Science+Business Media, 1997. Kracauer, Siegfried. Theory of Film. The Redemption of Physical Reality. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Lumet, Sidney. Faire un film. Translated by Charles Villalon. Nantes: CAPRICCI, 2016. Mitry, Jean. Esthétique et psychologie du cinéma. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2001. Plantinga, Carl. Moving Viewers. American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. Rousselot, Philippe. La Sagesse du Chef opérateur. Paris: Editions Jean-Claude Béhar, 2013. Rushton, Richard. Cinema after Deleuze. London: Continuum, 2012. Shaw, Spencer. Film-Consciousness. Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland  & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2008. Siety, Emmanuel. Le plan. Au commencement du cinéma. Paris: Cahiers du Cinéma, 2001. Sobchack, Vivien. The Address of the Eye. A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Tarkovsky, Andrey. Sculpting in Time. Translated by Kitty Hunter-Blair. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989. Villain, Dominique. Le Cadrage au cinéma: L’oeil à la caméra. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2001. Zernik, Clélia. Perception-cinéma. Les enjeux stylistiques d’un dispositif. Paris: Vrin, 2010.

Part V

Interpreting Cinematic Works

15 The Blade Runner Question From Philosophy to Myth Deborah Knight

Questions about the relationship between philosophy and fictional narratives go back at least to Plato and Aristotle. In The Republic, Plato famously decried the work of the poets. Poems and other fictions were not, he claimed, the work of reasoned thinking and could all too easily mislead their audience by sowing false beliefs and encouraging wrongly placed emotions. Worse, poetry could prompt faulty moral reasoning, thus possibly leading to mistaken moral judgements about events in the real world. Aristotle, by contrast, felt that some works of fiction could be beneficial. Proper engagement with tragic drama, for example, helped viewers experience and ground the so-called tragic emotions, pity and fear. Only a properly structured tragic drama would have this clarifying effect on the audience’s emotions, and The Poetics is as much a guidebook to the proper construction of tragedies as it is a theory of emotional catharsis. Contemporary investigations such as the essays in this volume consider the various ways in which philosophy and fictional narratives— in the present case, film narratives—intersect. It is uncontentious that some fictional narratives develop philosophical themes and can reward study from a philosophical perspective. A considerably more intellectually arresting claim currently being defended is that at least some films do philosophy directly themselves.1 In this chapter, I will not be defending the claim that fiction films themselves do or are philosophy. But I will be arguing that while narrative fiction films can and sometimes do address philosophical themes, whether they do this successfully or not depends on how a film’s narrative shapes its central concerns. Blade Runner and Blade Runner 20492 are obvious candidates for consideration from a philosophical point of view. This is because science fiction typically raises a range of fundamentally philosophical questions, for example, the paradigmatically metaphysical question: “What is it to be human?”3 This question is central to both films. Yet as I will argue, 2049 does not rise to the level of philosophical sophistication that Blade Runner achieved. Indeed, it seems to abandon the philosophical question altogether, turning away from philosophy and towards a religious answer

268  Deborah Knight to questions about human nature and identity. It is not philosophical so much as mythopoetic. 2049 creates a fictional mythology around a “miracle child” born to Deckard and Rachael. But there is another and equally pressing philosophical issue that arises in both films, a question central to feminist philosophy, namely the question of what it is to be female. I will argue that both the general and the gendered versions of the metaphysical question are inflected by each film’s narrative arc and generic conventions. Following Plato’s suspicions about fictions in general, I will argue that 2049’s mythopoetic narrative leads to a false sentimentalizing that distorts whatever philosophical potential the film might have had. Taking a cue from Aristotle, I  will argue that, unlike Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049 fails to rise to a moment of cathartic tragedy. Rather, 2049 can be seen as an example of the kind of bad art that Milan Kundera and others describe as kitsch—the sort of art that favors sentimentalized emotional responses over reason.4

The Philosophical Question Blade Runner presents us with the philosophical question: “What is it to be human?” The question arises because the Tyrell Corporation has produced genetically engineered beings that, over successive generations, have become increasingly close replicas of human beings, both physically and, more importantly, psychologically. At what point should a near exact replica of a human being be considered human? What does it mean to think of a replicant as if it were human? This is not just an abstract philosophical puzzle but a matter of urgency when the replicants themselves come to understand how close they are to being human. The rebel Nexus 6 replicants who return to Los Angeles viscerally understand the two things that prevent them from living as humans: their social status and function as slaves and, more urgently, their bioengineered “expiration dates.” Roy Batty and Pris want Tyrell, their “maker,” to change their programming and thus extend their lives. Batty, in particular, knows that his experiences have exceeded in brutality what most humans can imagine, yet he wants to live anyway. The pivotal “tears in rain” scene between Batty and Deckard presents the dying replicant as perfectly aware of his mortality. What distinguishes the most sophisticated of the replicants, including Batty and Rachael, is their awareness of themselves. They are not mere AI programs running in bioengineered bodies. They possess self-awareness. They have first-personal experience. They understand how things are for them. They have hopes for the present and future. In this sense, Tyrell’s creations have become quasi-human. The difference of self-knowledge that separates Batty and Rachael is that Batty knows he is a replicant. Rachael, while a more advanced model, does not. Initially, at least, she believes she is human, even though she knows that being subjected to a

The Blade Runner Question 269 Voight-Kampff test means that she is being studied to see if Deckard, who is conducting the test, can discover whether she is a replicant after all. When Batty tells Deckard of the things he has seen, such as attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, he is describing experiential memory, lived experiences. By contrast, when Rachael describes her childhood, Deckard knows that the memories she describes are actually those of Tyrell’s niece, which have been implanted and are therefore not Rachael’s experiences. The turning point of the narrative—the point where Deckard has to rethink his role as a blade runner and his relation to the replicants he is tasked to kill—occurs when he begins to suspect that his own childhood memories are implanted, just like Rachael’s. If those memories are not really his own, if his most basic beliefs about himself are false, then who, exactly, is he? What should he now believe and how should he now act, if he has been deeply mistaken about himself and his identity? Blade Runner 2049 repeats the narrative device of the protagonist who comes to doubt his own identity. As the film begins, we learn that K understands his status as a replicant programmed to kill other replicants. Like Deckard, K is a blade runner, but unlike Deckard, he knows that he is killing other creatures like himself. Where Deckard comes to suspect that his earliest memories are implanted just as all replicants’ memories are, K already knows this about himself. When Joshi asks him about his childhood, K says that he could tell her but that his memories aren’t real. If the mystery at the heart of Blade Runner emerges when Deckard comes to suspect that he is not human after all, the narrative hook at the heart of Blade Runner 2049 is that K might not, in fact, be a “mere” replicant but Rachael and Deckard’s “miracle” child. K, who has been ordered to find and eliminate the child, comes to believe that he is actually hunting for himself, because his memories are those of the child Rachael gave birth to. His job of hunting down Deckard is transformed, in his imagination, into a search for his father. Deckard’s growing suspicion, in Blade Runner, that he is a replicant meant that he was deceived about his actual identity. K, who by contrast knows from the beginning that he is a replicant, comes to believe that he has been deceived about being merely a replicant. For if he is the miracle child, his memories are not implanted after all but genuinely his own. Deckard and K are caught up in struggles not only about about personal identity but more broadly about goals, values and commitments, on the one hand, and decisions about how best to act, on the other. These are the features of their lives that are most human. Deckard’s decision to risk his life to rescue Rachael, in Blade Runner, and K’s decision to risk his life to save Deckard, in 2049, exemplify their values, and in both cases the actions they undertake are on behalf of others. The philosopher and ethicist Julian Savulescu puts it this way, “In the Blade Runner films, it is the psychological life, the mental states (including dispositions, character and memories) that matter, not whether one is natural human or

270  Deborah Knight a bioengineered replicant.”5 If we can agree that being human does not depend essentially on a particular biological etiology, then replicants like Deckard and K count as possessing many of the sorts of psychological properties that matter for personhood and individual identity.

Genre, Philosophy, Myth Blade Runner and 2049 are works of science fiction. Both are set in dystopian futures where Earth has been abandoned by virtually all humans who can afford to escape to the Off-World Colonies. The main exceptions are Tyrell and Wallace, who stand atop vast empires headquartered in Los Angeles. Their corporations oversee transformative developments in science and technology—especially in artificial intelligence—whose chief products are increasingly sophisticated replicants. The city is sprawling, desolate and sunless. The earth’s natural environment has been devastated, as we see initially when 2049 takes us outside Los Angeles across vast expanses of synthetic farming and later when K travels to postnuclear Las Vegas. First Tyrell’s corporation and then Wallace’s pursue grandiose plans of capitalist domination not merely on earth but more importantly off-world. Because they are able to create intelligent sentient beings, both Tyrell and Wallace have god-like powers. Tyrell’s means of creation are scientific and his demeanor modest for one in possession of such powers. With 2049, the shift away from philosophy towards a religious or mythological answer to the film’s governing question is embodied in part by Wallace, who extolls his products using the language and imagery of Christianity. Like many Hollywood films, Blade Runner is a generic hybrid, in this case one combining tropes of science fiction with conventions of film noir, notably the hard-boiled protagonist and the alluring femme fatale. Rick Deckard, our protagonist, is pressured by the local police to accept the job of killing the escaped Nexus-6 replicants who have returned to Earth from the Off-World Colonies. As we would expect from a hardboiled protagonist, Deckard is cynical and morally ambiguous, operating at the edges of the law even when he accepts assignments from the police. For much of the film he remains emotionally detached about the job he has been assigned, namely to find and terminate the rogue replicants. This changes as he becomes more closely involved with their creator, Tyrell, and once he is introduced to Rachael. She, in turn, is generically coded as a femme fatale, a woman of mystery in the film’s dystopic world. Emerging from shadow, smoking a cigarette, Rachael is an emblematic reminder of film noir’s beautiful, strong and calculating female characters, a figure aware of her own sexual attractiveness who is willing to use sexuality to achieve her ends. The Voight-Kampff test positions Deckard as investigator and Rachael as his object of study. But as the test’s subject, she must calculate how best to respond to him. The

The Blade Runner Question 271 interaction that develops during the test, the exchange of question and answer, means that Deckard is delving into Rachael’s psychology, treating her as a person. As their relationship develops, Deckard increasingly wants Rachael to return his interest in her. Towards the end of the film, Deckard demands that she prove her desire for him: “Say ‘Kiss me,’ ” he tells her. And she does. I will return to this scene. The film’s main philosophical question—“What is it to be human?”— is transformed through the figure of Rachael into the more important question, “What sort of beings are humanly valuable—that is, valuable as humans?” Whether or not one is physically a human being, what are the characteristics of any intelligent, sentient being—actual or bioengineered—that demand protection and respect? As Gaff correctly foresees, at the end of the film, Deckard will change allegiances. Because Deckard recognizes Rachael as humanly valuable, he will act to save her from those who seek to terminate her. He does this in part because of his emotional involvement with her. But from the moment that Rachael asks him whether or not he has taken a Voight-Kampff test himself—prompting him to suspect that perhaps he, too, is one of Tyrell’s creatures—he realizes that they might be the same sort of being sharing the same problem of self-preservation. Even though she is a replicant and he suspects he might be too, what matters to Deckard is Rachael’s love and trust. “Do you love me? Do you trust me?” he asks her. The film ends with the two escaping into an uncertain future. While 2049 shares with its predecessor the visual iconography of film noir—the narrow, dark and rainy streets filled with market stalls, the foreboding cityscape—it is missing the most central features of film noir, the noir protagonist and the noir femme fatale. Because K is a replicant model programmed to accept orders and obey without question, he lacks Deckard’s sardonic demeanor and uneasy relationship with law enforcement. K is not hard-boiled in the way that Deckard is. Deckard’s cynical detachment is a choice, but K’s detachment is a feature of his programming and lacks Deckard’s cynicism. None of the female characters in 2049 function as a femme fatale. This is made plain during the scene that briefly and dramatically returns a Rachael look-alike to the film. 2049 stands to Blade Runner as a mere pastiche of film noir’s visual style. Where Blade Runner weaves subtle clues about Deckard’s real identity as a replicant into its narrative, including Deckard’s dream of a unicorn and Gaff’s origami unicorn figures as well as Deckard’s collection of photographs, which includes several that are also shared by Rachael, the question of K’s “real” identity in 2049 is framed quite differently. As 2049 begins, K travels to a largely abandoned synthetic farming area, tasked by the LAPD with finding and eliminating Sapper Morton, an earlier model replicant. Morton knows that K is there to kill him, and while Morton is apparently physically stronger, K successfully completes his assignment. Before he does, Sapper Morton mysteriously announces,

272  Deborah Knight “You’ve never seen a miracle.” This reference to a miracle introduces the mythopoetic theme of 2049. Just what the “miracle” was that Morton speaks of and how it affects K will become the focus of the film’s main narrative arc. In investigating the miracle, K mistakenly comes to believe that the clues he discovers point to his real identity. K’s investigation reveals the apparently scientifically inexplicable fact that Deckard and Rachael, two replicants, have produced a genetic child—the “miracle” Morton spoke of. They have accomplished something Wallace, for all his wealth, has not: bioengineered entities capable of sexual reproduction. The scene in which Wallace and Luv watch the “birthing” of one of his new biological androids demonstrates the limits of Wallace’s success. In a caricature of birth, the “newborn” replicant drops in adult female form, coated with viscous liquid, from a quasiuterine sack. Touching the “newborn’s” stomach before knifing her to death, Wallace laments that he has not been able to create replicants capable of their own reproduction. Because his replicants are sterile, his corporation must continue to create new ones by technological means. Apparently, it would be a boon to his business if replicants could reproduce among themselves. In order to understand what he would need in order to bioengineer replicant reproduction, Wallace orders Luv to find the child so it can be studied. In the meantime, K has been ordered by his LAPD commander, Joshi, to eliminate the child and all evidence of it. This sets up the final confrontation between K and Luv. Wallace uses a range of Christian metaphors to describes himself and his replicant creations. His newly birthed female replicant is “an angel” and “a gift.” In anticipation of the pseudo-birth, he refers to the Kingdom of Heaven and, echoing the prophecy of the birth of Christ, announces that “a child is born.” While human, Wallace is himself augmented by a prosthetic device fixed into his head to aid his vision. For all his references to Christianity, he clearly sees himself as a god-like figure both in terms of his power but also in terms of his mission—which, ironically, is a mission of capitalist domination of the Off-World Colonies. Although he has taken over Tyrell’s corporation, he has not discovered Tyrell’s “final trick,” replicant procreation. The persistent references to the miracle birth and to other Christian themes turn 2049 away from the concerns of Blade Runner. There, Deckard and Rachael operate in a world where trusting anyone is dangerous, even each other. Their only hope is to escape their pursuers, and the film ends with no guarantee that they will succeed. By contrast, the moral framework of 2049 offers Christian themes of hope and redemption. As noted by Christianity Today, “the scriptural allusions of 2049 are obvious.” What marks Sapper Morton, Deckard and the underground replicant movement, the review continues, is their “willingness to sacrifice [themselves] for the sake of another.”6 On the strength of the “miracle” of replicant childbirth, a coordinated movement develops to protect the

The Blade Runner Question 273 child from discovery. Given the Christian overtones of the film, Rachael and Deckard’s daughter, Ana, takes on a symbolic role that is quasidivine in that she seems to hold the promise that the replicant society will be able to free itself from domination by its human creators. Ana becomes the focal point in a new age cult of the virgin. Like the Christ, Ana contains two natures. If Christ is human and god, Ana is replicant and something more than that, something that defies straightforward categorization. It is not that Ana is now properly human by virtue of having been created through replicant sexual reproduction. Rather, she moves beyond both human and replicant to an entirely new status of being. According to Freysa, the leader of the replicant resistance, the miracle birth means that replicants are “more human than humans.” And in order to free themselves from human domination, they must learn how to die for the right cause, as Sapper Morton does to protect Rachael and Deckard’s child and as K finally does in order to reunite Deckard and his daughter. This Christian analogizing takes 2049 from the orbit of the philosophical squarely into the realm of religion and mythology. K’s willingness to sacrifice himself in order to reunite Deckard and Ana is freighted with Christian symbolism. The configuration of his body as a tableau seen from above as he lies dying on the snowy steps outside Ana’s facility echoes the figure of the dead Christ. The overarching tone of the film’s conclusion makes it plain that the greatest good that K could achieve is to unite father and daughter. Yet as Slavoj Žižek argues, this reunion introduces unresolved puzzles. The miracle event of the film, Ana’s birth, is the result of replicant sexual reproduction, yet Ana “exemplifies the absence (or, rather, the impossibility) of a sexual relationship.”7 She is isolated in a sterile laboratory, unable to directly experience either nature or other beings. Her pure white environment and dress establish her symbolically as a virgin. The final scene of the film reunites father and daughter as an asexual couple. Deckard’s life has been devoted to ensuring Ana’s survival, and in that he has been successful. But despite the sentimental satisfaction of the father and daughter reunion, towards which the entire film narrative has been aimed, 2049 fails to advance the metaphysical question that was the impetus for Blade Runner. Arguably, due to her forced isolation, Ana is less human than either the humans or the replicants of 2049. She has become pure symbol.

From Metaphysics to Gender The Blade Runner films are not philosophical arguments but fictional narratives and as such are structured according to recognizable plot and genre conventions. Where the generic conventions of the science fiction film intersect with dominant plot conventions of Hollywood cinema, we find that both films are not merely genre films and not merely hero-driven

274  Deborah Knight action films, but films organized around heterosexuality. To the extent that gender organizes both films thematically and in terms of plot action, we need to rethink the main philosophical question the films raise: “What is it to be human?” After all, as has been noted by Noël Carroll, Blade Runner raises but does not answer the philosophical question.8 2049, as a sequel, inherits the question, but given the fact that it reframes the story in mythological terms, does not answer it either. Let us set aside the original philosophical question—“What is it to be human?”—and ask a different question, one that is central to feminist philosophy: “What is it to be gendered female?” Rethinking both Blade Runner and 2049 through the lens of gender will reveal much that would otherwise be missed and allow us to return to the guiding ideas from Plato and Aristotle that began this chapter. The Blade Runner films feature central male protagonists, and the fictional world of each film is dominated by a male figure of vast wealth and power. Zhora, Pris and Rachael, the three central female characters in Blade Runner, are replicants made by Tyrell. Zhora and Pris are examples of specific replicant models. Zhora is a warrior model, while Pris is a sex worker euphemistically described as a “pleasure model.” Rachael, as we have seen, is a newer version and is more psychologically and emotionally sophisticated than the others. Yet all are designed to be sexually attractive to males. Zhora is shown partially nude in the changing room at her job as an exotic dancer, while Pris’s physicality is demonstrated in her gymnastic movements and her form-fitting clothing. Zhora, Pris and Rachael are depicted as sexualized creations. One could go further and say that the female replicants are heterosexualized creations, females created according to an image of male heterosexual desire. As their relationship develops, Deckard becomes Rachael’s best option for protection. In his apartment, she asks if he would follow her if she fled north. What she is really asking is whether, if she were to escape, he would follow her to complete his assignment of terminating her. He says no because he “owes her one.” Shortly after, Rachael plays a few bars of music at the piano, and Deckard comes to sit next to her. He kisses her on the cheek, but she gets up to leave. He prevents her, taking hold of her and instructing her, “Say ‘kiss me,’ ” and shortly after, “Put your hands on me.” Deckard presses Rachael for sexual intimacy. He directs her in what to say and how to act, forcing her to submit. Viewers might wish to believe that Rachael truly loves Deckard. They might interpret this scene as one where Deckard is simply teaching Rachael the practical steps of heterosexual desire and intimacy. But what the film presents is Rachael’s coerced acquiescence. Like Zhora and Pris, Rachael’s sexuality is something she exchanges, in this case for her survival. As Rachael and Deckard leave his apartment for the last time, it is arguably not because they are the “true romantic couple” of Hollywood film endings, but because Deckard is Rachael’s means of escape.

The Blade Runner Question 275 In 2049 there are more female characters who figure centrally than there were in Blade Runner. Some of these female characters appear in positions of comparative authority. Lieutenant Joshi, a human, is K’s LAPD boss. Luv, an almost merciless replicant who nevertheless occasionally shows emotion, serves Wallace. Freysa is the black-cloaked leader of the replicant resistance who was present as Rachael died in childbirth. Joi, a hologram program, is one of the Wallace Corporation’s products, sold to lonely males like K to provide the illusion of feminine companionship. Mariette, whose resemblance to Pris is unmistakable, is, like Pris, a replicant pleasure model working the streets of LA. And there is Ana Stelline, Rachael and Deckard’s child. While these female characters are secondary to K, Wallace and Deckard in the film’s narrative structure, considered together they show us how gender is depicted in the fictional world of 2049 and give us an important perspective in our consideration of the role and figure of Ana. Joshi assumes that the normal social order requires enforcing a permanent division between humans and replicants—she speaks of the need to maintain a wall between the two types of beings. The miracle child overturns the clear distinction between humans and replicants and for this reason must be found and destroyed. Luv, who does shed a tear for the newborn replicant killed by Wallace, nevertheless shoots the rebooted Rachael when Deckard fails to exchange his daughter’s whereabouts for a replica of her mother. It is also Luv who kills Joshi as part of her quest to prevent Joshi’s LAPD from finding the miracle child and destroying it before she can retrieve it for Wallace. While embodying the opposition between human and replicant, Joshi and Luv share their subordination to a patriarchal authority structure that must take charge of the aberration of the miracle child. Both either order violence or inflict it themselves. Although in one scene Joshi appears interested in K as a possible sexual partner, her commitment is to the separation of races. Luv acts as Wallace’s handmaiden despite momentary suggestions that this submission troubles her. But the two female characters most central to examining the way gender functions in 2049 are Joi and Ana: the holographic program designed by the Wallace Corporation and the miracle child. Critical opinion differs as to whether Joi possesses consciousness and agency. For present purposes, Joi is noteworthy because she is designed to adapt to and fulfill the wishes and desires of whoever has purchased the product. Joi is a consumer product type of which there are many tokens. Indeed, there are as many variations of Joi as there are purchasers, each variation working from its basic programming to adapt as much as possible to its specific owner’s temperament and desires. Joi is targeted to male consumers as a virtual girlfriend. And in the particular iteration we find with the hologram K has purchased, Joi performs the dutiful girlfriend: dressing to please K, preparing his dinner like a modern version of a stereotypical

276  Deborah Knight 1950s housewife and becoming a source of emotional support as he pursues his quest to discover the truth about the miracle child. In the case of K’s Joi, the program does exactly what it was designed to do: it provides the simulation of romantic companionship. The problem, of course, is how to consummate a sexual relationship with a hologram. 2049 solves that problem by means of melding Joi and Mariette, hologram and replicant. Since Mariette is a sex worker by design, the logic of the film might suggest that this solution ought not to trouble us. Indeed, the film depicts this decision as one that is apparently taken jointly by Joi and Mariette. It is unclear why Mariette would agree to participate in the sexual plans of a hologram—that is, in the plans of a hologram programmed to fulfill its owner’s desires. But considered in the context of the representation of gender in 2049, it is possible to argue that what matters here, as we have already seen in Blade Runner, is the gratification of male sexual desire and the compliance of the female characters involved. The merging of Joi and Mariette is an example of male sexual fantasy where the desired image (Joi) is given form by the available sex worker’s body. Later in 2049, K is confronted with a monumental naked version of Joi, who descends from an advertising hoarding to speak to him. The exchange makes it clear that the purpose of the product is to fulfill the owner’s sexual desires. This version of Joi as sexualized female physicality is apparently sightless and does not really recognize K at all. Ironically, it refers to K as “Joe,” the name K’s Joi had used especially for him, or at least so he thought. K now realizes that Joe is just the default name the product gives to whoever happens to have purchased it. The product’s slogan captures the fact that it is merely a holographic program and not a person: “Everything you want to see, everything you want to hear.” The function of the product is to be a projection—literally—of the thoughts and desires of its owner. Functioning as the antithesis of Joi, Ana is the creator of the memories used by the Wallace Corporation for its replicants. The images of nature she invents are products of her imagination, as are the memories about happy childhood experiences such as birthday parties—an interesting irony since she did not have a happy childhood herself. Her personality exemplifies virtues that, taken together, are recognizably Christian: a gentle demeanor, kindness, patience, self-sacrifice, concern for others.9 Where K’s version of Joi briefly succeeds in becoming physical, Ana, who is actually embodied, remains strangely ethereal. To adapt old archetypes about women, she is the virgin to Joi’s whore. She is the object of the film’s quest, the solution to its mystery. But it is a surprisingly empty solution. Given the heterosexualized depiction of female characters in the fictional world of 2049, it seems unclear what to do with an isolated and ethereal virgin.

The Blade Runner Question 277

Lessons From Plato and Aristotle In the fictional world of Blade Runner, Rachael clearly understood her position in the Tyrell Organization. “I’m not in the business,” she said to Deckard, “I am the business.” By contrast, Ana Stelline has only a limited understanding of herself and what she symbolizes in the fictional world of 2049. While she is the solution to the identity of the mystery child, it is unclear, at the conclusion of the film, what her identity means for her. Aside from symbolizing a certain desexualized version of woman, the character of Ana has primarily functioned as the object of the quest, while the quest itself has been the focus of the narrative. Although the film teased us with the possibility that K was the mystery child, upon his discovery that in fact he is not, K turns instead to the task of reuniting Deckard and his daughter. Plato’s concern about narratives that trade in irrational responses seems apropos here. There is little motivating Deckard’s character in 2049. He appears to have been living in isolation for 30 years and is even more brusque and brooding than he was in Blade Runner. The film sentimentalizes this as his continued mourning for Rachael and a sign of genuine love that continues on for their child. As Deckard says to K by way of explanation, “Sometimes to love someone, you got to be a stranger.” But as argued earlier, true love does not seem to be what united Rachael and Deckard at the end of Blade Runner. There instead we found coerced sex and Rachael’s realization that, if she is to survive and escape, Deckard must be used to help her.10 This romanticizing of Rachael and Deckard’s relationship should alert viewers to the sorts of worries that Plato warned of. For it is only on the basis of this misrepresentation—in addition to the fact that he is portrayed by an iconic actor—that viewer sympathy for Deckard can be sustained and his reunion with Ana applauded. After the prolonged fight to the death in which Luv delivers the mortal wound before K drowns her, K brings Deckard to the Stelline laboratory. Once Deckard has gone inside, K lies down on the front steps in the gentle evening snow and dies. The music in this scene intentionally recalls the musical theme of Roy Batty’s death scene, but the two scenes could not be more different. Batty’s death comes at the end of a sequence where he and Deckard are in a fight to the death. Although Batty knows he is about to reach the end of his programmed life, he appears to be the stronger and more likely to survive. Yet in a moment of narrative reversal, Batty saves Deckard’s life, tossing him onto a rooftop and then explaining to him the meaning of his own death. In this scene, Batty and Deckard are at the same eye level, Batty sitting and Deckard crouched back against a piece of the roofing. Batty speaks directly to Deckard, who listens in silence, his eyes wide open as he realizes the implications of this moment—in particular, the fact that Batty could have let him die

278  Deborah Knight but rescued him instead. The famous “tears in rain” speech is actually quite short, but the pivotal feature of it is Batty’s understanding that his death means the loss of his experiences and his hopes: “All these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.” Deckard witnesses not just Batty’s death but the fate of the replicant, which could be his own fate as well. If we think of Batty for the moment as a reminder of the classical tragic hero, we find that his flaw is the desire to continue to live and his hubris is the belief that he will be able to force Tyrell to extend his life. Batty’s dilemma is existential—he cannot overcome the programming that kills him. The scene continues after Batty’s death, as rain continues to fall, as the white dove in Batty’s hand is released and as Deckard, presumably, recognizes both his debt to Batty for saving his life and his new understanding of Batty not just as enemy or opponent but as in important ways like himself. K’s death is the antithesis of Batty’s despite the musical cues that suggest a parallel between them. Whereas Batty’s death is marked by the tragedy of the self-conscious being realizing that his quest has failed, K’s death seems marked by the satisfaction of a job well done. Since self-sacrifice for the right cause is the central virtue of 2049, K’s death signifies that, within the context of the film’s narrative, the morally correct ending has been achieved. But what ending is that, exactly? One where, as suggested earlier, we are left with the union of Ana, the now-grown miracle child, and her father. But this seems to leave us nowhere in particular. Deckard has been unable to defend himself from Luv, so it is unclear how he can be expected to defend Ana from Wallace. Ana, while exemplifying a number of Christian virtues, is unable to move around safely in the world, making her of little practical use to the resistance except as a figurehead. Self-sacrifice, it appears, is reserved for the film’s central male protagonists. Inside the laboratory, Ana is unaware of K’s death just outside. If Batty’s death is in the mode of tragedy, K’s death is in the mode of the sentimental. Indeed, the last words K speaks to Deckard are sentimental: “All the best memories are hers.” While K has succeeded not only in saving both Deckard and Ana but in bringing them together at the film’s conclusion, his actions serve no broader philosophical purpose. While Blade Runner did not answer the question, “What is it to be human?” 2049 turns away from the question altogether. From Sapper Morton’s “You’ve never seen a miracle,” through K’s mistaken belief that he is the miracle child, to his discovery of that mistake, to his role in bringing together the father and daughter, 2049 has been in pursuit, not of philosophical reflection, but of acceptance of the miraculous. In the process, K has participated in a mythopoetic enactment of self-sacrifice. His death provides no opportunity for catharsis. Rather, it encourages a kind of self-satisfaction, where we recognize ourselves as the sort of viewers who feel sadness at his death but satisfaction at his sacrifice and are pleased that Deckard has finally found Ana. Since K’s sacrifice is based on the

The Blade Runner Question 279 mystery of the initial miracle, 2049 takes us beyond the realm of rational reflection. The film ends without offering any account of why the initiating “miracle” matters philosophically. The sentimental conclusion of 2049 prevents it from rising to the level of tragic catharsis. Indeed, it condemns it to the status of kitsch.

Notes 1 For example, Thomas Wartenberg, Thinking on Screen (London: Routledge, 2007), Robert Sinnerbrink, New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (London: Continuum, 2011), Noël Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy.” Film as Philosophy, ed. Bernd Herzogenrath (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017), 265–85. 2 For simplicity, I will usually refer to Blade Runner 2049 just as 2049. For the purposes of this essay, I take the 1991 Director’s Cut of Blade Runner to be the definitive version. 3 George McKnight and I have previously discussed this question in “What Is it to be Human? Blade Runner and Dark City.” in The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, ed. Steven M. Sanders (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008), 21–37. 4 See Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 251; also, Hermann Broch, “Notes on the Problem of Kitsch.” in Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste, ed. Dorflies (New York: Universe Books, 1968). 5 Julian Savulescu, “Blade Runner 2049, Parfit and Identity.” Practical Ethics: Ethics in the News, accessed August 24, 2018. http://blog.practicalethics. ox.ac.uk/2017/10/blade-runner-2049-parfit-and-identity/. 6 Joel Mayward, “Blade Runner 2049 Finds Hope Within Its Bleak Dystopia.” Christianity Today, accessed August 24, 2018. www.christianitytoday.com/ ct/2017/october-web-only/blade-runner-2049-finds-hope-within-its-bleakdystopia.html. 7 Slavoj Žižek, “Blade Runner 2049: A View of Post-Human Capitalism.” The Philosophical Salon, accessed August 24, 2018.https://thephilosophicalsalon. com/blade-runner-2049-a-view-of-post-human-capitalism/. 8 Noël Carroll, “Movie-Made Philosophy.” 267. 9 See James Fox Higgins, “Blade Runner 2049— A  Christian Analogy.” The National Rise, accessed 24 August  2018. http://therationalrise.com/ blade-runner-2049/). 10 The point is made explicitly in Casey Cipriani, “Blade Runner 2049 Tries to Make a Love Story Out of the First Blade Runner’s Violence.” Slate, accessed August  24, 2018. www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/10/12/blade_runner_2049_makes_a_love_story_out_of_a_rape_scene.html.

References Broch, Hermann. “Notes on the Problem of Kitsch.” Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste, edited by Dorflies. New York: Universe Books, 1968. Carroll, Noël. “Movie-Made Philosophy.” In Film as Philosophy, edited by Bernd Berzogenrath, 265–85. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Cipriani, Casey. “Blade Runner 2049 Tries to Make a Love Story Out of the First Blade Runner’s Violence.” Slate. Accessed August 24, 2018. www.slate.com/

280  Deborah Knight blogs/browbeat/2017/10/12/blade_runner_2049_makes_a_love_story_out_ of_a_rape_scene.html. Higgins, James Fox. “Blade Runner 2049—A Christian Analogy.” The National Rise. Accessed August 24, 2018. http://therationalrise.com/blade-runner-2049/. Knight, Deborah and George McKnight. “What Is it to be Human? Blade Runner and Dark City.” In The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, edited by Steven M. Sanders, 21–37. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008. Kundera, Milan, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. New York: Harper and Row, 1984. Mayward, Joel. “Blade Runner 2049 Finds Hope Within Its Bleak Dystopia.” Christianity Today. Accessed August  24, 2018. www.christianitytoday.com/ ct/2017/october-web-only/blade-runner-2049-finds-hope-within-its-bleakdystopia.html. Savulescu, Julian. “Blade Runner 2049, Parfit and Identity.” Practical Ethics: Ethics in the News. Accessed August  24, 2018. http://blog.practicalethics. ox.ac.uk/2017/10/blade-runner-2049-parfit-and-identity/. Sinnerbrink, Robert. New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images. London: Continuum, 2011. Wartenberg, Thomas E. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2007. Žižek, Slavoj. “Blade Runner 2049: A  View of Post-Human Capitalism.” The Philosophical Salon. Accessed August 24, 2018. https://thephilosophicalsalon. com/blade-runner-2049-a-view-of-post-human-capitalism/.

16 Race, Bodies and Lived Realities in Get Out and Black Panther Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo

Introduction In the present chapter, I would like to consider the success of two recent films, Get Out and Black Panther, within the context of philosophy of film. Taking the present volume’s subtitle into account, I would like to examine how these films might “bridge divides” and what these films might convey to philosophers of film, especially those not routinely working on topics of race and racism. In my view, this means asking what lessons films written and directed by black filmmakers, such as Get Out and Black Panther, have to convey regarding race and lived bodily realities, particularly as these are situated within the (racial) landscape of the contemporary United States. Moreover, I think it serves philosophers well to consider analyses of these films that appear in venues that are not strictly philosophical (as an academic discipline). Many such analyses have been published in online formats as articles and reviews, and many have been written by black writers and non-philosophers. These pieces have positioned Get Out and Black Panther in relation to race and lived realities within both the past and current United States. In turn, they have done much to unpack the racial and broader significance of these films. To further frame the context for consideration of these films here, it is important to foreground the social, political and cultural landscape of the United States as it pertains to black bodies. This landscape dates back to the transport and enslavement of black bodies through the formal institution of slavery and continues today through various forms of policing, surveilling and containment. The policing of black bodies has been heightened in tandem with an increasingly militarized police force within the United States1—one that expanded after the events of September 11, 2001, but one that also reflects policies and programs initiated much earlier. These policies and programs have included the so-called “War on Drugs,” since 1971, which has amassed disproportionate and negative effects on men (and often women) racially marked as black or brown.2 In many ways, these very bodies have been the targets of such policies and programs and not “merely” recipients of their after-the-fact impacts.

282  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo Regarding the militarization of U.S. police forces, we can also note as backdrop that the U.S. Defense Department’s “1033 Program” permitted the transfer of $5.4 billion in military equipment from U.S. military facilities to police departments at state, local and tribal levels.3 This figure includes military equipment secured by law enforcement agencies through federal funds designated for “terrorism prevention” after the events of September  11, 2001.4 Hence, we can notice an intersection between the long-standing “War on Drugs” and the U.S.-led “War on Terror,” since in both contexts, brown and black bodies have been both construed as threats to U.S. society/the American people and marked as demanding action. With the U.S.-led “War on Terror,” President G. W. Bush stated that “terrorists lurk in shadows.”5 By the time of the Clinton era’s “War on Drugs,” inner-city youth—racially coded as black—were designated as “super-predators.”6 Both groups were deemed to require identification and containment. Finally, for this introduction, I  would like to add that according to statistics from “Mapping Police Violence,” despite the fact that there are 160 million more whites than blacks in the United States (62% versus 13% of the population), black Americans are three times more likely than white Americans to be shot and killed by police.7 That is, while the white population is nearly five times larger than the black population, black Americans are still three times more likely than white Americans to be shot and killed by police.8 While black men comprise only 6% of the U.S. population, they represented 40% of all unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015.9 As stated in a Washington Post article, “The only thing that was significant in predicting whether someone shot and killed by police was unarmed was whether or not they were black.”10 Moreover, FBI statistics cited 990 fatal police shootings reported in 2015, while prior to this year, no more than 460 fatal police shootings had been reported in any given year.11

Get Out’s Alternate Ending To begin discussion of films in this chapter, I would like to start at the end, in a sense, by focusing on the alternate ending to Get Out, or what has been called the film’s “first ending.” The “first ending”—unlike the ending provided to U.S. and international viewers in movie theaters with the release of Get Out in February 2017—was available for the first time with Get Out’s DVD release later that same year in May. The alternate ending is so noticeably different from the theatrical one that it has been explained and clarified in subsequent interviews by the film’s writer and director, Jordan Peele. Specifically, Peele has provided a clear response to the question concerning why he changed the first ending, which required reshooting the final sequences of the film, to offer a conclusion both familiar and surprising. The theatrical ending has been referred to by

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 283 several film critics as “one of the most memorable endings of the 21st century.”12 Summarizing his position on the first ending and to briefly describe it here, Peele conveys that he wrote Get Out during the Obama administration. This was a moment in the United States, with the election of the first black U.S. president, that many people—white and black—promoted as “post-racial.” Peele’s own skepticism about such a post-racial reality for the United States—or, doubt that a black president had actually ushered in an end to entrenched racism and racial/racist U.S. history—provided his motivation for writing the screenplay for Get Out.13 We can see Peele’s skepticism in how the film’s “first ending” unfolds. In the final scene, after the main character, Chris Washington,14 a black man, has been forced to kill (in self-defense) much of the white family that has held him captive and as the Armitage family’s house burns in the background, Chris approaches the body of his bloody white girlfriend, Rose15—the daughter of the Armitage family—on the ground. Rose has a gun, and Chris slides it from her hands. He places his hands around her neck and squeezes. He continues to squeeze until she is dead. As this happens, sirens sound. A  police car arrives at the scene— headlights on Chris. Two white officers step from their car. They yell, “Hands. Show me your hands.” Chris removes his hands from Rose’s neck and presents them to the officers. The officers walk over and place Chris in handcuffs while man-handling him to the ground. The story then skips many months ahead. Viewers see Chris in an orange jumper inside a prison. His long-time friend, Rod Williams,16 arrives for a visit. Rod asks Chris, through a panel of glass and via telephones, to try to recall names and details surrounding what happened to him. Chris refuses, perhaps because he does not know or cannot remember, but mainly because he is satisfied with the result of his actions. Chris conveys, “I’m good, you know. I stopped it. I stopped it.” In other words, Chris is willing to accept a prison sentence in exchange for his actions, since by killing the white perpetrators—the members of the Armitage family—Chris has ensured that other black men can avoid the type of harm he received at their hands. After he conveys this resigned thought to Rod, a white officer enters and returns Chris to his cell. As movie theater viewers of Get Out know, the theater ending to the film differs from Peele’s first ending in that Chris’s friend, Rod, arrives on the scene—and not the white police officers. The fact that it is Rod is initially camouflaged by his arrival in an airport police car—a car he has borrowed from his workplace, since Rod works for the TSA. Having Chris’ friend appear in the aftermath of the Armitage family’s demise effectively saves Chris, as he gets into Rod’s car and they both drive from the scene. Viewers are left to think that Chris “got away,” instead of witnessing him “caught” within the U.S. prison system in a later scene. Thus, Chris emerges as the story’s hero. He is positioned as a rare survivor of

284  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo white wrongdoing. He has killed the “bad guys,” and they cannot hurt others. With the theatrical ending of Get Out, viewers are provided a release from real-life tensions and ongoing realities of black male imprisonment in the United States, as well as anti-black violence more generally, including the sort of police violence noted in the preceding introduction. Viewers—all viewers—are able to breathe a sigh of relief that the film’s finale does not reflect a more likely reality.17 I begin with the film’s alternate ending, since the change to the film’s planned resolution conveys a great deal about what the film has to say regarding the past, recent and current U.S. landscape on matters of race and racism. As Peele has noted, as he began filming Get Out, the U.S. landscape had changed.18 The post-racial claims made during the Obama years had been displaced by the newer “Trump era.” Racism that had been residing slightly below the surface of daily life in the United States— or, racism that post-racial hopefuls might have considered gone or in the past—came into clear view and made an open appearance.19 Peele comments that people were now bluntly “dealing with” this racism and its effects.20 He remarks that the film’s first ending, with Chris landing in prison, was supposed to say to post-racial advocates during the Obama administration, “ ‘Look, you think racism isn’t an issue?’ Well at the end, we all know this is how the movie would end right here.”21 Peele states that the first ending was intended to deliver a “gut punch” or “wake up call” and “to make people deal with it.”22 Instead, by the time of Get Out’s filming, the United States was quite openly embroiled in the reality of racism, including anti-black police violence. Police shootings and killings of unarmed black men had become familiar stories in the U.S. daily news cycle. The well-known events in Ferguson, Missouri, crystallized this reality with the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown on August  9, 2014. Massive protests ensued. In fact, Peele maintains, “The similarities of the narrative (in Get Out) are so parallel to what actually happened in Ferguson. When I have conversations with people about it, we talk about the importance of watching that body (Chris) get away to tell his story.”23 Consequently, in this climate, the gut punch that Peele originally intended was no longer needed. Americans, and black Americans in particular, were regularly experiencing the trauma of these racial/racist realities. Within this landscape, what was needed instead was for a black male body to “escape”—to emerge from the traumatic experience—and live to tell his story. With the theatrical ending to Get Out, Chris was positioned to conclude the film on his own terms. Speaking to this conclusion, writer Ira Madison claims that “[Get Out] gives black men an allegory they’ve craved for decades.”24 He continues: In America, my body does not belong to me. This is the message that Jordan Peele’s electrifying horror film Get Out has for black men. . . .

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 285 In horror, black men traditionally possess one of two roles: a firstact victim or the comic relief that provides running commentary on how black people don’t go upstairs and investigate a scary noise, they run out [of] the house, or some other variation on the white people are dumb and get killed joke. . . . But in a real world where black men can be killed for selling cigarettes, wearing a hoodie, or just driving . . . America in itself is a horror film for black men . . . the film depicts the emotional and physical toll that racism has on the American black body.25 Madison’s point that Get Out provides what black men have “craved,” in fact, undercuts any (previous and short-lived) pretenses to post-raciality. That is, this very craving is only logical provided a specific place for black men and black bodies within the broader narrative of the United States. If Get Out offers a long-desired counter-allegory, then its resonance with black men and black audiences more generally conveys as much about racialized/black bodies within the United States as it does about the workings of typical plots within Hollywood horror movies. After all, Hollywood plots reflect the workings and sensibilities of mainstream U.S. society, given that Hollywood films are typically marketed to mainstream (read: white) viewers. Thus, their workings reflect and contribute to these broader sensibilities. Steven Thrasher, writing for Esquire magazine, has said that Get Out is “the best movie ever made about American slavery.”26 Thrasher’s point here, given that the institution of slavery is not an overt subject of the film, unlike 12 Years a Slave, for instance, is that the storyline conveys and reinforces the reality of the theft of black bodies within U.S. history. As a horror film, the actual horror of Get Out lies in its take-over of black bodies.27 And while the theft or taking-over that the film signals is most markedly represented by the institution of slavery, the theft also recalls myriad other scenarios: medical experiments and studies conducted on black bodies within the United States for the ultimate benefit of whites, ways that black bodies have been positioned to perform and entertain for the pleasure of whites and ways that black bodies have been commodified or appropriated to the ends of whites. The black bodies that have been taken over in Get Out, specifically the characters of Walter, Georgina and Andre Logan King,28 have been denied the will and freedom to exist as themselves. They are instead forced to reside within or be altered by the confines of whiteness. They “live” with white brains and within white homes. As Krystal Valentine describes the plot: “Chris discovers that Rose’s family sells black people to the highest bidder, then performs an operation on them both, placing the buyer’s brain into the black person’s body.”29 To Valentine, this story is a familiar one—not a far-fetched device being used in a horror film. Rather, her experiences as a black woman have presented a reality

286  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo in which “white people love black culture and black bodies, but they do not value black lives.”30 In a notable line from the film, Chris is told by a white partygoer that “black is in fashion.” While these same partygoers are there to bid in a bingo-style lottery to “buy” what they covet about blackness, they clearly would not want the restrictions, scrutiny or profiling that comes with black bodies within the United States. While Logan tells Chris, in a dramatic moment in the film, to “get out,” Georgina, while trying to smile, conveys to him, “The Armitages are so good to us. They treat us like family.” These two comments convey two strategies for coping with the situation for two characters with slight “parts” of their consciousness remaining after the operations—on the one hand, flee; on the other hand, stay and reconcile the circumstances. Logan’s remark to Chris is particularly significant given the film’s theatrical ending, since Chris does indeed “get out.” While offering relief for viewers given present-day real-life events, if we keep Thrasher’s comment in mind that Get Out is a film about American slavery, the escape also points back to resistance in the form of fleeing or running away. This might suggest a sort of historical memory to that piece of consciousness remaining, as well. Moreover, the fact that real life is often the horror (movie) for black Americans means that the theatrical ending of Get Out offers the possibility for a black “win.” As Peele has stated, “The Sunken Place [highlighted by the film] means we’re marginalized. No matter how hard we scream, the system silences us.”31 Chris’ eventual escape from the scene and his destruction of the white family that had entangled him speak back to these injustices. The film offers a narrative of hope that inverts the typical horror story, especially for black viewers. As Peele explains, “I’d never seen my fears as an African-American man onscreen in this way.”32

Black Bodies and Black Panther Given these points, I would like to briefly connect Get Out’s theatrical ending, in which Chris emerges a hero by escaping the scene with the help of Rod, and the more obvious (super)hero movie Black Panther. These two recent films converge in offering black viewers, in particular, an understanding and reflection of black experience(s) not typically seen in Hollywood-based films. Both films strategically tell their stories through a lens of blackness. The 2018 film Black Panther centers the (history of) exploitation of Africa by the West. The relation between the continent of Africa and present-day black Americans is examined through the characters of Black Panther,33 King of Wakanda, and his rival, Erik Killmonger,34 a black American mercenary. Writing for The New Yorker, Jelani Cobb remarks that the film unveils “the implications of a version of Western domination that has been with us so long that it has become

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 287 as ambient as the air.”35 Cobb continues, “If the subordination of Africa had begun in the minds of white people, its reclamation . . . would begin in the minds of black ones.”36 While Cobb’s comment is specifically aimed at Black Panther, it communicates a broader message about authorship and who gets to tell and direct what story. Get Out and Black Panther are fairly unique as Hollywood films, since they were both written and directed by black men.37 The stories themselves are told from the perspective of black men or through the eyes of black men. Connecting the issue of authorship and direction to the film’s central characters, Cobb remarks, “superheroes are seldom tasked with this kind of existential lifting, but that work is inseparable in the questions surrounding Wakanda and the politics of even imagining such a place.”38 This imagining is similar to how it is Chris’ eyes, or point of view, that frame Get Out for viewers. Many scenes in Get Out feature Chris’ eyes themselves, as well as Chris’ love of photography and his camera with lenses.39 In fact, a strength of Get Out is that it asks viewers to experience the events through Chris or as Chris encounters them and it would be difficult not to view the film through the character of Chris. Peele has commented about Chris and the film as a whole, “You can ask a white person to see the world through a black person for an hour and a half.”40 Writing for The Atlantic, Lenika Cruz highlights the fact that “over the other bodily senses, vision has long been the most intuitive metaphor for discussing subjective experience,” as “vision is closely linked to a person’s unique way of knowing the world.”41 Cruz further notes, “Get Out is broadly concerned with race and body politics” and “probes the very real anxieties produced by racism.”42 Thus, it is significant that it is Jim, a blind art dealer, who wins the raffle for Chris’ body. Cruz points out that Jim “wants to possess the particular way that Chris views the world,” while not grasping “the particular challenges or complexities of being black.”43 Linda Duverne, in an article for the Journal of Social and Cultural Analysis, links the physical exploitation of blacks by whites during American slavery to the more recent and current “obsession with the physicality of the black body” and general fetishization of black bodies.44 With this point in mind, it is worth noting that a Google search for “Black Panther + bodies” yields a multitude of websites addressing the topic: “How to Get a Body Like Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman in Black Panther.”45 While it is not uncommon for mainstream media outlets and the popular press to write about an actor’s transformation for a role, especially when the transformation involves a drastic change to the actor’s body, the sheer number of articles on Michael B. Jordan’s and Chadwick Boseman’s bodies, their singularity of focus and the many photos accompanying these articles make this topic worthy of mention. YouTube videos and commentaries that appear with such a

288  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo Google search do not simply explain how the actors physically prepared to embody their roles; rather, they convey to a (primarily) white readership how they, too, can have these bodies. Thus, a question arises here regarding white viewers of films such as Get Out and Black Panther. While Peele positions “a white person to see the world through a black person for an hour and a half,”46 we can still ask how this seeing differs from an appropriating or fetishizing of messages in Get Out. As Thrasher notes, Get Out “shows the ultimate ways whiteness uses—indeed, the ways in which whiteness needs to use and use up—Black bodies for its continued existence.”47 In an article for Vibe, by Michael Saponara, a tweet helps to focus this concern: “Also I love that if the movie Get Out existed in the world of Get Out, the parents would have told Chris how much they loved Get Out.”48 Saponara’s point regards a white liberalism or performative ally-ship that ultimately does more harm than good—also a point made by Peele in crafting the screenplay.49 Or, as Thrasher states, “American liberalism, not just Trumpism, continues to make race by way of bodily theft.”50 A similar question is illustrated by Saturday Night Live’s skit “Wakanda Forever,”51 in which two white men who profess to be fans of Black Panther perform the “Wakanda salute” as they stand outside of the movie theater. They tell two black fans and special guest Chadwick Boseman that Black Panther is the “best film of 2018.” The white men repeatedly perform the salute as it is featured in the film by crossing their arms across their chests to form an X. The black fans react in dismay. When the white fans ask whether they are “doing it wrong,” the black fans respond that the issue is more that they are doing it at all. One of the white fans asks, “Why won’t you let me love Black Panther?” The black fans comment to each other that witnessing the Wakanda salute by the white men is “like indigestion but racially.”52 A second example of white performance of the Wakanda salute, in the wake of Black Panther’s box office success, occurred when Australian television and radio personality Maude Garrett greeted actor Michael B. Jordan at the start of an interview using the salute. After receiving no response from Jordan, Garrett performed the salute again. Jordan replied with a comment that went viral after the interview, “I ain’t from Wakanda,” and he refused to perform the salute.53 Discussion of this exchange online highlighted various features of this comment and refusal. Some viewers of Black Panther conveyed that Jordan’s response was factually accurate. Since Jordan’s character, Killmonger, was from Oakland, California—and not Wakanda—it made no sense for him to be greeted this way. Rather, it was Chadwick Boseman’s character, Black Panther (T’Challa), who was King of Wakanda. However, it was perhaps Jordan’s attitude in making the comment that is most revealing, as it mirrors the sentiment of the black fans in the Saturday Night Live skit. Jordan had asked Garrett whether she had seen the film, and her reply was to give

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 289 the Wakanda salute. So, a white woman performs the key gesture from Black Panther without appearing to understand its context—a fact that is highlighted, in turn, by her whiteness. And she performs the gesture a second time in an attempt to garner a reply from Jordan. Importantly, even Boseman has been reported as being tired of being forced to perform the salute. He remarked in a May 16, 2018, interview, “If I don’t want to do it, I have to not leave the house, pretty much. I’m being chased in cars.”54 An image of Boseman engaged in a half-hearted salute at the release of the Avengers: Infinity War premiere circulated on social media, and Boseman felt obligated to respond to comments that he appeared annoyed. A central point to be made here, and one highlighted by the plot of Get Out, involves the consumption of black bodies. In the case of Black Panther, this consumption takes the form of how to replicate the actors’ bodies or a desire to perform the Wakanda salute from the film. It also takes the form of repeatedly asking the actors to perform the salute in real life, when that request/demand can be positioned within a broader U.S. history and context of blacks serving various entertainment and performative functions. Given that these films decenter whiteness in their storytelling and position black characters in different roles, certain desires and gestures can be taken to reposition white control. We can recall Ira Madison’s comment: “In America, my body does not belong to me.”55

White Women and Black Bodies Feeding from the exchange between Garrett and Jordan addressed earlier, I would like to briefly consider the topic of white women vis-à-vis black male bodies. With respect to Get Out, the central white, female character is Rose, Chris’ girlfriend. And key to the film’s workings is the “reveal” of Rose as the film’s pivotal villain with her line to Chris, “You know I can’t give you the keys, right babe?” The line comes as Chris realizes he is in danger and searches for the car keys in an attempt to leave the Armitages’ property. He repeatedly asks Rose, “Where are the keys?” After feigning that she can’t find them, Rose looks at Chris stone-faced and delivers the revealing line as she dangles the keys within Chris’ view. Both Chris and the film’s viewers simultaneously learn that Rose has been involved in the family’s plan all along.56 In fact, she has lured Chris to the home and served as bait. Todd Van Luling describes the plot of Get Out as follows: “Rose helps trap a black man in her family’s house so that a rich white man can buy his body and then take over his mind.”57 Significantly, the role of Rose as a villain is one fully dependent on her white womanhood. In a podcast interview with director Peele, Jeff Goldsmith asked, “It seemed like at a certain point, there was still a chance that she might be a good person and didn’t realize that her family was doing this. . . . I’m curious if there

290  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo ever was an iteration where she was an ally rather than a foe.”58 Peele replied to Goldsmith, “Nope, there wasn’t that. There was an iteration of it where . . . we as an audience were meant to know that she was in on it the whole time. But no, Rose was never going to be an innocent bystander.”59 Peele conveys that in crafting the character of Rose, he relied on “our assumptions about how racial dynamics play out in Hollywood and real life.”60 He comments, “I knew in my heart that anybody who’s seeing a movie in a wide-release in America, would have to think, There’s no way Universal Studios would allow the one good white person in this film to also be evil!”61 Peele describes the scene revealing Rose’s villainy as the most difficult one for him to shoot, stating, “This is an introduction of the person we didn’t realize she was.”62 Writer Sherronda Brown remarks, “I  found it immensely satisfying that Peele’s narrative flips the dynamic by portraying white women as the ones who purposely enact some of the worst forms of racist violence.”63 Whereas black manhood or black male bodies have been routinely cast as monstrous and threatening (within films and in real life), the character of Rose inverts this depiction. Rose underscores the fact that the story of/for black bodies has been typically told from a white point of view. Moreover, this aspect of Get Out actually anticipates what became a news story phenomenon in 2018 of white women calling the police on black men (and women and children).64 The most famous case involved a Philadelphia Starbucks, in April 2018, when police removed two black men from the store after a white female employee reported them sitting in the store and using the restroom without making a purchase.65 Two weeks later, a white woman called the police on a black family having a barbeque in a park in Oakland, California (she said the family was using charcoal in a non-charcoal area).66 And in June, a white woman called 911 to report an 8-year-old girl selling water on a sidewalk in San Francisco (she said the girl was illegally selling water without a permit).67 Common to the character of Rose and these three real-life scenarios is how white women have historically “rationalize[d] and enacte[d] antiBlack violences.”68 Black men have been both feared and fetishized. Brown uses the phrase “phantasmagorical Blackness” to describe “the ways in which Blackness, especially Black male sexuality, becomes a monstrosity in the white imagination.”69 She remarks: Relationships between Black men and white women are constantly centered in social and cinematic narratives about phantasmagorical Blackness, and understanding this motif is significant when watching Get Out. Whiteness continually redraws the lines of connection between Blackness and animality as a way to both dehumanize and fetishize, and uses the perceived purity and inherent value of white women as the foundation for that work.70

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 291 Brown continues this analysis by stating: Accepted cultural myths about the dangerousness of Black sexualities and the innocence of white women are deeply rooted in our society, and white woman-hood has historically been instrumental in inciting and upholding violence against Black people. That violence has manifest in a particular way on the bodies of Black men.71 Aisha Harris points out that while Chris “makes it out alive,” he is nonetheless “mentally scarred forever.”72 In physically surviving the ordeal, he represents the inverse of the “Final Girl” (usually young, white and pure), with whom viewers are supposed to identify and cheer on. Harris notes that the “Final Girl” is “also who Allison Williams would play if this were a typical slasher film made by a typically white filmmaker.”73 Instead, Rose emerges as the film’s preeminent villain, with Get Out clearly demonstrating “the horror of being . . . a black person in America.”74

Conclusion I would like to conclude by mentioning what I  consider to be a slight tension in Get Out. Namely if the film was written to speak to Obamaera post-racial hopefuls, then the microaggressions and “conversations that make it clear who belongs and who comes from outside,”75 as noted by Peele, are precisely the sorts of encounters that should be centered in the film. And these encounters indeed comprise the majority of the film. Peele has stated, “The monster of racism lurks underneath that conversation.”76 He has also remarked that “it wasn’t red state racists, but ‘the liberal elite,’ who tend to believe that they’re—we’re—above this”77 that were the target of his film. However, in rewriting and reshooting the ending and moving away from the first or alternate ending that was intended to deliver a “gut punch” to such liberal elites—again, since Peele thought that punch was no longer needed given the shift in the national landscape to more blatant displays of racism and aggression—and instead offering a reprieve and relief for viewers from this racial reality . . . well, this theatrical ending stands in some tension with the central aspects of the film’s workings. Those features were intended to highlight the racial denial and hypocrisy of white liberals, which in the end represent a unique brand of harm and racism. However, it is most likely accurate to say that both of these lived realities exist (simultaneously) for black Americans and that tension is part of these everyday realities. In certain contexts, experiences of racism are via subtle acts and daily microaggressions. At other times, experiences of racism are more blatant and even deadly, as in the case of police shootings of

292  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo unarmed black men cited at the start of this chapter. What Get Out offers is a more complex narrative—one that unpacks the various workings of race and racism in the United States. I  have discussed, at lesser length here, aspects of the film Black Panther. These two films are brought together in their foregrounding of black experiences and possibilities, as told by black filmmakers. I have also noted that such films raise questions concerning white engagement and responses to their uniqueness and popularity. It is important that these engagements by whites not replicate and mirror daily experiences for black Americans—experiences that both of these films ultimately put in abeyance by centering the black (super)hero.

Notes 1 Dexter Filkins, “ ‘Do Not Resist’ and the Crisis of Police Militarization.” New Yorker, accessed May 13, 2016, www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ do-not-resist-and-the-crisis-of-police-militarization. 2 German Lopez, “Nixon Official: Real Reason for the Drug War was to Criminalize Black People.” Vox, accessed March  23, 2016, www.vox. com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon. 3 Tom Jackman, “Trump to Restore Program Sending Surplus Military Weapons, Equipment to Police.” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost. com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/08/27/trump-restores-program-sendingsurplus-military-weapons-equipment-to-police/?noredirect=on&utm_term=. bf513ad9b002. 4 Ibid. 5 Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo and Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo, “Citizenship and the Browning of Terror.” Peace Review 20, no. 3 (2008): 273–82. 6 Kevin Drum, “A Very Brief History of Super-Predators.” Mother Jones, March 3, 2016, www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/very-brief-history-superpredators/. 7 Mapping Police Violence, September 1, 2018, https://mappingpoliceviolence. org/unarmed/. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Wesley Lowery, “Aren’t More White People than Black People Killed by Police? Yes, but No.” Washington Post, accessed July 11, 2016, www.wash ingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-peoplethan-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?utm_term=.d8490b0b06b7. 11 Lowery, “Black People Killed.” 12 Brian Formo, “Let’s Talk About that Brilliant ‘Get Out’ Ending.” Collinder, February 28, 2017, http://collider.com/get-out-ending-explained/#spoilers. 13 Formo, “Let’s Talk.” 14 Played by Daniel Kaluuya. 15 Played by Allison Williams. 16 Played by Milton “Lil Rel” Howery. 17 Jordan Peele, “Alternate Ending with Director’s Commentary.” YouTube, accessed January 24, 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUMGzioWST4. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 293 21 Sarah Ahern, “Jordan Peele Discusses a Darker Alternate Ending of ‘Get Out.” Variety, accessed March 3, 2017, https://variety.com/2017/film/news/ jordan-peele-discusses-alternate-endings-get-out-1202001954/. 22 Peele, “Alternate Ending.” 23 Jada Yuan and Hunter Harris, “How Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ Got Made.” Vulture, accessed February  22, 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/02/makingget-out-jordan-peele.html. 24 Ira Madison, “Get Out Understands the Black Body.” MTV News, accessed February  24, 2017, www.mtv.com/news/2986793/get-out-understands-theblack-body/. 25 Ibid. 26 Steven Thrasher, “Why ‘Get Out’ is the Best Movie Ever Made About American Slavery.” Esquire, accessed January 23, 2018, www.esquire.com/ entertainment/movies/a53515/get-out-jordan-peele-slavery/. 27 Thrasher, “American Slavery.” 28 Played by Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel and Lakeith Stanfield, respectively. 29 Krystal Valentine, “Get Out is an Allegory for Cultural Appropriation.” Fishnet Cinema, accessed March 18, 2017, https://fishnetcinema.com/2017/03/18/ get-out-is-an-allegory-for-cultural-appropriation/. 30 Valentine, “Cultural Appropriation.” 31 Zack Sharf, “ ‘Get Out’: Jordan Peele Reveals the Real Meaning Behind the Sunken Place.” Indie Wire, accessed November 30, 2017, www.indiewire.com/2017/11/ get-out-jordan-peele-explains-sunken-place-meaning-1201902567/. 32 Cara Buckley, “ ‘I’d Never Seen My Fears as an African-American Man Onscreen’,” New York Times, accessed December  6, 2017, www.nytimes. com/2017/12/06/movies/jordan-peele-get-out-african-american-biracial. html. 33 Played by Chadwick Boseman. 34 Played by Michael B. Jordan. 35 Jelani Cobb, “ ‘Black Panther’ and the Invention of ‘Africa,’ ” New Yorker, accessed February  20, 2018, www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ black-panther-and-the-invention-of-africa. 36 Ibid. 37 Jordan Peele and Ryan Coogler, respectively. 38 Cobb, “Black Panther.” 39 Lenika Cruz, “The Meaning of Eyes and Cameras in ‘Get Out,’ ” Atlantic, accessed March  3, 2017, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/ 2017/03/in-get-out-the-eyes-have-it/518370/. 40 Jason Zinoman, “Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism.” New York Times, accessed February  16, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/ movies/jordan-peele-interview-get-out.html. 41 Cruz, “Eyes and Cameras.” 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Linda Duverne, “Post-Racial America: Nice White Liberals Recognizing Black Culture But Not Black People.” Journal of Social and Cultural Analysis, Spring 2017. 45 See, for example, “How to Get a Body Like Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman: Black Panther Edition.” Jump Rope Dudes, accessed September 3, 2018, https://jumpropedudes.com/get-body-like-michael-b-jordan-chadwickboseman-black-panther-edition/, and Matthew Jussim, “Whoa, Michael B.

294  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo Jordan and Chadwick Boseman Got Shredded for ‘Black Panther,’ ” Men’s Journal, September  3, 2018, www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/whoamichael-b-jordan-and-chadwick-boseman-got-shredded-black-panther/. 46 Duverne, “Post-Racial America.” 47 Thrasher, “American Slavery.” 48 Michael Saponara, “Being Black for 103 Minutes: ‘Get Out’ from a White Millenial’s Perspective.” Vibe, accessed March  22, 2017, www.vibe. com/2017/03/get-out-white-millennial-perspective-opinion/. 49 Ibid. 50 Thrasher, “American Slavery.” 51 “Wakanda Forever—SNL.” YouTube, accessed April 7, 2018, www.youtube. com/watch?v=iGKffRRIMko. 52 Ibid. 53 Staff writer, “ ‘I ain’t from Wakanda’: Michael B. Jordan Rejects White Interviewer’s Wakanda Salute and We’re Watching it on Repeat.” Grio, May 14, 2018, https://thegrio.com/2018/05/14/michael-b-jordan-wakanda-salute-reject/. 54 Jacob Shamsian, “ ‘Black Panther’ star Chadwick Boseman is Tired of Wakanda Salute.” Insider, accessed May  15, 2018, www.thisisinsider.com/ black-panther-star-chadwick-boseman-michael-b-jordan-tired-wakandasalute-meme-2018–5. 55 Madison, “Get Out Understands.” 56 Derek Laurence, “Best of 2017 (Behind the Scenes): Jordan Peele Goes inside That Shocking ‘Get Out’ Reveal.”  EW.com, accessed December  20, 2017, ew.com/movies/2017/12/20/jordan-peele-get-out-keys-interview/. 57 Todd Van Luling, “The Deleted Moment from ‘Get Out’ Would Have Changed the Whole Movie.” Huffington Post, accessed May 18, 2017, http://huffing tonpost.com/entry/get-out-deleted-moment_us_591dbc8f4b094cdba51f3d0. 58 Jeff Goldsmith, “Jordan Peele—Get Out Q&A.” Lone Survivor Q&A, accessed February  25, 2017, www.theqandapodcast.com/2017/02/jordanpeele-get-out-q.html. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Sherronda Brown, “ ‘Listen to the Ancestors, Run!’: Get Out, Zombification, and Pathologizing Escape from the Plantation.” RaceBaitR, accessed May 2, 2017, www.racebaitr.com/2017/03/07/listen-ancestors-run-get-zombificationpathologizing-escape-plantation/. 64 See Anthony Brooks, “Racism, Discrimination and Calling the Police on Black People.” WBUR News, accessed July 19, 2018, www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/07/19/ racism-discrimination-and-calling-the-police-on-black-people. 65 Chris Woodyard, “Starbucks’ 911 Call That Led to Philadelphia Arrests of Two Black Men.” USA Today, accessed April 17, 2018, www.usatoday. com/story/money/business/2018/04/17/hear-911-call-led-starbucks-arreststwo-african-americans/526255002/. 66 Carla Herreria, “Woman Calls Police on Black Family BBQing at a Lake in Oakland.” HuffPost, accessed May 11, 2018, www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ woman-calls-police-oakland-barbecue_us_5af50125e4b00d7e4c18f741. 67 Kalhan Rosenblatt, “White Woman Dubbed ‘Permit Patty’ for Calling Police on Black Girl Denies it was Racial.” NBC News, www.nbcnews.com/ news/us-news/white-woman-dubbed-permit-patty-calling-police-black-girldenies-n886226.

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 295 68 Sherronda, Brown, “Behind Amy Schumer’s ‘Get Out’ Joke: The Horrible Legacy of Claiming the Black Phallus Endangers White Women.” Black Youth Project, accessed September  4, 2017, www.blackyouthproject.com/ behind-amy-schumers-get-out-joke-the-horrible-legacy-of-claiming-theblack-phallus-engangers-white-women/. 69 Brown, “Listen.” 70 Brown, “Amy Schumer’s.” 71 Ibid. 72 Aisha Harris, “The Most Terrifying Villain in Get Out Is White Womanhood.”  Slate Magazine, accessed March  7, 2017, www.slate.com/blogs/ browbeat/2017/03/07/how_get_out_positions_white_womanhood_as_the_ most_horrifying_ villain_of.html. 73 Harris, “White Womanhood.” 74 Ibid. 75 Sam Adams, “In Jordan Peele’s Horror Movie, Get Out, the ‘Monster’ is Liberal Racism.” Slate, accessed January  25, 2017, www.slate.com/blogs/ browbeat/2017/01/25/at_sundance_jordan_peele_explains_how_obama_s_ election_inspired_his_horror.html. 76 Adams, “Liberal Racism.” 77 Ibid.

References Adams, Sam. “In Jordan Peele’s Horror Movie, Get Out, the ‘Monster’ Is Liberal Racism.” Slate Magazine. Accessed January  25, 2017. www.slate.com/blogs/ browbeat/2017/01/25/at_sundance_jordan_peele_explains_how_obama_s_ election_inspired_his_horror.html. Ahern, Sarah. “Jordan Peele Discusses a Darker Alternate Ending of “Get Out.” Variety. Accessed March  3, 2017. https://variety.com/2017/film/news/ jordan-peele-discusses-alternate-endings-get-out-1202001954/. Bloodsworth-Lugo, Mary K. and Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo. “Citizenship and the Browning of Terror.” Peace Review 20, no. 3 (2008): 273–82. Brooks, Anthony. “Racism, Discrimination and Calling the Police on Black People.”  Broad Jurisdiction of U. S. Border Patrol Raises Concerns About Racial Profiling | WBUR News, On Point. Accessed July  19, 2018. www. wbur.org/onpoint/2018/07/19/racism-discrimination-and-calling-thepolice-on-black-people. Brown, Sherronda J. “Behind Amy Schumer’s ‘Get Out’ Joke: The Horrible Legacy of Claiming the Black Phallus Endangers White Women.” The Black Youth Project, 4 September, 2017, blackyouthproject.com/behind-amy-schumers-getout-joke-the-horrible-legacy-of-claiming-the-black-phallus-endangers-whitewomen/. Brown, Sherronda J. “ ‘Listen to the Ancestors, Run!”: Get Out, Zombification and Pathologizing Escape from the Plantation.” RaceBaitR, Accessed May 2, 2017, racebaitr.com/2017/03/07/listen-ancestors-run-get-zombification-pathologizingescape-plantation/. Buckley, Cara. “  ‘I’d Never Seen My Fears as an African-American Man Onscreen’.” The New York Times. Accessed December 6, 2017. www.nytimes. com/2017/12/06/movies/jordan-peele-get-out-african-american-biracial.html.

296  Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo Cobb, Jelani. “ ‘Black Panther’ and the Invention of ‘Africa.’ ” The New Yorker. Accessed February 20, 2018. www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/ black-panther-and-the-invention-of-africa. Cruz, Lenika. “The Meaning of Eyes and Cameras in ‘Get Out’.” The Atlantic. Accessed March 3, 2017. www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/03/ in-get-out-the-eyes-have-it/518370/. Drum, Kevin. “A Very Brief History of Super-Predators.” Mother Jones. Accessed March 3, 2016. www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/03/very-brief-historysuper-predators/. Duverne, Linda. “Post-Racial America: ‘Nice White Liberals Recognizing Black Culture But Not Black People.” Journal of Social and Cultural Analysis, Spring 2017. Filkins, Dexter. “ ‘Do Not Resist’ and the Crisis of Police Militarization.” The New Yorker. Accessed May 13, 2016. www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/ do-not-resist-and-the-crisis-of-police-militarization. Formo, Brian. “Let’s Talk About That Brilliant ‘Get Out’ Ending.” Collider. Accessed February 8, 2017. www. collider.com/get-out-ending-explained/#spoilers. Goldsmith, Jeff. “Jordan Peele—Get Out Q&A.” Lone Survivor Q&A. Accessed February 25, 2017. www.theqandapodcast.com/2017/02/jordan-peele-get-outq.html. Harris, Aisha. “The Most Terrifying Villain in Get Out Is White Womanhood.”  Slate Magazine. Accessed March  7, 2017. www.slate.com/blogs/ browbeat/2017/03/07/how_get_out_positions_white_womanhood_as_the_ most_horrifying_villain_of.html. Herreria, Carla. “Woman Calls Police on Black Family BBQing at a Lake in Oakland.” HuffPost. Accessed May 11, 2018. www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ woman-calls-police-oakland-barbecue_us_5af50125e4b00d7e4c18f741. “How to Get a Body Like Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman: Black Panther Edition.” Jump Rope Dudes. Accessed September  3, 2018. https:// jumpropedudes.com/get-body-like-michael-b-jordan-chadwick-boseman-blackpanther-edition/. Irwin, Demetria. “White Journalist Who Hilariously Failed to Get Michael B. Jordan to Do the Wakanda Salute, Issues an Apology.” TheGrio. Accessed May 15, 2018. thegrio.com/2018/05/14/michael-b-jordan-wakanda-salute-apology/. Jackman, Tom. “Trump to Restore Program Sending Surplus Military Weapons, Equipment to Police.” The Washington Post. Accessed August 27, 2017. www. washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2017/08/27/trump-restores-programsending-surplus-military-weapons-equipment-to-police/?noredirect=on&utm_ term=.bf513ad9b002. Jussim, Matthew. “Whoa, Michael B. Jordan and Chadwick Boseman Got Shredded for ‘Black Panther’.” Men’s Journal. Accessed September 3, 2018. www. mensjournal.com/health-fitness/whoa-michael-b-jordan-and-chadwick-bosemangot-shredded-black-panther/. Laurence, Derek. “Best of 2017 (Behind the Scenes): Jordan Peele Goes inside That Shocking ‘Get Out’ Reveal.”  EW.com. Accessed 20 December, 2017. www.ew.com/movies/2017/12/20/jordan-peele-get-out-keys-interview/. Lopez, German. “Nixon Official: Real Reason for the Drug War was to Criminalize Black People.” Vox. Accessed March  23, 2016. www.vox. com/2016/3/22/11278760/war-on-drugs-racism-nixon.

Race, Bodies and Lived Realities 297 Lowery, Wesley. “Analysis | Aren’t More White People than Black People Killed by Police? Yes, but No.” The Washington Post. Accessed July 11, 2016. www. washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-whitepeople-than-black-people-killed-by-police-yes-but-no/?noredirect=on. Luling, Todd Van. “This Deleted Moment From ‘Get Out’ Would Have Changed The Whole Movie.” The Huffington Post. Accessed May 18, 2017. www.huffing​ tonpost.com/entry/get-out-deleted-moment_us_ 591dbc8fe4b094cdba51f3d0. Madison, Ira. “Get Out Understands The Black Body.”  MTV News. Accessed ­February 24, 2017. www.mtv.com/news/2986793/get-out-understands-the-blackbody/. Mapping Police Violence. Accessed September  1, 2018. https://mappingpolice​ violence.org/unarmed/. Peele, Jordan. “Alternate Ending with Director’s Commentary.” YouTube. Accessed January 24, 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUMGzioWST4. Rosenblatt, Kalhan. “White Woman Dubbed ‘Permit Patty’ for Calling Police on Black Girl Denies it was Racial.” NBC News. Accessed www.nbcnews. com/news/us-news/white-woman-dubbed-permit-patty-calling-policeblack-girl-denies-n886226. Saponara, Michael. “Being Black of 103 Minutes: ‘Get Out’ From A White Millennial’s Perspective.” Vibe. Accessed March 22, 2017. www.vibe.com/2017/03/ get-out-white-millennial-perspective-opinion/. Shamsian, Jacob. “ ‘Black Panther’ star Chadwick Boseman is Tired of Wakanda Salute.” Insider. Accessed May  15, 2018. www.thisisinsider.com/blackpanther-star-chadwick-boseman-michael-b-jordan-tired-wakanda-salutememe-2018–5. Sharf, Zack. “ ‘Get Out’: Jordan Peele Reveals the Real Meaning Behind the Sunken Place.” Indie Wire. Accessed November 30, 2017. www.indiewire.com/2017/11/ get-out-jordan-peele-explains-sunken-place-meaning-1201902567/. Staff Writer. “ ‘I ain’t from Wakanda’: Michael B. Jordan Rejects White Interviewer’s Wakanda Salute and We’re Watching it on Repeat.” Grio. Accessed May 14, 2018. https://thegrio.com/2018/05/14/michael-b-jordan-wakanda-salute-reject/. Thrasher, Steven. “Why ‘Get Out’ Is the Best Movie Ever Made About American Slavery.” Esquire. Accessed January  23, 2018. www.esquire.com/ entertainment/movies/a53515/get-out-jordan-peele-slavery/. Valentine, Krystal. “Get Out Is an Allegory for Cultural Appropriation.” Fishnet Cinema. Accessed March 18, 2017. fishnetcinema.com/2017/03/18/get-out-isan-allegory-for-cultural-appropriation/. “Wakanda Forever—SNL.” YouTube, Saturday Night Live. Accessed April  7, 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGKffRRIMko. Woodyard, Chris. “Starbucks’ 911 Call That Led to Philadelphia Arrests of Two Black Men.” USA Today. Accessed April 17, 2018. www.usatoday.com/story/ money/ business/2018/04/17/hear-911-call-led-starbucks-arrests-two-africanamericans/526255002/. Yuan, Jada and Hunter Harris. “How Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ Got Made.” Vulture. February  22, 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/02/making-get-out-jordanpeele.html. Zinoman, Jason. “Jordan Peele on a Truly Terrifying Monster: Racism.” The New York Times. Accessed February 16, 2017. www.nytimes.com/2017/02/16/ movies/jordan-peele-interview-get-out.html.

17 Transnational Biopolitical Motives in Postmodern Cinema Žižek and Badiou on Udi Aloni’s Forgiveness and Local Angel Oana Şerban The following chapter explores the multiple manners in which postmodern cinema supports a biopolitical turn of the moving images and artistic practices that might provide a new path for understanding the social and political reconciliations between national, respectively state, subjects. This hypothesis, according to which the postmodern cinema is biopolitically engaged, if this formula is to stand, tests the capacity of contemporary artistic productions to “question the validity of the standard ideological arguments”1 that explain mankind’s recovery after the century of industrialized death, of which the Holocaust and the Gulags were a part. It equally readdresses the uncertain identity of different discriminated races and political identities and creates a background for public debate on the limits and senses of forgiveness in these twisted political contexts, as well as for a potential reconciliation. The puzzle that surfaces from all these topics is no more, no less than the Jewish Question, depicted in particular terms in the Bauer-Marx dispute and reinforced, nowadays, on the political scene, both as the inheritance of a racial trauma born from a political antagonism between different (Jewish and non-Jewish) states and as an internal problem, claimed by agents belonging to the same (Jewish) nation. This scenario is reflected by the movies of Udi Aloni, Local Angel and Forgiveness, taking up the situation of the Jewish identity, as it was depicted by the Bauer-Marx polemics, to the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Therefore, the shift of perspective from an external conflict to an internal one provides a unity that endeavors a visual biopolitical critique, as a matter of prospecting life and examining its evolution under extreme or moderate regimes of authority. Addressing the consequences of these sources of dominance on power, knowledge and processes of subjectivation, these two cinematic productions signed by Aloni were deeply analyzed by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou, not as examples of visual biopolitical paradigms of the postmodern cinema, but as artistic products that succeed in shaping multiculturalism as a transnational2 specter.

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 299 These unique examples of the visual portfolio of Udi Aloni, namely Local Angel and Forgiveness, inspire my analysis in order to set up, from this artistic and pragmatic field, the coordinates of a biopolitical project that aims at reconstructing the traditional Jewish Question as a problem of transnational identity through the aesthetic experience. I  will argue that this direction, which is progressively implemented in contemporary cinema, reshapes transnationalism by accommodating metaphysical, moral and aesthetic experiences among moving images and universalizing, in the name of life and dignity, the following question: “what are the real conditions for peace for everybody?”3 Despite the fact that both Žižek and Badiou recognize the political potential of these movies, reflected by topics such as political and religious tolerance, political subjectivity, social faithfulness and awareness of the other, crossing borders and territories, separation, war and violence, they never use in their analysis a biopolitical consideration that I  will try to sustain in my article. Nevertheless, the fact that Aloni’s movies do not prescribe a political thesis, nor do they depict it, since “the truth is inscribed in art” and, at the same time, “is an effect”4 of it, might suggest something about the role that contemporary art, through its images, has in producing truth. In the light of these observations, I  will restrain the research to the investigation of the potential core concepts of Aloni’s aesthetic and biopolitical project, without extensively explaining the general coordinates of biopolitics: I will only provide, as a hermeneutical caution, the observation that my lecture is, from this perspective, inspired by the Foucauldian acceptance of biopolitics. In the first part of this chapter I will briefly present the binational and transnational context of the political conflict that lies at the base of the contemporary Jewish identity, followed, in the second part of the chapter, by the investigation, through artistic and aesthetic instruments, of the biopolitical project supported by the moving images of Aloni’s films. According to my research, there does not appear to be many critical inquiries devoted to the biopolitical potential of art; henceforth, the present paper might draw some general insights of such an important topic that explains, from a radically different perspective, the social and political engagement of our contemporary art. But before proceeding to the main objectives of this chapter, I will briefly explain my option for testing the biopolitical potential of contemporary art—here represented by cinema—in the light of Foucault’s considerations. Such an attempt may be regarded as inadequate for or inconsistent with the larger objectives of the Foucauldian oeuvre by its attentive readers or partisans who are aware of the fact that, despite any historical synchronicities between the period when Foucault develops the project on biopolitics and that when his secondary concerns are directed towards the role of perception and aesthetic experience in shaping the philosophy of the subject, he has never assumed any biopolitical functions of art.5 This historical occurrence represented by “the second half of the 1970s and

300  Oana Şerban the early 1980s”6 brings to our attention a striking fact: “that Foucault himself does not explicitly ponder on the possible links between the discussions on art/aesthetics and biopolitics, in spite of their coincidence in his intellectual biography.”7 Nevertheless, a solely biographical reference cannot give legitimacy to such a critical incursion, although it raises a certain plausibility of such an attempt. In order to strengthen the premises for this analysis, one might invoke indirect arguments inspired by the strong Foucauldian connections between the aesthetics of existence and the ethics of the good life, gathered in the biopolitical discourse on the government practices that allow the extension of the state power over the mental and physical dimensions of populations, regarded as bodies. The power of cinema to constitute public discourse engaged in prospecting the manner in which human life becomes a strategic object for governmental statistics and measures to ensure welfare, health and, at the limit, a powerful reason of state should be tested, even though Foucault neglects any personal and assumed intersection between biopolitics and aesthetics. They both place the experiential dimensions of “the living” at the core of perceiving and representing life, despite their radically different instruments. As aesthetics becomes a discourse about the speechless or common dimensions of our life experienced through art—a premise highly valued by Foucault in his articles devoted to visual art, mainly to photography and painting, following his declared affinities for the work8 of Velazquez, Magritte, Manet and Fromanger—biopolitics is reflected as a discourse on the attentive perception of the mobility of life and the limits and standards applied to its (normal) evolution. For the purposes of this chapter, a larger exposure of the Foucauldian considerations on modern art is unlikely to be appropriate; nevertheless, for the attempt of postulating the biopolitical potential of modern and contemporary art, it is important to point out that Foucault’s postrepresentational modern art explores what Tanke calls being an antinormative ethics of freedom, represented by ethical categories transposed in the practices of artistic subject, such as “rupture, release, liberation or reversal.”9 He considers that post-representational art stands for the triumph of simulacra in the visual discourse as a plea for “the irreality of images.”10 “Michals’s photographic sequences disrupt morality by reversing ‘the ocular ethic of photography’ (156), Fromanger’s ‘photogenic dispositifs’ (136) use painting as a ‘sling-shot of images’ (145) to release rather than capture events. And Cynicism’s performative  parrhesia  as visual truth functions as a ‘transhistorical ethical category’ (177) to transform modern life itself into a work of art (194).”11 In my opinion, talking about the biopolitical potential of art means to take Tanke’s and Huffer’s ambitions on a common ground, that of extracting the ordinary discourse on modern art as historical singularities, bringing them into connection with transhistorical exigencies of visual

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 301 experiencing and expressing the freedom of the subject in relation with the complacency of politics and culture in different regimes of power. A generous insight of this hermeneutical strategy that I test along with my research is given by the final outcome, that of adding modern and contemporary art to the Foucauldian network of phenomena that map the modern history of subjectivation, from which madness, sexuality, political forces and institutions and spirituality are incontestably inherent. In a sense, both aesthetics, through art, and biopolitics are visual, but for different aims: if the former explores the ocular experience for “lifecapturing” or life-liberating, the latter abuses it for controlling or, more ambitiously, “arresting life,” as Siisiainen formulates this mere distinction by these ingeniously selected expressions. Ongoing regimes of visibility developed for individuals subjected to the aesthetic experience or to practices of control and surveillance are simultaneous with the regimes of invisibility and power that authoritative entities, which orchestrate creation or government, preferentially perform. Despite the fact that aesthetics and biopolitics are hardly attached to similar institutions, knowledge discourses and practices, they share a common concern for life underpinned by social, political and creative processes that aim to contribute to the (government of the) good life. General arguments in favor of this parallel might be drawn in a larger specter of Foucault’s oeuvre, but for the objectives of this chapter it is sufficient to test the plausibility of their inner interdependencies and affinities between aesthetics and biopolitics by indicating a concrete field of conviviality of these two disciplines, recognized as the biopolitical potential of art. In order to satisfy this exigency, I will examine the two-way rationale of impacting politics and life that cinema incorporates, starting from a specific and problematic context, that of the transnational Jewish identity (Palestinian and Israeli) depicted by Aloni’s movies. I will operate on both theoretical and practical levels that seek to fixate a certain jargon—hence a conceptual framework—of the biopolitical potential of art, correspondent to a visual critique on the multiple manners through which moving images succeed in capturing, arresting or liberating life assumed as a transnational and conflictual living.

A Binational Background for a Transnational Problem One of the specters of transnational minorities is represented by the binational idea of a state that constructs its historical narrative as “a binational reality with two state solution.”12 Jewish minorities cultivated, in this manner, a Diaspora feeling inside their own Oriental carpet, so that “the Jewish identity today is not such a self-evident question,”13 as Žižek said, not even for Jews. On the one hand, there are Jews trying to fulfill the traditional project of their motherland. On the other hand, there are Jews who endured the atrocities of Shoah just to remain present

302  Oana Şerban in both a physical and mental geography of their sense of belonging. The Jewish Question nowadays is split between Palestinian Jews and Israeli Jews. They certainly are the result of a political division but, according to Žižek, not between “secular liberals versus religious fundamentalists,”14 but between two attitudes, which I would call relevant for the “governing of life and terror” that engages a biopolitical perspective. “The radically liberal Zionism, that is all the rights for the Palestinians, but not a secular state, that’s too risky and an attitude that would be willing to risk a secular state.”15 Žižek’s argument is relevant because, in these terms, secularism becomes a risk to the radicalization of the traditional Jewish identity. Therefore, we have to answer, following this route, Žižek’s question, “What does a Jew16 Want?” The first presupposition is that Jewish people want the recognition of their identity, starting with their binationalism, as an expression of a minimal distance for biopolitical security. At a first glimpse, Žižek’s option to explain the Jewish political options through the formula “let’s have a secular state, but a little later on”17 is inappropriate. The problem is to recognize that the concept itself of identity is intercultural, at least for the Jewish and, consequently, binational. Udi Aloni’s movies surprise, according to Žižek, the two individual groups in the scenario of negotiation, while, in real life, these political actors argue the reverse, meaning the total rupture. In this second paradigm, in which the best propaganda weapon is telling the truth, liberal Israelis argue “but we tried everything, now they are throwing bombs, we cannot even negotiate.”18 The Jewish definitely want transnational character to be bounded on binationalism. So, to the question “What does a Jew want?” one should not answer “Which Jew?” but “For all of Jews, he has one desire.”19 Secularism would involve, in Žižek’s perspective, converting the old Jerusalem to an exclusive sacred space for religious rituals. Social and civil emancipation should be gained on the field of political boundaries, not religious ones. Hence, this will provoke the following dilemma: Could a Jew abandon political control, experiencing it not as difficult, necessary compromise, but seeing it as gaining a sacred space? It would need to be a totally crazy gesture like that. People say it can’t happen, but we know that history is full of miracles.20 The Jewish Question becomes, in this logic, the universal question of peace for everyone, as Badiou considers. This will involve not the renunciation of Jewish identity today, but the creation of a new one. From this context that Žižek and Badiou briefly express during their analysis of Aloni’s films two questions arise out of these problems as a biopolitical concern. The first one is what acceptances of life, dignity, justice, power and God share the Jewish versions of binationalism and transnationalism? The second one deals with the need of creating a new

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 303 Jewish identity, as previously argued, investigating its biopolitical profile. In what follows, the answer will be conceived by recourse to the aesthetic experience provided by Aloni’s two movies Local Angel and Forgiveness.

Aesthetic Answers, Moving Images, Biopolitical Solutions Udi Aloni’s film Local Angel is inspired by the interpretation that Walter Benjamin gives in the “Theses on the Philosophy of History” to the painting of Paul Klee Angelus Novus, a monoprint from 1920. According to Benjamin, the angel is depicted in a dynamic that inspires the moving away from the past, the tragedies of the unstable present and a run from the chaos unleashed under its wings: A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.21 The angel is the symbol of history in its process. Correspondingly, Aloni’s “Local Angel” takes his face from the Jewish identity: among the history embedded within concepts such as sacrifice, faith and sacred duties, the Palestinian–Israeli conflict shows up as a rivalry of traditions disputed on the realm of capitalism. The documentary reflects Aloni’s intellectual travels, commenced soon after the 9/11 catastrophe, to Israel, where he seeks to rediscover the theological and political roots of his mother, Shaulamit Aloni, known as the founder of the Israeli Civil Rights Movement. As a peace activist, she seems to be Aloni’s original angel, followed by Hanan Ashrawi and Yasser Arafat, with whom Aloni engages in dialogue, along with other cultural figures of the Israeli and Palestinian society, slightly interrupted by the altered image of Klee’s and Benjamin’s angel. Aloni’s affinities with Benjamin’s thought,22 one of the later representatives of the Frankfurt School, is not accidental. This hermeneutical engagement, highly visible in his aesthetic creation, is based on the Jewish framework that Benjamin’s philosophy shares with one of his modern predecessors, Spinoza, to whom Aloni devotes a higher recognition, giving the subtitle of Theological Political Fragments

304  Oana Şerban to his movie, after Spinoza’s homonymous work Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus. On the one hand, Aloni follows Benjamin’s “Theological Political Fragment,” which takes Spinozist depictions of nature towards new considerations through which nature itself becomes identifiable with “the messianic.” Benjamin’s “fragment” overlaps the distinction between religion and theology to that between the Messiah and the Messianic. Aloni speculates in his movie that Benjamin’s main reflection is that “the order of the profane should be erected on the idea of happiness,”23 and questions the Messianic nature of happiness as it is addressed by the Jewish identity, in the narrative proper to the Israeli–Palestinian conflicts. On the other hand, Aloni has his own understanding of Spinoza’s sense of Jewishness, happiness and theocratic rationality and reconstructs it in his own Theological Political Fragments, recovering, in his critical and aesthetic experience, Benjamin’s latter remarks on history and the Messianic grace that transgresses it, for which the metaphor of the “angel” becomes quite eloquent. Choosing such a subtitle for his movie, Aloni recommends himself as one of the most assumed inheritors of the Spinozist and Benjaminian philosophical traditions. Nevertheless, his “Local Angel,” whereas local might be easily interpreted as Jewish, in its binational appearances, lost his aura and became a ruin, in Benjamin’s words, as history progressed and, implicitly, the Israeli–Palestinian conflicts amplified. But in Aloni’s logic, “local” is enough for “universal.” His artistic perspectives share their ideological background, which advocates for abolishing an unsuccessful and inauthentic “Jewish democracy” with a binational state. As a matter of fact, every work of art of Aloni is signed under the motto: “from the River to the Sea, all People must be Free.”24 What separates Israeli and Palestinian people is not only their contrary lifestyles and perspectives on identity, faith and submission to God’s will, but also the radicalization of their values through capitalism. Israel and Palestine begin to look more and more like the East and the West—a radical opposition born from a theological clash that advanced as a political conflict supported by the same capitalist progress belonging to the American landscape from the beginning of the film. Therefore, these correspondences, both on internal and external political levels, aimed by a theological symbol, describe a biopolitical project gathered under the image of the “Local Angel.” The voice of the narrator, which interrupts the film’s frames devoted to the capitalist industry of music, dance, fame and high-life of the Orient, expressed by Israeli singers and Palestinian rap groups, doubles the iconic image of the theological symbol with a story: “The angel looks as though he is about to move away from something he has been guarding.”25 The statue of the angel, placed in the cemetery of Jaffa, with his wings to the dead and his back to the world, announces the break of Israel and Palestine as the progress of history, otherwise assimilated through the contrast between East and West: “This is how one pictures the local angel

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 305 of history. He faces the East and his back is turned to the sea. The waves, in constant motion behind him, beckon him to sail westward.”26 In the end, the angel fails: The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been broken, but the easterly wind blinds his teary eyes, and the sea beckons him to sail into the future. He cannot resist the calling of the West, whose voice, like that of the sirens, calls him backward into what we call progress. Meanwhile, the pile of debris before him grows skyward.27 The angel follows “the divisions of consciousness”28 from New York29 to Israel and from Israel to Palestine; peace, in the name of life, depicts a “subjective engagement”30 through which life is reduced to a normalized behavior that, most of all, is considered to be normal, under the assumption that “the people who live in Palestine are something like the same to those who live in Israel.”31 Biopolitically, “the movie is concerned with  .  .  . the construction of a new place.”32 Therefore, binationalism and transnationalism are reduced to one topological order, namely and concretely, to one identity and extensively, to one state. Life, “as a border to politics,”33 reiterating Lemke’s expression from one of his lectures on Foucault’s biopolitics, is addressed by Aloni’s movie as a continuous dynamic between internalities and externalities of a desirable unitary state that seeks to solve the disensualities of a binational population, which is trained to sovereign, surveille, punish and resist. Otherwise, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict might be easily described by Foucault’s considerations from Society Must Be defended: “This is the right, or rather precisely the opposite right. It is the power to ‘make’ live and ‘let’ die. The right of sovereignty was the right to take life or let live. And then this new right is established: The right to make live and to let die.”34 In fact, Israelis and Palestinians dispute the right to govern and the risks of “massifying”; but, as Foucault would argue, this massifying would gather people not as “man-as-body but as man-as-species.”35 In these words, the “Local Angel” is the messenger of those who seek “to make live” and “let die.” Badiou understands that Aloni conceives the construction of the new state and implicitly the reconstruction of the socalled Jewish identity as an accommodation of individual and collective narratives that develop a topological spirituality. Biopolitics becomes a matter of mapping spirituality on material grounds: beliefs, religious traditions and moral values in their conflict and harmony develop borders and lifestyles, not the other way around. As Palestine is not just a local situation but a symbol for all humanity, it is the real destiny of the movie to propose something like a new place to all people on earth. It’s my final consideration that the great

306  Oana Şerban stories of states, wars, and religion and the small stories of one man, one woman, one Palestinian, one Jew, and so on, can have a sort of common point in the future, which is precisely a new place both spiritual and concrete.36 But what biopolitical force might have a visual project and how might it be (bio)politically engaged? In its assembly, Local Angel surprises the dynamics of nature through the sea, the contrasts between moving bodies, fighting for their survival and authority, the narrowed or expanded portraits of women, from the most civilized and lacking inhibitions, to the most conservative ones. Through the power of images and symbols, the movie depicts the horror, the tragedy and the despair of people who, despite their political conflict, resent all these feelings and life-attitudes alike, since, by nature and spirituality, “they are all the same.” Badiou observes: The movie is saying to us that when the situation is horrible, full of death and violence, when it has become impossible for it to become something good for all people, there is always the possibility of seizing the situation in another manner, from the point of view of humanity itself and not from some particular part of humanity.37 This direction towards universalizing a moral message continues to shape the biopolitical project that I  want to bring to the light, from Aloni’s movies, as a plurality of “theological and political fragments,” as the director promised from the beginning. Local Angel is also a symbol for the incongruity between the figure of the Christian conciliate and forgiving god and the rebellion of the two groups, discussing their power. There is a gap between theology and politics that Aloni shares in his attempt to support the construction of “new place” not by victory, nor by defeat, as Badiou would put it, but by weakness. In the film there is a very important subjective declaration about the reconciliation between the weak god, who is not the god of glory and potency but a weak and suffering god, and the figure of the mother who protests and does not accept. The question for me is the gap between these two determinations. Is it possible to have simultaneously a strong protest and revolt and, on the other hand, a god of weakness, pity, and compassion, something like a Christian god? Udi’s vision is precisely on this gap between the two. On one side, the question of the construction of a new place is always a question of weakness, because a new Palestine is something that is the result neither of victory nor defeat. If you want to have a new place, you have to renounce the logic of power. So, on one side, you have a god who is not the god of one people but the god of everybody; on the other

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 307 side, you have to do and to say something, because a searching for a new way in a situation can’t be purely passive and compassionate.38 Both Badiou’s and Žižek’s analysis of Aloni’s movie are left constituted; however, this radical perspective is not an argument overlapped over the artist’s own philosophical views, without a real reason. It is Aloni’s opinion that grace is a universal concept, while political identity will remain a particular one; the political identity lacks universalism nowadays. In this context, Aloni preferred to use the notion of “radical grace” that has at its core the analysis of the radicalism as it appears in the political engagement. To create the space of nonviolence in the space where the oppressed have the right to violence represents one of the multiple biopolitical ambitions that Aloni’s visual project claims. The radical grace acknowledges the right of the oppressed to violence, but it creates a space in which it is not necessary. Biopolitics is reduced, through radical grace, to nonviolence. A  brief observation must be introduced here, in order to better understand the concept of “radical grace,” which Žižek, for example, does not entirely accept. For Aloni, “the term hehsed,”39 in Hebrew, which means “grace,” represents one of the two energies that come from God; along with reason, it works for compassion. At the limit, “grace is what the humans can create in name of good”;40 it is not a material concept, such as Badiou would argue, for whom an event, for example, is the manifestation of grace, because it surprises the individuals and it overwhelms them, nor is it a “shared hermeneutic horizon,”41 as Žižek would call Aloni’s understanding of concept. The radical grace is not an exclusively messianic concept. It is more about the manner in which the individual’s interaction gains universality, behind and beyond their bi- or transnationalism and apart from the contradictions that a certain behavior, which protects life or fights against it, has against the Christian perspective on a peaceful God, an aspect that Badiou entirely understands from Aloni’s movies. The figure of compromise is reflected by Local Angel. As Žižek said, “to put it in naïve theological terms, God created the world, things went wrong and the only option for God as creator was to throw himself into it, to fall into his own picture.”42 And the Angel fell. Another concept that I  find relevant for the biopolitical project aesthetically developed by Aloni relates with the problems connected with the management of power: active or passive powers, pacifism and aggression become part of Aloni’s moving images. Badiou considers that Aloni “knows as well as I  do that a new political conception”43 must be instituted apart from fighting and obtaining “victory or death.” I would argue that consequently Aloni’s biopolitical project understands power not as a score of defeats and victories, but as a neutral equilibrium sustained not exclusively by politics, but also by religion and culture. “In

308  Oana Şerban the movie we can see that the art, the singers and love, are determinations immanent to a real conception of a political transformation of place.”44 Power, as equilibrium, can be understood only as the fulfillment of a gap but, what is more important, a gap left by a weak God who can no longer moderate the tensions between individuals. The gap that becomes power implicitly becomes “a new place” for “a new Jewish identity”: Aloni’s biopolitical project is also about mapping the areas of tolerance, conciliation, affective acceptance and disclosure, without proper solutions. His aim is more about engaging the authentic recognition on the political scene. Topology, in his biopolitical project, is reduced to ruptures. “The gap between protestation, revolt and the weak god is also a place for a new means for a new place. This gap is certainly a problem: Udi has no mechanical solution—only the gap itself.”45 Nevertheless, this new biopolitical project cannot be conceived without forgiveness. It is a concept that Aloni addresses in his other movie, from 2006, Forgiveness.46 Just to understand its objectives, I will briefly present one of the many directions of the plot: Aloni’s film is about a young Jew, from a German Jewish family, who goes to war to confront history on his own, despite his father’s silence. Falling in love, each time, with an Arabic woman, and committing a crime against his beloved woman’s sons, because of the war, his story culminates in a dilemma. Either he accepts the memory of being a murderer in riposte and peace becomes possible, or he prefers silence, recurrent violence and probable suicide. The main moral here is that parting for war is the gesture of willing the recognition of the father. Thus, binationalism should begin to be treated as the source of one motherland, not as the expression of two fathers certifying recognition of values, principles and culture. Nevertheless, forgiveness is exposed as a self-reconciliation, through the story of the principal character, with his own life set-up, before being able to forgive the others. Aloni’s great merit is to associate through the power of images and aesthetic experience the anti-memory motive to forgiveness. In his last movie, David Adler, the young American-Israeli, “decides to move back to Israel only to find himself committed to a mental institution that sits on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin,”47 as the artist tells us from the description of the movie. “Doctor Itzhik Shemesh, a psychiatrist at the mental institute, injects David with a chemo-technological drug in an attempt to build a bridge over the trauma zone and allow David to live a normal life.”48 Here we get to the main point of the paper: despite the continuous affinities of Aloni for the topic of normalization and governing of life, in a Foucauldian framework that he might adopt coincidentally or in the proper terms of the French author’s philosophy, since the asylum is one of the most reputed modern institutions of normalization, the Israeli director raises the question of what is and should be “the normal life.” In the end, normality itself becomes a gap, a gap

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 309 that must always be seen, “in theologico-political terms . . . between the physical and the metaphysical, between man and God and, at the same time, the bridge connecting them,”49 as Aloni himself explains. From his many positions expressed among the images of the film, Adler is much like Local Angel: they both seem memorial, prophetic, put on the run because of the war. Both want to take their eyes from the tragedies of the world by either departure or oblivion, but never by renunciation. They are the physical and the metaphysical; in other words, they both form the gap that Aloni’s full biopolitical and artistic project needs.

Conclusion In conclusion, I argue that in light of the previous analysis, Aloni’s art might be easily gathered around a biopolitical conception that reflects core concepts such as: radical grace, topological gap, new identity, new place, forgiveness, normalization (of behavior) and normal life standards.50 It is not an entirely postmodern project, since Spinoza’s inheritance and its Benjaminian continuations, at least at first glimpse, dominate some of the major philosophical trajectories of Aloni’s concepts, values and discourses, but it definitely shows up as a contemporary one, since it does not accept that war succeeded by victory or defeat is the proper answer to religious or political wars. It is not a comfortable Jewish project either, but it intimates much about how Jewish biopolitics might look nowadays. It accepts the influence of (American) capitalism on the Jewish life-style; it depicts Western shades of love, social and high life, entertainment that the most radical or conservative Jews adopted over time, although in recognizing that East and West—in their general traditional opposition—might be the new Palestine and Israel, that should question life not as who deserves to live and who should be left to die, but as a metaphysical duty encapsulated in a physical conflict. Mapping and defending society by gaps, spiritual or material; radicalizing grace and love in order to obtain and equilibrate universal interaction between individuals; neutralizing power by assisting its ruptures; seeking for peace that is never victory, nor defeat—all these elements should oblige us to think about the new place for the new Jews, but with the following caution. Art supports the Jewish biopolitics, and exactly this “local” biopolitical project should be interrogated in order to better understand the sense of multiple cooperation, reflexive identity and inclusionary society, at the present time, on a larger scale.

Notes 1 Alain Badiou, “The Four Dimensions of Art. On the Film Forgiveness.” in What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters. Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, ed. Udi Aloni (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 190.

310  Oana Şerban 2 In this article, transnationalism is tracked as a concept that nourished a philosophical literature, referring to multiple social, political and cultural trans-bordered interferences between individuals, their identity and sense of belonging. Transnationalism concerns the manner in which the process of identity negotiation of certain minorities develops, crossing and transgressing the national state borders, in different historical conditions. The Jewish identity represents a curious example in these terms, because its inner struggle between the Israeli and the Palestinian layers, which reflects a binational background, gets to be equally observed by its transnational character as the Jewish identity adapted to certain conditions of integration, for its cultural survival, as well as for its political and social protection, across the European nations. The “Jewish Question,” meaning “Where did the Jews really belong?” must accommodate these two folds of the problem: one that concerns the binational conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian dimensions of the Jewish identity and another devoted to the transnational evolution of the Jewish identity across borders. In my opinion, this interpretation reframes the Jewish Question as a biopolitical problem with binational and transnational insights, for which I provide a puzzle of problems and solutions. 3 Alain Badiou, “On the Film Local Angel.” in What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters. Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, ed. Udi Aloni (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 186. 4 Alain Badiou, “The Four Dimensions of Art. On the Film Forgiveness.” 189. 5 Albeit Foucauldian references to explicit masterpieces that provide political insights exist and are relevant, such as his analysis on Velazquez’s Las Meninas, which prospects royal hierarchies, lifestyles and values, there is no explicit and strong speculation around the biopolitical potential of art. As a project devoted to the genealogies of power and governmentality, biopolitics restricts itself, in Foucauldian terms, to the political rationality involved in the administration, transformation and multiplication of life. The mechanisms of life and the regulatory controls endeavored by the biopower are not conceptual trajectories of Foucault’s applied analysis on artworks. His interest on art is rather focused on the matter of representation, more specifically, on the relationship between visible discourses and invisible meanings of representation and not on their political incursions or symbolic capital of depicting normalized modern societies through mechanisms of control and surveillance. I strongly consider that such a possibility could have been proper to Foucauldian analysis, and yet, they did not show up in his writings because the idea of exploring the biopolitical potential of art was premature. The Birth of Biopolitics was quite a recent and well-documented project that chooses the path of explaining the anatomy of politics and the biological and scientific insights on life as sources of rationalizing the political authority on life in itself. Scarcely with post-Foucauldians, the biopolitical potential of art becomes an explicit idea. As an example, in Alain Badiou’s “Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art,” the democratic, non-imperial contemporary forms of art are connected with the political liberty that the human body gains through multiple depictions. 6 Lauri Siisiainen, “Foucault, Biopolitics and Aesthetics.” in The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics, ed. S. Prozorov and S. Rentea (New York: Routledge, 2017), 81. 7 Ibid. 8 In fact, Foucault’s attention is directed towards artist from different modern traditions in order to analyze whether or not modernity is compatible with

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 311 representation understood as an instrument of ordering knowledge. In the wider Foucauldian framework, for which The Order of Things stands, the figurative discourses of the modern art are assumed as an “epistemic shift” from Renaissance resemblance to Classical representation, hence, from “the self-referential materiality of Manet’s  tableaux-objets  (Chapter Two) to the non-referential similitudes found in the visual-linguistic paintings of Magritte, Klee and Kandinsky (Chapter Three) to the self-replicating release of the image in Warhol’s Campbell soup cans, Fromanger’s tableauxevents, or Michals’s serial photographic narratives (Chapter Three) to the Cynical ‘anti-Platonism of modern art’ (182) as an ethics of living (Chapter Five).” See Lynne Huffer, “Joseph J. Tanke. Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A  Genealogy of Modernity.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. Tanke, example, criticizes Foucault’s perspective on art as a hermeneutical for ­ process that starts from the premise that “art sheds its traditional vocation in order to become modern” and gets to the conclusion that modern art is fundamentally post-representational. See Joseph J. Tanke, Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A  Genealogy of Modernity (London and New York: Continuum, 2009), 5. 9 Huffer, “Joseph J. Tanke.” 10 Tanke, Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A Genealogy of Modernity, 11. 11 Huffer, “Joseph J. Tanke.” 12 Udi Aloni, “A Manifesto for the Jewish-Palestinian Arabic-Hebrew State.” in What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters. Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 16. 13 Slavoj Žižek, “What Does a Jew Want? On the Film Local Angel.” in What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters. Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, ed. Udi Aloni (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 173. 14 Ibid., 174. 15 Ibid. 16 The original formula of the quote has been provided here. To understand Žižek’s question, one must take into account that the term “Jew” has not a negative connotaion and it is not used pejoratively. 17 Ibid., 175. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., 178. 21 Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” in Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 249. 22 Aloni’s encounter with Benjamin is mainly hermeneutic: he admires the possibility to make operational a symbol of mankind and redemption as a desacralized presence of history; as Tiedemann lightly observed, “the angel described by Benjamin fails in his mission to the mankind . . . perhaps because he has tried to usurp the tikkum, the messianic restoration and perfection of history.” See Rolf Tiedemann, “Historical Materialism or Political Messianism? An Interpretation of the theses On the Concept of History.” in Walter Benjamin: Philosophy, ed. P. Osborne (New York: Routledge, 2005), 140. Although it is not the place here, this historical messianism that Benjamin authors might be evaluated as a valuable source of influence for the biopolitical turn of Aloni’s creations. My hypothesis takes into consideration the loyalty of Aloni for such a concern and topic: as an example, the presentation of his movie Forgiveness is accompanied by the artist’s “Reflections on the

312  Oana Şerban coming of the Messiah,” a belief well-known as “one of the core principles and most salient characteristics in Judaism.” 23 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History.” 311. 24 This slogan appears on the official website of Aloni`s movie Local Angel. To be consulted the online source is: http://localangel.udialoni.com/index2.htm. 25 Udi Aloni, “Local Angel: To Walter Benjamin.” in What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters. Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, ed. Udi Aloni (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 148. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Badiou, “On the Film Local Angel.” 184. 29 Aloni’s cinematic creations are inspired by a mental geography, through the lens of which one and the same topic, usually a moral content such as the decadence of contemporary lifestyles, is synchronically surprised in different spaces, delimited by political borders. Placing the main character in one place means to predispose him to a certain faith: in this topology, East is for fulfillment, and West is for solitude and alienation. “Fittingly, much of the film takes place in Israel, responding to the framing site of exile with a symbolic ‘return’ to the point of origin, Israel. But also, fittingly, the film ends with Aloni anticipating a renewed exile in an alien New York that will never be his home. Self-exile here is a political act.” See Alisa Lebow, The Cinema of Me: Self and Subjectivity in First-Person. Documentary Film (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 171. This final observation of Lebow counts for a better and wider understanding of the biopolitical coordinates of Aloni’s creations. The two spaces are conceived as legitimate candidates for depicting the good life, although a paradox remains visible, that of considering that the welfare of a community and the integrity of its national identity can be obtained either by destruction or by creation, therefore, either by abolishing the loyalty for customs, traditions and familiar places, or by creating on the ruins of an imagined and complete identity. Lebow pays attention to the terms and notices that “these opposing narratives are at the core of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict: the narrative of building and that of destruction, the narrative of immigration (known in Hebrew as Aliyah—which means literally, ‘rising’ or ‘ascending’) to the Promised Land and that of expulsion and exile” (Lebow, 174). Self-exile becomes a political act because it inherently obliges one to progress in one’s consciousness, memory and ambitions for national integrity. Voluntary immigration in this radical form means a total impulse for recreating a nation starting from and with oneself. 30 Badiou, “On the Film Local Angel.” 185. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Thomas Lemke, Biopolitics (New York and London: New York University Press, 2011), 4–5. 34 Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”. Lectures at the College de France, 1975–76 (New York: Picador, 2003), 252–53. 35 Ibid., 273. 36 Badiou, “On the Film Local Angel.” 285. 37 Ibid., 186. 38 Ibid., 187. 39 In Aloni’s opinion, questioning the etymology of terms in Latin inspires a philosophical inquiry, while in Hebrew, the analysis of the origin of the terms takes you closer to a theological argument.

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 313 40 Transcript from the conference of Alain Badiou, “Radical Grace” held at Colombia Maison Francaise, on December 15, 2015. 41 Transcript from the conference of Slavoj Žižek, Mladen Dolar, Udi Aloni, “Radical Grace.” held at Miniteater, Ljubljana, January  19, 2016, during The 2nd Festival of Tolerance in Ljubljana. 42 Žižek, “What Does a Jew Want? On the Film Local Angel.” 176. 43 Badiou, “On the Film Local Angel.” 186. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Here a psychanalytical symptom of Aloni’s movies can easily be tracked. As he recognizes himself in an interview published by Aljazheera, his psychoanalytical appetite was opened by the lectures of Edward Said, a Palestinian Freudian thinker who analyzed the binational structure of various non-European national identities—hence including the Jewish identity. Aloni acknowledges: “Said was very important, especially his work ‘Freud and the Non-European’ and the way he read in Freud, who of course was Jewish, ‘the kind of unresolved sense of identity’ that clearly exists in Israeli and Palestinian identities as well. . . . When I make my art in order to create a binational language, a mutual space for all of us, I have to use all of these tools and bring all sides together, rather than trying to keep them isolated and separate. In this context, the question in the book’s title, What Does a Jew Want? is like Freud’s question, What does a woman want? It’s not a question to answer, but rather the start of an investigation, of opening up from this Israeli particularist identity within which I grew up—and trying to reach out, beyond the many layers that still prevent us from envisioning a different, more universal identity.” See Udi Aloni, Mark LeVine, Interview: “Opportunity in a Middle East identity crises.” 47 Udi Aloni, Synopsis—Forgiveness. 48 The lines of the scenario ingeniously combine the monologue as a dialogue with oneself with the dialogue with others as a clash of consciousness. Doctor Shemesh’s both challenge and drama is to erase Adler’s memory, which was exercised for many years under the percept “never forget”—almost an ascetical imperative—for a soldier who served a country that was not his. Before working with Adler, experiencing any clinical practices with his patient, which usually start, as the psychiatric protocol requires, with a certain interrogation that places the subject in space, time and a storyline of all his traumas, Shemesh asks himself: “Should we invent a drug that keeps the memory intact but eliminates the associations—be they guilt, or horror, or fear? You might ask why I  am raising these questions, when we have many young people with similar conditions who function well in our society. Does killing our memory destroy the very essence of our Jewishness? When I  looked into the eyes of David Adler and saw the void, I  thought of the light in the eyes of my grandfather, a righteous man from Jerusalem and all I could think was, God help us.” (Udi Aloni, Scenario—Forgiveness). Again, a Foucauldian interference can be resented here: the psychiatric power is addressed by Shemesh in terms of potentiality. Before making from Adler a docile body, through drugs, clinical interrogations and induced seizures, his doctor is aware that the patient will remain the same—his Jewishness wouldn’t be erased nor altered, albeit he will be, mentally, a radically new person. In other words, he will become another Jew, with other narrative memories, and yet, even once this change would be produced, he will still be the person for whom this change was needed, the Jew whose traumas were cured or alienated.

314  Oana Şerban 49 Aloni’s art is revolutionary not only at the level of its artistic practices but also in everything that deals with an authentic postmodern aesthetic framework. The artist usually adds to his movies some manifestos, meaning some critical essays on the main topics to which his creations are endeavored, which might be easily unified as a theological and political treatise of art. The quotes previously mentioned are part of the second Manifesto of Forgiveness, “Reflections on the Coming of Messiah.” 50 The most difficult attempt of Aloni’s creations is to reflect, through the power of the moving images and by cinematic narratives, the limits and failures of “normality” in the post-Auschwitz ethical practices of the West. Normality, associated with the project of a new life as a promesse du bonheur, is hardly to be reconstructed between the two iconic images of our humanity, that of the human being from the end of the Oedipus Rex and that from the beginning of Oedipus at Colonus, both considered paradigmatic by Aloni. (See “Director’s Objective—Forgiveness.”) What strikes most in Aloni’s analysis is the definition of creating normal life standards as practices of “maintaining control over the destiny” through which an individual “reconstructs himself as normal.”

References Aloni, Udi. “Director’s Objective—Forgiveness.” Accessed November 11, 2017. www.forgivenessthefilm.com/manifesto/manifesto.html. Aloni, Udi. “Local Angel: Theological Political Fragments.” Accessed November 11, 2017. http://localangel.udialoni.com/index2.html. Aloni, Udi. “Local Angel: To Walter Benjamin.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 148–49. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Aloni, Udi. “Reflections on the Coming of the Messiah.” Accessed November 11, 2017. www.forgivenessthefilm.com/manifesto/manifesto.html. Aloni, Udi. “Scenario of ‘Forgiveness’.” Accessed November  11, 2017. www. forgivenessthefilm.com/story.html. Aloni, Udi, ed. What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek). New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Aloni, Udi and Mark Levine. “Interview: ‘Opportunity in a Middle East identity crises’.” October 7, 2011. Accessed November 11, 2017. www.aljazeera.com/ indepth/opinion/2011/10/201110414418645816.html. Badiou, Alain. “Existence on the Boundary. On the Film Kashmir: Journey to Freedom.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 194–203. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Badiou, Alain. “Fifteen Theses on Contemporary Art.” Conference—The Drawing Center, December 4, 2003, Lacanian Ink. Accessed November 11, 2017. www.lacan.com/issue22.php. Badiou, Alain. “The Four Dimensions of Art. On the Film Forgiveness.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 188–93. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.

Transnational Biopolitical Motives 315 Badiou, Alain. “On the Film Local Angel.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 184–87. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Badiou, Alain. “Radical Grace.” held at Colombia Maison Francaise, December 15, 2015, introduction by Udi Aloni and moderated by James Schamus. Accessed November  12, 2017. www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0TADEp1bV4. Bauer, Bruno. Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question). Braunschweig, 1843. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1969. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–1979. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1970. Foucault, Michel. Psychiatric Power, Lectures at the College de France, 1973–74. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Foucault, Michel. Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at the College de France, 1975–76, edited by M. Bertani and A. Fontana. New York: Picador, 2003. Huffer, Lynne. “Review of Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A Genealogy of Modernity.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, (8), 2010. Lebow, Alisa, ed. The Cinema of Me: Self and Subjectivity in First-Person. Documentary Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics. New York and London: The New York University Press, 2011. Marx, Karl. “On the Jewish Question.” (1843) In The Marx-Engels, edited by Robert Tucker, 26–46. New York: Norton & Company, 1978. Siisäinen, Lauri. “Foucault, Biopolitics and Aesthetics.” In The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics, edited by S. Prozorov and S. Rentea, New York: Routledge, 2017. Tanke, Joseph. Foucault’s Philosophy of Art: A Genealogy of Modernity. London and New York: Continuum, 2009. Tiedemann, Rolf. “Historical Materialism or Political Messianism? An Interpretation of the theses On the Concept of History.” In Walter Benjamin: Philosophy, edited by P. Osborne. New York: Routledge, 2005. Žižek, Slavoj. “ ‘I Will Tremble the Underground’ On the Film Forgiveness.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 179–83. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Žižek, Slavoj. “The Jew Is Within You, But You, You Are in the Jew.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 159–72. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Žižek, Slavoj. “What Does a Jew Want? On the Film Local Angel.” In What Does a Jew Want? On Binationalism and Other Specters (Conversations and Comments by Alain Badiou, Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, edited by Udi Aloni, 173–78. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Žižek, Slavoj, Dolar Mladen and Udi Aloni. “Radical Grace.” held at Miniteater, Ljubljana, January  19, 2016, during the 2nd Festival of Tolerance in Ljubljana. Accessed November  12, 2017. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=uOcKXqc3QHM.

Part VI

Further Debates

18 Cinema and Television The Art and Industry of Joint Works Inês Rebanda Coelho

Who is (are) the author(s) of a television or cinematographic work? When one talks about authorship in cinema and television, three main theories can be identified, named for this research as: solo authorship, the “death of the author” and joint authorship. After disproving the plausibility of the first two theories, the purpose of this research is to bring to light the possibility that cinema and television are joint works. The notion of joint authorship defends that from the moment a group of people creates the work, its author is the whole group. Moreover, it is of interest to show that nowadays there is a possibility of this vision being the most indicated for the authorship of works made by several people. For this, two case studies were directed, one in television and another in cinema, that could show that the professions and departments more readily associated with technical work, connected to bureaucracy and financial issues, also have a significant artistic contribution to the point of influencing the work’s language, aesthetics, narrative and diegesis. As such, for the television case study, the production department was chosen and, for the cinema one, the producer and executive producer. A summary will provide a historical review about authorship, from Plato to postmodernist theories, to find the best notion of what an “author” is for this study.

Introduction The research subject of this essay is the notion of authorship in cinema and television. Before discussing the diverse approaches to authorship in an audiovisual work concretized by several people, it is essential to understand what it means to be an author. After establishing which is the interpretation given to authorship that better fits this study, integrating scientific, philosophic and artistic fields, the main authorship proposals of fictional cinema and television drama series will be mentioned. The selection of these two formats was made due to their growing visual proximity, the disparity related to the solo authorship notion and the uncertainty of where authorship resides.

320  Inês Rebanda Coelho A categorization of different notions for these two media was made, which can be incorporated in one of the following: solo authorship, “death of the author” or joint authorship. Therefore, after concluding that solo authorship and “death of the author” have flaws in their theorization, it was decided that the joint authorship conception should be deepened. The intention became to show that professions seen as technical could be noticed and are significant for the final work result. It was also seen as viable to study occupations that have a high hierarchical position in the crew, but that have become unknown among society and researchers, such as the producer. The producer in cinema had already been considered authorial, even before the director, and even so this profession did not become part of any theory or approach of solo authorship. However, nowadays in television, the producer-screenwriter (more often the executive producer–screenwriter)1 is seen academically and by several fans as an author, even as a solo one. Therefore, to compare the same professions inside different media and with distinct realities became the ideal scenario. An analysis of diverse films was made to study the producer in cinema, helping to reach some conclusions about executive producers in this medium. At the same time, in television, the first four seasons of an episodic drama series were chosen, where the production department and the temporary teams were studied. This research aims not to answer “who is the author of a film or series?” but to raise the possibility that there are several authors and at the same time reinforce this idea so that in the future it may become a theory with cohesive and coherent support. There is also no intention to give a universal response to “what is an author?” but to present a different and ampler look that could integrate works from all formats and future ones. The importance of searching for the film and television series’ author(s) is in the lack of consensus in both media, which leads other fields, such as law, to create their own interpretation. Each country governed by the Author’s Rights system elects its own authors, which has led not only to the appropriation of intellectual property but also to interference with the economy, culture and art of these two media industries in several countries.2

“What Is an Author?”—A Cross Between Several Fields of Study What is an author? This question has been raised several times throughout history. It is useful to approach some of the notions that appear to be distinct and relevant, defended by great minds of various fields, to support the search for a more adequate vision of authorship for this research, since the term “author” does not have a universally accepted definition.

Cinema and Television 321 The first contact with authorship occurred in literature, where the artist was seen as a divine election, relinquishing his power as a creator, despite the distinction comparing with other people. The words “author” and “authorship” did not exist yet. Nonetheless, some of the concepts that would give them shape were already perceptible. The ideas that stand out most in this context are presented in Plato’s Republic, followed by Aristotle’s Poetics. Plato introduces the term “mimesis,” which he defines as imitation. This philosopher defended all art as imitation. For him it was still impossible for a human to make a precise copy of reality, something achievable only by a god. In Plato’s optic there were three creators and three realities created.3 The first reality was the true reality made by a divinity, which is the archetype (idéa in Greek); the second reality is built from the archetype by the artisan (phainómenon). Finally, the artist conceives his work based on the artisan’s production, meaning a copy of a copy (mímema). To Plato, mimesis had an associated negativity. Morally he considered that not having access to the truth was dangerous, an act that could lead to the corruption of the human’s soul. To him the artist did not know the real essence of his creation’s material, because for each material there is an immaterial reality present in the realm of ideas. The ideas were the archetype of reality, whence the objects of the visible world originated.4 The artist creates one representation among the multiple possibilities of one or several materials, or even beings. This sometimes includes the selection of just one perspective in that representation, equally subjected to a certain degree of representative quality of reality. This notion can be related to the signifier (the material existence)—in other words, the way the archetype is presented—and to the signified (the interpretation, the mental concept), everything that can be and that, consequently, causes a withdrawal from the truth, by all the possibilities it raises.5 Especially the artist, who by making a copy of a copy moves further from the truth and what is rational, stimulating the instincts and immeasurable judgements instead. Plato believed that the mimesis dissociated the public from the ideas’ real world.6 Aristotle, on the other hand, saw the mimesis in a sense, not just as imitation, but as emulation, which means that the artist was considered as the producer and expert and the mimesis as the action of his creative exercise. Imitation for Aristotle was innate for the human being since he (not so much she) enjoys it as a means of obtaining the first notions of everything that he faces. Aristotle defends the existence of two separations in the way of employing the mimesis, one through the narrative and the other through the actors. The imitations are also differentiated between them. The way of differentiation includes the confirmation of the following: what the motive of imitation is, the circumstances of the medium, the represented elements and how actions are represented or

322  Inês Rebanda Coelho executed. As such, there is diversity inside the various imitations of the same thing, and those differences should be sought. To him, art imitates the laws, principles and proportions inside nature. The imitation occurs through what is similar to the truth, instead of through true reality. A  verisimilar work, to Aristotle, is not an identical copy of the divine level, but a representation of nature’s logic.7 During the Hellenistic period, there was still no sign of concern about the authorship notion. However, the religious aura attached to human creation remained. Some mythological divinities, where the muses were also included, were considered responsible for inspiring human beings in artistic and scientific creations. Humans were perceived as tools that these creators used for their benefit and interest, as singing the glories of Olympus.8 By analyzing a later period in history, the Middle Ages, through a study made by Alastair J. Minnis named Medieval Theory of Authorship of 1984 and the article “Author,” first published in 1990 by Donald E. Pease, there came the observation and comprehension of the first steps given in the conception of authorship. Minnis researches the influence of the church on the idea of authorship during the Middle Ages, and Pease, in addition to making a study of the word’s etymology, accompanies its evolution until the industrial revolution. Furthermore, Minnis discovers that medieval scholars created a literary theory related to auctore and auctoritas.9 He refers only to a single theory for the existing consistency in the approaches made by medieval scholars, both thematically and in its singular vocabulary. Minnis detects growth of interest for the human auctores (authoritative Latin writers) and at the same time some tension around this new proposal.10 This tension was provoked by the usual perception of God (this time from the monotheistic Catholic religion) as the author of life, while the human author, even of the Scriptures, remains irrelevant.11 Per Burke, with an emerging Christian culture, the notion of inspiration was reconciled with the one of autonomous truth through the concept of auctoritas, the authority derived from God. The auctores of Scripture, which would be the closest to God, conceded the truth, divinely revealed.12 The word “auctoritas” was also present before the Middle Ages. In Ancient Rome, auctoritas was generally attributed to the prestigious, credible and reputable level of someone influential in society.13 Minnis shows with his study that the author is not a modern figure when he localizes the use of the term in the thirteenth century. In this time, there is a particular focus on the individual author, his moral status and literary production.14 Pease, on the other hand, in his etymological analysis of the word “author,” adds that the medieval term “auctor” was connected to a writer whose words entail respect and faith. He divides the word “auctor,” which, per his research, derives from four etymological sources: the Latin verbs agere, “to act or perform,” auieo, “to tie” and

Cinema and Television 323 augere “to grow” and the Greek name autentim, “authority.”15 The auctores established the fundamental rules and principles of different disciples and sanctioned the political authority and moral of the medieval culture. During this time, there was a dependency on the abilities of the medieval scribes to interpret, explain and in most cases solve historical problems. Such corrections reflected an authoritative presence, because they organized the events in a context capable of giving it significance. Pease also recognizes that the auctor in the medieval time based his authority on divine revelation, yet, moving on to the New World author, the words of the author claim true authority. The author of the New World builds his individuality on the stories he composes, derived from discoveries of new lands. From the fifteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century, the term “author” gains prestige in society. For Pease, the development of the author’s cultural prominence was correlated with the beginning of the auctor’s fall. In the transition to an industrial society, the author ceases to be part of an emergent cultural process and transposes to a search for geniality. Although genius transcends culture and common cultural work, these did not stop serving a cultural function. The transition of auctoritas to authorship marked a cultural and political separation, being so that the writer no longer had an obligation to participate in common culture, but instead to transcend it, by originating alternative worlds.16 It may be concluded that the author, during an initial phase in history, was seen to be a tool and a representative of authority and divine will. An author was one without free will on which he (not so much she) would externalize, nor one who would create something genuinely new, until he becomes considered someone different from other humans and even from the rest of the culture, a genius. Due to mutations that the notion of the author (and even of the artist) has been suffering throughout history, it is of great interest to analyze some theories of different study fields that followed this period of great ties with religion.

Authorship’s Theories: From Anonymity to the Law After several articles over the centuries that connect the author to the divine and/or poetic—for example, Philip Sidney’s “An Apology for Poetry” (1595); Edward Young’s “Conjectures on Original Composition” (1759); Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry” (1840); T. S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1921)—one was found to be emphasized: Boris Tomasevskij’s “Literature and Biography” (1923). In his article, Tomasevskij denotes that the artistic personality during many eras was a subject that did not arouse the audience. The paintings were signed by the donor, not the artist, and the literary works by the people that printed them or even the clients. Later, many artists started

324  Inês Rebanda Coelho to sign the works of their pupils. The name of the master had the same significance as the commercial brand of a nowadays socially recognized company. Tomasevskij notices a tendency for anonymity, a tendency that lasted until the time when what he calls the “individualization of creativity” occurred, with eighteenth-century writers.17 This was a time when subjectivism of the artistic process was cultivated, and Tomasevskij defends it as having brought the name and personality of the author, because readers’ interest reached the creator beyond the work. However, with this new interest, another kind of anonymity was brought forth: fake biographies.18 Nevertheless, Tomasevskij does not define the terms “author” nor “author’s personality.” In Walter Benjamin’s work The Author as a Producer (1934), he studies the author linked to political criticism. In it, Benjamin opposes the elitist and romantic side bound to the writer, the creative genius. He talks about the author’s autonomy being compromised in respect to what he desires, without social conditioning forcing him to decide whom to serve. To Benjamin, the bourgeois author of entertainment literature does not recognize this choice. Instead, the author serves certain classes of interest, something that a kind of progressive writer recognizes. The authors’ decisions are at the base of the fight between classes, in what is more practical for the proletariat, and that becomes the end of their autonomy. There is a vision of the author as producer, the artisan in authorship linked to the relation between quality and compromise and to the production act of socio-economic relations.19 Jean-Paul Sartre, on the other hand, keeps us in this political criticism. His idea of an author resides in the social involvement of this figure that, in his opinion, offers a potential political alteration. Art would become that which is the people’s will, so that, for Sartre, authorship extends farther than the text to lead the fundamental way in which the individual is present in the world, influencing their thoughts and actions. He also describes the relationship between author and reader and their freedom.20 See Sartre’s “What Is Literature?” and Other Essays (1950). These two interpretations led to the work of William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy” (1946). Wimsatt and Beardsley defend in this work that the author’s design or intention is not available, nor are they desirable as a standard to judge the success of a literary work of art. The intention corresponds to what the author wants in the formula that, somewhat explicitly, had a wide acceptance. The intention is the design or plan in the author’s mind, and it has an affinity for the author’s attitude towards his work, the way he felt and what made him write. Wimsatt and Beardsley defend that the poem departs from the author at birth and goes beyond his power and influence to think about or otherwise control it. They argue that the intention dominates the work’s creation, but not its reading, so for them the intention is not something pertinent to the judgement of the work.21

Cinema and Television 325 In 1962, Umberto Eco published Open Work. According to Eco, the author produces a finished work in itself and intends that this same work be understood and enjoyed as they have produced it. Nevertheless, each person who enjoys the work, in the act of reaction to the stimuli provoked by it, as well as the understanding of their relations, “is bound to supply his own existential credentials, the sense conditioning which is peculiarly his own, a defined culture, a set of tastes, personal inclinations and prejudices. Thus, his comprehension of the original artefact is always modified by his particular and individual perspective.”22 Pierre Macherey in the chapter “Creation and Production” present in the work A Theory of Literary Production, 1966, also speaks about the component of product and producer: “Now, art is not a man’s creation, it is a product (and the producer is not a subject centered in his creation, he is an element in a situation or a system).”23 The artist produces works under certain conditions. For him, creation is liberation of what exists or testimony of a sudden apparition. In the first one, nothing occurs; in the second, what occurs is inexplicable. Macherey defends that the creative process is not a process but a work, a religious formula. He finds disillusionment with genius and the subjectivity of the artist, the soul, as a principle. For this reason, Macherey substitutes the word of creation with production. There is thus a reinterpretation and return to the religious origins. In addition to religion, it can so far be seen that a strong link of art to criticism and political interests has been perceived by scholars of this area, as well as to the author as a producer and artisan. This seems to be due, on one hand, to the concern to perceive what the author wants to transmit and, on the other hand, to the necessity of discarding this demand, attributing the final power of the meaning of the work to the reader and his critical spirit of analysis. With Criticism and the Experience of Interiority (1966) by Georges Poulet, for example, the responsibility of the critic becomes, not so much to think through the work, but to allow the author to think through the criticism.24 E. D. Hirsch initiates, in his work Validity in Interpretation (1967), a crossing of intentions with the signifier (the original and fixed author’s intention) and the signified (the interpretation that specific periods and contexts imposes on the work).25 Centralization of the critic’s image continues to exist, but this time in the search for significance. Hirsch points out that even if the critic had access to the divine criterion that determined better reading of a work, that would leave them with two normative ideals: the best meaning and the author’s meaning. For him, banning the original author as one who determines the significance is the same as rejecting the only normative principle that could validate the interpretation.26 This affirmation is due to Jacques Derrida’s and Roland Barthes’ approaches to authorship. Derrida discards the author’s intention with the allegation of its irrelevance, because each word has more than one

326  Inês Rebanda Coelho meaning, being that in the interpretation of a text there isn’t just one final significance,27 whereas Roland Barthes defends that the author must cease to exist so that the reader can get all the possible messages from the work.28 After going through a lot of theoretical approaches to authorship, such as Harold Bloom’s29, it was decided to deepen Michel Foucault’s What Is an Author? (1969). Foucault does not defend the “death of the author,” as Roland Barthes did, but instead his disappearance. He also does not celebrate nor analyze the absence or emptiness left by the author but proposes to observe new demarcations. Foucault sees the author’s name as one of the problems that arise. For him the name is not simply a discursive element since its presence is functional by serving as a form of classification. The author’s name also entails a statute, and it is therefore relevant how it is received and managed by the culture and society in which it circulates. For Foucault, the function of an author is to characterize the existence, circulation and operation of certain discourses within the society, thus defending the “author-function.”30 I seem to have given the term “author” much too narrow a meaning. I have discussed the author only in the limited sense of a person to whom the production of a text, a book or a work can be legitimately attributed. It is easy to see that in the sphere of discourse one can be the author of much more than a book—one can be the author of a theory, tradition or discipline in which other books and authors will in their turn find a place. These authors are in a position that I will call “transdiscursive.”31 He argues that an author can be responsible for more than what they directly materialize. If they obtain more status within one or more social circles, their influence can have significant ramifications in other works and even fields. On the other hand, Donald E. Pease affirms at the beginning of his article “Author” (1990) that, in general, the term “author” applies to a diversity of activities. It can refer to someone who starts a game, invents a machine, affirms political liberty, thinks of a formula or writes a book. Depending on the activity and application, the term can have a connotation of initiative, autonomy, inventiveness, creativity, authority or originality. Peace defends that the concept of authorship raises questions of authority and whether the individual is the source or the effect of that authority.32 Nevertheless, nowadays this set of significations has become more restricted, erasing, at least, the banal, quotidian creations and acts or the ones that copy almost entirely something that already exists; in other words, every kind of result that doesn’t demonstrate differentiation, not even in a limited extent. As it seems, few scholars are concerned with defining what an author is. There is a more significant concern and focus on the reader, on criticism, intent and interpretation, as well as on political, social and economic issues. There is also a tendency to speak of the author almost exclusively

Cinema and Television 327 in writing. As Nancy Miller mentions, not even the removal of the author opened space to the authorship concept revision.33 One talks about his (not so much her) practices and functions, which are limited to a specific time and space, but not about what authorship is. Each theorist presents an interpretation of what they think that the author does or should do or of the power that some characteristics have in his work and its perception. For these reasons among these scholars, no suitable definition of authorship was found, nor any description of functions to include in it, despite their relevance. To give an example from another field of study, in the Author’s Rights legal system, authorship is one of the central premises linked to a work’s protection. Molly Nesbit explores this theme in her article “What Was an Author?” (1987), talking about the French legal evolution throughout history. Nesbit sees the situation of lack of clarity that surrounds the author as the origin of growing criticism, the death of the author, postmodern conditions and inappropriate pronunciation of culture. The concerns of those who previously investigated authorship usually focused on the search for evidence. Nesbit nominates two pieces: the explicit affirmations written by the authors themselves and what is implicit, the assertions made in the authorial practices. It is defended that there is a need to leave the “author’s home” and find a more trustworthy and reliable standard form of measurement. She defends, also, that such a standard exists and that it can be found in the law.34 The legislation protects the authors and their works mostly in an indiscriminate form, without aesthetic evaluations and value judgements provided it is not a work considered mundane or daily and it carries originality. This means that the work must originate from the creator’s intellectual production, putting aside copied works.35 So, it integrates any existing and future form of creation. The author is thus the intellectual creator of a work, stripped of any artistic or social value since many great artists and creators in history were discovered past their time. Hence, this definition was adopted in the present investigation.

Authorship in Cinema and Television As mentioned before, the few theories and approaches linked to authorship in cinema and television that were found were divided into three categories: solo authorship, the “death of the author” and joint authorship. Solo authorship in cinema was brought forth by the cinéma d’auteur, one of the most popular proposals of the Film Studies provided by young critics through the magazine Cahiérs du Cinéma, with the first publication dated from 1951. Its critics, among them François Truffaut, Eric Rhode, André Bazin, Alexandre Astruc and Jacques Rivette, despite having different points of view, were united by their notion of authorship. They defended that the author was the film director, but not any director. In

328  Inês Rebanda Coelho addition to ceasing the film writer’s existence and the director taking their place as a director/writer, for a director to be considered an auteur they had to transcend their own work.36 These critics tried to elevate a cinematic work to art status by applying characteristics that belonged to ancestral, solo built art forms. This raised several problems, since they: tried to end an essential profession in cinema, suggesting that a full director could do both directing and writing; based the value of a work on its director and not on its quality; generated polemical brio around demeriting the image of colleagues from the same profession; considered the profession as the first step to validate an author, independently of the existence of a supporting theoretical basis; lacked analysis of the industrial reality and all the power interests that served the Cahiérs critics, who were mostly film directors and would not always uphold what they defended.37 In television, some scholars tried the same line of thinking with other professions: the writer, producer, director/writer and showrunner. There is an attempt by both sides to assimilate an ancestral art (literature) and other professions, in a way that they would become authorial by osmosis. Moreover, there are researchers like Roberta Pearson, Gerald Mast, Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi who consider the hyphenate-author as the true author, meaning all who assimilate another profession to theirs, recognizing among them the ones of the director, producer/executive producer and writer.38 There is a behavior that can be perceived in both formats’ industry that interferes with the author notion, which is the creation of the celebrity-author, an idea that has been instilled in society through marketing and publicity. Power and money became the watchwords behind this authorship notion. However, the author-celebrity can be more than a person with different professions and/or even a collective entity.39 None of these approaches present theoretical support that can be considered sufficient to prove whom the author(s) are, only that, artistically, each of them, in an unbound or agglomerated way, shows intellectual creation and influence in the final work’s language definition. The next categorization, “the death of the author,” is presented similarly on the two media. This derives from Roland Barthes’ theorization about the importance of the author ceasing to exist, so the reader can draw all the possible messages from the work, as mentioned before.40 That later led scholars like Alessandro Duranti to defend that both the reader and the audience were equally authors, since one of the true senses of creation is in its signification.41 It is an appealing perspective, but the materialization of one or several ideas must not be devalued. What is seen on screen is the agglomeration of the creators’ main intentions that after the work’s conception can be interpreted in several different ways. The audience creates only outside the work; the authors create inside and outside the work, and that is the real difference.

Cinema and Television 329 At last, there is joint authorship, also represented in a similar way on both media. Joint authorship has several designations, among them collaborative, collective, multiple and polyauthorial. Nonetheless, the designation of joint authorship is used here, because, for the Author’s Rights and Copyrights law, a joint work or authorship means that there are several authors and that their contributions may or may not be possible to separate. For theorists of Film and Television Studies advocating this approach, it means that the authorship of a cinematographic or television work belongs to all those who have contributed to it.42 This means that people who work for those who built the cinema or TV project (catering staff or a driver, for example) or previously created works selected for the project, also used in other industries and inserted in other works but not purposefully built for them (e.g., shopping wardrobe pieces, buildings or music from three years ago), are not considered authors. Nevertheless, this proposal challenges ideas of individual authorship by arguing that the industrial production and mass production patterns are based in a group effort. It is, thus, among the different theories the one that considers the industrial reality. The playwright, who is the creator, has an idea for a story. It is filled with different characters, and the playwright knows how those characters are supposed to behave. Later, the director comes along with a somewhat different interpretation of the characters and explains that vision to a casting director. At the casting session, an array of actors take a stab at how they feel the characters should be played, and none of the actor’s choices are the same as what the director or casting director imagined, or what the author imagined, or what some other actor imagined. Each interpretation is based on the life and experiences of whoever is interpreting. It is never the same experience for any two people.43 A joint work is the junction and reflection of all those individual experiences, knowledge ands skills and could never be the same with different people’s contributions. All the people in a team should share the same vision and at the same time find their own significance and language in what they are making. Each member of a film or TV series has the capacity of helping, saving or ruining it, no matter how insignificant their contribution may seem.44 Nevertheless, this approach does not yet have a theoretical base sufficiently sustained, since for that at least all the professions in both media should be analyzed regarding their artistic and technical influence and probably taking into account the differences between formats and genres (e.g., animations, documentaries, serials).45

The Cinema and Television Producers Nowadays several studies try to verify the artistic influence of multiple professions, especially in cinema, focusing mainly on the departments’

330  Inês Rebanda Coelho directors. However, there is a department and its chief that have been frequently forgotten: the production department and the producer. While the producer’s figure has slowly been growing in television, particularly the showrunners (the people who start the project, usually writers who also became producers or executive producers), in cinema, they continue to be associated with more financial work, going almost unnoticed by the audience. Still, their professions are identical. Both the television executive producer and the cinema producer are responsible for tasks of major importance that define the final work. They are both the directors of their department and have responsibilities like selecting and supervising the story/script, crew and cast selection, locals, materials, building and supervising the budget, acquiring and/or overseeing financial support, supervising all the departments and always being in contact with the entities that support the project. They oversee the definition of the work’s purpose from the beginning and guide the crew and cast towards it, without ever losing sight of it. They can shape and adapt the goal to different talents, but they cannot deviate from it.46 As Cathrine Kellison says, “although producers share certain skill sets, each genre in which the producer works is different. Each project requires a unique result from its producer.”47 The significant dimensions of an episodic TV drama series make these tasks unenforceable by one or two producers. In TV series, the executive producers are usually responsible for tasks of great responsibility linked to the main crew and cast (above-the-line). The producer, nevertheless, focuses on the fieldwork, helping with major decisions, but also has a greater responsibility towards the secondary crew and cast, including below-the-line ones. The executive producers, depending on the series’ dimension and on the work methodology used (since series have several episodes in which the different phases cross each other), often end up overseeing certain production phases and/or main shooting locations or even being representatives of entities responsible for the work.48 A considerable variation between cinema and episodic drama series is that, in some of the latter, the director changes several times. This makes, unlike in some films, the producer responsible for the work, and they must fulfill all the possible duties encompassing the occupation. So, the main producers will want to get a production department that complements their weaknesses. In cinema, on the other hand, sometimes the principal producer delegates some of their tasks to other producers and/ or the film director. Therefore, Film Studies presents a categorization that distinguishes the two main ways of how the producers exercise their profession, financially or creatively. Concretely, the creative producer is known as such for performing all the creative functions and the technical errands considered fundamental to this career. The creative producer may delegate the remaining affairs, considered more technical and financial, to other producers, normally

Cinema and Television 331 financial ones, who hire as well as distribute them to the production department (production manager, production accountant and so on), never failing to supervise and approve them. Those taking charge of responsibilities inherent to production, both creative and financial, may also be considered creative producers, despite it being increasingly rare for such producers to take both roles efficiently. The financial producer focuses on duties linked to the cinema business, the managing and economic exploitation of the work, as well as planning the marketing and distribution of the project. By norm, the financial producer leaves other producers or the film director in charge of taking the majority or all of the creative decisions and only supervises and approves them during each phase, to guarantee that there is no interference with the budget and the financial return. The maintenance of the primary interests and linearity of the film remains a priority, but for different reasons than for the creative producer, who also focuses on involving themselves in the film’s art and not just in business.49 So, one is a businessperson and the other is a businessperson and also an artist who wants to contribute with their knowledge and skills and see them reflected in the work. The producer’s creative contribution may be very great or very small. The producer who takes an active part in the supervision of casting, writing, design and editing may exert a considerable influence on the style and content of the finished production; other producers may concentrate on administrative and financial responsibilities and leave the creative decisions to others.50 For the cinema study, it was of interest to define a way of differentiating the creative producers from the financial ones in films without the Producers Mark.51 When one detects how to identify the creative producer, differences and patterns that complement his/her unique professional language on the films in which the selected producer participated will be noticed, revealing their artistic personality and contribution to each work’s intellectual creation.

The Study of Film Credits and The Game of Thrones— Final Conclusions The primary goal of this film study became finding a way to detect in a film whether the cinema producer is creative or financial. It was realized that film crediting is one of the film’s factors that hails from early cinema, containing messages about its production. Credit patterns became recurrent in films, especially in the American industry, and were subsequently adopted in Europe. In the beginning of the film is the word. The opening credits can be understood in the narratological tradition as “paratext” and hence as being on the threshold between inside and outside, so this cinematic entrance area is, in a sense, always filled with signposts, signs and

332  Inês Rebanda Coelho memorial plaques. Thus, within the spatial boundary between the auditorium of a cinema and the events of the film (diegesis), between the screen and the cinematic image, lies a temporal paradox: the opening credits simultaneously point ahead to the main part of the film and back to the history of its production; they lead into the cinematic fiction precisely by speaking about the extrafictional conditions of the film’s creation.52 For this reason, producers who were considered creative by the industry and by academics from Film Studies were selected. Among them, in the American panorama, the selection was: Peter Guber, Jon Peters, Arnold Kopelson, Art Linson, Darryl F. Zanuck, Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson. In the European panorama: Franco Cristaldi, Véra Belmont, Dieter Geissler, David Puttnam and Elías Querejeta. Recently the study was updated, and five producers were added who worked with film directors seen as auteurs by the followers of that approach: Meta Louise Foldager, Letty Aronson, Allan Ekelund, Lawrence Bender and Daniel Toscan du Plantier. It was impossible to examine all the films from each producer, but it was guaranteed that more than half of the filmography was studied. At the time of this writing, 384 films have been observed in total, of which 137 were from the selected American producers, 147 from the European ones and 100 randomly chosen. It was discovered that it is possible to create a categorization from the order in which the credit appears, the way it is presented, the credit’s type (if it is a special credit or a professional one) and how many times the producer is mentioned (directly or indirectly). The films were divided as follows: the cinéma d’auteur credits and the creative producer credits. Though with the first one the producer has a greater probability of being a financial one, it is not a certainty. Most likely, the producer being analyzed was financial, but not the main one. Indeed, it depends on all the initial credits. In the analysis, five scenarios were found with 12 variations in the cinéma d’auteur credits and 15 scenarios with 36 variations belonging to the creative producer credit. It was also possible to find patterns in the films from the nominated producer, theme, genre, locations, aesthetic of some departments, recurrent cast and/or crew members, as well as some small personal details, for example, Véra Belmont, who uses reference to her Jewish culture and heritage in most of the films she produces (e.g., Le crime de David Levinstein (1967), Tendres cousins (1980), La tregua (1997), Survivre avec les loups (2007)). Another example is Elías Querejeta, known as a producer of landscape and even an auteur.53 He aesthetically shaped and attributed symbolism to the several landscapes used in each of the works in which he participates. A  solo producer and also a producer-screenwriter that created and worked with characters which tended to be caricatured, symbolic and/or metaphorical, with the purpose of representing the political, cultural and social system in which they work. In many of his films, he approached themes such as death and destruction, especially through suicide, stagnation and

Cinema and Television 333 resurgence, even in aesthetic terms.54 Franco Cristaldi, on the other hand, has a work method seen as unconventional for the time and medium. He had the merit of having sponsored the development of a film genre, the Italian comedy (commedia all’italiana), inspiring and nurturing the best of denunciation cinema, with an approach borrowed from investigative journalism and sociology. The film Le notti bianche (1957) is a demonstration of how the style of production can intervene with the aesthetical rigor. It is filmed entirely in studio, and it’s characterized by its revolutionary side and the lighting that makes stand out the scenic unreality of the Italian cinema of the time, mixing theater, cinema and literature. The fact that they filmed everything in studio optimized the use of scenography, reduced costs and maximized revenue, something that characterizes Cristaldi’s work methodology, the updating concerning the industry and the cinematographic tendencies, as much aesthetic as technical and narrative, without ever neglecting the best way to distribute the money for the work, to minimize costs and to induce the greatest possible final return.55 Even the producers elected for working with film directors seen as auteurs demonstrated some influence and creative work. Daniel Toscano du Plantier, for example, had a unique taste for operas, and in all of them, in comparison with other films he produced, he adopted credits that showed his influence. Nevertheless, to know what kind of influence the producer had, we have to analyze their filmography and know more about them as people. Likewise, it was possible to detect the artistic influence that some executive producers had, also by the initial credits. Nowadays it is more frequent to see it in sagas and trilogies, but it was possible to also see it in solo works like Willow, 1988, for example. For the second study, the first four seasons of the episodic drama series Game of Thrones (2011–2014) were analyzed. In addition to the director’s constant change within each season, the production team held for at least one, while the showrunners followed the series from start to finish. Whenever someone holding a specific position demonstrates a meaningful contribution to the series, that someone takes a higher position the following season. This is something that is not possible to observe in cinema because of the work methodology. For example, Chris Newman, during the first four seasons, climbs from line producer to co-producer and, at last during the third and fourth seasons, to producer. He made substantial contributions to selecting locations, as well as to specific scenes, like in the fourth episode of the fourth season, where several references to the Fortress of Solitude, from Superman, are noticeable (Chris Newman was the only one in the team who worked on Superman II, 1980). In those first four seasons the number of producers was small, one or two. When there were two, they usually were divided by two spaces and led teams, with the Wolf Team responsible for the studio material, the most intimate work, and the Dragon Team dedicated mainly to the

334  Inês Rebanda Coelho exterior footage. The executive producers, on the other hand, in addition to the majority being attached to writing, were also responsible for distinct phases and aspects of the project. For example, Frank Doelger, as an executive producer, was usually responsible for the post-production phase by monitoring and supervising the editors’ work, while Carolyn Strauss was, in a sense, a representative of the HBO studio, who worked creatively in the supervision of the entire series, helping to keep the studio’s requirements.56 In addition to the production department, four temporary teams were also selected, where four film directors (Alik Sakharov, Tim Van Patten, Daniel Minahan and Neil Marshall) were responsible for choosing most of the professionals. It was intended to understand to what extent their languages were distinct and in what way the producers maintained their linearity. It was observed that each had a different working method and aesthetics. For example, the Alik Sakharov teams, of all, were the ones who worked with the lighting most and had daring approaches to it compared to the other colleagues, playing a lot with focus and zoom, while the Tim Van Patten team found itself with the responsibility of starting the language of the series. They used more closed plans in comparison to their colleagues, due to the lack of availability of the intended outdoor locations. This team had the responsibility to do it fluidly and naturally, playing equally well with the characters’ dispositions. It wasn’t just possible to detect these slight variations with the temporary teams and their elements, but also with other members of the crew that could not be maintained during the four seasons; for example, the production designer Gemma Jackson, who worked a lot with details, props and their disposition in the scenes, and Deborah Riley, who was more minimalistic in the use of props and liked to work in and explore large and grandiose spaces. This has shown the significant contribution of each member in the expression of their own language without ever losing the collective language of the work. The primary function of these various producers became maintaining the central vision and ensuring it during the supervision of each department and stage. Each one complements the different areas and functions, and has different skills and knowledge, which result in both subtle and notorious impacts on the whole. Therefore, it is concluded that the influence of the producers in the intellectual creation of the work, whether film or television, is noteworthy and that its subtlety is essential for the proper functioning of the work’s production and for obtaining good results. What ends up being important is who is behind the job and not the position itself, because all functions end up merging with those of the people in the several departments. It is difficult to say that the artistic direction is only by one person or department, when there is a constant interaction with the

Cinema and Television 335 photography, direction and production departments, for example. The same can be said of the other departments.

Conclusions When we talk about the author applied to a TV series and a fiction film, if the theoretical strand that advocates joint authorship is followed, the intellectual creation refers to the choices made for each department. This includes how these departments interconnect, expressing a single aesthetic, narrative and diegesis, composed of diverse creations and contributions that retain the artistic and/or technical personality of each member who participated in the work’s creation. A unified language can be obtained only if all the members chose to work for the same purpose. It is considered here that the authorship of the final work resides in the whole and in the particular, since it would suffice to change just one person to make the work change. Someone may argue that this particular person may not have a language of their own, or may work with standard techniques proper to their profession. The standard is also a choice, and it contributes to the definition of the work’s final language and may even enhance other departments (e.g., when directors of photography make simple and basic plans to boost the special effects department, something that can be perceived in some episodes of Game of Thrones (see episode nine of the second season and of the fourth season). Indeed, this means that in fictional cinema and television series, at least, the particular languages cannot be wholly separated. Therefore, what the standard is in a work of solo authorship is not in a work created by multiple people. The first will lead to banality, to the absence of artistic personality, to what already exists, and in the second these same characteristics are not determined by the use of the standard by a single person, but also by other people belonging to other departments. It is concluded in this article that it is possible that the approach of joint authorship would be the closest we have come to answering the question of authorship in artistic works that are made by several people. It was possible to prove that the figures chosen for analysis contribute significantly to the final work’s form and artistic language. The number of contributions given by one person does not define a work’s authorship, but rather their quality does. As Peter Schepelern says about cinema, “because a film must necessarily be a collective work, understood as the result of a large number of creative contributions, it was often unclear who the decisive power behind a certain film was, who contributed the ‘distinctive quality.’ ”57 The profession is not the defining index of authorship, unlike what studies on solo authorship attempt to establish without being able to prove it. The person behind the profession is where the true

336  Inês Rebanda Coelho value of the given contribution lies.58 It may be legitimate to say that the author is everyone who participates in a work, but for that, it is necessary to continue investigating.

Notes 1 See Tara Bennett, Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show (London: Titan Books, 2014), 7. 2 See the legal act of countries governed by the Author’s Rights (e.g., European Union) in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Publications about this theme will soon be made in English by Inês Rebanda Coelho. 3 Book X of Plato’s Republic and Ion. See it in Platão, República (São Paulo: Editor Nova Cultura, 1999), 595–97; Plato, Ion (Amsterdam: BRILL, 2007); Santiago Juan-Navarro, “The Power of Mimesis and the Mimesis of Power: Plato’s Concept of Imitation and his Judgment on the Value of Poetry and the Arts.” STVDIVM. Revista de Humanidades 13 (2007): 103. 4 “The artisan who imitates essential form does not make a reality, but ‘something of such sort as what is real’ (X,597a), which, therefore is somewhat ‘indistinct relative to the truth.’ The artisan makes an image, but the other kind of imitation is at a further remove from the truth yet, imitating not the nature itself, but that nature’s appearance in an image.” Plato, Plato’s Sophist (Prague: OIKOYMENH Publisher, 2011), 294. 5 See Ferdinand Saussure and Roy Harris’ Course in General Linguistics (1998) about the notion of signifier and signified. 6 Plato, Plato’s Sophist, 279. 7 Aristotle, The Poetics of Aristotle (Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University, 2000), 4–14, 34. 8 Alissa Cook, “Of Memory and Muses: The Wellsprings of Creativity.” Master diss., (Montana State University, 2013), 3. 9 Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 1. 10 Ibid., 13. 11 Ibid., 176. 12 Séan Burke, Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A  Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 1995), 7. 13 Christopher Francese, Ancient Rome in so Many Words (New York: Hippocrene Books, 2007), 114–15. 14 Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship. 15 Donald Pease, “Author.” in Critical Terms for Literary Study, ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 103. 16 See Ibid. 17 Boris Tomasevskij, “Literature and Biography.” in Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader ed. Seán Burke (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 1995), 82. 18 Tomasevskij, “Literature and Biography.” 82–85. 19 See Walter Benjamin, “The Author as a Producer.” in Understanding Brecht ed. Walter Benjamin (London: Verso, 2003), 86–87. 20 See Jean-Paul Sartre, “What is Literature?” and Other Essays (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 37. 21 See William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy.” in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, ed. William Kurtz

Cinema and Television 337 Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1982), 5. 22 Eco considers that the work becomes aesthetically valid, since it can be perceived and understood in multiple perspectives, manifesting richness of aspects and resonances, without ceasing to be itself. For this reason, a work of art is both a finished and closed work, which Eco sees as being closed in its perfection of impeccably calibrated organism, but at the same time is also open, because it is susceptible to several different interpretations, without this altering its irreproducible singularity. Umberto Eco, The Open Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 3. 23 Pierre Macherey, “Creation and Production!” in A Theory of Literary Production, ed. Pierre Macherey (New York: Routledge, 2006), 77. 24 See Georges Poulet, “Criticism and the Experience of Interiority.” in The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, ed. Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2007), 63. 25 Séan Burke, Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A  Reader (Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 1995), 63. 26 See Eric D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1967), 4. 27 Jacques Derrida questions himself in his work Auteur 139, until what point we are authors of our texts about the author. He highlights that the necessity of a concept and rules for the author was created, but in the end, this remains undetermined and will disappear. Derrida assigns the disappearance of the author to a sociotechnical factor, which reflects what was occurring in 1985 in the cultural world and was perceived for a long time, stating that it will be so forever. “Unless, through the immaterials’ machine, losing tone and hand, in renouncing for all time our old mirrors, we did not again seek a supplementary authority, an oh so symbolic authority, it is true, so that neither the image nor any other living thing any longer came back to us. But let us not forget, all is still signed, no one has the right to touch the text of another, our copyright is well protected just like in the good old days of modernity (seventeenth to twentieth centuries)” Jacques Derrida, “Auteur 139,” in Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture, ed. Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput (Paris: Centre National Georges Pompidou, 1985). 28 Roland Barthes, Image-Music-Text, ed. And trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1977), 142–48. 29 For Harold Bloom, the rhetoric criticism was theorized concerning strong categories of authorship. The author overlaps the language while giving privilege to the figurative sense of a work instead of its meaning. Bloom insists on the division inside the creative authorial psyche between the poet’s conscience and the unconscious influence of the predecessor. Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 77, 139. Burke, Authorship, xvi, 70. 30 Michel Foucault, “What is an author?” in Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, ed. Michel Foucault and James Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1998), 213. 31 Ibid., 215. 32 Pease, “Author.” 105. 33 Nancy Miller, Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 104. 34 See Molly Nesbit, “What was an Author?” Yale French Studies 73 (1987): 230–31.

338  Inês Rebanda Coelho 35 See UNESCO, “The ABC of Copyright.” Unesco Culture Sector. Last modified December, 2010, 11. 36 Jim Hillier, Cahiers du Cinéma-The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 6. 37 See David Tregde, “A Case Study on Film Authorship: Exploring the Theoretical and Practical Sides in Film Production.” The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 4, no. 2 (2013): 8. Hillier, Cahiers du Cinéma, 7. John Caughie, Theories of Authorship: A  Reader (London: Routledge & Kegan, 1981), 27. Sidney Lumet, Making Movies (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1996), 47, 153. Robert Carringer, “Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship.” PMLA 116, no. 2 (2001): 374. James Vest, “To Catch a Liar: Bazin, Chabrol and Truffaut Encounter Hitchcock.” in Hitchcock: Past and Future, ed. Richard Allen and Sam Ishii-Gonzales (London: Routledge, 2004), 112. 38 See Christopher Wicking and Tise Vahimagi, The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), 53. 39 Jason Mittell, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 97. 40 Barthes, Image-Music-Text, 142–48. 41 Alessandro Durani, “The Audience as Co-Author: An Introduction.” in TextInterdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 6, no. 3 (1986): 239–45. 42 See Berys Gaut, “Film Authorship and Collaboration.” in Film Theory and Philosophy, ed. Richard Allen and Murray Smith (London: Clarendon Press, 1997), 165. 43 Ian Cury, Directing and Producing for Television: A  Format Approach (Oxford: Focal Press, 2007), 1. 44 Sidney Lumet, Making Movies (New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1996), 162. 45 See Peter Schepelern, “The Making of an Auteur. Notes on the Auteur Theory and Lars von Trier.” in Visual Authorship: Creativity and Intentionality in Media, ed. Torben Grodal, Bente Larsen and Bente Larsen (Copenhaga: Museum Tusculanum, 2005), 103. 46 Myrl Schreibman, Indie Producer’s Handbook Creative Producing from A to Z (New York: Watson- Guptill Publications, 2012), 442–52. Mittell, Complex TV, 89–82. 47 Cathrine Kellison, Producing for TV and New Media: A  Real-World Approach for Producers (Oxford: Focal Press, 2013), XVII. 48 Robert Valle, The One-Hour Drama Series: Producing Episodic Television (Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2008), 19, 32. 49 Angus Finney, The State of European Cinema: A New Dose of Reality (London: Cassel, 1996), 10. 50 David Draigh, Behind the Screen: The American Museum of the Moving Image Guide to Who does What in Motion Pictures and Television (New York: Abbeville Press, 1988), 81. 51 See PGA, Producers Guild of America, “The Producers Mark.” accessed June 15, 2017, www.producersguild.org/?page=producer_mark. 52 Julia Dettke, “The Opening Credits as Schriftfilm.” in Typemotion. Type as Image in Motion, ed. P. Weibel (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2015), 87. 53 Tom Whittaker, The Films of Elías Querejeta: A  Producer of Landscapes (Wales: University of Wales Prests, 2011), 76. 54 See Ibid., 3. 55 Mario Sesti, “Cristaldi, Franco.” in Enciclopedia del Cinema, ed. Trecanni, 2003. 56 Anne Thompson, “How This ‘Game of Thrones’ Director Moved from Cannes to Westeros (Emmy Vttideo),” Indie Wire, July 4, 2016.

Cinema and Television 339 7 Schepelern, “The Making of an Author.” 103. 5 58 Bennett, Showrunners, 7.

References Aristotle. The Poetics of Aristotle. Translated by S. H. Butcher. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University, 2000. Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. Edited and Translated by Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. Benjamin, Walter. “The Author as a Producer.” In Understanding Brecht, edited by Walter Benjamin, 85–103. London: Verso, 2003. Bennett, Tara. Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show. London: Titan Books, 2014. Benshoff, Harry. Film and Television Analysis: An Introduction to Methods, Theories, and Approaches. New York: Routledge, 2016. Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. Oxford: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Burke, Séan. Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 1995. Carringer, Robert. “Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship.” PMLA 116, no. 2 (2001): 370–79. Caughie, John. Theories of Authorship: A Reader. London: Routledge & Kegan, 1981. Cook, Alissa. “Of Memory and Muses: The Wellsprings of Creativity.” MA diss., Montana State University, 2013. Cury, Ian. Directing and Producing for Television: A Format Approach. Oxford: Focal Press, 2007. Derrida, Jacques. “Auteur 139.” In Les Immatériaux: Epreuves d’écriture, edited by Jean-François Lyotard and Thierry Chaput. Paris: Centre National Georges Pompidou, 1985. Derrida, Jacques, Of Grammatology. Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.Dettke, Julia. “The Opening Credits as Schriftfilm.” In Typemotion. Type as Image in Motion, edited by P. Weibel, 87–89. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2015. Draigh, David. Behind the Screen: The American Museum of the Moving Image Guide to Who does What in Motion Pictures and Television. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. Duranti, Alessandro. “The Audience as Co-Author: An Introduction.” In TextInterdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 6, no. 3 (1986): 239–46. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1986.6.3.239. Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Finney, Angus. The State of European Cinema: A New Dose of Reality. London: Cassel, 1996. Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” In Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, edited by Michel Foucault and James Faubion, 205–23. New York: The New Press, 1998. Francese, Christopher. Ancient Rome in so Many Words. New York: Hippocrene Books, 2007.

340  Inês Rebanda Coelho Game of Thrones (David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, UK and USA, 2011–2014). Gaut, Berys. “Film Authorship and Collaboration.” In Film Theory and Philosophy, edited by Richard Allen and Murray Smith, 149–72. London: Clarendon Press, 1997. Hillier, Jim. Cahiers du Cinéma- The 1950s: Neo-Realism, Hollywood, New Wave. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985. Hirsch, Eric D. Validity in Interpretation. Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1967. Hunter, Aaron. Authoring Hal Ashby: The Myth of the New Hollywood Auteur. New York: Bloomsbury, 2016. Juan-Navarro, Santiago. “The Power of Mimesis and the Mimesis of Power: Plato’s Concept of Imitation and his Judgment on the Value of Poetry and the Arts.” STVDIVM. Revista de Humanidades 13 (2007): 97–108. Kellison, Cathrine. Producing for TV and New Media: A Real-World Approach for Producers. Oxford: Focal Press, 2013. Lumet, Sidney. Making Movies. New York: First Vintage Books Edition, 1996. Macherey, Pierre. “Creation and Production!” In A Theory of Literary Production, edited by Pierre Macherey, 75–78. New York: Routledge, 2006. Mast, Gerald. Howard Hawks, Storyteller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Miller, Nancy. Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. Minnis, Alastair. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. Mittell, Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press, 2015. Nesbit, Molly. “What was an Author?” In Yale French Studies 73 (1987): 229–57. Pearson, Roberta. “The WriterlProducer in American Television.” In The Contemporary Television Series, edited by Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon, 11–26. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Pease, Donald. “Author.” In Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, 105–21. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. PGA, Producers Guild of America. “The Producers Mark.” Accessed June  15, 2017. www.producersguild.org/?page=producer_mark. Platão. República. São Paulo: Editor Nova Cultura, 1999. Plato. Ion. Amsterdam: BRILL, 2007. Plato. Plato’s Sophist. Prague: OIKOYMENH Publisher, 2011. Poulet, Georges. “Criticism and the Experience of Interiority.” In The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, edited by Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, 56–72. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 2007. Sartre, Jean- Paul. “What is Literature?” and Other Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988. Saussure, Ferdinand and Roy Harris. Course in General Linguistics. Chicago: Open Court Classics, 1998. Schepelern, Peter. “The Making of an Auteur. Notes on the Auteur Theory and Lars von Trier.” In Visual Authorship: Creativity and Intentionality in Media,

Cinema and Television 341 edited by Torben Grodal, Bente Larsen and Bente Larsen, 103–29. Copenhaga: Museum Tusculanum, 2005. Schreibman, Myrl. Indie Producer’s Handbook Creative Producing from A to Z. New York: Watson- Guptill Publications, 2012. Sellors, Paul. “Collective Authorship in Film.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65, no. 3 (2007): 263–71. Sesti, Mario. “Cristaldi, Franco.” In Enciclopedia del Cinema, edited by Trecanni, 2003. Accessed www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/franco-cristaldi_(Enciclopediadel-Cinema)/. Smith, Paul and Carolyn Wilde. A Companion to Art Theory. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Steward, Tom. “Authorship, Creativity and Personalisation in US Television Drama.” PhD diss., University of Warwick, 2010. Superman II (Richard Donner and Richard Lester, USA and UK, 1980). Thompson, Anne. “How This ‘Game of Thrones’ Director Moved From Cannes to Westeros (Emmy Video).” Indie Wire. Accessed July  4, 2016. www.indiewire.com/2016/07/game-of-thrones-jeremy-podeswa-directoremmy-video-1201702115/. Tomasevskij, Boris. “Literature and Biography.” In Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader, edited by Seán Burke, 81–89. Edinburgh: Edinburg University Press, 1995. Tregde, David. “A  Case Study on Film Authorship: Exploring the Theoretical and Practical Sides in Film Production.” The Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications 4, no. 2 (2013): 5–15. UNESCO. “The ABC of Copyright.” Unesco Culture Sector. Accessed December  2010. http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=40820&URL_ DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. Valle, Robert. The One-Hour Drama Series: Producing Episodic Television. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2008. Vest, James. “To Catch a Liar: Bazin, Chabrol and Truffaut Encounter Hitchcock.” In Hitchcock: Past and Future, edited by Richard Allen and Sam IshiiGonzales, 109–19. London: Routledge, 2004. Whittaker, Tom. The Films of Elías Querejeta: A Producer of Landscapes. Wales: University of Wales Press, 2011. Wicking, Christopher and Tise Vahimagi. The American Vein: Directors and Directions in Television. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979.Willow (Ron Howard and New Zealand, 1988). Wimsatt, William and Monroe Beardsley. “The Intentional Fallacy.” In The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, edited by William Kurtz Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, 3–20. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1982.

19 Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy Hunter Vaughan

Before the development of modern “science” as we know it, there was a field of inquiry known as natural philosophy or the philosophy of nature. In Aristotelian times this was distinguished from metaphysics and mathematics as a realm of physical sciences focusing on living and changing nonhuman beings (what we now might call “nonhuman nature”). However, natural philosophy was discarded as collateral damage in the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment’s institutionalization of natural sciences, as Western white men framed their taxonomical evaluation of nonhuman nature in terms of its benefit to the centralization of power, the emergence of industrial technologies and the growth of market capitalism. Five centuries later, this hierarchical ideology of the natural has pushed us to the brink of global environmental collapse; meanwhile, it has also blanketed our planet in a tapestry of virtual screens that, though simultaneously enabling us to visually explore everything from faraway planets to molecular cores, ontologically detach us further from the concrete materiality of being. In this essay I investigate what a natural philosophy of the digital era might entail. Building upon the transformations to the human condition produced by the unspooling celluloid and flickering lights of the cinematic century, the recent proliferation of screen technologies has encased our planet in streaming images and has engulfed our cultural practices and social values in a Catherine Wheel of moving pictures, temporal acrobatics and sensory hallucinations. We live today in a world defined by screens: screens that sense the world, screens that read our faces, screens through which we craft our identities and our relationships with what lies beyond and, increasingly, within us. From heart monitors to in-dash GPS systems, from drone warfare to unmanned roving cameras that implode into the rings of Saturn once they have beamed their image mission back across this galaxy, our internal and external states of being are increasingly shaped by a fractal-like assemblage of moving images, technocratic logics and social paradigms interrupted by the refracted mirrors of electronic virtuality. At the myopic behest typical of the human species,

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 343 image machines have entered nature, and the clockwork of nature has started to bend to the demands of its most selfish cog. As this wired existence demands more and more natural resources for its manufacturing, execution and upkeep, our fossil fuel and alternative energy apparatuses are increasingly governed by interactive sensors and screen systems. And, as this wired existence demands more space for the illusory immateriality of its signal provisions, we are snaking our ocean floors with fiber-optic cables, lacing our atmosphere with satellites that ping and beam through the night and redistributing our social hierarchies across a new digital world order marred by superfund sites and digital dumping grounds. The throbbing pulse of the digital is just a swipe away from the interlocking stories of our heating planet, our rising seas and an array of species extinction and human inequality that beats like a marching band leading millions of years of evolution into a Mardi Gras level of carnivalesque destabilization. Contrary to the myths of the “cloud” brought to us by the ad-lingo of the tech industry, our images do not come from nothing, and they do not vanish into the air. They have always been generated by the earth and sun, by blood and minerals and fossil fuels and chemical reactions, and our enjoyment of them is a material act with concrete consequences. In The Aesthetic Dimension, critical theorist Herbert Marcuse offers one of the Frankfurt School’s most optimistic claims: “Art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciences and drives of men and women who change the world.”1 But the way we make and use art actually does change the world, using its resources, draining its fluids, mining its innards, impacting its ecosystems, rerouting its flows and adjusting its composition. Our screen culture (which includes cinema, television and digital media) has altered the very makeup of our planet and has reconfigured its landscape, while radically determining our cultural practices, social norms and political activities. This is “being” in the twenty-first century. This is the human condition, which is increasingly a decisive part of the natural world—inseparable, interconnected and increasingly mediated by screen technologies. It is time we philosophized it as such.

Doing Away With Descartes and Hyphens I have long been a passionate participant in the debates surrounding film-philosophy. The Cartesian binary between subjective “I” and objectworld, which has provided the foundation of most dominant Western systems of thought and worldviews since the 1600s, formed the ontological basis for the colonialism of the Other, the subjugation of women and the entitled harnessing of natural resources. The historical contemporaneity between cinema and the breakdown of classical philosophical paradigms such as the Cartesian subject weaves a romantic hope for the struggle

344  Hunter Vaughan against the yoke of patriarchy, racial oppression and the various forms of exploitation that have emerged in the name of “ergo” ideology. Moreover, with regards to moving-image culture, philosophy has long been at its core: mental images, representational images and the world-as-image have been integral to numerous philosophies of mind from Plato to Bergson; filmmakers often couched their intentions and screen expressions in the refrain of philosophical concepts; and popular culture emerged as a site of philosophical investigation and social inquiry. And yet, I have long harbored an anxiety that film-philosophy, or the general field approaching philosophy and the moving image, is overly beholden to the institutionalization and ivory tower territorialism that has long held philosophy in the thrall of certain tenants of the very reactionary exceptionalism its spokespeople occasionally condemn. There is a certain skepticism that ought to come with the hyphenation or ampersanding of “philosophy” to anything, since it is the ongoing process we all have, every day, of trying to figure it all out. It could be anything here: a text message from a friend, why trees exist, the liminal aesthetics of a shot in Todd Haynes’ Carol, whether or not fictional characters are real, whether or not climate change is real, whether or not I am real, whether or not I am Carol. . . . Philosophy need not be pared down to an academic discipline: it is an activity both explicit and innate, a characteristic of living, a byproduct of the process of understanding this bizarre thing called “existence.” The practice of philosophy, as a dedicated and intentional act, is at its core simply the attempt to reconcile one’s thoughts and beliefs with one’s actions and to interact this synthesis with the world of which we are a part—this is the central goal that comes across to me in the most challenging, personal and urgent of philosophers, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Naomi Klein, Margaret Atwood, Barry Jenkins and Susanne Bier. This reconciliation of our intersubjective reality between the inner self, the outer self and the world around us and the collapse of a dichotomy between real and fantasy, between body and mind, is uniquely realized through screen expression’s combination of image and sound, its sequencing of perspectives and its intertemporal weaving of past, present and future. At its most liberated—that is, when it rejects the insistences of market surveys, representational mimesis and narrative cliché— moving-image art has afforded experiments with sensory distribution and time-space contortion that manage to destabilize the very foundations of our most bristly hegemonic systems. Moving images have helped us to philosophize, to actively essay the comprehension and communication of complex concepts, realities and ethical dynamics—but not without material costs, both in the form of resource use and waste production, as well as through the psychological rupture with the real invoked by virtual living. As such, in order to chart the mutual interventions played out between philosophy and screen culture, we must account for the nonhuman natural world.

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 345

Materiality, Screens, Ecologies Nature, earth. How do we use it? How do we position ourselves, our cultural practices, relative to it? My gradual turn to the problems of media and the environment grew quite organically from my previous focus on film-philosophy, expanding the subject of my inquiry from the individual mind and filmic moment to the entirety of our interlinked ecosystems and cultural apparatus. As such, it is necessary to begin with the philosophical roots of this relationship: what might constitute a natural screen philosophy? For me, this challenge requires a negotiated reframing of the notion of conventional film-philosophy, whose dual terms return us to two of the twentieth century’s fundamental critical and cultural questions: what is philosophy and what is film? As Wittgenstein pursues in his later philosophy of language, the goal of philosophy is not conceptual but is existential and even ethical: to arrive at a harmony between thought and action, to live in accordance with our beliefs. In other words, philosophy is not an internal interrogation, but instead pursues the external manifestation of theory. Merleau-Ponty eschews this slightly, positing philosophy as the coming to terms with our intersubjective coexistence as beings-in-the-world. In both cases, philosophy is not a static condition, but a flux in action. I would reconcile these two so as to understand philosophy as the ongoing quest to live as a harmony between the mind and the world, a transcendental ethics that binds our moral beliefs to our actions and the two to the world around us—a world that is both around us and within us, that we are in, with and as. The logical extension of this would be natural philosophy, which considers “being-in-the-world” to reach beyond inter-human action, to a concept of the world where nature itself is granted a slice of that sweet inter-subjective pie. As Michel Serres notes in his 1990 The Natural Contract, our conceptualization of the human condition and social contract must extend beyond the local and even the global, to the planetary, and yet to allow nature entry to the human is a surprisingly radical notion to Western philosophy. “Global history enters nature,” Serres writes according to a popular summation of human civilization’s undeniable place in the natural world; he continues, with a pointed shift and ironic asymmetry: “Global nature enters history is something utterly new in philosophy.”2 As time and carbon bend history towards ecological crisis, philosophy must adjust for an inevitable confrontation of environmental science and studies; meanwhile, so has the latter curved towards a philosophical paradigm. In Steps to an Ecology of the Mind, ecologist Gregory Bateson insists that we bring environmental science out of its pigeon hole and redefine ecology as “the act of dwelling, of occupying a mental and physical space,” thus catapulting the central dualism of Cartesian philosophy to a view of ecology that is no longer simply an empiricist science of nature,

346  Hunter Vaughan but is instead an ethics beyond the human, a moralism of our coexistence with the space around us.3 This refrain, and its extension to the cultural shapers of that space, has been taken up a wider turn in the humanities and the emergence of environmentally focused studies of art, literature and—finally—screen culture. What is generally referred to as “ecocriticism,” or the study of how popular culture both represents the natural and positions us in relation to it, grew primarily out of literary studies and critical theory in the 1990s. Works by Lawrence Buell, Verena Andermatt Conley and others focused on nodal points of American cultural history (e.g., transcendentalist philosophy or postwar social movements) as signposts for how literature and philosophy have been shaped by—and shaped—our relationship to the environment. The turn of the millennium witnessed a strong turn towards literary and film ecocriticism, echoing a rise in the visibility of environmental issues in popular and journalistic discourse and met by a parallel rise in communications studies’ turn to the environment as a field of significant query.4 And, while many foundational works of screen ecocriticism focus on issues of representation in popular moving-image culture, scholars such as Adrian Ivakhiv have heralded an environmental bridge from ecocriticism to a more material focus, with writers such as Sean Cubitt, Nadia Bozak, Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, and Nicole Starosielski moving away from issues of film representation and towards the geopolitics, industrial infrastructure and material impact of media industries and practices.5 What, then, of cinema, you might ask—and rightly so. I believe that these preliminary notes may help us to update the underlying concerns of André Bazin’s classic question: “what is cinema?” First, in this day and age, we must allow “cinema” to be encapsulated into a larger culture of moving-image technologies and practices, which I refer to as “screen culture.” And, while screen culture is certainly a set of texts, a network of aesthetic practices, a bricolage of media and a megaphone of ideology, I argue here for an understanding of it in the tradition of philosophy and ecology: screen culture is what binds us to the earth, what externalizes our internal and permits us to internalize the external. It is our most technologically updated form of being-in-the-world— not only through the positionings crafted by its representations, but through its practice, its practice as a mode of artistic production and as a projection of social values and desires, a tacit cultural contract between material use and human reception that has profound environmental repercussions. The most ecologically disruptive and demanding popular culture yet developed, the screen empire is civilization’s heightened testament to the strain on natural resources and the production of waste we will abide for our culture industries; consequently, a natural philosophy of screen culture must incorporate a social understanding of how our

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 347 collective use of images marks that liminal space between our beliefs and our actions into a material study of its impact on “global nature.”

Philosophizing Moving Images Amidst the Regime of Spectacle In addressing the relationship between screen culture, philosophy and the natural environment, I  find it valuable to return to the conceptual bedrock of my previous work, which theorizes the form of screen representation according to modern philosophy’s guiding problem: the relationship between subject and object. Not unlike the multi-tiered patriarchy explored by Laura Mulvey in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” the typical binary hierarchy found in mainstream cinema, which places the superior human subject in conflict with a perspectiveless object-nature, is manifested on levels of narrative, form and practice from production methods to marketing rhetoric, thus consolidating the classical subject-object dualism on all levels: textuality, aesthetics and industry; denotation, connotation and discourse.6 The hierarchical basis for this division underlies much of the glorification of technology that has spurred Western industrialization. Writing in the 1970s, Bateson was witnessing only the cusp of electronic media’s entrance into industrial society’s tradition of manipulating nature, but still offered this hauntingly telling observation: “Technology falsely assumes even now that it can dominate the world and control nature. Those ideals are outworn, the more so as they presuppose ‘objectively’ on a division between subject and object, of framing and delimitation.”7 This has not changed, only sharpened, with the advent of digital media and the proliferation of devices that empower us to comprehend, to conquer and to command nonhuman nature. Challenging the classical organization of subject-object relations and the ideological hierarchies consequent of these relations is an important bond between the identity-based politics of post-structuralism and the postwar rise of environmentalism, a connection Verena Andermatt Conley draws in her 1997 Ecopolitics. Environmental discourse of the 1990s, she argues, owes much to the rhetoric of 1960s political and intellectual movements, with a rejection of the classical subject-object binary being central to critiquing the treatment of women, non-European cultures and, today, nature itself. Conley writes: “[i]f . . . issues of the Anthropocene and climate change should now be considered as important as gender, race and class have hitherto been considered to humanities research, the question arises as to how we situate the new category in relation to others.”8 The evolution of postwar theory that climaxed with May ’68 changed how the world is thought; while Sartrean existentialism returned philosophy to a Cartesian anthropocentrism, the subsequent structuralist

348  Hunter Vaughan and post-structuralist thinkers insisted on transcending the limited space of the individual human experience; whereas for Sartre man came before all else, Conley points out, for Levi-Strauss life came before man. This de-centering of man (and, ultimately, humanity) returns Conley to Serres’ insistence that “humans do not just dwell as individuals, they weigh on the earth,”9 and reveals that at the bottom of the LeviStraussian mission is a materialism that is not necessarily Marxist, but instead deeply ecological: “life begins in matter.”10 And yet, the bells and whistles of new gadgets and the giddy drive of sharing interfaces seem to have technocratically brought to fruition the neoliberal subjugation of social resistance. Sonar and LiDAR formats, remote environmental sensors and a slew of interactive daily constituents of the Internet of Things allow us to pierce the invisible mysteries of soil, gas molecules, mineral organizations and elemental flows and in many cases to reshape them. But, as Jennifer Gabrys puts it, computational technologies are becoming part of the environment, but this does not make them environmentalist.11 It would benefit the field of film- and image-philosophy in general to reach beyond the philosophical and ethical problems represented in screen texts and even manifested in moving-image forms and to return to the alarmingly basic problem that is our existence, as cultural beings, in the natural world. Culture—in this case screen culture—is not something that exists separately from humanity, nor is the moving image something intangible or magical, some mystical eruption in the fabric of the universe. Critical theorist and master dialectician Theodor Adorno wrote: Immanent criticism of culture, it may be argued, overlooks what is decisive: the role of ideology in social conflicts. To suppose, if only methodologically, anything like an independent logic of culture is to collaborate in the hypostasis of culture, the ideological proton pseudos. The substance of culture, according to this argument, resides not in culture alone but in its relation to something external, to the material life-process.12 Adorno’s complex vocabulary and imminent crotchetiness are only veils over a clear point that has not been made clearly enough: culture is a material action, and its consequences impact us not only mentally but physically, tangibly, us and our loved ones and the natural environment of which we are a part. This life system is far reaching and consists of a series of interlinked ecologies. The binary between culture and nature is as outdated as that between interior subject and exterior objective world, and yet we still consider our human endeavor to be separate from the planet and life with which we coexist. But we can no longer entertain this Cartesian split whereby our mind is in the cultural experience and our body in the physical world, which is the essential goal of

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 349 spectacle—the “disproportion between the reality represented and the means used to represent it,” as cultural theorists Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs phrase it.13 Spectacle as a regime of art, to adapt Jacques Rancière’s terms, has emerged as the antithesis of ecology and environmentalism; though integral to the various essential aspects of the natural world (such as predation, attraction, copulation), mainstream screen industries have rendered spectacle a complicit distraction from the material roots of our actions and insinuated the ideological premise that this very removal is a goal, autonomous and inconsequential in and of itself. As French philosopher Guy Debord and the Situationists indicated four decades ago, spectacle is a collectively condoned interruption of our connection with the real, a technological interruption in the case of screen spectacle—and as it deflects our attention from the material costs of production to the surface of the virtual event, I  recommend that we view spectacle as a sleight of hand that renders transparent the resources that go into the experience. Just as in other species, spectacle seduces us, lures us and deflects us. Along every step of development, from its narrative structuring to its marketing strategies, Hollywood spectacle casts a sheen of misdirection over the resources and waste of its practices, highlighting the technological aptitude but rendering transparent the material reality of its use. This is a gambit that distracts us from the praxis of this technological apparatus, and we should view the environment in Marxist terms, as that which is exploited in the circuit of production and consumption but never compensated, never replenished. We stand on its shoulders, extract its blood, erect our effigies from its cells and blow it up—then applaud the sheer size of the explosion and leave the carcass of our synthetic production to dribble toxic leftovers back into the soil and waterways. Might this be the underlying engine of screen culture itself?

Digitalia: A Virtual Revolution As we come to appreciate more and more the materiality and impact of our natural resource use, so should we that of our image use. In doing so, we must begin to fully assess the complex relationship between our screens, our natural resources and the ecosystems, ecologies and economies they are a part of. The aforementioned turns in ecocriticism and environmental studies can be seen in connection to a larger resurgence, in light of the increasing visibility of climate change threats, of an ecocentric and holistic worldview that was very much dispatched by the rise of capitalism, the Scientific Revolution and the age of industry. In her brilliant 1980 book The Death of Nature, Carolyn Merchant captures an epic historical

350  Hunter Vaughan shift from medieval agriculture to modern industrial capitalism as being definitively connected to our complex and anxious relationship with the natural world today: The Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been treated by most historians as a period of intellectual enlightenment in which a new science of mechanism and mechanical world view laid the foundation for modern scientific, technological, and social programs. But, in the face of the current crisis over the depletion of natural resources Western society is once more beginning to appreciate the environmental values of the premechanical “world we have lost.” Today, the ecological consequences of exploitative attitudes toward the four elements—earth, air, water, and fire—the ancient sources of life and energy, are beginning to be fully recognized.14 Much of what crystallized through the Scientific Revolution and the installment of market capitalism was, of course, already well set in place by the design of previous empires, the institutionalization of Christianity and the rise of oligarchical political structures and commodity exchange culture. Yet, Merchant sharply identifies the fifteenth-century transition between organic and mechanistic models as an umbrella for complex changes in technology, social organization and ideology that laid the foundation for our contemporary relationship with the environment. Though her book was written nearly 40 years ago, Merchant sagely heralds the imminent twenty-first-century return of ecology as reviving a holistic tradition founded on the belief—revitalized by the Romantics in the shadow of early industry, by preservationists such as John Muir in the face of American expansionism and by a growing voice today at the threshold of the digital era—that human beings are not apart from nature, nor at the top of an environmental pyramid, but are inextricably bound within a symbiotic fabric of the natural world. The renaissance of such ecological thinking has been expedited by a recent rise in the general awareness of environmental instability and a growing anxiety over the human impact on the rest of the natural world. Unlike the fifteenth century, though, and unlike 1980, our natural world today just happens to include artificial intelligence and virtual reality avatars, drone warfare, accelerated species extinction and rising sea levels. And, in the midst of it all: movies, television series and webisodes streaming all day and all night, through millions of devices and millions of human lives. Our current shift from analog to digital models is equally as sweeping, complex and problematic for the environment as was that from organic to mechanistic models of philosophy, social organization and political theory experienced during the Scientific Revolution. Myths of immateriality and fetishizations of immediacy, drawn from the self-branding and

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 351 marketing buzzwords of smart tech, remove us from the human reality and environmental accountability of our actions and behaviors. Screen processes increasingly determine our inter-human dynamics, from the individual exchanges of social media to the archived surveillance and WhatsApp wars that define international policy and internal national strife. Issues of identity and difference are splintered by the emergence of artificial intelligence and non-biological extensions of the self, while networked information communications systems determine the production and dissemination of knowledge—all part and parcel of the digital turn. The 2000s were marked by two important cultural surges: the rapid growth, in response to an increase in extreme weather occurrences and species extinction, of our collective awareness and discussion of major environmental issues such as climate change and the proliferation of smart technology devices and their central role in our daily lives. The renewal of ecology and the soft progress of the environmental movement towards neoliberal ends of green consumerism have battled with each other through the problematic discourse surrounding the green revolution, the digital revolution and the—at once both real and mythologized— relationship between them. While I  critique overly optimistic claims to the symbiosis between the green revolution and the digital revolution, we cannot deny that the two are historically, technologically and socially connected. They are emerging simultaneously, often empower one another through both mechanical process and moral principle and in many cases engage similar demographic sets and political rhetoric. There is no question that we live in a volatile time, when the challenges of social division and global inequality are only exacerbated by the increasing effects and risk perception of accelerated climate change. This is not an issue that can—or will—wait, and it touches our entire screen universe, from the phone in your pocket to the rovers catapulting images back to us from distant planets. It is not disproportionately alarmist to state that the way social and cultural systems interact with—and position us in relation to—the environment is part of a tacit agreement we abide by every day and that it is part of a process of environmental destruction that is nearing a point of no return and that this agreement is increasingly shaped by and reflected in our digital screen practices. Nor is it overly ideal to believe that, while larger political decisions must be made in order to force large-scale industrial change, this may come only at the behest of radical shifts in popular thought and collective worldview, for which screen culture could be our strongest weapon. This weapon is not without its problems and its contradictions. The screen culture industry and especially the advent of the digital era have had a hugely detrimental impact on the natural environment, demanding an exponential increase in the mining of precious metals and the reliance on fossil fuel and dirty energy, carving out a new global order of exploitation and e-waste imperialism. The shift to digital has not only had

352  Hunter Vaughan major material and political ramifications, but has also had profound psychological and philosophical consequence, on both the personal and collective levels. Sociologists and psychologists such as Sherry Turkle have provided a wealth of insightful qualitative and quantitative analysis of how the rise of smart screen technology has deteriorated our sense of community and place. This technology, which is meant to enhance our ability to connect and to communicate, is in fact alienating us—from each other and from the world around us. Consequently, smart devices, social media and virtual reality have provided “a space for the emergence of a new state of the self, itself, split between the split between the screen and the physical real, wired into existence through technology.”15 The cognitive dissonance created by this push and pull of digital media and technology use, at once seemingly miraculous and riddled with unexpected traps, has triggered a set of new psychological anxieties and social problems and is linked to a contemporary crisis in the human connection to nature. Moreover, from a purely ontological standpoint, which itself must be reframed in environmental terms, the building dominance of digital production and post-production methods has removed us still further from the ostensible reality that image culture reproduces, represents and manipulates. As media theorist Lev Manovich argues, digital imagery has boosted our reliance on simulation, as its authenticity is predicated on not a mimetic resemblance of the real, but a resemblance of our filmic and televisual representations of the real.16 Analog and video are the new degree zero, and digital screen culture is merely trying to reproduce them. In environmental terms, this active dispossession of the real allows us only further detachment from an underlying unity with the rest of the natural world, with the organic and rivulet analogies for our brain functions and thought patterns replaced by those of the microchip, the computer and the wired network. We may, of course, be well programmed for this detachment, but that makes it neither inevitable nor healthy. While I will not espouse the wholesale transposition of psychoanalysis to screen analysis, Jean Louis Baudry’s fundamental analogy between the film viewer and the Freduian dreamer is apt: we gravitate to the virtual experience of the moving image because it offers us artificial regression to a state of subjective fluidity in which we can no longer distinguish between perception and representation—a sort of voluntary psychosis in which we confound the image and the actual.17 Like the slaves of Plato’s Cave, if given the choice we would opt for the comfort of the hallucination, the security of our enclosed world of flickering images. Psychosis and regression are not revolution, though, and the digital wonderland we have arrived at makes Plato’s Cave seem like a bastion of wilderness adventure and outdoor exploration. Moreover, we cannot simply understand the ramifications of the digital turn in technocratic,

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 353 financial or communications terms. As Merchant argues of her own environmental study of the Scientific Revolution, we require a natural philosophy framework to reveal “the limits of demographic, economic, or political factors as single underlying explanations in history.” To continue in her words, disruptions and reconfigurations in the human/environment dynamic affect the course of history “in the form of social uprisings, wars, laws and technological innovations and [have] an important impact on human health, nutrition and warfare.” However, this happens dialectically, which we can see today in terms of the rising collective anxiety in the face of undeniable climate change impact—and the collective psychological and philosophical escape into the virtual with which we react to this anxiety: “Conversely psychological adaptation to altered environments helps to explain the rise of intellectual movements, conceptual structures and new human behaviors.”18 This leads me to two conclusions: first, that human culture and the natural world exist not separately but as part of one great osmotic ecology, as do the various components of human social systems and natural ecosystems; and, second, that any inquiry into human behavior, thought and being today must also be an inquiry into our relationship to digital screen culture and an inquiry into our relationship to the natural environment—a natural screen philosophy.

Notes 1 Herbert Marcuse, The Aesthetic Dimension (New York: Beacon Press, 1979), 32. 2 Michel Serres, The Natural Contract, trans. Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 4. 3 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), 96. 4 For the relatively recent bloom of environmental concerns across the humanities, see Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm, eds., The Ecocriticism Reader (Athens: University of Georgia, 1996), Laurence Coupe, ed., The Green Studies Reader: from Romanticism to Ecocriticism (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), and Siperstein, Hall and Lemenager, ed., Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities (London and New York: Routledge, 2016). For environmental communication, see Alison Anderson, Media, Culture and the Environment (London: UCL Press, 1997) and Anders Hansen and Robert Cox, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication (London and New York: Routledge, 2015). 5 See Adrian Ivakhiv, Ecologies of the Moving Image (Wilfred Laurier Press, 2013), Sean Cubitt, Finite Media (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), Bozak, The Cinematic Footprint (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011), Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, Greening the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), and Nicole Starioselski, The Undersea Network (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). 6 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 3 (Autumn 1975): 6–18. 7 Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 98.

354  Hunter Vaughan 8 E. Ann Kaplan, Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016). 9 Verena Andermatt Conley, Ecopolitics (New York: Routledge, 1997), 74. 10 Ibid., 44, quoting Mizoeff, “Visualizing the Anthropocene.” Public Culture 26, no. 2 (2014): 213–32. 11 Jennifer Gabrys, Program Earth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 16. 12 Theodor Adorno, Prisms (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967), 29. 13 Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs, Theatre to Cinema (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8. 14 Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature (San Fran: Harper, 1980), 99. 15 Sherry Turkle, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 16. 16 See Lev Manovich, The Language of Digital Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 177–205. 17 Jean-Louis Baudry, “Le Dispositif: Approches métapsychologiques de l’impression de réalité.” Communications 23, no. 1 (1975): 56–72. 18 Merchant, The Death of Nature, 67.

References Adorno, Theodor. Prisms. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1967. Anderson, Alison. Media, Culture and the Environment. London: UCL Press, 1997. Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Le Dispositif: Approches métapsychologiques de l’impression de réalité.” Communications 23, no. 1 (1975): 56–72. Bozak, Nadia. The Cinematic Footprint. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011. Brewster, Ben and Lea Jacobs. Theatre to Cinema. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Conley, Verena Andermatt. Ecopolitics. New York: Routledge, 1997.Coupe, Laurence, ed. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Cubitt, Sean. Finite Media. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. Gabrys, Jennifer. Program Earth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. Glotfelty, Cheryll and Harold Fromm, eds. The Ecocriticism Reader. Athens: University of Georgia, 1996. Hall, Siperstein and Lemenager, eds. Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities. London and New York: Routledge, 2016. Hansen, Anders and Robert Cox, eds. The Routledge Handbook of Environment and Communication. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Ivakhiv, Adrian. Ecologies of the Moving Image. Wilfred Laurier Press, 2013. Kaplan, E. Ann. Climate Trauma: Foreseeing the Future in Dystopian Film and Fiction. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Manovich, Lev. The Language of Digital Media. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002. Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension. New York: Beacon Press, 1979.

Towards a Natural Screen Philosophy 355 Maxwell, Richard and Toby Miller. Greening the Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Merchant, Carolyn. The Death of Nature. San Fran: Harper, 1980. Mizoeff, Nicholas. “Visualizing the Anthropocene.” Public Culture 26, no. 2 (2014): 213–32. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 3 (Autumn 1975): 6–18. Serres, Michel. The Natural Contract. Translated by Elizabeth MacArthur and William Paulson. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Starioselski, Nicole. The Undersea Network. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Turkle, Sherry. Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books, 2011.

20 Metaphysical Alter-Egos Matheson, Dunne and the View From Somewhere John Ó Maoilearca

This essay approaches the subject of time-travel from two perspectives: that of philosophy, in particular J. W. Dunne’s bizarre metaphysics of time in his 1927 opus An Experiment With Time; and that of film, specifically, the idea of traveling back in time as screenwriter Richard Matheson explored this notion in both his 1975 novel Bid Time Return and his own screenplay adaptation of that book in the romantic classic Somewhere in Time (Szwarc, 1980). The reason we bring these two together is because Matheson’s ideas about time, attention and identity actually partly originate in Dunne’s philosophy (mostly as relayed via the work of J. B. Priestley in his 1964 study Man and Time).1 And yet Matheson’s is no straightforward implementation of Dunne’s work, a mere illustration of a philosophy. Rather, his novelistic and cinematic readings both apply and resist Dunne’s views, creating a distorting mirror—a refraction rather than simply a reflection. Moreover, given that (as we will see) Dunne’s metaphysics mostly concerns travel into the future, it may seem perverse that we should emphasize its influence on a much more Proustian work, that is, a study of travel to the past, as Matheson offers us. All the same, placing Dunne’s ideas alongside those of Matheson does reveal the latter as a veritable metaphysics at work beneath the schmaltzy gloss of Somewhere in Time, however unlikely this may sound. Such counter-intuitive readings as this of other films, like that of In Bruges (2008), where Bruges itself is purgatory and all the characters are already dead, or The Searchers (1956), where Ethan and Scar are alter-egos rather than rivals, or even An American Werewolf in London (1981), where the hero is only insane rather than a lycanthrope, need not be read as merely perverse interpretations but as experiments in thought that allow for many versions, many alter-egos, of a film to exit in parallel. It is one such coexistent reading or alter-ego for Somewhere in Time that we forward here. Indeed, what this film, alongside its original source, Bid Time Return, provides us is nothing less than Matheson’s own philosophy of time. Set in 1980, Somewhere in Time concerns the last days of Richard Collier (played by Christopher Reeve), a man who travels back to 1912

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 357 through the agency of sheer willpower and mind manipulation: he has no time machine, phone booth, DeLorean car or any other mechanical device. He has only his will, plus a set of props, costumes and performative acts (used to train his belief, or “alter” his “consciousness”) to propel him through time. Richard journeys by, first, dressing and grooming himself in such a manner as to offer the appearance typical of a “man of this period” (June  27, 1912, to be precise).2 He also immerses himself as best he can in an atmosphere of the past, namely the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan—a kind of “Proustian space” that will help him recreate and inhabit the past.3 He further adds to the period authenticity of the space by removing (again, as best he can) all the contemporary objects from his hotel room: he will have to “dissociate” himself “entirely from the present.” Once this preparation is complete, he then attempts to hypnotize himself into thinking he is in 1912 through a form of auto-suggestion. As Matheson’s Bid Time Return puts it (the earlier book using the date of 1896 as its target): “Using the principles of Psychocybernetics, I  can ‘re-program’ myself to believe that I  exist, not in 1971 [the book’s setting], but in 1896. The hotel will help because so much of 1896 still exists within its walls. The location is perfect, the method sound. It’ll work! I know it will!”4 And yet his mind-method does not work at first. Richard takes this journey in order to meet a once famous actor, Elise McKenna (played by Jane Seymour). She is now dead, but he wants to see her in her prime, in 1912. The reason for his seemingly impossible goal is because he believes that he has fallen in love with the late McKenna in 1980 and at a distance, through seeing her portrait in the hotel where he is staying (the Grand Hotel), years after her death. So far, then, this looks like romantic make-believe. And it must be admitted that Matheson’s metaphysics is indeed also fictional, perhaps even psychotically so. There are differences between the film and the book that are notable in this regard: in the novel Collier is dying from cancer, with a temporal lobe tumor giving him “four to six months” to live; in the film, he merely sets out with severe writer’s block (in the book, he is a TV writer; in the film, a playwright).5 In both versions, however, Collier dies at the end of the story, though in the film it appears to be a willed death—suicide through thwarted desire—rather than from brain cancer. Is this backstory of brain cancer Matheson’s own invitation to us to naturalize the outlandish elements of his tale—to think that Collier is simply deluded? Given that the book is almost entirely related in the first person (through Collier’s diary), might the science-fictional elements exist only in his declining state of mind? We will see. Regardless of this, the ostensible story of Somewhere in Time works on the hypothesis that the past is accessible through the mind and that which part of time one inhabits is a matter of belief—a belief that can be swayed by volition (self-hypnosis within a prepared setting). Even

358  John Ó Maoilearca “psychocybernetics” can only go so far, however. And here Richard enters into a kind of paradox—not unusual in time-travel films, but unusual here because it plays a part in his means of transport: in the hotel attic, he finds an old log that proves he was indeed in the hotel long before—he had signed the hotel register when checking into his room, in 1912. This “proof” of his success at time-travel then acts as the spur to his next and successful attempt to hypnotize himself into the belief that he has gone back in time. It also creates a chicken and egg problem—a circularity of cause and effect—for which time-travel stories are notorious. We will return to this problem and others like it, later in the essay.

Dunne’s Experiments With Time Contrary to what might have been inferred about J. W. Dunne in our introduction, the theorist of time most cited in Matheson’s Bid Time Return is not actually Dunne, but rather J. B. Priestley. However, one suspects that Priestley’s work Man and Time is preferred only because it provides a more accessible (or at least less technical) presentation of Dunne’s extremely challenging ideas about time.6 Nonetheless, in the novel Collier finds a list of books that Elise McKenna had read: “One of them is An Experiment with Time by J.W. Dunne. She had to have read it after 1896 because it wasn’t in print then. I wonder why she read it.”7 In the film adaptation we get none of this: Collier’s education in time-travel is shown instead in a scene where he discusses the possibility of going back in time with his old philosophy teacher, Gerald Finney (named after the author Jack Finney, whose own book Time and Again (1970) was an acknowledged influence on Matheson’s work).8 Little discussed now (perhaps for being “slightly crackpot,” as James Gleick puts it), Dunne’s work was quite influential in its day, especially among artists like Priestley, T. S. Eliot and John Buchan.9 As Priestley later declared in 1964, in writing An Experiment with Time, “we Timequestioners owe him [Dunne] most for bringing the whole subject out of various kinds of mystical dusks and magical twilights into the air of ordinary life. . . . He rejects the idea, almost a dogma now, that our lives are completely contained by chronological uni-dimensional time, without becoming other-worldly.”10 The other-worldly is made ordinary— though still a little crackpot perhaps. Dunne rejects any notion of a singular, Newtonian dimension to time, though he also believes that it would actually be through the sciences—and the addition of more spatial dimensions—that certain anomalous, non-linear experiences of time might be explained (especially those in dreams): “For Time has always been treated by men of science as if it were a fourth dimension. What had to be shown was the possibility of displacement in that dimension.”11 In particular, there was the matter of predictive dreams—the apparent ability for some people (or rather all people, some of the time) to see into the future while dreaming, which Dunne had assessed as a real fact and not

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 359 simply a statistical coincidence. What might be described as “previsional dreaming” is not a non-spatial, extra-scientific affair for Dunne, but a higher-order dimensional one—it concerns perceptions existing in nth-order spaces: “It has been noted that the book has not referred to the psychologist’s ‘specious present’ under that name. It has, however, introduced this as the four-dimensional focus of attention (of the observer).”12 The dream, then, is simply a (probabilistic) future perception within a higher-order dimension. Of course, much of the imagery in any dream has its origins in our past experiences, so Dunne must expend a good deal of time teasing out any significant probabilities of genuinely prophetic future-oriented material existing in specific dreams (beyond predictable coincidences). And though its presence is infrequent and barely discernible, he claims that it is there. “Time-travel” is possible, both into the future and the past. Interestingly, it also took Dunne a good deal of initial effort to rid his earliest explanations of these odd phenomena of any otherworldly aspects before he could settle on something (relatively) more mundane. At first, his ability to dream the future seemed hopelessly paranormal to him: This time there seemed to be no way out. I was driven to the conclusion that I possessed some funny faculty of seeing—seeing through obstacles, across space, and round corners. But I was wrong. . . . Then came a dream which somewhat simplified matters. For it ruled out definitely: insanity, clairvoyance, astral-wandering, spirit-messages, and telepathy. But it left me face to face with something much more staggering than any of these.  .  .  . They were the ordinary, appropriate, expectable dreams; but they were occurring on the wrong nights. . . . No, there was nothing unusual in any of these dreams as dreams. They were merely displaced in Time.13 So, what might appear as clairvoyance of, say, an event occurring far away or concerning others in the future was always and “only” a precognition of one’s own life: for example, a vision of oneself reading about a far-off event in a local newspaper on some future occasion (hence one’s apparently spooky foreknowledge). In the dream, one perceives, “at rare intervals, large blocks of otherwise perfectly normal personal experience displaced from their proper positions in Time.”14 Yet, despite Dunne’s dimensional and spatial explanation, there is also a reliance in his (dream) analyses on a quasi-phenomenological method, namely on increasing our attention to the “present” changing world, such that it is transformed (distended, multiplied), and this attention-training also requires immense effort (there is much on the need for this labor in Dunne). As he writes— in dreams and their laborious recollection, we enlarge our “focus of attention”: Moreover (and this I  discovered by separate experiment), if one allowed the attention to pass from the image under consideration to

360  John Ó Maoilearca another which was manifestly associated therewith, one remained, so to say, in the “past” part of the network. There, attention was completely at home. . . . Every Time-travelling field of presentation is contained within a field one dimension larger, travelling in another dimension of Time, the larger field covering events which are “past” and “future,” as well as “present,” to the smaller field. . . . The focus of attention in any field has the same number of dimensions as has that field and is a dimensional centre of the foci of attention in all the higher fields.15 By extending our perceptual attention, as Dunne thought we did in dreamexperience, we can travel forward or backward in time (“the larger field covering events which are ‘past’ and ‘future’”). Attention is the key. Dunne’s dreaming-sleeper who travels along the higher orders of space is actually also traveling within inner space. Dunne is quite neurological here: in dream, he writes, “your attention is travelling among brain-states.”16 His naturalism extends beyond spatialization normally understood into the internal spaces of the brain: “At the outset brain is the teacher and mind the pupil. Mind begins its struggle towards structure and individuality by molding itself upon brain.”17 And this move towards the interior will be crucial in our rereading of Somewhere in Time: in Bid Time Return, Collier is suffering from brain cancer, which is usually taken as a cue for interpreters to explain away (naturalize) the fantastical aspect of the story as just a hallucination or symptom of delirium.18 Yet Matheson may well have prompted just such deflationary readings in order to redirect our attention from its proper focus on Dunne: a brain disease may well be the agent of time-travel rather than its rationalization—naturalism de-naturalized.

Performing Objects and the Sealed Room The question of attention brings us face to face with the objects and spaces surrounding Collier. In the film, it is the aforementioned Dr. Gerald Finney, Collier’s old philosophy teacher, who intimates to our hero that a mind-powered journey into the past might very well be possible, if the physical conditions are just right. Finney relates an anecdote of a visit to Venice in 1971 (which is oddly, the date of the novel’s opening). The dialogue continues thus: GF: 

I was staying in a very old hotel. But I mean, very old. The structure, the furnishings, everything. The atmosphere was aged, if you follow me. And my room, I felt as though it was . . . a century or more earlier than 1971. (. . .) RC:  So, in other words then, the location is very important. GF: Not all important, but essential. The rest is here [points to head]. (. . .) One afternoon, I . . . I was lying down in that room. All the

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 361 sights around me . . . a part of the past. Even the sounds I heard . . . and I conceived a notion. What, I asked myself . . . if l attempt to hypnotize my mind? Suggest to it that it isn’t 1971 but 1571. . . . I closed my eyes . . . and fed a suggestion into my brain. It’s August 1571, I am in the Hotel Del Vecchio . . . and I spelled out the details for myself  .  .  . and did it over and over  .  .  . and again and again and again. RC: And? GF:  Well . . . I’ll never really know, Richard. I’ve never done it since. And I’m not sure I’d want to do it again. I felt exhausted afterwards, completely washed out. And if it really did happen . . . I was only there a fraction of an instant, remember. A flicker. RC:  Yes, sir. I understand that, but . . . you were there. GF:  I thought so. Oh, it wasn’t perfect, granted. How would it be otherwise? There were objects around me that were clearly from the present . . . and I knew they were there. Oh, if I were going to try it again—mind you, I have no such intention. But if I did . . . I would disassociate myself entirely, from the present. Move everything out of sight that could possibly remind me of it. Then, who knows? The archaeological notion of the “sealed room” comes to mind here—a space disconnected from the modern world, either intentionally or by accident, for a considerable length of time: one that has aged, but only in terms of certain basic material properties (oxidization, material decay, rot and so on) and not in its contents, design or arrangement.19 Indeed, the nature of the seal on such a room may even protect its contents from the worst rigors of time (extremes of temperature, dampness, sunlight, airborne chemicals and other contaminants): it is not that they will have remained completely unchanged, but they will have been “touched by time” so much less. There are many sealed rooms in Somewhere in Time (film and novel): the Queen Mary museum (in the opening of the book Collier visits the docked ship that had been converted in 1971 to a museum and hotel at Long Beach harbor); the room in Elise’s house that her companion and biographer Laura Roberts is turning into a museum dedicated to the actor’s life—filled with her costumes, dresses, portraits and books; the Grand Hotel itself; the “Hall of History” in the Grand Hotel where Richard first sees Elise’s photographic portrait; the hotel attic; the Hotel Del Vecchio in Finney’s anecdote; and, of course, Collier’s own hotel bedroom where he conducts his experiments with time. Collier’s visit to the Queen Mary, in particular, sets the tone for these other sealed rooms. While taking the tour of the ship’s compartments, Collier studies a range of memorabilia— period photos and props laid out in various rooms on the ship: There’s Gloria Swanson in her furs. There’s Leslie Howard; how young he looks. I remember seeing him in a movie called Berkeley

362  John Ó Maoilearca Square. I recall him time-traveling back to the eighteenth century. In a way, I’m doing something like that at this moment. Being on this ship is being partially in the 1930s. . . . Here the feeling is reversed yet equally uncomfortable. I’m the one who’s moving, and the Queen’s environment is fixed. Does that make sense? I doubt it. But this place is starting to give me the creeps. . . . Is this what psychics feel like after entering a house filled with a presence of the past? I felt it growing in me constantly, a drawing, twisting discomfort. The past is in that vessel. I doubt it will endure with all those people tramping through. Presently, it must be dissipated. But it’s there now.20 Potent as these sealed rooms of the Queen Mary are, they, like all of the other enclosed spaces in Somewhere in Time, are nothing less than types of time capsule: they are fragments of lost time.21 For here is the crucial point: if there is no one, “uni-dimensional” time (Newton’s famed “absolute” time that “flows equably without regard to anything external”—as measured by the clock) but only different dimensions of time, with any clock (of whatever chosen technology) being only one measure with no authority to transcend all others—if this is true, then there are only times (plural) that flow unequally in different spaces, spread horizontally along one scale and vertically across myriad other scales, micro and macro, with no one overall container (a sealed universe) to mark them, no master time. Every space is only relatively open and relatively sealed, of course; none are ever absolutely closed off. However, where one space has, for whatever reason, endured at a different rate (or we should say, in a different manner—because there is no absolute rate by which to measure it) compared to those around it, then entering that space is also, to some extent, entering a different time zone. As Matheson describes it, “the past is here” in the hotel where Collier stays—“the past . . . like some immense, collective ghost is present here beyond all possibility of exorcism.”22 If there never were any absolute nows or simultaneities before, then there never was one past for us to lose or leave behind, but simply different, moving dimensions, each a temporal part or fragment only (with no absolute whole)—some attended, some unattended (at least by “us,” whomever “we” are supposed to be). So, if one can extend one’s attention from one present to another, be it through hypnotism or a tumor, or by dwelling within a certain space, then the result may appear to be a (relative) deceleration of oneself to another time (or rate of change). Regress and progress in time is possible—indeed, it is a nocturnal inevitability according to Dunne (albeit one that becomes notable only when we travel forward in our lifespan). Pace Dunne’s avowed scientific and materialist approach, these are, for Matheson, Proustian space-times, physical and phenomenological.23 Lost rooms that are also “lost times”—time-machines composed of varied mind-body-space relations. And that they are phenomenological is not

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 363 incidental—as Finney says when pointing to his head, “the rest is here” (otherwise, the sealed room would be only an objective “time-slip” that is open to all).24 Collier’s head is vital in his experiments, but not merely because his brain is hypnotized or diseased but because every space, like every time, is somewhere (there is no room or view from nowhere); everything is perspectival. So how one enters that room (a how that also entails who is entering it too) is equally important. If this is “correlationism,” then it is unapologetically so—“hyper-correlational” even: classical idealisms, be they subjective or transcendental, are never sufficiently correlational; they are always far too human. There are perspectives everywhere and not only on the anthropic level. Indeed, to pretend to have abstracted oneself from all points of view as such in the name of, say, Platonic realism (or any other form of realism) is, perhaps, only to allow oneself to dwell even deeper within the “great indoor” space of anthropos (even as it itself is still partially open, as every mathematical intuitionist knows).25 So, Richard Collier, installed alone in his room in the Grand Hotel, begins his psychocybernetic experiment, using period-correct costume (sourced from a local “costume house”) to perform a kind of improvisatory “cosplay” (which is now ironically part and parcel of Somewhere in Time’s lively fan culture), the correct props (currency of the period) and his self-hypnosis tape that plays the same phrases over and over: It is 6pm in the evening of June 27, 1912, Elise McKenna, now, in this hotel. She and her company, who are in this hotel at this very moment . . . even as you lie here on your bed in the Grand Hotel. Your mind . . . accepts this absolutely. (. . .) You have travelled back in time. Soon, you will open your eyes . . . and you will walk into the corridor . . . and you will go downstairs and find Elise McKenna (. . .) It has to happen. There is no question. You know it. It has to happen. And so on. As the novel relates, Collier goes to every effort to “set the stage with more detail” and compile “enough items to enrich my next instruction.”26 His intention, we are told, is to thrust all memories of 1971 from my mind. I’ve even scraped away the printing inside the boots; as little a thing as that might undo everything. No socks, no underwear; too contemporary in appearance. . . . Good God! I almost overlooked my wristwatch!27 In Matheson’s book, we are shown more of the trials and errors of Collier’s experimentation, with partial successes coming in only fragments of the targeted past returning (1896 in the book): The feeling I have is that I was, in fact, in a pocket of 1896. . . . In essence, then, if my theory is sound, I was lying on the bed in 1896

364  John Ó Maoilearca and heard the fireplace which was in 1896—but, beyond that point, 1971 was still in effect. . . . If my theory is true, she (Elise) wasn’t there because I was in only a fragment of 1896, not in its entirety.28 Constrained by the usual economies of cinematic story-telling, the film adaptation spares us much of these trials; but, just as with the book, we see Collier’s eventual greater success (though not an absolute one) only after he sees his name in the hotel register from 1896/1912. After that, his auto-suggestion takes on much more power, even doing away with the anachronistic tape-machine to use his own hypnotic voice instead. Yet even then, his success is not absolute, but only relative: the book makes it clear that, after his “arrival,” Collier still cannot be sure that it remains 1896 beyond the hotel and its environs, and if he strays too far afield, he may be involuntarily catapulted back to 1971. And, in any case, in both film and novel Collier’s trip does prematurely end when he discovers a modern, 1970s coin (a penny) that he’d forgotten to remove from his suit pocket before traveling. Here, however, it seems to be his suspension of disbelief that looks to have been ruptured—it is in his “head” where the fault lies, rather than in the range of space he traverses. Matheson’s story never properly explains why this is the case. For instance, in the book, after “arriving,” Collier learns that his suit is not, in fact, in period, being a decade out of date—so why did that not break the spell? Moreover, the phenomenology of his time-travel story (changing beliefs or suspending attitudes, enriching surrounding spaces with new (old) meanings, having how things appear somehow generate how things are and so on) raises awkward questions about his use of subjective idealism. The usual one is this, of course: is the trip all in Collier’s head (is he deluded, cognitively impaired or even demented)? Or, even in a more charitable version of this approach—is his brain tumor actually enabling a greater attention span that broadens his perceived present beyond the usual here and now? Yet, notwithstanding both of those subjective phenomenologies, there is also the matter of an objective, or objectoriented, phenomenology: how do things “appear” to themselves when out of place, at the wrong time or too rapidly altered? In other words, even if the “bad penny” had never turned up under Collier’s gaze, wouldn’t it have always been there in his pocket, being an untimely 1970s coin spoiling 1896 or 1912? And what of the traces of modern drugs in Collier’s body (treating his illness) or, even if he’s presumed healthy in the film version, the modern vaccinations in his system that keep him healthy? Matheson’s book gives no time over to settling how these micro-details are to be treated. And yet Matheson was well aware of these physical limits to timetravel too, having Collier declare that “no matter what I  want or feel or believe I can do, my mind and body, every cell within me knows it’s 1971” (whether or not this is a metaphorical use of the term “cell” here

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 365 is crucial).29 Indeed, Jack Finney wrote about such recalcitrant details in his short story from 1956, “Second Chance,” one that Matheson himself adapted for his 1977 film anthology Dead of Night: I wonder if we aren’t barred from the past by a thousand invisible chains. You can’t drive into the past in a 1957 Buick because there are no 1957 Buicks in 1923; so how could you be there in one? You can’t drive into 1923 in a Jordan Playboy (a car of the 1920s), along a four-lane superhighway; there are no superhighways in 1923. You couldn’t even, I’m certain, drive with a pack of modern filter-tip cigarettes in your pocket—into a night when no such thing existed. Or with so much as a coin bearing a modern date, or wearing a charcoalgray and pink shirt on your back. All those things, small and large, are chains keeping you out of a time when they could not exist.30 The entire plot of Somewhere in Time itself turns on one such small thing, a penny coin, one seemingly inconsequential item that draws Collier’s journey and the story told about it to an end. Yet it remains unclear how it is able to do so and what kind of “chain” it constitutes when doing so: that is, it is not only the matter of how the coin is able to drag Collier back from 1912 to 1980, but also of how he ever got to 1912 in the first place while still having the coin in his possession. And this is not the only case of circular causation in the story.

Metempsychoses: Time-Travel and the Fragmentations of Identity Traveling in attentiveness is traveling in time—a time composed of bodies-in-movement, of multiple, superposed dimensions, large and small. How far one can travel, though, and whether one can travel outside the scope of one’s own time remains mute: the degree of “plasticity” within our brain, or our DNA, or even the “laws” of physics surrounding us may well be variable, but whether any agent can control any level of that variability is contentious. Ruminating on Priestley’s ideas about time, we hear Collier face the logical objection to time-travel: If 1890 still exists somewhere, he might be able to pay it a visit. But he could only do it as an observer because 1890 plus his physical intervention would no longer be 1890 as it was. . . . That disturbs me. Let me think about it. No; that can’t apply to me. Because I’ve already been there. 1896, without my physical intervention, would no longer be 1896 as it was. Therefore, I must go back.31 On the one hand, an essential aspect of what it is to be 1890 is not to have parts of 1896 cropping up in it. Unless, on the other hand, it was always

366  John Ó Maoilearca already part of 1890 to have parts of 1896 within it. A  logical objection becomes a (virtuously) circular argument—an argument that needs its circular form. Something is both impossible and necessary. Does this also mean that the separation of times according to date is itself absurdly circular? Saying that “part of 1896” (a person, thing or event) cannot appear any earlier than it does is accurate only because that person, thing or event has already been essentialized within “1896” in a prior reduction of events and processes to one, universal and rigid time-line. Contrariwise, might some time-lines be less rigid, more non-linear, than others (as Dunne argues)? Can we transport ourselves to some degree, to a fragment of a line, as Collier believes he has done? Is he mad to think so? Perhaps Collier is, in fact, simply mad, psychotic. It is worth spending some time with this thought and not merely in the name of some common-sense naturalism. The perverse readings mentioned at the out­ set of this essay—different characters being alter-egos in The Searchers, characters being (literally) in purgatory in In Bruges and, of course, a character’s insanity in An American Werewolf in London—can all be applied to Somewhere in Time. Perhaps Collier is already dead, or at least in his death throes (the book does mention Ambrose  Bierce’s An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge at one point), or, as he so often insists, simply insane. Death and madness make the marked parallel between Stephen King’s The Shining (also adapted for film in 1980) and Somewhere in Time all the more significant.32 Both stories involve (in their film adaptations) an author/playwright suffering from writer’s block and going to stay in a large, old hotel as part of a remedy—the Overlook and the Grand.33 Both plots can be read/counter-read as either time-travel stories or (perversely) ghost tales—The Shining being normally taken for the latter, Somewhere in Time normally for the former. In both, the main protagonists undergo huge stresses—involving isolation and repetitive behavior (“It has to happen. You know it. It has to happen. . .”/“all work and no play. . .” and so on)—leading to the onset of what could be described as psychosis. And both these figures eventually have visions, or at least see things out of their proper time, before their eventual death. Indeed, the sting-in-the-tail ending of The Shining when Jack Torrence emerges as the man who has always been the hotel’s caretaker, or at least since 1921 (when we see Jack’s face immortalized in a photograph of the 4th of July Ball at the hotel for that year), sets it up as a possible timetravel horror.34 Conversely, it is arguable that Collier in Somewhere in Time does not travel back to the past, but simply induces (real or hallucinatory) visions of ghosts from the hotel’s past—i.e., 1912—a past that he, in his death, finally joins forever (analogies with ghosts are strewn throughout Bid Time Return). There is even a little boy in both films— Danny, who has “the shining” or ability to see ghosts, and “Arthur” the bellboy, who sees Collier at the hotel first as a child and later as an old man—with uncanny effects.

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 367 If The Shining and Somewhere in Time can be read as cinematic alter egos, then—romantic time-travel in one perspective, horrific ghost story in another—then psychosis is their one, shared natural reduction: for the supernatural dimensions of both can be naturalized through the (purported) insanity of their protagonists.35 The question for us, however, is whether that insanity can be both accepted and re-interpreted. And we do this, just as Dunne does, by multiplying the number of dimensions involved. The psychosis involved would not come in only one form of dementia, but many; or rather, there are many ongoing fragmentations of the mind, which we will call metempsychoses. This is not to be taken as the transmigration of singular souls (from one body to another) but the fragmentation of soul-parts, or types, across space and time. And, indeed, now we can finally return to the paradox of time-travel left aside earlier, where it appears to be both “impossible and necessary.” Time-travel is not only a fantastical notion, it is paradoxical—it doesn’t merely stretch reason, it crushes it, at least in reason’s standard form. The immanent circularities of time-travel stories are abundant, the most famous being the “grandfather paradox,” one that many philosophers, such as David Lewis, have explored: traveling back in time and killing one’s own grandparent before one’s parent’s conception both enables and disables one’s journey, being both necessary to the story and impossible for it.36 Somewhere in Time has its own set of immanent circles of such ilk: in the film version, for example, there is a fob watch that is handed to an unwitting Richard in 1972 by an old woman (Elise), a watch that sets in motion his return to her in 1912 when he gives (returns?) it to her as a gift, having taken it with him back in time: but, of course, the age and origin of the fob watch must be left uncertain. Similarly, in Matheson’s novel, Elise’s love of Mahler is both inspiring to Richard (in the book’s present setting) and inspired by him (in its past setting), to form another chicken and egg conundrum.37 Lacanians might describe these anomalous circulations as forms of objet petit a—unattainable objects that create chains of signification (and desire) without themselves being signified, the voids that make every thing circulate. An alternative to this basically Hegelian dialectic of being and nothingness is, for instance, the Deleuzian one of process, of becoming. Instead of reducing the paradox to zero, we multiply its variables. In Dunne’s language, we serialize time. This is because the paradoxes of time-travel are typically forms of self-reference paradox (irrespective of whether or not they involve encounters with one’s ancestors): the object, person or event “X” appears at least twice as simultaneously an end (the watch to give, say) and a means (the watch received). And as paradoxes of self-reference, time-travel paradoxes, like Russell’s classic paradox of self-reference, can be resolved by multiplication in a “theory of types.” The solution always comes by multiplying the variables or types involved. So, the logical type (or order) of X in its first

368  John Ó Maoilearca appearance in the conundrum is not the same as the logical order of its second appearance—it is always of a higher-order (or meta-level).38 Yet, in our inquiry, these are not only logical types, but real types, levels or dimensions. Certainly, Dunne’s serial time, born of regress and the inescapability of self-reference in time, is not only logical in form. That time, to change at all, needs another time in which its alteration can be marked (and so on, ad infinitum) is a real phenomenon for him. Most philosophers, starting with Aristotle, avoid such regresses by positing either motionless Being or motionless Void as a terminus. Dunne, however, embraces the infinite regress.39 Moreover, his regress and serialization concern not only time, but us who inhabit time: “We must bear in mind, moreover, that serialism in Time is almost bound to signify serialism in other matters. In actual fact (the reader had best be warned of the worst) we shall find that it involves a serial observer.”40 Most importantly, the regress (and multiplicity) here is not of logical types but real dimensions. As he puts it: “ ‘Higher-order’ does not mean an observer who is in any way remote, in either Time or Space. The observer in question is merely your ordinary everyday self, ‘here’ and ‘now.’ (. . .) This higher-order observer . . . is merely your ordinary everyday self.”41 So when Dunne refers to an expanded attention, in terms of “dimensionally larger fields,” these dimensions also mark out real, ordinary experiences.42 The only way through to “the” past (or rather one that transcends my own) is through my past. The ordinary life leads to the extraordinary. In what might also be described as his psychological romance, Matheson describes this multiplication of selves in Bid Time Return: More and more, I  am becoming convinced that the secret of successful time travel is to pay the price of eventual loss of identity. . . . My presence in 1896 is like that of an invading grain of sand inside an oyster. An invader of this time, I will, bit by bit, be covered by a self-protecting-and absorbing-coat, being gradually encapsulated. Eventually, the grain of me will be so layered over by this period that I will be somebody else, forgetting my source, and living only as a man of this period.43 One self becomes another, displaced through the agency of multiple spaces and times. However, where Dunne quasi-naturalizes this seriality with the geometry of higher-order (and yet still “ordinary”) dimensions, we might take the even more radical route that immanentizes the supernatural within the natural—placing space-time di-mensions in the realm of metempsychosis, or metem-psychoses, de-mentia and de-minding. In other words, within insanity.

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 369

Conclusion: Altered-Egos, Or, Film as Philosophy Is Richard “visiting” Elise in the past, or is she traveling to him, to the ghost of her future? In fact, Richard and Elise can also be seen as alteregos—ghostly, traveling versions of each other (and many other others, to boot). Metempsychosis here is not the migration of souls in space but the coincidence of soul-types or soul-fragments in different space-time dimensions. We could gloss such mutuality in crypto-scientific terms of “mirror neurons” at the micro-level of brains, or as “entangled” identities at the both smaller and larger level of the physical cosmos; or we could give it a theo-phenomenological rendering, following Michel Henry, and think of each life as an experiment by auto-affective (self-referring) Life itself. Or, we might even intersect Nietzschean nihilism with French Personalism in a variation on the theme of the eternal return—the idea that each person’s life is the logical, existential possibility of another person’s life, made flesh: not “there but for the grace of God, go I,” but “there with grace (understood as chance, contingency, repetition), goes an alternative I.” Whatever the vocabulary, however, we are faced with levels, types or dimensions of mind—an “extended mind” that is spread out not only in ordinary space, but in extra-ordinary time as well. Traveling in time turns out to be actually traveling among part-identities (that span other dimensions). This is not only the “temporalization of space,” but the mentalization or spiritualization of space-times, so long as one understands “spirit” here as already embodied, already moving and multiple. What is it, anyway, to be a man “of this period,” as Collier puts it when describing the subject’s dissolution when transported to the past? He records that “eventually, the grain of me will be so layered over by this period that I  will be somebody else, forgetting my source and living only as a man of this period.” If this is the case eventually, will Collier remain in the past, as a man “of the future,” or will the past have somehow absorbed him so fully that his journey and exile from his proper time have been nullified? All will be as it always was. Counterfactual histories such as “if I had been Napoleon at Waterloo. . .” soon dissipate into actual history given all that would be needed to transform another person genuinely into “Napoleon at Waterloo.” In other words, being not only “of this period,” but also of this situation (as a real token, not merely a similar type) requires everything that only an exhaustive factual analysis of Napoleon-there-and-then can provide (and only the Napoleon-there-and-then can inform such an analysis). And we can refract this deflationary thought even further: might not the ordinary world of separate identities in our supposedly singular time (the present) now be seen (post-Dunne-Matheson) as ongoing experiments, not only “with time” as Dunne would have it, but also with identity? Time travel would thereby become radically ordinary yet without

370  John Ó Maoilearca simply being dismissed: a coexistence of spatial-dimensions experienced, not merely when dreaming, but in multiple waking consciousnesses. And not only as nth-ordered planes of space either, but as alteredegos. Time travel becomes a transport in spaces and among fragmented identities—as always already actual, in a myriad of coexistent dimensions. This would then make the non-identity of Matheson and Dunne that we began with (and with that, metonymically, of film and philosophy) less and less of a problem: Matheson (his work) is neither the faithful application nor the distortion of Dunne (his ideas), for each is the rendering in different dimensions of another level of thought (or, if you prefer, of art) that is itself another rendering from another space-time-identity and so on ad infinitum. This other rendering does not come to a terminus in either the void or the eternal Platonic forms (one-and-the-same for Badiouians, of course), because none of them are copies or reflections. There is no absolute (time or space). Serialism  =  Perspectivism (there are only views from somewhere, in time). To adapt an idea from David Lewis: Matheson and Dunne, perhaps film and philosophy too, are “counterparts”—a series of parts sharing an identity strung across possible worlds—only here these fragments coexist actually as transports or refractions between temporal dimensions—interminable travels in (everchanging) cinematic and philosophical thought. Matheson as Dunne/film as philosophy.

Notes 1 See John Ó Maoilearca (2019) for a complementary study of the similarities between Matheson’s ideas of time-travel, fragmentation and Bergson’s concept of “attention to life.” 2 Richard Matheson, Bid Time Return, republished as Somewhere in Time (New York: TOR Books, 1998), 302 [(henceforth, BTR). 3 In the original 1975 book it is the Hotel del Coronado in California, made famous in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959), that serves as the setting: in the 1980 adaptation, however, the location is shifted to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, for purposes of greater period authenticity. 4 BTR, 74. 5 See Kooyman 2014 for more on Matheson’s skills in adaptation with specific regard to Somewhere in Time/Bid Time Return. 6 J. B. Priestley, Man and Time (London: Star Books, 1978), 236–65. Incidentally, Priestley, though a strong advocate for Dunne, rejected his additional proposal of infinite seriality in time, favoring a limited serialism instead. 7 BTR, 74–75. 8 Matthew R. Bradley, Richard Matheson on Screen: A History of the Filmed Works (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010), 219ff. 9 James Gleick, Time Travel: A History (London: 4th Estate, 2016), 131. 10 J. B. Priestley. Man and Time (London: Star Books, 1978), .237, 238. 11 J. W. Dunne, An Experiment with Time (London: Faber and Faber, 1927), 55–56 (henceforth, ET). 12 ET, 212, 207. 13 ET, 40, 48, 50.

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 371 14 ET, 55. 15 ET, 102, 158, 159. See also 159: “the focus of attention (the area covered by observation of a given degree of concentration) must have, in each case, the same number of dimensions as have the observer and his field. In field 1 it is three-dimensional; in field 2 it is four-dimensional; and so on” (we will return to this multi-dimensional subject later). 16 ET, 172. 17 ET, 178. 18 See Tanfer Emin Tunc, “(Re)Presenting the Past: Bid Time Return as Historiographic Metafiction.” in Reading Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey, ed. Cheyenne Mathews and Jannet V. Haedicke (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). 19 See, for example, Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair (1999) in Rodinsky’s Room for a famous recent case of such a sealed room. 20 BTR, 20, 22. 21 Since at least its new life at Long Beach as a museum and hotel, the owners of the Queen Mary have also traded on its reputation as a haunted site, with many ghost tours on offer to visitors. 22 BTR, 48. 23 Dunne, Matheson’s guide, positions himself as a naturalist, his exotic notions being based on sound logic and science (albeit with purportedly crackpot results). Though the phenomena he describes “mimicked to perfection many classical examples of alleged ‘clairvoyance,’ ‘astral-wandering,’ and ‘messages from the dead or dying,’ ” he still argues that “there is nothing in all this which need alarm the materialist. It is abundantly clear that, when this observer, with his field, reaches the terminus of the cerebral substratum, he will find that the observable phenomena have come to an end. Nor is there anything yet to show that he has the smallest capacity for interference with the sequence of the cerebral states which he observes” (ET, 37, 144). 24 A time-slip, as in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court from 1889, is an objective location in space that acts as a portal to another time for those who come across it. 25 See John Mullarkey, Bergson and Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), Chapter Eight on the intuitionist’s defense against mathematical Platonism. 26 BTR, 94, 95. 27 BTR, 105. Collier goes on: “I’ve put the telephone under the bed, put the lamp from the bedside table in the closet, removed the bedspread so all I’ll see on the edges of vision will be white sheet.” 28 BTR, 110, 111. 29 BTR, 69. 30 Admittedly, Finney’s story can get going only because the modern narrator does a perfect job in restoring a Jordan Playboy to its 1926 state, and, while driving it on an old back road, is “rejected” by modern time to be taken back into its past. Of course, at the material level of the car’s metal, glass, rubber and paint, the changes undergone can be only superficially reversed—rust can be removed from the surface of a metal, but many of the other, unseen processes (molecular and submolecular) undergone by the metal still take their toll. 31 BTR, 71. 32 See Joshua Comer, “Another Time: Novelizing History after the Canon in Matheson.” in Reading Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey, ed. Cheyenne Mathews and Jannet V. Haedicke (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

372  John Ó Maoilearca King has admitted that Matheson was the writer who had the greatest influence on him, and though it would be churlish to point out that Bid Time Return was published in 1975 while The Shining appeared in 1977 (especially given Matheson’s avowed debt to Jack Finney), the resonance between the two works, in both their similarities and differences, remains uncanny. Matheson, of course, was no stranger to the haunted house genre either, Hell House (1971) being his most famous work in the field (adapted for screen in 1973 as The Legend of Hell House). 33 Each of the film hotels, incidentally, have miniatures of themselves—the main building and the garden maze—that appear in the story (in Somewhere in Time, Elise has had a miniature of the Grand Hotel made for herself). 34 In Bid Time Return, the scene when Collier is within one of the “sealed rooms” of the Queen Mary museum offers the following description of a number of photographs hanging on the wall (21, 23): “More photographs. Mr. and Mrs. Don Ameche. Harpo Marx. Eddie Cantor. Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Robert Montgomery. Bob Hope. Laurel and Hardy. Churchill. All suspended in time, forever smiling. . . . Above the counter is a mural. People dancing, holding hands, a long thin oval of them. Who are they supposed to be? All of them are frozen like this ship.” The echo of this in the finale to The Shining is very audible. 35 Admittedly, Shelley Duvall’s character, Wendy, also sees ghosts, as her son Danny does too, but these could all be symptoms of a group hysteria brought on by stress and isolation. 36 See David Lewis, “The Paradoxes of Time Travel.” American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (1976): 145–52; and William J. Devlin, “Some Paradoxes of Time Travel in The Terminator and 12 Monkeys.” in The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, ed. Steven M. Sanders (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008), 103–17 for more on these paradoxes. 37 There are others, such as Elise (or, in the book, her medium’s) premonition of Richard’s appearance, or Richard’s odd attraction to Elise’s portrait in the hotel’s “Hall of History.” Gomel 2010 (59) points out a more overarching paradox within Collier’s story concerning freewill and determinism: “Fortified by philosophy, immersed in the antiquarian ambience of the hotel and fired by his love for Elise, Collier does indeed transport himself back into 1896. But a strange paradox ensues, familiar from The Time Machine. In order to travel in time, Collier has to believe that action is predetermined and choice is an illusion. But having travelled in time he has to act as if the future is open-ended and choice has consequences. He has to find the means of surviving in the past; he has to woo Elise; and most of all, while knowing that their love is preordained to be tragic, he has to believe it can have a happy ending and act on this belief. He tells her he is writing a love story whose end he does not know and when she expresses amazement at this, he silently rejoices in his own ability to change her carefully laid-out plans for her future.” 38 See Mullarkey, Bergson and Philosophy. 39 See John Mullarkey, Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (London: Continuum Books, 2006), and Ricki Leigh Bliss, “Viciousness and the Structure of Reality.” Philosophical Studies 166, no. 2 (2013): 399–418 for more on the virtues of infinite regress. As we said earlier, Priestley admonishes Dunne for making the regress infinite—see J. B. Priestley, Man and Time (London: Star Books, 1978), 246. 40 ET, 135. See also 159: “The serialism of the fields of presentation involves the existence of a serial observer.”

Metaphysical Alter-Egos 373 41 And it involves the “regressions of self-consciousness and of time” (ET, 209. See also 158, 168, 197, 199). 42 ET, 159. 43 BTR, 216, 302. See also, 120: “As an 1896 man, I was, almost literally, newborn; obliged to learn the use of my limbs in this new and unfamiliar world.”

References Bliss, Ricki Leigh. “Viciousness and the Structure of Reality.”  Philosophical Studies 166, no. 2 (2013): 399–418. Bradley, Matthew R. Richard Matheson on Screen: A  History of the Filmed Works. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Comer, Joshua. “Another Time: Novelizing History after the Canon in Matheson.” In Reading Richard Matheson: A  Critical Survey, edited by Cheyenne Mathews and Jannet V. Haedicke, 225–38. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014. Devlin, William, J. “Some Paradoxes of Time Travel in The Terminator and 12 Monkeys.” In The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, edited by Steven M. Sanders, 103–17. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. Dunne, J. W. An Experiment with Time. London: Faber and Faber, 1927. Gleick, James. Time Travel: A History. London: 4th Estate, 2016. Gomel, Elana. Postmodern Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. London: Continuum Books, 2010. Kooyman, Ben. “From Bid Time Return to Somewhere in Time: Matheson as Adapter, Adaptation as Transformation, and the Perks of Infidelity.” Brumal, 2, no. 1 (2014): 89–106. Lewis, David. “The Paradoxes of Time Travel.” American Philosophical Quarterly 13 (1976): 145–52. Lichtenstein, Rachel, and Iain Sinclair. Rodinsky’s Room. London: Granta 1999. Matheson, Richard. Bid Time Return, republished as Somewhere in Time. New York: TOR Books, 1998. Mathews, Cheyenne, and Janet V. Haedicke, eds. Reading  Richard Matheson: A Critical Survey. Lanham: Roman & Littlefield, 2014. Mullarkey, John. Bergson and Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Mullarkey, John. Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline. London: Continuum Books, 2006. Ó Maoilearca, John. “The Defragmenting Image: Stories in Cinematic Timetravel.” In Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in Digital Culture, edited by Daniel Rubinstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2019. Priestley, J. B. Man and Time. London: Star Books, 1978. Tunc, Tanfer Emin. “(Re)Presenting the Past: Bid Time Return as Historiographic Metafiction.” In Reading Richard Matheson: A  Critical Survey, edited by Cheyenne Mathews and Jannet V. Haedicke, 197–210. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.

Contributors

Editors Christina Rawls is a full time Lecturer at Roger Williams University, U.S. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Duquesne University under the direction of Dan Selcer, George Yancy and Jennifer Bates in 2015. She is also a regular contributor to the American Philosophical Association Blog. Her research interests include Spinoza’s dynamic epistemology, the critical philosophy of race, philosophy of education with an emphasis on teaching and the philosophy of aesthetics and film. Diana Neiva is a Ph.D. Student of Philosophy at the University of Minho, Portugal. She was awarded with an FCT studentship to work on her thesis about film as philosophy and cinematic thought experiments. She obtained her MA (under supervision of Sofia Miguens and Thomas E. Wartenberg) in Contemporary Philosophy from the University of Porto, with a dissertation about film as philosophy in Anglo-American philosophy. She also did an Erasmus Internship in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Warwick, under the supervision of Tom McClelland. Her main interests include philosophy of film, the film as philosophy hypothesis and metaphilosophy. Steven S. Gouveia is a Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy of Mind at the University of Minho (Braga, Portugal) under the supervision of Manuel Curado (University of Minho) and Georg Northoff (University of Ottawa), funded by the Science and Technology Foundation (SFRH/ BD/128863/2017). His primary focus of research is on the relationship between neuroscience and philosophy. He is a researcher of the Mind, Language and Action Group of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto (PI: Sofia Miguens) and at the Lisbon Mind & Reasoning Group, IFILNOVA—NOVA University of Lisbon (PI: Robert Clowes). He is a visiting researcher at Minds, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics at the Royal Institute of Mental Health of the University of Ottawa (PI: Georg Northoff). He is the author of Philosophical Reflections: Art, Mind and Justice (Edições Humus). He edited and co-edited

Contributors 375 four books on democracy, bioethics, aesthetics and philosophy of mind and will co-edit Perception, Cognition, and Aesthetics (Routledge, 2019), Artificial Intelligence: A Multidisciplinary Perspective (Vernon Press, 2019) and The Science and Philosophy of Predictive Processing (Bloomsbury, 2020). His main interests are neurophilosophy, philosophy of neuroscience, democracy, philosophy of arts, bioethics, political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science and artificial intelligence. More info: stevensgouveia.weebly.com.

Authors Mary K. Bloodsworth-Lugo is Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University. She completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Memphis in 1997. Bloodsworth-Lugo’s research includes 9/11 cultural production, race and racism, film and popular culture, embodiment and contemporary continental philosophy. She has published several books, including Projecting 9/11: Productions of Race, Gender, and Citizenship in Recent Hollywood Films, with Carmen R. Lugo-Lugo (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014), and edited Race, Philosophy, and Film, with Dan Flory (Routledge, 2013). She has also published articles and book chapters on the topic. Noël Carroll, a distinguished Professor of Philosophy and one of the leading philosophers of art and aesthetics in the United States, is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in the philosophy of film. His work also encompasses the philosophy of literature, the philosophy of visual arts and social and cultural theory. A prolific author, his recent monographs include Minerva’s Night Out: Philosophy, Pop Culture, and Moving Pictures (2013); Art in Three Dimensions (2011); Living in an Artworld (2011); On Criticism (Thinking in Action) (2008); and Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (2001). In 2011, he edited, with John Gibson, Narrative, Emotion and Insight. Carroll has also written five documentary films, including The Last Conversation: Eisenstein’s Carmen Ballet (1998), and published more than 200 academic articles and reviews and numerous edited or co-edited collections, including The Poetics, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Narrative (2009); The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology (2005), with Jinhee Choi; and Philosophy in the Twilight Zone (2009), with Lester H. Hunt. A former president of the American Society for Aesthetics and a 2002 Guggenheim winner, Carroll has been a regular contributor of journalistic reviews of dance, theater and film in publications such as Artforum and the Village Voice. Carroll came to the Graduate Center from Temple University in 2008 and holds a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from NYU and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

376  Contributors Steen Ledet Christiansen is Associate Professor of English at Aalborg University, Denmark. His area of expertise is American popular visual culture, especially action movies and science fiction. His research currently focuses on the burgeoning field of post-cinema, where he is currently working on a book project on the morphing techniques of post-cinema as a new mode of thought for the twenty-first century. Recent books include Drone Age Cinema: Action Film and Sensory Assault (I.B.Tauris, 2016), and articles on film and affect: “Mediating Potency and Fear: Action Movies’ Affect” in Cultural Studies 32(1), 2018, and “Pain and the Cinesthetic Subject in Black Swan” in Screen Bodies 1(2), 2017. Inês Rebanda Coelho has a Ph.D. in Communication Science from the University of Minho, and works as a Researcher with the Research Centre CECS (Communication and Society Study Centre) and the research groups SOPCOM (Portuguese Association of Communication Sciences) and AIM (Association of Moving Image). Her fields of expertise are film studies, television studies, intellectual property, philosophy and communication sciences, and her research interests are authorship in joint works, creative and financial production in cinema, television and other audiovisual fields, Authors’ Rights and related rights, copyrights, artistic and creative communication. Some of her publications linked with philosophy and moving image are: “Authorship: A Legal Approach of the Cinema Industry” in Edições Cine-Clube de Avanca, with a nomination for the prize Eng. Fernando Gonçalves Lavrador; “When the Solo Authorship Is Not Enough” (in Portuguese) in Lasics- Literacia, Media e Cidadania: Livro de Atas do 4° Congresso; “The Declarative and Possessive Credits: The Line Between Economic Exploitation and the Artistic Recognition in a Film” (in Portuguese) in AIM- Atas do VII Encontro Anual da AIM; “The Creative Producer: How to Detect in a Film the Producer’s Work” in ECREA 2016; and, in phase of publication, “Authorship in Audiovisual Works: A Case Study of the TV Show Game of Thrones” in Labcom- O Cinema e as Outras Artes. David Davies is Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, where he has taught since 1987. His doctoral research (Philosophy, Western Ontario) and much of his research for the following few years was on the realism/anti-realism debate in contemporary metaphysics, and on related issues relating to mind and language. For the past 20 years his research has focused mainly on metaphysical and epistemological issues in the philosophy of art, where he has also published widely on topics relating to literature, film, photography, music, performance and the visual arts. He is the author of Art as Performance (Blackwell, 2004), Aesthetics and Literature (Continuum, 2007) and Philosophy of the Performing Arts (Blackwell, 2011), and the editor of two books

Contributors 377 on film and philosophy: Blade Runner, co-edited with Amy Coplan (Routledge, 2015), and The Thin Red Line (Routledge, 2008). Christopher Falzon is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Newcastle. He joined the Philosophy staff in 2001, after holding a position at the ANU. His teaching and research interests are in ethics and social and political philosophy, especially in connection with twentieth-century continental thought. Another area that has occupied him is philosophy and film, the idea of exploring philosophical issues in or through movies (as opposed to a philosophy of film). His book Philosophy Goes to the Movies, currently in its 3rd edition, aims to provide a broad introduction to philosophical positions and issues through film. He has also produced a number of articles and book chapters in this area, including pieces on the Truman Show and existentialism, Being John Malkovich and Merleau-Ponty, and the “why be moral” question in film. Deborah Knight is Associate Professor at Queen’s University. Her research is primarily in the philosophy of art and aesthetics, in particular the philosophies of literature, film and the visual arts, as well as the intersection of (so-called) “high” art and (so-called) “popular” art. She has published on topics including: philosophy and literature, philosophy and cultural studies, The Matrix, The Simpsons, the horror film, Hitchcock, Blade Runner, Dark City, Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, and the Western, with a focus on Robert Altman’s McCabe and Mrs. Miller. Recent work deals with the films of Clint Eastwood and Tim Burton’s films starring Johnny Depp. Forthcoming publications examine the role of grief and remembrance in our experiences of memorial art, and analytic philosophy of film with a focus on the early contributions of Francis Sparshott and Alexander Sesonske. Paisley Livingston has a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University, the Humanities Centre (1981), and is Visiting Professor in Philosophy at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the Lingnan University (Hong Kong). His primary area of specialization is aesthetics. Recent projects have been on the history of aesthetics and especially the work of Bernard Bolzano. He also continues to do work in the area of philosophy and cinema. He edited, with Carl Platinga, The Routledge Companion to Film and Philosophy (2009) and published Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2009). John Ó Maoilearca is Professor of Film at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University, London. He has also taught philosophy and film theory at the University of Sunderland, England, and the University of Dundee, Scotland. He has published ten books, including (as author)

378  Contributors Bergson and Philosophy (2000), Post-Continental Philosophy: An Outline (2006), Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010), and (as editor) Bergson and the Art of Immanence (2013) and The Bloomsbury Companion to Continental Philosophy (2013). His last book was All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Tom McClelland joined Warwick in 2016 as a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellow. His current project—Mental Action and Cognitive Phenomenology—explores how our environment guides what we do with our minds. He was previously a Post-Doc on the Architecture of Consciousness project at the University of Manchester, and a Fixed-Term Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He studied for his Ph.D. at Sussex, his MA at York and his BA at Clare College Cambridge. He has published several papers on the philosophy of film and is especially interested in the idea of films performing a role analogous to that of a philosophical thought experiment. Dina Mendonça (Ph.D., University of South Carolina, U.S., 2003) researches on philosophy of emotions and philosophy for children at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Her current research is focused on the application of the situated approach to emotions, which takes emotions as dynamic and active situational occurrences (Mendonça, 2012) to several philosophical areas (aesthetics, ethics and decision making, philosophy of mind, philosophy of education, etc.). This research of Deweyan inspiration aims at elaborating a critical interpretation of the philosophy of emotions clarifying different methodological and philosophical approaches to emotions, as well as identifying the key issues and problems for emotion (e.g., paradox of fiction, shared emotions) and further complexities of our emotional world (e.g., variability of valence of emotion, meta-emotional processes). She is the author of several papers on emotion theory and, in addition, promotes and creates original material for application of philosophy to all schooling stages, and as an aid in the creative processes. She is the author of the book Brincar a Pensar? Manual de Filosofia para Crianças (Toying With Thinking? Manual of Philosophy for Children). On film and philosophy, she has published several articles (e.g. “Existential Feelings—How Cinema Makes Us Feel Alive” in Cinema—Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, “Timing: Refinement of Experience Through Time and Time Distortions in Emotions and Cinema” in Book Project Film and Philosophy (ed. João Mário Gril and Irene Aparício). Roberto Mordacci is Full Professor of Moral Philosophy and Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of San Raffaele University, Milan. He teaches

Contributors 379 moral philosophy, philosophy of history and leadership and teamwork in the medical profession at San Raffaele. He also teaches philosophy of management at Libera Università Luigi Cattaneo, Castellanza (VA). He is the Director of the International Research Centre for European Culture and Politics (IRCECP), and has founded the Centre for Public Ethics (CeSEP) in 2007 and the Film & Philosophy Lab in 2011. His research and teaching activities include issues in the philosophy of history (modernity, postmodernism, neomodernity, utopias), normative ethics (the principle of respect, critical personalism), neuroethics, philosophy of management, bioethics and the philosophy of film. Among his recent publications: La condizione neomoderna (Einaudi, Torino, 2017); Come fare filosofia con i film (a cura di, Carocci, Roma, 2017); L’etica è per le persone (San Paolo, Milano, 2015); Bioetica (ebook; Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 2013); Rispetto (Cortina, Milano, 2012). Recently published in English: “Moral Theories” in H. ten Have (ed.), Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics (Springer, Dordrecht, 2015); “From Analysis to Genealogy. Bernard Williams and the End of the Analytic-Continental Dichotomy in Philosophical Inquiries 4, n. 1 (2016), pp. 71–84. Oana Şerban is Research Assistant at the University of Bucharest (Faculty of Philosophy) and member of CCIIF—The Research Center for the History and Circulation of Philosophical Ideas (University of Bucharest). She is also a Member of ISCH—International Society of Cultural History. Oana Şerban is the author of the volume Artistic Capitalism (2016) and co-editor of various volumes of philosophy, culture and aesthetics, of which the most recent are Octavio Paz: Culture and Modernity (co-edited with R. Brancoveanu, L. Gheorghe, M. Zamfir, The University of Bucharest Press, 2017), Bordering the European Identity (co-edited with V. Vizureanu, S. Laegreid), Culture and Religion in the Balkans: Philosophical Approaches (co-edited with M. Pop, The University of Bucharest Press, 2015), The Hermeneutics of the Idea of Romanian Philosophy (co-edited with C. Aslam and V. Cernica, The University of Bucharest Press, 2014). She has participated in more than 15 international conferences and lectures, held in Greece, Italy, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Bulgaria and Romania and 20 national symposiums. Around 30 academic articles and studies reflect her interest in the following main areas of expertise: aesthetics, modern and contemporary philosophy, capitalism, critical theory, educational policies, arts management. Robert Sinnerbrink is Associate Professor in Philosophy and former Australian Research Council Future Fellow at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher (Bloomsbury, 2019), Cinematic Ethics: Exploring Ethical Experience

380  Contributors Through Film (Routledge, 2016), New Philosophies of Film: Thinking Images (Continuum, 2011) and Understanding Hegelianism (Acumen, 2007/Routledge, 2014). He has published numerous articles on the relationship between film and philosophy in journals such as the Australasian Philosophical Review, Angelaki, Film-Philosophy, Necsus: European Journal of Media Studies, Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind, Screen, Screening the Past, and SubStance. He is also a member of the editorial boards of the journals Film-Philosophy, Film and Philosophy and Projections: The Journal of Movies and Mind. Jônadas Techio is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, since 2011. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from UFRGS in 2009, after a research period at the University of Oxford (2008). He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at UFRGS (2009–2011), a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at The University of Chicago (2014) and a CAPES Visiting Professor at the Universities of Leipzig (2018) and Chicago (2019). He has experience in the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, modern and contemporary philosophy and philosophy of film. His more recent publications include papers on film and philosophy, skepticism, solipsism, the grammar of the first person, Wittgenstein, Cavell and Strawson. He is currently editing an anthology on film and philosophy and a collection of essays tentatively titled Skepticism and the Burdens of Finitude: Reading Wittgenstein and Cavell. Hanna Trindade has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Charles University with a thesis entitled: “Le vécu du cinéma: Une approche husserlienne de l’expérience filmique.” She was Guest Lecturer in the Master Erasmus Mundus EuroPhilosophie Program from 2015 to 2016 at the Charles University, giving two courses on phenomenology and cinema. Her more recent publications include an article entitled “The Role of Horizon-Consciousness in Filmic Experiences” (to be published in the journal Interpretationes). Her scientific interests include phenomenology, more specifically that of Edmund Husserl, and film studies. Malcolm Turvey is Sol Gittleman Professor in the Department of Art and Art History and Director of the Film and Media Studies Program at Tufts University. He is the author of Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2008), The Filming of Modern Life: European Avant-Garde Film of the 1920s (MIT Press, 2011) and Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism (Columbia University Press, forthcoming 2019). He is an editor of the journal October and co-editor of Wittgenstein, Theory and the Arts (Routledge, 2001). He is currently working on a book.

Contributors 381 Hunter Vaughan is a Cultural Historian and Environmental Humanist, focusing on issues of environmental media, messaging and justice, as well as uses of screen culture and digital technology in constructions of identity and heritage. He is the author of Where Film Meets Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2013) and Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: The Hidden Environmental Costs of the Movies (Columbia University Press, 2019); is co-editor, with Tom Conley, of The Anthem Handbook of Film Theory (Anthem Press, 2018); and co-author, with Meryl Shriver-Rice, of Screen Life and Identity: An Introduction to Media Studies (Cognella Press, 2017). He is an Associate Professor of Cinema Studies at Oakland University, a 2017 Rachel Carson Fellow and the founding editor of The Journal of Environmental Media. Susana Viegas is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Ifilnova/Universidade Nova de Lisboa and Deakin University. She has been working on her postdoctoral research project, “Rethinking the Moving Image and Time in Gilles Deleuze’s Philosophy,” supported by the FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Technologic (SFRH/BPD/94290/2013). She received a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Aesthetics) from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in 2013 with a dissertation on Deleuze’s philosophy of film. Susana Viegas is co-editor/founder of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image. Her academic research interests are Gilles Deleuze, philosophy of film, philosophy of time, aesthetics, contemporary art and Portuguese cinema. She has published several articles and book chapters on those topics.

Authors / Filmmakers

Aloni, Udi 298–314 Aristotle 125, 218, 267–68, 274, 277, 321–22, 368 Badiou, Alain 298–99, 302, 305–07 Bazin, Andre 29, 34–35, 39, 44, 187, 188, 200, 242, 259, 260, 327, 346 Benjamin, Walter 61, 199, 259, 303–04, 309, 324, 336 Bergman, Ingmar 86, 88, 120 Bishop, Michael 105–06, 131 Bordwell, David 56, 88 Carroll, Noël 18, 22, 44, 117, 120–21, 126, 145–46, 149, 153, 189, 200, 220, 262, 274, 279 Cavell, Stanley 26–46, 116, 127, 129, 136–37, 192, 194–95, 260 Chaplin, Charlie 140, 174 Cox, Damien and Michael Levine 120, 164 Deleuze, Gilles 49–50, 55, 57–58, 67–74, 116, 194–95, 259, 261 Descartes, René 31–33, 45, 94, 117, 124, 138, 343 Dunne, J.W. 356, 358–60, 360, 362, 366–70 Eisenstein, Segei 53, 82, 84, 189, 199–200 Fellini, Federico 174, 177–184 Foucault, Michel 160, 165–168, 176, 178, 299–301, 305, 308, 310–13, 326 Gaut, Berys 176, 338 Gendler, Tamar 144, 153, 228

Hegel 60, 99, 118, 131, 165, 367 Heidegger, Martin 29–30, 33, 44, 45, 137 Hopkins, Robert 11–21, 23, 27, 237, 337 Hume, David 210, 212, 224 Husserl, Edmund 239–41, 244–49, 253–62 Kracauer, Siegfried 55, 187–88, 200, 259 Levinson, Jerry 17, 23, 224 Livingston, Paisley 51, 99, 118–120, 122, 135–36, 139, 141–49 Malick, Terrence 123, 137, 146–151 Marx, Karl 140, 192–95, 298, 348 Matheson, Richard 356–58, 360, 362–65, 367–68 McClelland, Tom 123, 131, 164 Montaigne, Michel de 174, 176–77, 181–82 Mulhall, Stephen 1, 43, 60, 92, 116, 127–29, 137, 140, 146, 148, 201, Plato 124, 127, 151–52, 161–62, 165, 186–87, 189–90, 196, 201, 220, 224, 267–68, 274, 277, 374 363, 370 Rodowick, D.N. 49–50, 57, 195 Russell, Bruce 103, 116–19, 124–27, 130, 153 Seneca 88–89, 176, 178 Shakespeare: 33, 45, 72

Authors / Filmmakers  383 Sinnerbrink, Robert 123, 127, 132, 136, 146–50, 201–02 Smith, Murray 15–19, 21, 23, 87, 98, 116, 118, 121–22, 124–27, 130, 132, 139–40, 145, 171, 200 Smuts, Aaron 51, 84–85, 120 Sobchack, Vivian 201, 240, 259 Socrates 93, 103–04, 123, 151–52 Stecker, Robert 13, 24, 237

Wartenberg, Thomas E. 43–44, 83, 92–95, 117, 119–121, 123, 127–29, 136–40, 146, 159, 161–62, 165, 174, 181, 201, 224, Wittgenstein, Ludwig: 27–31, 33, 36–37, 42–43, 121, 344–45 Welles, Orson 70–71, 255 Žižek, Slavoj 119, 273, 298–302, 307, 311

Films / TV Series

12 Years a Slave (2013) 285 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) 101 8½ (1963) 174–75, 177, 179, 182 A Simple Plan (1998) 117 Alien (1979) 137 All of Me (1984) 140 Amarcord (1973) 182 An American Werewolf in London (1981) 356 Angelus Novus (2015) 303 Antichrist (2009) 149, 193

Fitzcarraldo (1982) 193 Forgiveness (2004) 298–99, 303, 308 Game of Thrones (2011–) 333, 335 Germany Year Zero (1948) 242 Get Out (2017) 281–92 Gladiator (2000) 218 Gravity (2013) 256 Groundhog Day (1993) 68 Her (2013) 102 High Noon (1952) 71

Being John Malkovich (1999) 102, 109 Bid Time Return (1975) 356–58, 360, 366, 368 Black Panther (2018) 281, 286–89, 292 Blade Runner (1982) 140, 145–46, 148, 150, 267–78 Blade Runner 2049 (2018) 267, 269–79

I Vitelloni (1953) 179 In Bruges (2008) 356, 366 Inception (2010) 110 Inland Empire (2006) 149 Interstellar (2014) 73 Irréversible (2002) 59, 151–52

Citizen Kane (1941) 70–71, 255 Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) 103, 109, 117

La Dolce Vita (1960) 179–80 La Strada (1954) 179 La Tregua (1997) 332 Late Spring (1949) 68 Last Year in Marienbad (1961) 70 Le Crime de David Levinstein (1967) 332 Le Notti Bianche (1957) 333 Local Angel (2002) 298–99, 303, 306–07, 309 Looper (2012) 101

David Holzman’s Diary (1967) 17, 20 Dawn of the Dead (2004) 2016 Days of Heaven (1978) 137 Dead of Night (1977) 365 Déjà vu (2006) 52–53 Detention (2011) 49–51, 59 Dredd (2012) 57–58 Dunkirk (2017) 73 Edge of Tomorrow (2014) 59, 68, 110 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) 95, 138, 174, Ex Machina (2014) 95, 100, 102, 111

Jaws (1975) 211, 217

Memento (2000) 85–87 Modern Times (1936) 140, 176 Mother! (2017) 256 Nymphomaniac (2014) 193

Films / TV Series  385 Predestination (2014) 59 Psycho (1960) 213 Requiem for a Dream (2000) 54–56 Roger and Me (1989) 193 Rogue One (2016) 210 Rules of Engagement (2007–2013) 102 Serene Velocity (1970) 117 Seven Samurai (1954) 213 Somewhere in Time (1980) 357, 360–63, 365–67 Split (2016) 209 Star Wars (1977) 82 Stardust Memories (1980) 178, 181 Stella Dallas (1937) 192 Superman (1978) 333 Superman II (1980) 333 Survivre avec les loups (2007) 332 Tendres Cousins (1980) 332 The Act of Killing (2012) 71 The Conformist (1970) 186 The General (1926) 213 The Good Place (2016–) 119 The Hurt Locker (2008) 193 The Lady from Shanghai (1947) 71 The Matrix (1999) 57, 110, 117, 119, 123, 138, 174, 245

The New World (2005) 123, 149 The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) 243 The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2012) 119 The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) 216 The Return of the Jedi (1983) 101 The Sea Inside (2004) 192 The Searches (1956) 356 The Shining (1980) 366–67 The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 18, 193 The Sopranos (1999–2007) 16 The Thin Blue Line (1988) 193 The Thin Red Line (1998) 148, 150 The Third Man (1949) 149, 174 The Twilight Zone (1959–1964) 103 The Weavers (1905) 197 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri (2017) 101 Torn Curtain (1966) 211 Ulysses’ Gaze (1995) 196, 198–99 Under the Skin (2013) 169, 171 Waking Life (2001) 52, 119 Willow (1988) 333 White Mane (1953) 70 Zero Dark Thirty (2012) 193

Subject Index

9/11 / September 11 281–82, 303 Aesthetic(s) 17–18, 74, 118, 139, 146–51 188–89, 191, 195–96, 198–99, 300–301, 319, 334, 344, 347 Appreciation 15–17, 139, 168, 228, 258 Experience 30, 150, 186, 299, 301, 303–04, 308 Alienation 188, 312 Self– 166 Ambiguity 71, 88–89, 118, 121–23, 186, 189–90, 246, 248, 252, 270 Animacies 49, 52–54, 58 Anti-black 284, 290 Anti-hero 219 Apparition 37, 242, 249, 255 Improper 253 Proper 253 Art form(s) 28, 82, 84–85, 119–120, 123, 136, 142, 159, 180 Artistic Personality 182, 323, 331 Practice 135, 298 Value 82, 88, 118, 179, 182, 245, 260 Attention 15–21, 28–29, 36–37, 53–56, 58, 148, 177, 188–189, 196, 199, 209–11, 213, 215– 17, 247, 257 Auteur 178, 189, 192, 327–28, 332–33, 335 Authorship 287, 319– 329 Awareness 15–16, 20–21, 23, 111, 151, 162, 179, 186, 268, 299, 350 Biopolitics 51, 299–301, 305–310 Bold thesis 51, 84–87, 119–120, 123, 141–43, 147

Capitalism 59, 303–304, 309, 342, 349–50 Christianity 270, 272–73, 276, 278, 306–07, 322, 350 Cinema Aesthetic dimension of 146–51, 196 As cultural medium 192 As distraction 184, 186, 190, 195, 349 As ethics 191, 196 As ideology 187–88, 190–92, 346 As illusion 190 As propaganda 161, 189 As trivial 186, 190 And the ‘power of movies’ 187–83 Classical 50 Narrative 50, 93, 96, 116–117, 119, 135–36, 146, 159–68, 188–90, 192, 194–95, 199, 209, 214, 267, 290 Cognitive value of film 81, 126, 137–38, 143–50, 183, 189 Composition 56, 193, 198–99, 217, 245, 247, 250–51, 254–56, 260, 262, 343 Counterexample 103, 117, 119, 124, 126, 138, 149, 162, 181 Crystal–image 64, 68–74 Cronosign 64–65, 70, 73 Depiction 14, 17, 87, 106, 110, 151, 192–93, 198–99, 276, 290, 304 Diaspora 301 Dilemma of paraphrase 119, 141 Documentary 162, 188, 192–93, 197–98 Dramatic imagining 140, 145–46 Duration 49, 57, 59, 64, 67–68, 72–73

Subject Index  387 Ecocriticism 346, 349 Ecology 50, 52, 345–46, 349–51, 353 Emotional Attachment 218–20 Engagement 142, 187, 190, 194, 199, 214, 217, Experience 224–28, 231–32 Laboratory 222, 226, 229, 233 Learning 222, 228–330 Processes 215, 232–35 Reaction / Response 194, 215–218, 222, 224, 226–35 Epistemic Value 83–84, 8697, 93–94, 96, 98–99, 101, 105, 107–08, 111 Erotetic narration 209, 211–14, 217–18, 220 Ethical experience 185, 191, 193–96, 198–200 Ethics Cinematic 185, 191–92, 196, 198–200 Of freedom 300 Of good life 300–01, 312 Of reception 192–93 Of spectatorship 193, 196, 198 European, non– 313, 347 Expansive strategy 87, 122 Experimental solution 222, 224–28, 234–35 Explicit(ness) 88–89, 92–93, 95–96, 103–08, 116, 118–19, 121–127, 140, 144, 160, 164, 187, 195, 324, 327 Femme fatale 270–71 Fictum 245, 248, 251 Film Genre 118, 169, 188, 270, 273 Theory 185, 188, 193 Classical 15, 187, 240 Cognitivist 146, 149, 194 Feminist 192–93, 195 Grand 194 Psychoanalytic 149, 194 Flow 56, 58, Fragmentation 50, 56, 365, 367, 370 Gap 72, 159–60, 248, 306, 308–09 Genealogy 69, 227 Generality (Philosophy) 81, 88, 92, 95–96, 102–06, 108, 112, 116,

118–19, 121–25, 128–30, 139, 143–44, 161 Hero(ine) 18, 166, 216–17, 219, 273, 278, 283, 286, 292, 363, 356 Heterosexuality 274, 276 Hollywood 149, 189, 270, 273–74, 285–87, 290 Humanity 146, 186, 305–06, 314, 348 Identity Jewish 298–99, 301–05, 308, 310, 313 (Trans)National 188, 299 Personal (Personhood) 99, 101–02, 109, 111, 137, 140, 174–75, 177–83, 198, 268–72, 298, 351, 368–70. Ideology 187–88, 190–93, 342, 344, 346, 348, 350 Illusion 11, 13–15, 17, 19–22 Illustration 36–37, 43, 69, 120–21, 138–40, 142, 160, 162, 174–75, 181, 356 Image -consciousness 241 -object [Bildobjekt] 241–47, 250–51 -subject [Bildsubjekt] 241–245, 247, 250–51 Immateriality 321, 337, 343 Israel 298, 303, 304–05, 308 Jewish Question 298–99, 302, 310 Justice 57–58, 101, 129, 219 Macro-answers 212–13 Macro-questions 213–14, 218–20 Make–believe 222, 225–27, 234–35 Medium Artistic 33, 148–49 Cinematic 28–29, 82–86, 119–20, 136–37, 141–42, 149, 163, 165, 168, 185–87, 189–91, 193–96, 198–99, 320–21 For ethical experience 191, 193–96, 198–200 Philosophical 123, 135, 138, 144 Photographic 36–37, 39 Exclusivity / Specificity 35, 82–83, 85, 119–20, 139–143, 145 Memory 37, 69, 85–87, 196–98, 230, 269, 286, 308

388  Subject Index Messiah 304, 312, 314 Metaphilosophy / Conception of philosophy 105, 112, 116, 122, 124–29 Metempsychosis 368–69 Micro-answers 213 Micro-questions 213, 218–20 Miracle 272–73, 279 child 268–69, 275–76, 278 Mobility 253–54, 300 Montage 65, 72–73, 83, 85, 120, 141, 143, 188 Intelectual 82 Moral Action 109, 127 Edification 188–90 Imagination 194, 196, 199 Issue 104, 191, 194 Judgement 109, 267 Lesson 85, 87, 101 Morality 103, 109, 129, 175–77, 188, 219–20, 300 Perception 195, 199 Problem 191, 195, 199 Situation 185, 199 Morph-image 50, 52 Movement–image 49, 58, 64–66, 68, 69, 72–73 Multiculturalism 298 Narrative Experimentation 160, 163–65, Fictional 92, 116–18, 138–40, 144–45, 267, 273 Cinematic / Filmic 92, 94–95, 101, 110, 139–41, 314 Design / Structure 118, 139, 142, 179, 216, 275, 349 Historical 301, 305, 312 Logical–narrative 65, 68 Of a film 18, 58, 73, 95, 97, 103, 146, 149, 151, 161,198, 210– 13, 267, 268, 273, 278, 284, 286, 333, 335, 344 Of a thought experiment 92–93, 95, 140, 144, 159, 162, 164–65 Question 218–19 Normalization 308–09 Orient 301, 304 Painting 13, 21–22, 30, 33–37, 128, 148, 189, 226, 241, 244, 300, 303, 311, 323 Palestine 304–06, 309

Paradox of fiction 224, 226, 233–35 Participation 50, 252, 256 Perception 33, 40, 54, 56–57, 65, 118, 148, 188–89, 194–95, 199, 222–23, 229–30, 240, 244–57, 259–60, 299–300, 322, 327, 351–52, 359–60 Perception–image 69 Performance 15–16, 18, 54, 83–84, 135, 146, 192, 248, 288, 357, 360, 363 Phenomenology 13, 22, 30, 36, 41–42, 194, 214, 223, 239– 262, 359, 362, 364, 368–69 Philosophical Argumentation 88, 164, 273 Consciousness 38, 40 Content 83–84, 86–89, 119–20, 135 Contribution 85, 93, 119–20 Disenfranchisement of film 127, 187 Framework 27, 89, 135 Inquiry 92–94, 97, 112, 137, 143, 151, 164 Issue 12, 98, 108, 112, 121, 129, 137, 140–42, 145–46, 150, 164, 268 Knowledge 84, 86–87, 93–94, 96–99, 102–105, 108, 111–12, Merit 83, 86–87 Methods 95, 97, 129 Problem 12, 81, 125, 127, 142, 144 Progress 12–13, 21, 143 Property 81, 86, 97 Question 12, 64, 87, 129, 150, 159, 170, 267–68, 271, 274 Theory 12, 21, 120, 129, 138, 160 Thesis 12, 85, 117, 123, 174, 183 Philosophy Academic 95, 99, 124, 344 Analytic 11–13, 26, 31, 126, 135–38, 194 Continental 137, 194 Natural 342, 345–46 Traditional 87, 94, 112, 121–23, 127, 129–30, 135, 150–51, 165 Photographic transparency 28 Physical Conditions 360 Cosmos 369 image 241, 244, 259 Limits 364

Subject Index  389 thing 241, 243–46, 251, 254 Space–time 362 Physicalism 96, 98, 103, 126 Pictorialization 241 Plato Plato’s cave 186–87, 352 Platonic forms 370 Platonic prejudice against art 127 Platonic realism 363 Plot 52, 166, 179, 182, 210, 230, 233, 273–74, 285, 289, 365–66 Post-racial 283–85, 291 Possible worlds 100, 110, 117, 370 Predictive processing 222–24, 226, 228, 233–35 Presentism 73, 166 Producer 53, 177–78, 180, 319–21, 324–25, 328–34 Propriety 118 Puzzle 36, 68, 121, 146, 149, 268, 273, 298, 310 Race 188, 192, 275, 281, 284, 287–88, 292, 298, 347 Radicalization 302, 304 Rationality 26, 122, 235, 304, 310 Realism 34–35, 53, 180, 187–88, 243, 247, 252 Recognitional properties 16, 18–19, 21 Reconciliation 178, 242, 298, 306, 308, 344 Reductive strategy 122 Religious fundamentalism 302 Renaissance 34, 177, 311, 350 Replicant 268–276, 278 Representation Allegorical 85 Cinematic 13, 188, 192–93, 195 Photographic 13–14 Theatrical 14–17, 19–21 Sci-fi / Science-Fiction 11, 109–110, 169, 267, 270, 273, 357 Scenario Hypothetical 94, 98–100, 103, 106, 110, 112 Narrative 95, 164, 189 Paradigm 222, 225, 227–28, 230 Self-writing 174–75, 178, 181, 183 Sensations 52, 55, 226, 234–35, 244–45, 249–51, 254–56, 261

Sentimental 243, 268, 273, 277–79 Simulation 101, 117, 234, 276, 352 Skepticism 26–43, 45, 136, 176, 194, 239, 344 About film as philosophy 112, 124, 129, 147–49 About medium essentialism 82 About philosophical progress 12 About thought experiments 93–94, 98, 106, 108–09 Slavery 281, 285–87 Spaciality 250, 254 Spatials 50–51, 56–58, 66 Socratic model 96–97, 123, 151 Spectacle 186, 189–90, 250, 347 Subjectivity 28, 32–35, 38–39, 64, 165, 196, 240, 250, 252, 299, 325 Suspense 18, 193, 211, 214, 216–17, 219 Sympathy 18, 218, 277 Tears in rain 268, 278 Temporaility 57–58, 65, 67–68, 72–73, 232–33 Temporals 57–58 Terrorism 282 Time–travel 52, 356, 358–60, 362, 364–67 Thought experiment (TE) 51, 92–112, 117, 119, 121–123, 125, 127, 129, 131, 136–141, 143–146, 159–60, 162–165, 167, 181, 191–92, 224 Time-image 49-51, 58, 64–66, 69–70 Topology 308, 312 Trauma 198, 284, 298, 308, 313 Trolley problem 94, 101, 107–110 War 103, 105, 111, 299, 306, 308, 309, 351, 353 War on drugs 281–82 War on terror 193, 282 Warfare 342, 350, 353 Whore 278 Virgin 273, 276 Virtuality 342 Virtue 88-89, 125, 176–77, 188, 219, 276, 278 Zionism 302