Online research in philosophy

Although the cinematic medium can be used in philosophically valuable ways, bold contentions about how films 'do philosophy' in an independent, innovative and exclusively cinematic manner are highly problematic. Philosophers' interpretations of the stories conveyed in cinematic fictions do not actually support such bold claims about film's independent philosophical value; nor do they offer adequate appreciations of the films' artistic value. Different kinds of interpretations having different goals and conditions of success should be kept in view if we are to take a sufficiently critical perspective on contributions in this area. In particular, 'as if' interpretations in which a philosophical problematic is freely applied to elements of a movie's story are contrasted to interpretations that target a film author's actual philosophizing.

Preface The Cinematic Body is a transversal, exploratory work, one that cuts across disciplinary boundaries and seeks to engage new currents in critical ...

In Metaphor and Film, Trevor Whittock demonstrates that feature films are permeated by metaphors that were consciously introduced by directors. An examination of cinematic metaphor forces us to reconsider the nature of metaphor itself, and the ways by which such visual imagery can be recognised and understood, as well as interpreted. Metaphor and Film identifies the principal forms of cinematic metaphor, and also provides an analysis of the mental operations that one must bring to it. Recent developments in cognitive psychology, especially those relating to the nature and formation of categories, are called upon to explain these processes. Metaphor and Film ranges widely over film theory as it does over philosophical, literary, linguistic, and psychological accounts of metaphor. Particularly useful to those studying film, literature, and aesthetics, this study is also a provocative contribution to an important debate in which film theorists and philosophers are currently engaged.

The claim that photographs are fictionally incompetent (i.e. that they can only depict those particulars they are appropriately causally related to) is argued by Noël Carroll, Gregory Currie, and Nigel Warburton to be falsified by cinematic works of fiction. In response I firstly argue that it does not follow from cinema's having a capacity for the representation of ficta that photography has a capacity for the representation of ficta. Secondly, and inspired by the work of Roger Scruton, I develop an account of how it is that cinema represents ficta on which this is fundamentally a matter of dramatic/theatrical representation. I argue that in cinematic fiction photography delivers a pre-existent representation of ficta rather than creating or generating fictional content. With this being so, the claim that photography is fictionally incompetent is compatible with cinematic fiction. 1.

In Film and Phenomenology, Allan Casebier develops a theory of representation first indicated in the writings of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and then applies it to the case of cinematic representation. This work provides one of the clearest expositions of Husserl's highly influential but often obscure thought. It also demonstrates the power of phenomenology to illuminate the experience of the art form unique to the twentieth-century cinema. Film and Phenomenology is intended as an antidote to all hitherto existing theories about the nature of cinematic representation, whether issuing from classic sources such as the film theory of Andre Bazin or the post-structuralist synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Barthesian textual analysis and Metzean cine-semiotics. Casebier shows how a phenomenological account of representation will further the aims of any film theory. Developing a viable feminist film theory, legitimizing the documentary, answering the challenge of Derridean deconstruction, properly theorizing narrativity, Film and Phenomenology argues that theory of film must be Realist both with respect to epistemology and ontological issues. In this way, this work runs contrary to the whole course of contemporary film theory which has been deeply anti-Realist.

Introduction: why did philosophy go to the movies? -- The analytic-cognitivist turn. The empire strikes back: critiques of "grand theory" -- The rules of the game: new ontologies of film -- Adaptation: philosophical approaches to narrative -- From cognitivism to film-philosophy. A.I.: cognitivism goes to the movies -- Bande à part: Deleuze and Cavell as film-philosophers -- Scenes from a marriage: film as philosophy -- Cinematic thinking. Hollywood in trouble: David Lynch's Inland empire -- "Chaos reigns": anti-cognitivism in Lars von trier's Antichrist -- Song of the earth: cinematic romanticism in Malick's The new world -- Coda: "the six most beautiful minutes in the history of cinema".

Is cinematicity a virtue in film? Is lack of cinematicity a defect? Berys Gaut thinks so. He claims that cinematicity is a pro tanto virtue in film. I disagree. I argue that the term "cinematic" principally refers to some cluster of characteristics found in films featuring the following: expansive scenery, extreme depth of field, high camera positioning, and elaborate tracking shots. We often use the word as a term of praise. And we are likely right to do so. We are right if we mean that the film does well what movies often do well. We are wrong if we mean that the film is good for doing what is merely distinctive of film. This issue has important implications for understanding the role of the medium in artistic evaluation. I argue that we should reject Gaut's claim because it entails an implausibly strong medium specificity thesis.

The moving frame of a tracking or crane shot, or of a camera tilt or pan, can affect the way we engage with a film narrative. In this paper, I argue that certain uses of the moving frame in narrative fiction film prescribe us to imagine ourselves moving through the world of the film. The existence of such an imaginative prescription ultimately threatens the necessity of the cinematic narrator. In light of the standard indeterminacy of our means of access to fictions, the prescription to imagine moving is not accompanied by a prescription to imagine a narrator providing us with a moving view.

It is widely held in theories of narrative that all works of literary narrative fiction include a narrator who fictionally tells the story. However, it is also granted that the personal qualities of a narrator may be more or less radically effaced. Recently, philosophers and film theorists have debated whether movies similarly involve implicit audio-visual narrators. Those who answer affirmatively allow that these cinematic narrators will be radically effaced. Their opponents deny that audio-visual narrators figure in the ontology of movies at all, and many have argued that the ‘effaced’ literary narrator is an illusion as well. In this paper, I attempt to sort out the central issues that arise in these debates, defending the existence of effaced narrators in both literature and film.

This paper reveals an ulterior motive for insisting on the necessary presence of narrators in film: the desire to fit film into a literary paradigm. Despite important theoretical links between film and literature, the assumption that films must be like novels in always having narrators is unsound. By moving beyond literature in the comparison of narrative media, and focusing specifically on cases of ‘breaking the fourth wall’ in film and theatre, we find that the presence and function of a cinematic narrator depends as much on the features of a specific work as it does on the nature of narrative.