_France on Film: Reflections on Popular French Cinema_ Edited by Lucy Mazdon London: Wallflower Press, 2001 ISBN 1 903364-08-6 pbk 180 pp.

Popular Indian cinema provides a test case for examining the limitations of Gilles Deleuze's categories of movement-image and time-image. Due to the context-specific aesthetic and cultural traditions that inform popular Indian cinema, although it appears at times to be both movement- and time-image, it actually creates a different type of image. Analysis of Toofani Tarzan (1936) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) demonstrates how, alternating between a movement of world typical of the time-image, and a sensory-motor (...) movement of character typical of the movement-image, popular Indian cinema explores the potential fluxing of identities that emerge during moments of historical complexity. (shrink)

This article examines popular cinema’s interactions with digital culture, focusing on cinema and social structure. A product of technological and social developments, digital culture has introduced the creation of cyberspace, the emergence and spread of social media, and the formation of virtual communities. This article focuses on a specific period (1980 – 2010) to examine the evolution in cinema of portrayals of digital culture. The analysis includes four influential films: WarGames (1983, by John Badham), Perfect Blue (...) (1997, by Satoshi Kon), Pulse (2001, by Kiroshi Kurosawa), and Life in a Day (2011, by Kevin Macdonald, Loressa Clisby, and Tegan Bukowski). The article provides a guide to popular cinema's interaction with and use of the possibilities offered by digital culture, revealing how the four selected films reflect digital culture themes. Each film demonstrates different aspects and dynamics of digital culture at a particular time, offering a unique look at that period's social and technological landscape through its portrayal of technological developments, human relations, cultural values, and social norms. Each film evaluates the impact of the digitization process on cinema from different perspectives, depicting how cinema adapts and responds to technological changes. (shrink)

The article advocates the importance of studying conceptual meaning and change in modern mass media and highlights the significance of conceptual intermediality. The article first analyzes anger in Hindi cinema as an audiovisual key concept within the framework of an Indian national ideology. It explores how anger and the Indian angry young man became popularized, politicized, and stereotyped by popular films and print media in India in the 1970s and 1980s. The article goes on to advocate for extending (...) conceptual history beyond language on theoretical grounds and identifies two major obstacles in political iconography: the methodological subordination of visuals to language in the negotiation of meaning, and the distinction of emotion and reason by assigning them functionally to different sign systems. (shrink)

This article tries to explore the shifts in contemporary urban Bengali cinema and map and historicize the main trends in relation to changes in the political fortunes of the city. In this context, the article tentatively wishes to accomplish two things: one, to show the main trends in urban Bengali film-making, post-1990s; and two, to read closely two recent Bengali films, in a search for ways of mapping this newness. The article first identifies three new possibilities in Bengali (...) class='Hi'>cinema: first, the inward-looking, often apolitical sketches that celebrate liberal development and psychosomatic indulgences, second, the sentimental, community-based films that sometimes take political changes on board as well, and attempt to bridge the rural-urban divide; third, cult-ish films of a newer pedigree that show impatience with old Left and progressive values, and are also technically experimental and avant-garde. The second objective of the article is to discuss specifically two contemporary filmmakers – Moinak Biswas and Suman Mukhopadhay – and place their films within this ferment. (shrink)

This article tries to explore the shifts in contemporary urban Bengali cinema and map and historicize the main trends in relation to changes in the political fortunes of the city. In this context, the article tentatively wishes to accomplish two things: one, to show the main trends in urban Bengali film-making, post-1990s; and two, to read closely two recent Bengali films, in a search for ways of mapping this newness. The article first identifies three new possibilities in Bengali (...) class='Hi'>cinema: first, the inward-looking, often apolitical sketches that celebrate liberal development and psychosomatic indulgences, second, the sentimental, community-based films that sometimes take political changes on board as well, and attempt to bridge the rural-urban divide; third, cult-ish films of a newer pedigree that show impatience with old Left and progressive values, and are also technically experimental and avant-garde. The second objective of the article is to discuss specifically two contemporary filmmakers – Moinak Biswas and Suman Mukhopadhay – and place their films within this ferment. (shrink)

The increasingly popular idea that cinematic fictions can "do" philosophy raises some difficult questions. Who is actually doing the philosophizing? Is it the philosophical commentator who reads general arguments or theories into the stories conveyed by a film? Could it be the film-maker, or a group of collaborating film-makers, who raise and try to answer philosophical questions with a film? Is there something about the experience of films that is especially suited to the stimulation of worthwhile philosophical reflections? In (...) the first part of this book, Paisley Livingston surveys positions and arguments surrounding the cinema's philosophical value. He raises criticisms of bold theses in this area and defends a moderate view of film's possible contributions to philosophy. In the second part of the book he defends an intentionalist approach that focuses on the film-makers' philosophical background assumptions, sources, and aims. Livingston outlines intentionalist interpretative principles as well as an account of authorship in cinema. The third part of the book exemplifies this intentionalist approach with reference to the work of Ingmar Bergman. Livingston explores the connection between Bergman's work and the Swedish director's primary philosophical source-a treatise in philosophical psychology authored by the Finnish philosopher, Eino Kaila. Bergman proclaimed that reading this book was a tremendous philosophical experience for him and that he "built on this ground." With reference to materials in the newly created Ingmar Bergman archive, Livingston shows how Bergman took up Kaila's topics in his cinematic explorations of motivated irrationality, inauthenticity, and the problem of self-knowledge. (shrink)

This special issue responds to the current discourse on cinema and education from a philosophical point of view. Considering the fact that young people worldwide are watching films and series via their smartphones or personal computers, we here explore the educative aspects of this popular activity. Does this wide-ranging habit mis-educate the next generation? Or does cinema carry a potential for ethical-political education, parallel to the ancient Greek tragedies and the modernist Bildungsroman? The authors of this special (...) issue deliberate this question by exploring the intersection between cinema and philosophy and the potential powers of cinematic education. (shrink)

Cinema Derrida charts Jacques Derrida's collaborations and appearances in film, video, and television beginning with 1983's Ghost Dance (dir. Ken McMullen, West Germany/UK) and ending with 2002's biographical documentary Derrida (dir. Dick and Ziering, USA). In the last half of his working life, Derrida embraced popular art forms and media in more ways than one: not only did he start making more media appearances after years of refusing to have his photo taken in the 1960s and 1970s, but (...) his philosophy started to draw more explicitly from visual culture and artistic endeavours. While this book offers explanations of this transition, it contends the image of "Jacques Derrida" that emerges from film and TV appearances remains spectral, constantly deferring a complete grasp of him. Tyson Stewart draws out the main tenets of spectrality from Derrida's seminal texts Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx and other writings, like Echographies of Television, in order to fill a gap in studies of Derrida and film. Throughout the book, he explains how various techniques and spectral effects such as slow motion, stillness, repetition, mise-en-abîme, direct address, and focus on body parts/bodily presence bring about a structure of spectrality wherein the past other returns to make impressions and ethical demands on the viewer. Drawing on communication theory and film and media studies, Cinema Derrida makes a major intervention in classical communication thought. (shrink)

What is remarkably unique of the popular cinema in the region of South Asia? How does it lead beyond the vexed notions of the contemporary milieu, namely, hybrid local? How does it transcend the idea of nationally restricted local too? Looking through eclectic motley of popular cinema in the region, this article seeks to unravel such questions with reflexive propositions. It paves the way to comprehend cinematic identity of the region with the adjective of ‘melodrama’, as (...) perceived through the local sociocultural component. It is with the sweep of melodrama, arguably, that cinema of South Asia transcends the notions attached with the category of ‘local’. In this backdrop, this article moots a probing question: What is local in the regional cinemas? Does local mean merely a vexed category in contemporary context of transnational flow? Or there is more to the category of local, beyond the existing formulations? With these questions, this article seeks to participate in the available discourse showing the regional cinema underpinned by the essentially dynamic nature and scope of the local. (shrink)

Does cinema express or engender political thought? Can we think of cinema, or certain specific cinematic texts, as bodies of political theory? In this paper I provide a positive response to such questions by arguing for a notion of, what I want to call, cinema as political critique. In order to make sense of this idea and render it more concrete, I will draw on fragments of the political theory of Jürgen Habermas and will discuss and give (...) an analysis of a popular and relatively recent Hollywood film: Gary Ross's Pleasantville . Reading Habermasian themes in and through Pleasantville, I will argue that this text can be seen as a concrete instance of political critique and, more particularly, as a form of political critique that ethically implies a certain conception of freedom. (shrink)

Deleuze, Japanese Cinema, and the Atom Bomb establishes the first ever sustained encounter between Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema books and post-war Japanese cinema, exploring how Japanese films responded to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. From the early days of occupation and political censorship to the social and cultural freedoms of the 1960s and beyond, the book examines how images of the nuclear event appear in post-war Japanese cinema. -/- Using Deleuze’s taxonony of cinema, each (...) chapter begins by focusing upon one or more of three key Deleuzian themes – image, history and thought – before going on to look at a selection of films from 1945 to the present day. These include movies by well-known directors Kurosawa Akira, Shindo Kaneto, Oshima Nagisa and Imamura Shohei; popular and cult classics – Godzilla (1954), Akira (1988) and Tetsuo (1989); contemporary genre flicks – Ring (1998), Dead or Alive (1999) and Casshern (2004); the avant-garde and rarely seen documentaries. A series of tables clarify the conceptual components deployed within the text; and each film is illustrated with a number of stills. (shrink)

Este estudio se ocupa del control social del cuerpo y de la reconfiguración de la memoria popular en películas de horror a través de la perspectiva genealógica de Foucault, presentada en su libro Vigilar y Castigar, publicado hace 40 años. Por lo tanto, tomaremos, À l’interieur e Frontière (s), dos producciones de horror cinematográfico hechas por directores franceses, ambos publicados en 2007. La hipótesis principal es que las películas de terror se muestran como una nueva forma de vigilancia y (...) control social del cuerpo. Por otro lado, también puede recodificar la memoria popular apropiándose de acontecimientos polítcos y/o revolucionarios como en las películas comentadas por Foucault en la revista Cahiers de Cinéma en 1974 políticas, aunque no sean las películas de terror. (shrink)

Boys, Boyz, Bois concerns questions of ethics, gender and race in popular American images, national discourse and cultural production by and about black men. The book proposes an ethics of masculinity, as ethnics refers to a system of morality and valuation and as ethics refers to a care of the self and ethical subject formation. The texts of analysis include recent films by black/African American filmmakers, gansta rap and hip-hop and black star persona: texts ranging from Blaxploitation and New (...) Black Cinema to contemporary music video to autobiography and the public image of Sidney Poitier. The book is a significant contribution to cultural studies and gender studies and critical race theory. What is distinctive about the book is the question of ethics as a question of race and gender. (shrink)

The study of film entered a new era after World War II, as cinema became an acceptable focus for intellectual inquiry. The many ways in which cinema has been imagined, studied, and discussed in the last fifty years are the subject of this comprehensive overview of film theory in the United States and Europe since 1945. Francesco Casetti groups his essays around principal movements in film studies. In the first part of the book, he reviews the attempts at (...) defining the "essence" of cinema during the 1950s. Then he explores disciplinary approaches to cinema--psychological, sociological, semiotic, and psychoanalytic--popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Finally, he focuses on "field" theories--cinema and politics, the critique of representation, feminist film theory, neo-disciplinary tendencies, cultural and aesthetic studies, and the new approaches to film history. Theories of Cinema was originally published in Italy, where it won the Premio Domenico Meccoli--Scrivere di cinema 1993 of the Centro dello Spettacolo in Rome. This is its first English translation. The author has revised and updated this edition to cover the years 1945-1995. (shrink)

This article interprets David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) to argue for the morphological influence cinematic images have on modernity's monstrous identity. It shows how Lynch's tactic of interweaving apparently discrete spaces of dream and reality – one often inverting or uncannily ironising the other – relies on the virtual space of cinema, which leaves a mark on understanding, irrespective of its apparent truth. To do so, I employ Peter Sloterdijk's philosophy of space – especially the spherology developed in his (...) Spheres trilogy – and Bernard Stiegler's approach to cinematic phenomenology to consider the transferential force of cinema, and its power to cultivate and shape popular consciousness. Mulholland Drive is acutely aware of this force, and its interplay with the expectations and disappointments of Hollywood monstrosity inserts itself into the sphere-forming traffic of modern meaning-making. In doing so, I argue, the film takes up Lynch's familiar approach to irony and the weird to unwind the destructive uniformity of Hollywood hegemony. The productive bifurcations that result, inscribed in between cinema and consciousness, and forgettable as the very spheric intimacy of memory, gesture to what might live beyond discrete forms. (shrink)

This issue ofScience in Contextis dedicated to the question of whether there was a “cinematographic turn” in the sciences around the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1895, the Lumière brothers presented their projection apparatus to the Parisian public for the first time. In 1897, the Scottish medical doctor John McIntyre filmed the movement of a frog's leg; in Vienna, in 1898, Ludwig Braun made film recordings of the contractions of a living dog's heart (cf. Cartwright 1992); in 1904, Lucien (...) Bull filmed in slow motion a bullet entering a soap bubble. In 1907 and 1908, respectively, Max Seddig and Victor Henri recorded Brownian motion with the help of a cinematograph (Curtis 2005). In 1909, the Swiss Julius Ries was one of the first to film fertilization and cell division in sea urchins (Ries 1909). In that same year in Paris, Louise Chevroton and Frédéric Vlès used a film camera to observe cell division in the same object (Chevroton and Vlès 1909). As early as 1898, the Parisian surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen began filming several of his operations, among them the spectacular separation of the Siamese twins Doodica and Radica (Bonah and Laukötter 2009). And in England, the scientist and zoologist Francis Martin Duncan produced an array of popular-scientific films for Charles Urban: “The unseen world: A series of microscopic studies” was presented to the public in the Alhambra Theatre in London for the first time in 1903 (see Gaycken in this issue). (shrink)

The form of Western mainstream film is the crux of its ideological efficiency: by using established formal techniques, films ensure audiences un- derstand that aesthetic decisions support and clarify the narrative to ensure maximum spectatorial satisfaction. However, some films exploit their formal aesthetics in order to prevent clarification, thwarting satisfaction in favour of viewing practices that can be considered perverse in that they withhold, suspend or obstruct immediate pleasure. Contemporary Western filmmaking in the mid-1990s witnessed the emergence of a distinct (...) group of filmmakers and films that, in the popular discourse of cinematic criticism, were together coded as “difficult” or “perverse.” These films were, as a result of the characteristics we identify below, situated obliquely in relation to the larger economic and artistic struc- tures of a commercially oriented “mainstream” cinema. Included in this new form of cinematic production were films from directors such as Tim Burton: Edward Scissorhands ; David Cronenberg: eXistenZ ; David Fincher: Se7en ; Peter Greenaway: The Baby of Maçon ; David Lynch: Lost Highway ; Quentin Tarantino: Pulp Fiction and Lars von Trier: Breaking the Waves . Whilst Western cinema as a whole has a long history of exploring “difficult” or “perverse” material within the overt or covert content of narrative, plot and story, such films demonstrate a particular relationship between the content being explored and the specific formal characteristics utilised in the delivery of that content. Thus where previous examples would utilise standardised formal techniques as a way of both delivering and containing the difficult or objectionable material, the films instead offer instances where the material of the narrative content seems to bleed backwards, affecting the form and rendering the very materiality of the film itself suspect and problematic. (shrink)

The idea that films can be philosophical, or in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, has recently found a number of prominent proponents. What is at stake here is generally more than the tepid claim that some documentaries about philosophy and related topics convey philosophically relevant content. Instead, the contention is that cinematic fictions, including popular movies such as The Matrix, make significant contributions to philosophy. Various more specific claims are linked to this basic idea. One, relatively weak, but pedagogically important (...) observation is that some films can be used to provide philosophy students with vivid and thought-provoking illustrations of philosophical issues. Film screenings stimulate discussion and may motivate renewed engagement with difficult philosophical texts. A stronger contention, however, seeks to link innovative and philosophically valuable thinking to ‘the film itself’ or to the ‘specificity of the cinematic medium’. Such claims raise interesting questions, including questions about the status of the increasingly prevalent philosophically motivated interpretations of particular movies. Who is actually doing the philosophizing in such cases? Is it the audio-visual display, the film-maker, or the philosopher who devises an interpretation of the work? What is the role of specifically cinematic devices in the philosophical points made in such interpretations? Is there any tension between the goal of appreciating a film as a work of art and the goal of arguing that a film has significant implications for a position on a problem in philosophy? A course in the general area of cinema as philosophy can focus on issues related to the locus and status of cinematic philosophizing. It can also delve into specific films and film-makers and philosophically oriented interpretations of specific philosophical topics, such as personal identity. Issues pertaining to interpretation, meaning, and authorship can be usefully investigated in this connection, as can topics in meta-philosophy related to the very nature of philosophical insight or knowledge. (shrink)

A colleague of Roland Barthes at the CNRS in the 1950s and cowriter and friend of Cornelius Castoriadis until the latter's death, Edgar Morin has until recently been too little known in the English-speaking world. In an oeuvre that spans half a century, attempting to combine in ongoing dialogue the `humanities' and `sciences', Morin has written on scientific method, fundamental anthropology, politics, contemporary life and popular culture. He is an advocate of `complex' thought, thought which does not reduce, rationalize (...) and mutilate phenomena under examination, which emphasizes the interaction between researcher and researched, and participation as a way of being in the world. This article particularly focuses on his work on death and cinema, suggesting a strong continuity between his early studies and his more recent writing on complexity and ecology. The radically democratic complexion of Morin's writings, his emphasis on a human empathy that can incorporate notions of unity and difference, make him a thinker of great relevance for today. (shrink)

One has the distinct feeling that Deleuze and World Cinemas was already in the works when David Martin-Jones published Deleuze: Cinema and National Identity in 2006. In that earlier study, he married Deleuze with Homi K. Bhabha to produce constructive readings of both canonical and popular films. He considers these texts to be hybrid films that display qualities of both the movement-image and time-image, two Deleuzian concepts he deploys in showing how narrative time fashions national identity in distinctive (...) ways. The final chapter of this earlier work departed abruptly from discussion of Hollywood and Western European cinema to engage with films from East Asia, a move that charted a specific future course. In... (shrink)

The purpose of this research is the analysis of a specific cultural and political tension, through two decisive concepts: imagocracy and imagomaquia. Our aim is to define the political battlefield in the arena of audiovisual communication. In the case of Latin America, we have identified two significant moments, in which the popular audiovisual strategies had crucial importance. Our material of research has been both the New Latin American Cinema and the sociology of the decolonial image. We have studied (...) them in depth in order to define the effectiveness of popular audiovisual strategies as nuclei of creation and aesthetic-political resistance, which opposes the hegemonic audiovisual order. (shrink)

This article examines popular representations of accountants' ethics by studying their depiction in cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession's ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values. We use factor analysis to reduce 22 personal characteristics to five factors encompassing two terminal and three instrumental value sets, which we (...) relate to ethical behavior. Findings indicate that in popular cinema, the ethical behavior of accountants is positively associated with intrinsic terminal values, but negatively related to competency values. (shrink)

In what ways does a society perceive itself as beautiful? Do images of physical perfection indicate aspirations of the social or national body, the perfect body/face emblematic of the collective self-image? In recent years, under conditions of economic and cultural globalization, practices and discourses to render the body beautiful have come under increasing scrutiny. Concerned with the marketing and commodification of body ideals, these studies trace the deleterious effects of advertising, fashion, and celebrity culture in various national and cross-cultural contexts. (...) Yet beauty itself is strangely absent in historical and aesthetic accounts of traditional and new media. In this essay, I try to account for this absence and to provide an alternative view of Indian society's relationship to media images of the body. Using examples from popular cinema, I explore the historical and cultural meanings underlying the fascination with the beautiful. (shrink)

ArgumentThis essay considers the metaphors of projection in Hugo Münsterberg's theory of cinema spectatorship. Münsterberg (1863–1916), a German born and educated professor of psychology at Harvard University, turned his attention to cinema only a few years before his untimely death at the age of fifty-three. But he brought to the new medium certain lasting preoccupations. This account begins with the contention that Münsterberg's intervention in the cinema discussion pursued his well-established strategy of pitting a laboratory model against (...) a clinical one, in this case the “master-trope” of early cinema a spectatorship drawn from hysteria, hypnosis, and related phenomena like double-consciousness. Münsterberg's laboratory-oriented account also flowed from his account of cinema technology as an outgrowth of the apparatus of his own discipline of experimental psycho-physiology, which entailed a model of cinema spectatorship continuous with the epistemological setting of laboratory relations. I argue that inThe Photoplayand related writings projection functioned in three registers: material, psychological, and philosophical. Münsterberg's primary concern was with psychological projection, where he drew upon his own work in experimental aesthetics to articulate an account of how the basic automatisms of cinema produce a state of oscillation between immersion and distraction. I show how Münsterberg's experimental aesthetics drew upon German doctrines of aesthetic empathy, orEinfühlung, which Münsterberg sought to modify in accordance with the dynamic and temporal characteristics of psycho-physiological experiment. Finally, I argue that Münsterberg's cinema theory was enfolded in his action or double-standpoint theory, in which the transcendental self posits the material, objective conditions of laboratory experience as a means to know itself. This philosophical projection explained cinema's uncanny ability to suspend ordinary perceptions of space, time, and causality. It also made cinema uniquely suited for the philosophical emancipation of a popular mass audience. (shrink)

Torture Porn is a term that has generated a great deal of controversy during the last decade, critics utilizing the term to dismiss contemporary popular horror cinema as obscene and morally depraved. Arguing primarily in defense of torture-themed horror films, this book seeks to offer a critical overview and examination of the Torture Porn phenomenon, discussing the generic contexts in which it is situated, scrutinizing press responses to the sub-genre, and offering narrative analyses of the sub-genre’s central films; (...) including the highly popular Saw franchise, the Hostel movies, and recent revamped versions of slasher movies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the multitude of independent direct-to-DVD films that have been influenced by these theatrically successful films. (shrink)

Jean Baudrillard, the misfit. Jean Baudrillard, who told us that the Gulf Warnever happened, who drew our attention to the perils of a civilization thatchoses to lead a virtual existence in an arena of images and simulacra - this isthe Baudrillard we are mostly familiar with. But Jean Baudrillard, thechampion of appearances? Baudrillard, more-feminist-than-the-feminists?This Baudrillard remains buried in the stacks of a prolific career spanningover forty years and involving some of the most radical systematicdeconstructions of Western culture, society and politics. (...) Baudrillard hasprimarily been heralded as an enemy of the world of images, the surfacesuperficiality of consumer culture; it stands as no surprise, then, that in mosttheoretical assessments of his work there is little mention of Seduction , a text aimed at restoring a great amount of value to the surface ofthings.1While apostles of Baudrillard such as Norman K. Denzin tend tooffer brief and, in this writer’s opinion, erroneous summaries of seduction’s‘potential of unmasking the order of appearances’ , Seduction hasyet to be understood as a praise for the world of appearances, play, andreversibility, as encouragement for the resistance of the orders of law certainty, and production. 2 In the following pages, I hope to introduce readers to a fascinating but often overlooked text of Baudrillard’s and, in doing so, to demonstrate that Baudrillard’s text offers a unique and yet unexplored insight into the dichotomous and contradictory nature of cinema - this medium which as an instrument of popular culture acts according to the modern logic of production, but as a form owes more to the transformative and playful semiology of the pre-modern. (shrink)

What is called “time travel” cinema is but one aspect in a tripartite series of interweaving modes of disjunctive narration which is also – simultaneously – a cinema of “many worlds” and “altered states”. Exploiting Gilles Deleuze's three syntheses of time, space, and consciousness from Difference and Repetition (1968) allows a conceptual development of these cinematic series through three popular Hollywood film cycles beginning with Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984), (...) and Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985). In so doing, film and philosophy are deployed as two series which together create inexhaustible atemporal, aspatial, and ahuman disjunctions, ungrounding everyday spatio-temporal identities, and affirming productive images of cinematic thought. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Paisley Livingston, ‘Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy’, Philosophy Compass 3/4 (2008): 509–603, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2008.00158.x Author’s Introduction The idea that films can be philosophical, or in some sense ‘do’ philosophy, has recently found a number of prominent proponents. What is at stake here is generally more than the tepid claim that some documentaries about philosophy and related topics convey philosophically relevant content. Instead, the contention is that cinematic fictions, including popular movies such (...) as The Matrix, make significant contributions to philosophy. Various more specific claims are linked to this basic idea. One, relatively weak, but pedagogically important observation is that some films can be used to provide philosophy students with vivid and thought‐provoking illustrations of philosophical issues. Film screenings stimulate discussion and may motivate renewed engagement with difficult philosophical texts. A stronger contention, however, seeks to link innovative and philosophically valuable thinking to ‘the film itself’ or to the ‘specificity of the cinematic medium’. Such claims raise interesting questions, including questions about the status of the increasingly prevalent philosophically motivated interpretations of particular movies. Who is actually doing the philosophizing in such cases? Is it the audio‐visual display, the film‐maker, or the philosopher who devises an interpretation of the work? What is the role of specifically cinematic devices in the philosophical points made in such interpretations? Is there any tension between the goal of appreciating a film as a work of art and the goal of arguing that a film has significant implications for a position on a problem in philosophy? A course in the general area of cinema as philosophy can focus on issues related to the locus and status of cinematic philosophizing. It can also delve into specific films and film‐makers and philosophically oriented interpretations of specific philosophical topics, such as personal identity. Issues pertaining to interpretation, meaning, and authorship can be usefully investigated in this connection, as can topics in meta‐philosophy related to the very nature of philosophical insight or knowledge. Author Recommends Carroll, Noël and Jinhee Choi, eds. 2008. The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology, Part VIII: Film and Knowledge. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 381–405. Inclues a brief introduction by Carroll followed by papers by Bruce Russell, Karen Hanson, and Lester H. Hunt. Kania, Andrew, ed. 2009. Memento. London: Routledge. A number of philosophers elucidate philosophical themes in Memento and discuss more general issues pertaining to cinema’s philosophical significance. Livingston, Paisley. 2009. Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman: On Film as Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Part 1 surveys arguments surrounding the cinema as philosophy theme, providing detailed criticisms of some of the bold theses in this area. Part 2 discusses issues related to cinematic authorship and the status of philosophically motivated interpretations of works of fiction, arguing for a partial intentionalist account of a work’s meanings. Part 3 illustrates the intentionalist principles in a discussion of Ingmar Bergman’s philosophical sources, providing insight into themes of motivated irrationality, inauthenticity, and self‐knowledge in some of Bergman’s works. Livingston, Paisley and Carl Plantinga, eds. 2009. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film, Part IV: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge. 547–659. Offers a succinct survey by Wartenberg as well as entries on Ingmar Bergman, Terrence Malick, and Andrei Tarkovsky, discussions of film and specific philosophical topics (morality, skepticism, personal identity, and practical wisdom), and examples of philosophically motivated interpretations of three specific films: The Five Obstructions, Gattaca, and Memento. Smith, Murray and Thomas E. Wartenberg, eds. 2006. Thinking Through Cinema: Film as Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. A collection of papers that combines essays devoted to general positions on the cinema as philosophy topic as well as specific interpretations of works in different genres. Turvey, Malcolm. 2008. Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A probing critical investigation into the assumptions underlying influential philosophical claims about the epistemic value of cinema. Wartenberg, Thomas E. 2008. Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. London: Routledge. Ably surveys and responds to arguments against the idea that films can ‘do philosophy’. It defends a conditionalist form of intentionalism in response to the ‘imposition objection’ according to which it is only the commentator who reads philosophical themes ‘into’ the movie; illustrates the favored account of film as philosophy with interpretations of specific cinematic fictions. Online Materials Film‐Philosophy Founded in 1996, this peer‐reviewed online journal is dedicated to philosophically oriented interpretations of films and cinema studies more generally. The e‐mail salon encourages discussion of related topics. Includes essays, festival reports, calls for papers, conference and job information, and book reviews. The archive includes contributions from 1997 to the present. Wartenberg, Thomas E. ‘Philosophy of Film.’The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; A brief survey of a range of issues in the philosophy of cinema including a few paragraphs on the film as philosophy topic. Philosophical Films A briefly annotated list of philosophical films grouped in rubrics such as ‘The Meaning of Life’ and ‘Environmental Ethics’. Sample Syllabus What follows is a 4‐week ‘start‐up module’ followed by samples of optional units that focus on particular topics and cinematic examples. Introductory Module Week I: Introduction & Overview Livingston, Paisley. ‘Recent Work on Cinema as Philosophy.’Philosophy Compass 3 (2008): 1–14, 20 (DOI: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2008.00158.x). Wartenberg, Thomas E. 2009. ‘Film as Philosophy.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Ed. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 549–59. Russell, Bruce. 2008. ‘The Philosophical Limits of Film.’The Philosophy of Film and Motion Pictures: An Anthology. Ed. Noël Carroll and Jinhee Choi. Malden, MA: Blackwell. 387–390. Week II: The Bold Thesis on Film as Philosophy Reading: Livingston, Paisley, ‘Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.’Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman, Chapter One. 11–38. Screening: October (dir. Sergei Eisenstein 1928). Week III: Debating the Bold Thesis: The Case of October Carroll, Noël. 1998. ‘For God and Country.’Interpreting the Moving Image. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 80–91. Smuts, Aaron. 2009. ‘Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 67:4: 409–20. Week IV: Cinema as Philosophy: Objections and Replies Livingston, Paisley. 2009. ‘Arguing over Cinema as Philosophy.’Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman, Chapter Two. 39–59. Additional Optional Units Depending on the instructor’s areas of interest and expertise, any of the following units could be added (and in some cases, easily expanded into longer segments). The Case of Ingmar Bergman Livingston, Paisley. 2009. ‘Ingmar Bergman.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 560–568. Screening(s): Wild Strawberries (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1957), or The Seventh Seal (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1957), or Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman 1966). Skepticism Fumerton, Richard. 2009. ‘Skepticism.’ In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 601–10. Screening: The Matrix (dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski 1999) or Total Recall (dir. Paul Verhoeven 1990). Ethics Kupfer, Joseph. 1999. Visions of Virtue in Popular Film. Boulder, CO: Westview. 35–60. Falzon, Chris. 2009. ‘Why be Moral?’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 591–599. Screening: Groundhog Day (dir. Harold Ramis 1993), or Crimes and Misdemeanors (dir. Woody Allen 1989), or Hollow Man (dir. Paul Verhoeven 2000). Personal Identity Knight, Deborah. 2009. ‘Personal Identity.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 611–619. Hanley, Richard. 2009. ‘Memento and Personal Identity: Are We Getting it Backwards?’Memento. Ed. Andrew Kania. London: Routledge. 107–126. Martin, Raymond. 2009. ‘The Value of Memory: Reflections on Memento.’Memento. Ed. Andrew Kania. London: Routledge. 87–106. Screening: Memento (dir. Christopher Nolan 2000). Freedom and (Genetic) Determinism Sesardic, Neven. 2009. ‘Gattaca.’The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. Eds. Paisley Livingston and Carl Plantinga. London: Routledge. 641–649. Screening: Gattaca (dir. Andrew Niccol 1997). Focus Questions • Is there anything special about the experience of fiction films that is especially well suited to the stimulation of worthwhile philosophical reflection? • Have any novel and philosophically significant ideas found their first expression in a cinematic work? • Under what circumstances can the film medium be used as an expression of a cinematic author’s views? • What sort of background knowledge has to be in place for a film to be interpreted as articulating reasonably precise philosophical theses and arguments? • Does the goal of spelling out a film’s philosophical meaning sometimes conflict with the goal of appreciating its value as a work of art? (shrink)

Cultural studies constitutes one of the most multi-perspectival research fields. Amidst a polyvocal theoretical landscape that spans different disciplines semiotics is of foundational value. In an attempt to effectively address the conceptual richness of the semiotic discipline, a wide roster of perspectives is evoked in this book against the background of a diverse set of cultural phenomena, including structuralist and post-structuralist semiotics, semiotically informed psychoanalysis, cultural semiotics, film semiotics, sociosemiotics, but also, to a lesser extent, music semiotics and more niche, (...) but certainly promising perspectives, such as postmodern semiotics, ethnosemiotics, phenomenological semiotics and rhetorical semiotics. The recruitment of semiotic frameworks and concepts is enacted against the background of advances in cultural studies (thus reinstating the dialogue with a discipline that took form by drawing on semiotics in the first place) and the various research streams that have become consolidated within the wider cultural studies territory, such as memory studies, celebrity studies, death studies, cultural geography, visual studies. At the same time, the offered readings engage dialogically with Consumer Culture Theory. As regards the diversity of cultural phenomena that constitute the empirical substratum of the offered analyses, music, cinema, new media, live-shows, branding, advertising and literature constitute the focal areas of concern. Under the aegis of a permeating textuality paradigm, the ubiquitously applicable tools of multimodal analysis, and time-hallowed qualitative research methods facilitated by advances in videography and archival research, the featured semiotic readings aim at scrutinizing the wider social implications and communicative functions of popular cultural artefacts, spectacles, processes and places, such as Lady Gaga’s monstrosity, Dio’s memorial, experiential consumption events, the ice-bucket challenge video meme. (shrink)

Contemporary cultural and media studies have been increasingly interested in redefining the relations between religion and culture (and particularly popular culture). The present study approaches a series of theories on the manner in which religious aspects emerge and are integrated in contemporary cultural manifestations, focusing on the persistence/resurrection of religious patterns into secularized cultural contents. Thus, the analysis departs from the concept of implicit religion, coined and developed by Bailey and the theories following it, as well as other associated (...) concepts, influential for the evolution of debates in the recent period, such as invisible religion , as approached by Luckmann, civil religion , by Bellah, folk religion, residual religion , by Davies or ‘wild’ religion, by Borg. In order to discuss the relations between religion and popular culture in contemporary U.S. and particularly the presence of certain religious patterns in popular culture messages, symbolism and rituals, the study uses an interdisciplinary approach, based on approaches currently used in media studies, film studies, cultural studies, visual culture perspectives, religious studies, and sociology. The article discusses, through different theories (and in its second part, a case study on James Cameron’s cliché masterpiece Avatar) the manner in which contemporary popular culture (and cinema in particular) recycles, integrates and reinterprets religious patterns, symbols and behaviours. (shrink)

The article presents an analysis and interpretation of the features of two animated works of French animation created at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. "Kirikou and the Sorceress", a cartoon released in 1998, is one of the most interesting works of the famous French animated film director Michel Oselo. The "Trio from Belleville", a work that appeared on screens in 2003, gained popularity not only in France, but also glorified the name of its creator Sylvain Chaume in the world (...) of animation. The aim of the study is to develop theoretical knowledge about the world's oldest animation school by analyzing these works as the most representative in French animated cinema at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. The methodology of the research is based primarily on the use of formal stylistic, iconological and cultural-historical methods, which makes it possible to describe and analyze the artistic forms of works of artistic animation in France, to determine the meanings contained in them in the context of the culture that gave rise to them. The novelty of the research is primarily connected with the introduction into the circulation of Russian science of previously unexplored works of modern French animation and their interpretation in the context of the development of French animated cinema. The author analyzes the plot features, character systems, reveals the metaphors and meanings that fill the cartoons in question, as well as the means of artistic expression used by French directors. The analysis of these works shows that the animated works of the turn of the XX-XXI centuries reflect a significant stage in the development of modern French animated cinema. This development takes place not by referring to foreign experience, but by forming national specifics in the creation of animated works. French directors manage to successfully improve their own original handwriting, while transferring the meanings and values of national culture to the screen. (shrink)

Representations of women, or more exactly of gender, and the presence and works of women filmmakers constitute an important area of analysis for gender studies and feminist film theories. In Turkey the presence and the participation of women in the public sphere have been one of the important objectives of the Kemalist modernization project since the founding of the modern nation-state in 1923. However, despite the modernizing efforts to empower women in different spheres of life there was no woman director (...) in Turkish commercial feature cinema until the beginning of the 1950s. Since the beginning of the 2000s the number of women directors has increased significantly, reaching a number well above that of the entire period before. This article investigates the reasons behind this increase based on quantitative data gathered from secondary sources and in-depth interviews with women producers and directors. It also questions whether and to what extent the increase in the number of women film directors contributed to the production of ‘women’s films’, based on a qualitative analysis of films produced by women directors between the years 2004 and 2013. The results show that in addition to technological and aesthetic changes in the industry, the increase in the availability of international and national public funding for low-budget independent film productions and the enlargement of the women’s movement allowed more women directors to enter the film industry. While half of the films made by women directors in the 2000s could be qualified as ‘women films’, the other half remained, largely due to market forces, within the conventions of popular or art house cinema. (shrink)

Film is a powerful medium that can influence audience’s perceptions, values and ideals. As filmmaking evolved into a serious art form, it became a powerful tool for telling stories that require us to re-examine our ideology. While it remains popular to adapt a literary novel or text for the screen, filmmakers have more freedom to pick and choose the stories they want to tell. This freedom allows filmmakers to explore narratives that might otherwise go unheard, which include stories that (...) feature marginal figures, such as serial killers, as sympathetic protagonists, which is what director Patty Jenkins achieves in her 2003 film Monster. Charlize Theron’s transformation into and performance as Aileen Wuornos, and Jenkins’s presentation of the subject matter, make this film an example of rogue cinema. In addition, Aileen Wuornos is portrayed as a clear example of the rogue character. This character trope frequently defies social standards, suffers from past trauma, is psychologically complex, and is often exiled. As a prostitute and social outcast, Aileen Wuornos exists on the fringes of society and rejects the hegemonic power structure and later heteronormativity of society, which makes her a rogue figure. While there are several aspects to consider when analyzing Jenkins’s film, my intention is to argue that this film is an example of rogue cinema because of its content. In order to accomplish this task, I examine Theron’s bodily transformation and her performance as Wuornos. Furthermore, I look at how Jenkins handles the depiction of romantic love and gendered violence and argue that her treatment of this content renders this film rogue. (shrink)

"The main spine of this book stems from a comprehensive series of interviews with subjects recalling their experiences of 1930s cinemagoing. Your feel the breath of life in these spectators, a rarity in film studies, thanks to the painstaking work contracting the interview subjects and recording and tabulating their testimony."- JUMPCUT In the 1930s, Britain had the highest annual per capita cinema attendance in the world, far surpassing ballroom dancing as the nation's favorite pastime. It was, as historian A.J.P. (...) Taylor said, the "essential social habit of the age." And yet, although we know something about the demographics of British cinemagoers, we know almost nothing of their experience of film, how film affected them, how it fit into their daily lives, what role cinema played in the larger culture of the time, and in what ways cinemagoing shaped the generation that came of age in the 1930s. In Dreaming of Fred and Ginger , Annette Kuhn draws upon contemporary publications, extensive interviews with cinemagoers themselves, and readings of selected film, to produce a provocative and perspective-altering ethno-historical study. Taking cinemagoers' accounts of their own experiences as both "the engine and product of investigation," Kuhn enters imaginatively into the world of 1930s cinema culture and analyzes its place in popular memory. Among the topics she examines are the physical space of the cinemas; the role film played in growing up; the experience of being a member of a cinema audience; film-inspired fantasies of American life; the importance of cinema to adolescence in offering role models, ideals of romance, as well as practical opportunities for courtship; and the sheer pleasure of watching such film stars as Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Nelson Eddy, Ronald Colman, and many others. Engagingly written and painstakingly researched, with contributions to film history, cultural studies, and social history, Dreaming of Fred and Ginger offers an illuminating account of a key moment in British cultural memory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Looking Beyond Neoliberalism: French and Fran-cophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis by Martin O’ShaughnessyJoseph MaiO’Shaughnessy, Martin. Looking Beyond Neoliberalism: French and Fran-cophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. 224pp.Martin O’Shaughnessy has devoted a career to scouring the intersections of politics, identity, and contemporary French cinema, perhaps most notably in his 2007 book, The New Face of Political Filmmaking. In a review in (...) Cineaste, Jonathan Buchsbaum called that book “theoretically sophisticated” and a “powerful and eloquent polemic for retaining a class analysis of film” (90). According to Buchsbaum, The New Face asked “the central question of how films can formulate political critiques after the collapse of the grand leftist narrative(s) of the twentieth century” (89). O’Shaughnessy’s new book, Looking Beyond Neoliberalism: French and Francophone Belgian Cinema and the Crisis, is a major publication with similar qualities of theoretical breadth, and is also once again inspired by cinematic attempts to envision different political futures.Things have not gotten better since 2007. The “crisis” of O’Shaughnessy’s title does not refer narrowly to the financial meltdown of 2007–2008 and subsequent government-funded bailouts. Crisis is not an event requiring austerity (disguised as “courageous decision-making”), but in many senses the essence of global neoliberalism, or as the frequently cited Maurizio Lazzarato puts it: “the form of government of contemporary capitalism” (qtd. in O’Shaughnessy 5). The 2008 crisis has, if anything, made this form of government ever more visible, and ever more punitive and essential to Western industrial societies. With a mastery of the philosophical critique of neoliberalism, O’Shaughnessy unpacks how the logic of crisis habituates the subject to self-entrepreneurship, debt, social and political isolation, conformism, precarity, social violence, and nihilism.The book looks at these issues through cinematic works by French and Belgian Francophone filmmakers, ranging from popular auteurs like Jacques Audiard and Luc Besson to more critically political filmmakers like the Dardenne brothers or Laurent Cantet. O’Shaughnessy is not looking only for thematic representations; he also seeks new answers in films that respond to, flee, or resist neoliberalism. Like the Occupy or Nuit Debout movements, much of this cinema seeks to reformulate identifications and cultivate political resistance, though O’Shaughnessy warns us early on [End Page 117] that we are not in a place “where there is a cohesive political cinema” (9). There is, therefore, a refreshingly normative concern throughout the book: the most valuable films seek paths toward social encounter, re-assemblage of identity categories, lives that are not defined through debt, and a future in which crisis and precarity do not structure action.The first three chapters focus on the “crisis of the neoliberal subject” (6). Chapter 1 approaches the work of Jacques Audiard, who has at times been read as reinforcing regressive gender roles and at other times embracing a rather more disruptive masculinity. Bringing the lens of the neoliberal subject to bear on films like Un prophète (2009) or Un héros très discret (1996), O’Shaughnessy emphasizes Audiard’s use of crime-genre filmmaking as a parallel to capitalism, and the genre hero as a corollary to the bourgeois entrepreneurial male subjectivity it fosters and puts into crisis. Desperately, Audiard’s masculine subjects rehearse, recreate, and “perfect” themselves, initiate profitable collaboration, self-define through flexibility, improvisation, and competence, in ways that are hallmarks of, but do not surpass, an internalized neoliberal subjectivity.Chapter 2 examines how the mechanisms of debt influence characters’ beliefs and actions. What does it mean, in works by the Dardenne brothers, Laurent Cantet, and Mia Hansen-Løve, to be “man in debt” (54)? O’Shaughnessy explores debt’s temporality as it limits the possibilities of the future by tying actions to the obligations of repayment. In Le silence de Lorna (2010), Lorna is enrolled in a logic of indebtedness in exchange for papers to cross borders, at the expense of another human, Claudy. Caught in an “overarching tension between systemic violence and an ethical commitment to the Other” (45), she seeks a way out in increasingly irrational attempts to escape. Vincent, the protagonist of L’emploi du temps... (shrink)

Much of the current philosophy of film literature follows Walter Benjamin’s optimistic account and sees film as a vehicle for screening philosophical thought experiments, and offering new perspectives on issues that have relevance to everyday life. If these kinds of films allow for philosophical thinking, then they are like other so-called ‘high’ artworks in that they encourage social, political and economic critique of social norms. Yet, most popular films that are digested in large quantities are not of a high (...) aesthetic or moral quality. Theorists who conceive of cinema as a means of thinking must firstly reply to the objections that most films simply do not encourage active, intelligent, imaginative participation. Prior to the publication of Deleuze’s cinema books, theorists such as T. W. Adorno feared the advent of the Hollywood Studio film as akin to Nazi propaganda. Dismissed as elitist, their concern was that mass produced and distributed artworks portrayed the depicted social norms as immutable reality. If the imagination cannot enter and engage with the messages depicted through the filmic medium, i.e. through montage or similar ‘shock’ techniques, then viewers cannot critique the moral and social status quo screened; instead, they simply receive it, and it is reinforced. If we consider how passive cinematic viewers are, voyeuristically ensconced in a darkened theatre, we can see the concern here. If only some films allow for critique of social, political and economic norms in society, and these films are attended by those viewers who are already critical viewers, then how is film more generally a tool for thinking? If we are to honestly discuss the filmic medium, we must acknowledge the Hollywood blockbusters that stifle imaginative engagement with their narratives and often depict stereotypes. I argue that we need to read Adorno alongside Benjamin, in order to acknowledge the positive as well as negative attributes of films. In doing this we see the need to focus on the critical attitude of the viewer, as well as the moral messages of the film, particularly when we consider what the majority of consumers willingly ingest uncritically. Adorno and Benjamin both offer a historical account of art whereby their aesthetics require audience reception and are linked to experience. The way art is tied to human experience and the world of sensory perception is through language. Language allows the communication of ideas or referents which convey meaning via signs that contain some kind of ‘truth’ in the form of a cognitive component that must be interpreted. While there are many different stories being told in contemporary culture, the focus on the critical thinker, the interpreter of the narrative, is vital. (shrink)

This article examines popular representations of accountants’ ethics by studying their depiction in cinema. As a medium that both reflects and shapes public opinion, films provide a useful resource for exploring the portrayal of the profession’s ethics. We employ a values theoretical framework to analyze 110 movie accountants on their basic ethical character, ethical behavior, and values. We use factor analysis to reduce 22 personal characteristics to five factors encompassing two terminal and three instrumental value sets, which we (...) relate to ethical behavior. Findings indicate that in popular cinema, the ethical behavior of accountants is positively associated with intrinsic terminal values, but negatively related to competency (instrumental) values. (shrink)

What is archaeology? A research field dealing with monuments? A science? A branch of philosophy? Dzbyński suggests the simple but thoughtful equation: Archaeology = History = Knowledge. This book consists of 8 chapters presenting a collection of characteristic philosophical attitudes important for archaeology. It discusses the historicity of archaeological sources, the source of the algorithmic approach in archaeological reasoning, and the accuracy of logical and irrational thinking. In general, this book is concerned with the history of archaeologists' search for a (...) suitable methodology. All these issues are discussed in relation to two main intellectual trends of archaeology to the present day: processual and post-processual archaeology. Processualism introduced and developed the idea of algorithmic and universal reasoning in archaeology, while post-processualism focused attention on the individual value of a monument and the archaeologist himself. These are still two foundations on which the present knowledge of the past is based, and thus their defining role cannot be overestimated. An additional layer of narrative, visible right from the beginning of the book, is the gradual discovery of the relationship between archaeology and popular culture, especially film and literature. Its aim is both illustration and explanation. It is intended that the reader receives not only information and knowledge, but also a deeper emotional reference which is connected with the reception of works of art. (shrink)

Há um diálogo entre os estudos antropológicos e literários não só porque a literatura está dentro do âmbito da antropologia cultural, mas também porque a literatura de um povo reflete substancialmente os aspectos da sua cultura e sua visão de mundo. Este trabalho investiga as representações de classe, raça e relações raciais em “O Romance d'A Pedra e o Príncipe do Sangue do Vai-e-Volta”, um romance do autor brasileiro contemporâneo, Ariano Suassuna (1927). Em primeiro lugar, pretende-se demonstrar como a representação (...) de Suassuna da cultura popular reflete classe, raça e relações raciais sociais em uma área particular do Brasil, o Nordeste, tradicionalmente rural. Posteriormente, investigar como a comunicação de massa, especialmente os veículos culturais de televisão e cinema, utiliza a literatura para tentar mudar ou espalhar e perpetuar atitudes racistas e formas de pensamento. Mesmo que estudos modernos tenham mostrado que o conceito de "raça" é uma construção cultural e uma falácia, a literatura e a cultura de massa exploram identidades deliberadas com base em estereótipos recebidos. Os debates linguísticos e culturais de uma cultura e país racialmente híbrido, como o Brasil, não podem deixar de considerar os conceitos de "raça" e "grupos étnicos", pois o Brasil é um país que herdou as tipologias de classe, cor e preconceito patriarcal e agrário baseadas em colonialismo português (Ribeiro, 1995). Esses debates se refletem na cultura popular de maneiras particulares; são capturados em formas eruditas de cultura, como literatura, e são então apropriados pela mídia e televisão. As obras de Suassuna podem ser vistas como um recurso valioso deste debate, apontando para questões de assimilação ou segregação de raça e / ou poder de classe, e influência, boa ou ruim, tolerância e preconceito. Observa-se o impacto de seu trabalho não só através da literatura, mas também através dos meios de comunicação. (shrink)

Charles Chaplin, like Charles Dickens, knew the deep allegiance between theme and visual symbol, and the greatest popular genius of our century, when he began a film called Modern Times with a nondescript clockface upon which the second hand inexorably spins, negotiated this alliance between satiric narrative and its props with the bold assurance of the nineteenth-century master. To have seen Modern Times again for the first time in nearly a decade, as I did recently, after in the interval (...) having reread, taught, and written about Dickens' Hard Times, was to see Chaplin's masterpiece virtually for the first time—and to wonder anew at the critics. I will shortly return to the symbolic devices by which the pervasive motif of modern time is propped and propelled in both Chaplin's film and Dickens' novel, but it is important to question first why the very thirst for overt social satire which draws a certain kind of reader to Hard Times, often one who has little converse with the other and greater Dickens novels, tends to go bafflingly unsatisfied where Modern Times is concerned. In the most recent book-length study of Chaplin, by noted film historian Roger Manvell, we hear that "Though highly entertaining, Modern Times had little social comment and no political party implications whatsoever."1 To grieve over this would be like dying of thirst in a rainstorm. Although Walter Kerr, in his far more searching treatment of Chaplin in The Silent Clowns, observes "at least two dazzling opportunities for the ironic social comment" in the opening factory sequence, on the whole he decides that "Chaplin's true theme lies elsewhere and is much more personal."2 Yes and no; more than any other artistic predecessor, Dickens can help us see the deeply-rooted grip of industrial satire on the apparent discrete, episodic comedy of Modern Times. · 1. Roger Manvell, Chaplin , p. 143.· 2. Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns , p. 357. Garrett Stewart, associate professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is the author of Dickens and the Trials of Imagination, Film on Film, and a book on the symbolism of death in modern British fiction, Point of Departure: The Death Scene since Dickens, as well as essays on film. He has contributed "Coppola's Conrad: The Repetitions of Complicity" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

In the late 1990s, Rosalind Krauss, one of the principal theorists of post-modernism in the arts, began using the term "post-medium" in her work. It was a nod to the American "ordinary language" philosopher Stanley Cavell, who had been thinking through a concept of medium in art for 30 years. Today with the decline of post-modernism, Stanley Cavell has emerged as one of the most important figures for thinking again about the visual arts, film and theatre. Stanley Cavell and the (...) Arts looks at Cavell's extensive writings on a wide variety of artforms and at a number of writers (Michael Fried, William Rothman) influenced by his work. Over a 50-year career, Cavell wrote about visual art, photography, classical music, Shakespeare, the plays of Samuel Beckett and perhaps most notably Hollywood cinema. Stanley Cavell and the Arts offers an overview of Cavell's writings on the arts, situating them within his wider philosophical practice, analysing in detail his treatment of particular art forms and looking at the work of those he has deeply shaped. (shrink)

While organ transplantation has been established in the medical imagination since the 1960s, this technology is currently undergoing a popular re-imagination in the era of global capitalism. As transplantation procedures have become routine in medical centers in non-Western and developing nations and as organ sales and transplant tourism become increasingly common, organs that function as a material resource increasingly derive from subaltern bodies. This essay explores this development as represented in Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s 2002 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, (...) focusing on the ethnic and class characteristics of the global market in organs and possible modes of counter-logic to transplant technologies and related ethical discourses. (shrink)

This essay deals with the manner in which Salman Rushdie’s works engage with the heterogeneous logics of ethics and aesthetics. Drawing upon the work of Jacques Rancière it is argued that Rushdie neutralizes the two by introducing what Rancière calls a dissensus in the ethical-aesthetic hierarchy. The dissensus works on a principle of ‘excess’ so that within the domain of aesthetics the ethical is pushed to its limits. The order of desire (aesthetics) and the order of knowledge (ethics) are no (...) longer seen as hierarchical and mutually exclusive categories. By examining two versions of an unpublished novel by Rushdie (‘Madame Rama’) it is suggested that Bollywood cinema functions as a mode in which the two orders come together. In this early and mercifully unpublished novel, one finds the beginnings of Rushdie’s belief that works of art are sites of ideological and ethical contestations. (shrink)