Film-Philosophy
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'The Epidermis of Reality': Artaud, the Material Body and Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc
No full textThis article examines Artaud's 1920s cinema texts, arguing that like other theorists writing at the time, Artaud envisaged the medium of cinema as capable of forging new types of corporeal experience, both through the types of bodies that were portrayed onscreen, and their relationship to the body of the audience, conceived as collective force rather than an individual spectator. It pays particular attention to Artaud's theories of corporeal materiality, and argues that these are relevant to more recent approaches to embodiment and identification in film studies. Whilst Artaud never successfully put his own cinematic theories into practice, these are discussed in relation to Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, 1928), a film which puts distinctions between bodies into question in an unprecedented manner. Finally, through an analysis of the various different critical interpretations of Dreyer's film, the article considers the difficulties inherent in the notion of a universally intelligible affective body, arguing that there is a distinction to be made between a fascist appropriation of collective affect, and a type of body that overcomes the boundaries between self and other
Ghost in the Shell 2, Technicity and the Subject
No full textThis discussion examines how Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence questions what remains of being human and the assemblage of humanity when the human and the machine collide and elide their limit of differentiation. It will be shown how the film's predilection for technology in its narrative content and technological rationalism in its wider conceptual embedding reconstructs humanity but rejects the metaphysical valuation of humanity through notions of dignity, taboo, respect, affect, and so forth. By connecting this twin problematic of ontological difference and metaphysical poverty to the ontological philosophy of Martin Heidegger and psychoanalytic philosophy of Slavoj Žižek, this paper aims to unearth and lay bare the paradoxes inherent in the view of technology and society deployed by Innocence and how the film is able to, in the presence of these explicitly ontological paradoxes, put the question of what constitutes a human Subject into crisis by coding it as a symptom
'Misfortune's Image': The Cinematic Representation of Trauma in Robert Bresson's Mouchette (1967)
No full textThis paper asks questions about 'trauma' and its cultural representation specifically, trauma's representation in the cinema. In this respect, it compares and contrasts the work of Robert Bresson, in particular his 1967 masterpiece, Mouchette, with contemporary Hollywood film. James Mangold's 1999 'Oscar-winning' Girl, Interrupted offers an interesting example for cultural comparison. In both Mouchette and Girl, Interrupted the subject matter includes, amongst other traumatic experiences, rape, childhood abuse and suicide. The paper ponders the question of whether such aspects of trauma can ever be authentically represented on film; or, whether, on the contrary, through the deployment of cultural stereotypes, cinematic representation tends rather to reproduce the very forms of structural power which are, in the first place, trauma's primary cause. Bresson emerges from this analysis in a favourable light for, whereas Mangold stereotypes victims of trauma and represents traumatic experience itself as inevitable and over-determined, Bresson always retains for the victim a sense of critical agency. By contrasting key scenes from both films, the paper suggests that contemporary popular cinema (the 'Hollywood-ized' form), working in tandem with institutions of social control, such as psychiatry, does not subvert but, in fact, reproduces patterns of structural power. This argument has particular significance for the cultural representation of women. The paper is theoretically framed by Simone Weil's reflections on both 'representation' and 'structural power'
Extreme Makeover: Art and Morality in The Shape of Things
No full textMany of us might welcome a makeover in our appearance, but how would we feel if it involved being emotionally manipulated in the name of art? The story of a young woman’s reshaping of her boyfriend encourages us to consider whether the creation of art could justify what would otherwise be immoral behavior. For example, do moral considerations always take precedence over other values, such as the aesthetic? The subordinate themes of gender and narrative inform Neil LaBute’s cinematic portrayal of the competition between art and morality
'That Man Behind the Curtain': Atheism and Belief in The Wizard of Oz
No full textWhile The Wizard of Oz (1939) constructs an elaborate mythic world filled with witches, wizards, and magic, this essay argues that Victor Fleming's classic film also carries with it a message that is profoundly atheistic. The film persistently deconstructs ostensibly supernatural experiences by revealing their materialist underpinnings. Further, this essay interrogates Oz's epistemology by connecting it with Slavoj Žižek's concept of decaffeinated belief, as well as Daniel Dennett's notion of belief in belief
Bad Memories: Haneke with Locke on Personal Identity and Post-Colonial Guilt
No full textMichael Haneke's film Hidden ( Caché, 2005) raises questions about responsibility and guilt in the context of post-colonial inequities that are profoundly discomfiting for the viewer, framing a meditation on identity, consciousness and responsibility that is at once visceral and intellectual. On the reading presented here, this film makes visible and palpable some of the effects of the 'strange suppositions' about personal responsibility and memory that were first articulated by a philosopher who also felt called upon to justify colonialism: John Locke. The perspective provided by the film casts light both on the unpleasant emotional resonances of Locke's theory of personal identity and points to the likely source of its structure in his celebrated theory of private property
The Ister: Cinema's Interruption
No full textIn this paper I explore the filmakers' intention of making a film about Martin Heidegger's 1942 lecture series on Friedrich Holderlin's poem, 'Der Ister,' as an 'act of philosophical expression'. With and against Heidegger's principles of thought and the possibilities of expression, I argue the filmmakers undermine its generic classification as an essay film through interruption, a technique that is exemplary of Holderlin's poetry
