Spring 2010

Philosophy & Film (Disc. Sec Reqd) - ULEC 2570 A

Professor(s):  Jay Bernstein 
Day(s):  T
Time(s):  2:00 pm - 3:20 pm 
CRN:  6645
Credits:  0
Prerequisite(s): 

Course Description
Movies interrogate, narrate, and disclose the world, and our modes of inhabiting it in distinctive ways. With the emergence of film during the 20th Century, a new artistic way of encountering the world came into being. Film is (or was until recently) the only major art form still formative for culture as a whole. One could argue as well that film is the only art which possesses an intrinsically democratic form, a form pledged to plural individual lives in an intransigently material world. Doing justice to these large claims and illuminating the power and interest of film’s new way of encountering the world is the object of a philosophical analysis of film. Among the general aesthetic issues explored are: Is film an art? Are only some films works of art (say, not the Hollywood ones)? What is the relationship between film and photography? How does the possibility of being mechanically reproducible change our understanding of art? Is the role of beauty the same in, say, painting, photography, and film? How does the high art versus popular art distinction play out in film as opposed to, say, painting? And what are we to make of the image character of movies as opposed to their typically narrative structure? Films to be screened for discussion include contemporary and classic works by directors such as Hitchcock, Scorsese, Fincher, Lang, Altman, Resnais, and Charlie Kaufmann. Among the philosophers we will read are: Plato, Siegfried Kracuaer, Walter Benjamin, André Bazin, T.W. Adorno, and Stanley Cavell. Please note: Students must register for a ULEC 2571 discussion section and the ULEC 2575 screening section for a total of 3 credits.