Up In the Air: Truth Filmed at a Slant (original) (raw)

Friedman. 2012. Unforgiven. A Hermeneutical Reading.

This thesis proposes an existential analysis of the ethical dimension of film. Its goal is to illuminate the role of fiction in creating and testing moral worlds. It does so by examining Unforgiven, a Western film by Clint Eastwood. This examination provides the grounded analysis of a specific moral universe, relating it to earlier analyses of the Western genre. In doing so, the thesis stakes a claim for ethical textual analysis as an alternative to formalism and other established approaches to analyzing film. This thesis examines film as an ethically significant art form. It argues that film is a crucial laboratory for ethical discussion in which the lifeworld, and the representation of lifeworld are interdependent. This interdependence creates a locus of ethical obligation requiring ethical consideration. One issue inherent in film as a locus of ethical obligation is Paul Ricoeur’s concept that relations among human beings are symmetrical. This symmetry is intrinsic to the relation between film viewers and the characters in the films they view. For films to have emotional and intellectual meaning, viewers must understand film characters as persons who confront the audience with ethical dilemmas and actions. These characters are important precisely because the ethical dilemmas they face and the actions they take resemble those of viewers who watch a film. In this perspective, films participate in constructing the nomothetic universe of the viewer, enabling the viewer to reflect upon the nomos a film evokes. The viewer experiences film as an ethical and existential text, enabling the viewer to reflect in ways similar to Ricoeur’s description of philosophy as reflection on human existence. The symbolic form of film experience renders the ethical and existential issues of human experience accessible. This permits the viewer to grasp these issues in human concrete terms. Film genres present human experience by representing a lifeworld that permits engagement and reflection. In this thesis, scene-by-scene analysis of the unfolding narrative recapitulates the experience of viewing the film. The temporal experience of viewing emulates Ricoeur’s narrative structure of ethical decision as well as the structure of interpretation. As narrative, Unforgiven creates a world to tell a story. As philosophy, Unforgiven highlights the ethical and existential problems of human responsibility and the status of the subject. As a work of art, Unforgiven creates a surplus of meaning that meets each viewer on a hermeneutical horizon as individual and different as one viewer is from the next.

A Feminist Understanding of Liturgical Art

2005

ii Synopsis iii Synopsis Among church folk in Australia today, there are concerns that soon -with the surge of secularism in our society -there will be no Christian tradition left for their children to inherit. At the same time, there is also a rising desire for spiritual renewal among Australians. It seems that the church and society are worlds apart. It is my contention that feminist liturgical artists are in a unique position to bridge the gap between the church and the world, and to promote the spiritual renewal of both.

SUBMISSION FINAL COPY SCHINKEL THESIS

This thesis establishes the traditional Jewish interpretative model PaRDeS as the foundation of a new film interpretation method, and suggests a PaRDeS interpretative process that can be used as a guide by other analysts, critics and scholars. PaRDeS is a sophisticated method of analysis that reflects millennia of Judaic explorations of narrative structures, stories, interpretations and commentaries. Maimonides' blending of Aristotelian and Jewish philosophy led to the development of different kinds of interpretative frameworks, including PaRDeS. PaRDeS is a map of meaning that articulates Jewish philosophy and reflects a Jewish history of emphasising the importance of interpretation. PaRDeS interpretation encourages dialogues about cinema, and the meaning of films. The PaRDeS method responds to other film analyses in its own interpretative mission to coordinate and integrate multiple levels of meaning. Using PaRDeS in this original way to interpret contemporary films is significant to both Jewish Studies and Film Studies. This thesis extends the investigations of contemporary uses of PaRDeS in Jewish Studies and introduces the method to Film Studies, responding to existing issues of film interpretation in doing so. A multi-level framework of different kinds of meaning differentiates PaRDeS from its contemporary counterparts, and from a tradition of film interpretation that narrows the scope of interpretative interest to ideological perspectives. The originality of the PaRDeS conceptualisation of film meaning, the unique assumptions of the model, and its coordination and synthesis of different interpretative strategies differentiates PaRDeS from contemporary critical perspectives. PaRDeS film interpretation develops important insights about film meaning, and describes specific ways cinema reflects the world that creates and interprets films. Since this is the first time the PaRDeS method has been used to produce formal interpretations of films, there is as yet no established process for doing so. This thesis develops a PaRDeS model of interpretation (Chapter Two) and uses it to generate new insights during the various investigations of different elements of film in the chapters that follow. PaRDeS has never been adapted for use as a modern tool of cinematic investigation before now, and this thesis is necessarily exploratory in its evolution of a new PaRDeS approach to film interpretation. The PaRDeS method is developed in various multi-level interpretations of the following films: