Pleasure in Understanding, Pleasure in Not Understanding (original) (raw)
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Deleuze's concept of temporality undergoes radical revision with his elaborations of time's expressions in cinema. In Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, Deleuze elucidates aspects of Bergson's thought to present a concept of time that is no longer tethered to the movements of entities. Deleuze-in what is perhaps one of the oddest definitions in the history of western philosophy-characterises cinema as attempting to move beyond the representation of the movements of existents to give viewers a 'direct presentation of time' (1997b: 38). In the present chapter, I elucidate Deleuze's tantalising suggestion that cinema, the art form that has moving images as one of its ontic bases, involves a direct representation of a sort of temporality that is conceptually discrete from the movement of existent entities. I further suggest that filmic expressions of time reveal it to be a singularity that enjoys the attribute of radical indeterminacy. Deleuze further suggests that time-as it is presented in film-obtains as that ongoing continuum of variation. My argument progresses through four stages: (1) I will critically assess the suggestion of various commentators that the Cinema texts o er a fraught addition to Deleuze's philosophy of time; (2) I suggest that Deleuze's innovative reading of Bergson's concept of duration is key to understanding how time is expressed in cinema; (3) I observe-through reference to Alain Robbe-Grillet's theory of artistic descriptions-that a direct image of time enjoys nascent expression in the form of 'pure optical and acoustic situations' (i.e., moments of profound change in any of the diegetic elements of a film story); (4) finally-through reference to Deleuze's nuanced reading of Bergson's ontology of virtual and actual modes of existence-I suggest that time gains direct cinematic expression in the peculiar 'crystal-images' that proliferate in post-Second World War cinema. I observe that time's expression in cinema involves
The Cinematic Temporalities of Modernity: Deleuze, Quijano and How Tasty was my Little Frenchman
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This article takes a first step towards identifying a non-Eurocentric film-philosophy. It does so by exploring how cinema expresses, or rather constructs, time. Whilst the narratives of all films can be said to be underpinned by some broadly identifiable philosophical or cosmological conception of time (from the Aristotelian emphasis of Hollywood’s continuity editing to the dharmic cycles of Bollywood’s distinctive episodic cinema of spectacles), the focus here is on how modernity is considered, temporally, in films from different parts of the world. This process begins with a brief introduction to the most important and widely-used concept of cinematic time, that of Gilles Deleuze’s time-image. From the range of different examples that can be offered to outline a varied range of cinematic temporalities of modernity, the Brazilian film directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, ‘Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês/How Tasty was my Little Frenchman’ (1971) is singled out for focused analysis. This rare but wonderful film, known for its postcolonial importance (along with the engaging viewing pleasures it offers, of black humour, full frontal nudity, human sacrifice and cannibalism), provides an opportunity to reconsider the specific meaning of the time-image in relation to world history. When seen in light of the conclusions of philosophers writing in the wake of Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems analysis, like Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri and Aníbal Quijano, the time-image can be said to express a five-hundred-year history of modernity that commences with the discovery of the Americas. This is not solely to provide a different angle from which to consider the concept of the time-image. Rather, as is noted in the conclusion, it is an attempt to shed new light on the varied cinematic temporalities of modernity evident in contemporary world cinemas, and is therefore a first step towards a non-Eurocentric film-philosophy.
Where Film Meets Philosophy: Godard, Resnais, and Experiments in Cinematic Thinking (monograph)
Columbia University Press, 2013
Hunter Vaughan interweaves phenomenology and semiotics to analyze cinema's ability to challenge conventional modes of thought. Merging Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of perception with Gilles Deleuze's image-philosophy, Vaughan applies a rich theoretical framework to a comparative analysis of Jean-Luc Godard's films, which critique the audio-visual illusion of empirical observation (objectivity), and the cinema of Alain Resnais, in which the sound-image generates innovative portrayals of individual experience (subjectivity). Both filmmakers radically upend conventional film practices and challenge philosophical traditions to alter our understanding of the self, the world, and the relationship between the two. Films discussed in detail include Godard's Vivre sa vie (1962), Contempt (1963), and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967); and Resnais's Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and The War Is Over (1966). Situating the formative works of these filmmakers within a broader philosophical context, Vaughan pioneers a phenomenological film semiotics linking two disparate methodologies to the mirrored achievements of two seemingly irreconcilable artists.
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In the use of a spectator to formulate film theory, theorists have inadvertently made spectatorship a subjective experience rather than a universal one. Without addressing the individuality of this spectator, the theory generalizing spectatorship faces an identity crisis. Who is the spectator? Are they a character experiencing the trespasses of the filmic body as their own? Or, are they a ghost possessing a consciousness already there, reliving someone else's life? Film theory does not offer us a concrete answer to any of these questions, and neither will I. Instead, I will use this indefinite identity of the spectator to reverse the paradigm of cinema as mirror and discuss the spectator as a mirror through which film, art, and nature are perceived. Over the course of this paper, I will explore the philosophical implications of self in Gilles Delueze’s "Cinema 1" and "Cinema 2" and Vivian Sobchack’s “Phenomenon and Film Experience'' (guided by Hugo Münsterberg and Judith Mayne’s conceptions of the spectator) to arrive at the final metaphor: “cinema as self”. These concepts of “cinema as self” and “spectator as mirror” really derive from a series of immersive practices in film. Filmmakers have been experimenting with the direct inclusion of the spectator since the point of view (POV) shot was introduced. Through this shot, the filmmaker would momentarily place the spectator in the character’s position, melding existence with experience. Over the years, filmmakers continue to extend the length of the POV shot and, through other point of view devices, invoke visceral cognitive and perceptual responses in the fusing of spectator and character. As a result, I will use two films experimenting with POV and nostalgia, "Lady in the Lake" (Robert Montgomery, 1947) and "LoveFilm/Szerelmesfilm" (Istvan Szabo, 1970), to cross-examine the inclusive spectatorship discussed in Deleuze and Sobchack and bridge the gap between the metaphysical and the corporeal self/spectator.
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In demoting Deleuze’s ‘philosophical cinema’ to a mere cinema of philosophy we might be forgiven for supposing that Badiou has effectively ‘deconditioned’ film, thereby cementing its status as an art ‘beneath’ art. Before we jump to such a conclusion, however, given the purportedly transitory-repetitious nature of these concepts, we would do well to consider precisely what it is that con- stitutes Deleuze’s theory of movement and time. Moreover, given the fact that Badiou appropriates Deleuze’s various theses on movement (immobile, false, global, etc.) in his own cinematographic writings, we should examine how these concepts are (implicitly or explicitly) rethought in Badiou’s own philosophy. Or again, we know that Badiou effectively ‘borrows’ the movement-image from Deleuze, but in what form precisely? And what can we say of the time-image?
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In his reflection on watching instead of interpreting as a way of getting to know a film, the author wishes to focus on two issues: (i) one related to the sensuous experience of the cinema, the pleasure of the act of watching itself (in accordance with the formula “seeing as only seeing”), and supported by the long tradition of the aesthetic thought (Baumgarten, Dewey, Shusterman, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty), and (ii) one connected with film thinking – inspired by the thesis of Rudolf Arnheim: “The visual perception is visual thinking”. Thus, the concept of watching instead of interpreting raises the status of the pre-intellectual and sensuous way of receiving a film work, which does not act against the interpretation (as Susan Sontag claimed), but constitutes its alternative or complementary version.