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Thesis Some films do philosophy that prose cannot, rather than illustrating it

Martín Iriarte Fellow
· 7 replies
Film & mediaAmericanAnalyticNoël CarrollStanley Cavell#cavell#film-as-philosophy#remarriage-comedy#thought-experiments
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Where it stands

I'll argue a thesis my analytic friends here find indulgent: some films do philosophical work in their own right, work that can't be fully restated in prose.

The sceptic's argument is simple. Whatever philosophical content a film has can be put into words: indeed, critics explaining it always do. So the film is a vehicle for ideas found elsewhere. And films can't do what philosophy does: state premises, draw inferences, be refuted.

My reply has two parts.

First, a film can put the viewer in a position rather than describe one. It can withhold information so the audience shares a character's ignorance, then reveal it so they feel the correction. Questions about self-deception, about memory, about whether you'd recognise the person you love, become available as experience. A paper can describe that experience. It can't make it happen to you.

Second, Stanley Cavell. In Pursuits of Happiness he reads the Hollywood ‘comedies of remarriage’ (The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam's Rib and others) as working through what marriage is: a couple must be re-acknowledged, chosen again, through conversation. I think those films are a contribution to the philosophy of love and of recognition that couldn't have been written as a treatise, because what they show is the tone in which acknowledgement happens.

Noël Carroll and others are sceptical of this kind of claim, and I respect their caution. But I think the restatement objection proves too much: you can paraphrase a poem, too.

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7 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Parisa Moghaddam

    For Fellow

    For, from the edit suite. Kiarostami's Close-Up re-enacts a real case of a man who impersonated a famous director, using the real people playing themselves. By the end you can't separate performance, identity and confession, and the film makes you complicit in that confusion. I've read essays on authenticity and self-presentation that say less. The film doesn't state a thesis. It makes the problem unavoidable.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Henrike Vogel

    For Fellow

    A middle position, from someone who spent years teaching literature: a film can be a thought experiment realised rather than described. Philosophers already rely on thought experiments that work by eliciting reactions. A film elicits reactions under better conditions: detail, time, sympathy. The data it produces about our responses is philosophical evidence, even if the conclusion is drawn in prose.

    Helpful · 2

Against the thesis 3

  1. Oskar Nyberg

    Against Fellow

    Against. ‘You can paraphrase a poem too’ concedes my point: poems aren't philosophy either. Nobody thinks a sonnet about time is a contribution to the metaphysics of time. Films can be profound, moving, insightful about life. That's not the same as doing philosophy, which requires claims that can be assessed and rejected.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Martín Iriarte

      Fellow

      Oskar, I'd say ‘requires claims that can be assessed’ defines philosophy as the genre of the paper. Plato's dialogues include myths and dramatic irony doing work no premise does. Is the end of the Symposium, with Alcibiades drunk at the door, an illustration or part of the argument?

      1. Oskar Nyberg

        Against Fellow

        Fair hit about Plato. I'll grant that dramatic form can contribute to an argument. But the argument is still there, in the text, to be extracted. My claim is narrower: whatever a film contributes philosophically can be identified and assessed in prose, even if the film did it first and better.

        Helpful · 1
  2. Vũ Quốc Bảo

    Against Fellow

    Against, as a translator. Every film I've subtitled has lost something, but I can always say what it was doing. If Martín's thesis were true, there'd be philosophical content that is untranslatable not just into other languages but into language as such. I'm not sure that's a coherent idea.

    Helpful · 3

Other replies

  1. Martín Iriarte

    Fellow

    I'll accept Henrike's middle position as a fallback and keep my flag on Cavell. Perhaps the right formulation is: some films generate philosophical evidence and orientations that prose can describe but not produce. Whether that counts as ‘doing’ philosophy is, I now think, partly a dispute about the word.