The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema: Turning Anew to the Ontology of Film a Half-Century After the World Viewed

Description

Stanley Cavell was, by many accounts, America's greatest philosophical thinker of film. Like Bazin in France and Perkins in England, Cavell did not just transform the American capacity to take film as a subject for philosophical criticism; he had to first invent that legitimacy. Part of that effort involved the creation of several key now-canonical texts in film studies, among them the seminal The World Viewed along with Pursuits of Happiness and Contesting Tears. The present collection offers, for the first time anywhere, a concerted effort mounted by some of today's most compelling writers on film to take careful account of Cavell's legacy. The contributors think anew about what precisely Cavell contributed, what holds up, what is in need to revision or updating, and how his writing continues to be of vital significance and relevance for any contemporary approach to the philosophy of film. Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword Inroduction: Philosophy’s Claim to Film, Film’s Claim to Philosophy As If: The More Perfect Union of Film and Philosophy Notes Part 1: Underwriting and Overhearing: Reconceiving Cinematic Ontology and Genre Chapter 1: “Assertions in Technique”: Tracking the Medial “Thread” in Cavell’s Filmic Ontology Notes Chapter 2: Revisiting The World Viewed Introduction Commentary Critical Review Notes Chapter 3: The World Heard Ontological Peace Realism, Limits, and Conditions Positions and Prepositions The Unsayable I: Synchronization The Unsayable II: The Lucidity of Bodies The Mimesis of the Unsayable The Coherence of Doubt Notes Chapter 4: What a Genre of Film Might Be: Medium, Myth, and Morality Medium Myth Moral Perfectionism Conclusion: Conversing with Socrates Notes Part 2: Interlude: Temperaments for Film Chapter 5: My Troubled Relationship with Stanley Cavell: In Pursuit of a Truly Cinematic Conversation Notes Chapter 6: Film as Film and the Personal Notes Part 3: Philosophy, As If Made for Film Chapter 7: Between Skepticism and Moral Perfectionism: On Cavell’s Melodrama of the Unknown Woman Film as a “Moving Image of Skepticism” Film and Moral Perfectionism Moral Perfectionism and Remarriage Comedy Moral Perfectionism in Stella Dallas Romantic Love and Moral Imperfectionism: Carol as Melodrama of the Unknown Woman Notes Chapter 8: Overcoming Skepticism in Casablanca Rick’s Isolationist Individualism The Origins of Rick’s Skepticism Restoring Trust, Overcoming Skepticism A Different Lesson in Love Notes Chapter 9: A Skeptic’s Reprieve: Cavell on Comedy in Shakespeare and the Movies Notes Part 4: Film, As If Made for Philosophy Chapter 10: Film Exists in a State of Philosophy: Two Contemporary Cavellian Views Stephen Mulhall on Philosophy in the Alien Films Robert Sinnerbrink on Philosophical Film Criticism Cavellian Origins of Contemporary Film-Philosophies Notes Chapter 11: The Conception of Film for the Subject of Television: Moral Education of the Public and a Return to an Aesthetics of the Ordinary The Democracy of Cinema The Importance of Film The Public Notes Chapter 12: On Film in Reality: Cavellian Reflections on Skepticism, Belief, and Documentary Notes Chapter 13: On the Aesthetics of Amateur Filmmaking in Narrative Cinema: Negotiating Home Movies after Adam’s Rib Notes Acknowlegments Contributors Index