Abstract
The critical perspective on film in the Anthropocene fashioned in the present book is both old and new. It is derived from Aristotle and Plato and from Gregory Bateson (Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000a) and Norbert Wiener (1961), as well as a range of philosophical and literary perspectives in between. Its structural principles include the idea of “play” as a form of communicative exchange shared widely across Mammalia, combined with the idea of art as syllogistical mimēsis, derived from Aristotle, to provide “frames” through which to understand film as a multi-layered form of communication. The physical machineries of modernity meet with communicative ones of postmodernity in the digital camera: a hybrid of mechanism and information. The complex problems posed by the Anthropocene, from this perspective, might effectively be addressed in the medium of “film” as an artifact produced by this emerging “informatic” assemblage. The key films studied are summarized.
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from classical and modern languages are my own.
- 2.
At the outset of Plato’s Republic Book 7 (1969, 514a–517a) his protagonist, Socrates, tells a story of prisoners locked in an underground cavern who are forced to view images on the cave wall. The images are shadows cast by a fire located behind them, toward the cave’s entrance. Puppets and other objects are paraded in front of the fire to cast their darkened images on the wall. One prisoner escapes to discover the mechanism of the fire, which serves as an early movie projector. He climbs slowly out of the cave to discover moonlight and, finally, sunlight. He then returns to the cave to teach his fellows. The result is not promising.
- 3.
Hegel famously writes, “Wenn die Philosophie ihr Grau in Grau malt, dann ist eine Gestalt des Lebens alt geworden, und mit Grau in Grau läßt sie sich nicht verjüngen, sondern nur erkennen; die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug” (1979, 29). “When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering” (Hegel 1896, 12, Dyde, trans.).
- 4.
The term noosphere is formed from the Greek nous (mind) and sphaira; hence, it means literally “mindsphere.” For commentary on the concept in light of electronic communications, see Fuchs-Kittowski and Krüger (1997).
- 5.
An ancient Roman poet described the god in terms resonant with our times:
Then sacred Janus wondrously with his two-headed image
suddenly presented his double face to my eyes.
I was terrified and sensed my hair stiffen with fear
and suddenly my heart was icy cold. .. [as he spoke].
‘learn, putting away your fear, industrious poet of our days,
what you desire and keep my words in mind.
The ancients called me Chaos (for I am ancient):
Behold how I shall sing the deeds of historic time.’
(Ovid Fasti I, 1933, lines 89–104)
- 6.
In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant argues that the subject is both an empirical phenomenon and a transcendental noumenon: the first, subject to natural necessity; the second, free to act as a causal agent: “the very same subject [as the empirical one], being on the other side conscious of himself as thing in itself, also views his existence insofar as it does not stand under conditions of time and himself as determinable only through laws that he gives himself by reason.” Hence, his phenomenal existence “the whole sequence of his existence as a sensible being—is to be regarded in the consciousness of his intelligible existence as nothing but the consequence and never as the determining ground of his causality as a noumenon” (Kant 1996, Gregor, trans., § 5:98, 218).
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White, D. (2018). Introduction: Stepping into the Play Frame—Cinema as Mammalian Communication. In: Film in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93015-2_1
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