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1. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Daniel Flory

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2. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Dominic Lash Orcid-ID

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This article considers aspects of Stanley Cavell’s film-philosophy in the light of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread, and vice versa. Methodologically, it concentrates on the interpretation of Cavell’s writing and of Anderson’s film. In arguing that Phantom Thread has affinities with Cavell’s famous cinematic genre of remarriage comedy, the article addresses Cavell’s understanding of the production of what Wittgenstein calls “criteria.” Affirming Steven J. Affeldt’s insistence that the production of criteria is occasioned by crisis, the article explores the claim that Phantom Thread can be viewed as the story of the production of criteria in response to a situation of interpersonal confusion and disorientation, criteria according to which a remarriage may, or may not, eventually take place. The results of this enquiry, it is hoped, will help both to clarify aspects of Cavell’s philosophy and to articulate something of the nature of the distinctive cinematic achievement that Anderson’s film represents.

3. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Joseph Kupfer Orcid-ID

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The film Young Adult offers a striking example of vanity and its entanglement with other vices. Mavis Garry is prompted to return to her home town to woo a married, former beau out of vanity: an overweening desire to be admired for her appearance and authorship. Vanity involves wishing to be seen possessing something valuable that others lack and bestowing excessive attention on it, as in Mavis’s repeated physical preening and buffing. Because comparison is central to vanity, it contributes to Mavis’s envy. Vanity also encourages her arrogance by inflating Mavis’s distorted view of her self-worth. At the film’s climax, Mavis’s defects are publicly witnessed, producing in her the salutary moral experience of shame. However, Mavis’s incipient self-awareness and shame are dissipated by a few words from a fawning fan, as the undertow of vanity pulls Mavis beneath the clarity of the moral sensibility that was momentarily evoked by shame.

4. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Steven G. Smith

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Based on a bold equation of cinema with history, Jean-Luc Godard’s essay-film Histoire(s) du Cinéma (1988–1998) provokes new thoughts about what historical understanding involves and how cinematic revelation can happen. This paper discusses how Histoire(s) engages conventional standards of historical understanding while also taking us into uncharted depths of historical realization, examining the undeniable historical evidence presented in the film (mainly documenting the content of Hollywood and European films along thematically suggestive lines), undismissable insights into relations among historical data, and possibly valid judgments of historical truth (notably that cinema failed in its essential mission by not filming the Holocaust). Reaching for non-obvious connections, Godard risks misleading decontextualization of his materials. But by stocking our minds with pertinent film selections, new treatments of those images, and various writers’ musings he draws us into his quest for a practically decisive realization of the significance of the recent history of our civilization.

5. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Meribah Rose Orcid-ID

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This article engages in a close analysis of community across the films of Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. What emerges from this is that while Almodóvar has a strong subversive streak, his films are deeply concerned with questions about how we might live together in the best way possible. Drawing on the feminist ethics of care—with its emphasis on the maternal as an ethical model—and the work of Jean-Luc Nancy, I argue that Almodóvar’s preferred communities are “communities of circumstance,” best conceptualized as dynamic networks of relations that respond directly to the varied needs of their members. Rather than fitting any fixed social boundaries, they emerge organically from lived experience. Ultimately, I conclude that Almodóvar’s films not only offer screen representations of communities of circumstance, but might contribute to our understanding of what it means to live in community in the “real world.”

6. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Thorsten Botz-Bornstein

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What is the “miracle” that protein farmer Sapper Morton mentions when he says to K: “You never saw a miracle”? It is the transformation of inorganic life into organic life. Rachael, who was a replicant in the old Blade Runner (though falsely believing she is human) gave birth to twins. Tyrell had “perfected procreation,” in the words of Niander Wallace, but his knowledge has been lost. The theme of 2049 revolves around the scientific and philosophical question whether machines can become organic. Is a human only an accumulation of parts or cells, or does the quality of being human denote more than the sum of its parts? Is a bioengineered human a real human or simply a sophisticated machine? Furthermore, the film associates the organic with the real. Real humans as well as real memories are linked to a larger whole. The article reflects these constellations against various philosophical stances.

7. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25
Pamela Foa

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Contra Stanley Cavell in Pursuits of Happiness, I argue that in The Philadelphia Story Tracy Lord (Katherine Hepburn) squanders her opportunity for a fully mature relationship when she rejects Mike Connor (Jimmy Stewart) to remarry her former husband, C. K. Dexter Haven (Cary Grant). Critics of Cavell’s analysis of this film have generally accepted that at their remarriage Tracy and Dexter are perfect for each other, but disagree about which of the men in her life is responsible for her education and maturation. I argue, instead, that to become the intelligent, erotic, fully mature woman she can be, Tracy should have married Mike. To defend my view, I look at details in The Philadelphia Story that have not been widely noted (e.g. the wordless prologue and costuming) and offer a different interpretation of some other details that have been noticed. On my analysis, at the end of the movie, faced with the prospect of true autonomy, Tracy becomes so frightened that she abandons her agency and retreats to the stability and protection that her former husband represents.

8. Film and Philosophy: Volume > 25

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