Philosophy and Cinema (and other disasters)
simon — Fri, 04/25/2008 - 12:21
I haven't written a journal entry for PHI350: Philosophy and Cinema in a few weeks so this is a first attempt to catch up. I'm catching up on my reading material today so I'll likely follow this post with another reflecting upon that material. What I would like to focus this post upon is my second piece of assessment, a short essay.
The question I chose asked about Rancière's three 'regimes of the arts' in relation to cinema. I loved this topic and there is such a wealth of information out there. This, of course, was my first problem. Because I had a passion for the topic and the depths that I could see it reaching a short essay couldn't do it justice. My notes alone were twice as long as the essay was allowed to be, and if I included all of the topics I desired to cover then a rather detailed book would have been the result.
You may have noticed that above I mentioned my first problem, well my second was much worse (Andrès, if you're reading before you've marked this particular essay then this paragraph is not for you). When I first read the course outline back at the start of the semester I entered all of the assessment details in my calendar. Due to some oversight, or plain stupidity, I wrote down that the length of the essay was to be 3500 words. I happily wrote a 3500 word essay which I felt was still too short, long enough though to communicate my main ideas etc.. Well, when I went over my checklist before hitting the send button I discovered that the essay was onlly to be 2500 words! Shock! I spent an entire day pulling bits from one section, writing new linking sections and, in the end, being left with an essay that I'm utterly disappointed with. I needed to rewrite the whole thing but didn't have the time.
I won't repeat my arguments here as I'll put the essay up over the weekend. Hopefully it doesn't read like it has been cut and pasted all over the place.
Anyhow, back to some Merleau-Ponty and Zizek. More reflections to follow.
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Would you like a copy of
nathan — Fri, 04/25/2008 - 18:06Would you like a copy of Žižek's The Pervert's Guide to Cinema: Lacanian Psychoanalysis and Film? There is also an International Journal of Žižek Studies
Why Not?
simon — Fri, 04/25/2008 - 18:46Sure thing Nath. You know how to get hold of me.
I'm reading a very interesting paper of Zizek's at the moment titled 'The Thing that Thinks: The Kantian Background of the Noir Subject'. What Zizek is doing is looking at Noir not only as stand-alone genre but as a general influence in other film production, from limiting Noir to crime film to exploring how Noir influences other genres and naratives of film. Of course there is much more to this paper too.
I particulaly like this paper as Zizek uses Scott's Blade Runner as a comparative subject. I love Scott's films and Blade Runner is one of my favs. I first saw this film as a child and something in it just stuck with me. Of course I had no idea of the import of this film but it was nevertheless fascinating.
Anyhow Nath, if you want to forward me a copy I'm not going to complain.
Blade Runner
nathan — Fri, 04/25/2008 - 20:52No worries, I'll send a copy up when I get the chance. As a side note, did you know that 'Blade Runner' is based on the Phillip K. Dick novel 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep'?
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