Finding Ourselves at the Movies

Finding Ourselves at the Movies PDF Author: Paul W. Kahn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231164386
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Academic philosophy may have lost its audience, but the traditional subjects of philosophy—love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith—remain as compelling as ever. To reach a new generation, Paul W. Kahn argues philosophy must be brought to bear on contemporary discourse surrounding these primal concerns, and he shows how this can be achieved through a turn to popular film. In such well-known movies as Forrest Gump (1994), The American President (1995), The Matrix (1999), Memento (2000), The History of Violence (2005), Gran Torino (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Road (2009), and Avatar (2009), Kahn explores powerful archetypes and their hold on us, and he treats our present-day anxieties over justice, love, and faith as signs these traditional imaginative structures have failed. His inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, he uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, and narrative, not abstraction, emerges as the critical concept for understanding both. Second, he explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. Engaging with genres as diverse as romantic comedies, slasher films, and pornography, Kahn gains access to the social imaginary, through which we create and maintain a meaningful world.

Finding Ourselves at the Movies

Finding Ourselves at the Movies PDF Author: Paul W. Kahn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231164386
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Get Book

Book Description
Academic philosophy may have lost its audience, but the traditional subjects of philosophy—love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith—remain as compelling as ever. To reach a new generation, Paul W. Kahn argues philosophy must be brought to bear on contemporary discourse surrounding these primal concerns, and he shows how this can be achieved through a turn to popular film. In such well-known movies as Forrest Gump (1994), The American President (1995), The Matrix (1999), Memento (2000), The History of Violence (2005), Gran Torino (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Road (2009), and Avatar (2009), Kahn explores powerful archetypes and their hold on us, and he treats our present-day anxieties over justice, love, and faith as signs these traditional imaginative structures have failed. His inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, he uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, and narrative, not abstraction, emerges as the critical concept for understanding both. Second, he explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. Engaging with genres as diverse as romantic comedies, slasher films, and pornography, Kahn gains access to the social imaginary, through which we create and maintain a meaningful world.

Finding Ourselves at the Movies

Finding Ourselves at the Movies PDF Author: Paul W. Kahn
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023153602X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Academic philosophy may have lost its audience, but the traditional subjects of philosophy—love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith—remain as compelling as ever. To reach a new generation, Paul W. Kahn argues that philosophy must take up these fundamental concerns as we find them in contemporary culture. He demonstrates how this can be achieved through a turn to popular film. Discussing such well-known movies as Forrest Gump (1994), The American President (1995), The Matrix (1999), Memento (2000), The History of Violence (2005), Gran Torino (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Road (2009), and Avatar (2009), Kahn explores powerful archetypes and their hold on us. His inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, he uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, arguing that narrative is the critical concept for understanding both. Second, he explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. Engaging with genres as diverse as romantic comedy, slasher film, and pornography, Kahn explores the social imaginary through which we create and maintain a meaningful world. He finds in popular films a new setting for a philosophical inquiry into the timeless themes of sacrifice, innocence, rebirth, law, and love.

Reel People

Reel People PDF Author: Howard M. Gluss
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Characters and characteristics in motion pictures
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Reel People

Reel People PDF Author: Howard M. Gluss
Publisher: Keylight Company
ISBN: 9780971447707
Category : Characters and characteristics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A hands-on process of creating authentic stories, this book provides creative artists with an exciting analytical tool to help in the process of character creation. Various personality styles depicted in films are examined, as well as why they are celebrated in hundreds of films. Behavioural traits that define a person and recognisable attributes such as speech, profession, dress, and health are analysed in depth. This guide offers a valuable list of films to study to see how others interpret the personality as well as a useful template of questions to ask when developing consistent and convincing character psychologys.

Shadow Philosophy: Plato's Cave and Cinema

Shadow Philosophy: Plato's Cave and Cinema PDF Author: Nathan Andersen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317805895
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
Shadow Philosophy: Plato’s Cave and Cinema is an accessible and exciting new contribution to film-philosophy, which shows that to take film seriously is also to engage with the fundamental questions of philosophy. Nathan Andersen brings Stanley Kubrick’s film A Clockwork Orange into philosophical conversation with Plato’s Republic, comparing their contributions to themes such as the nature of experience and meaning, the character of justice, the contrast between appearance and reality, the importance of art, and the impact of images. At the heart of the book is a novel account of the analogy between Plato’s allegory of the cave and cinema, developed in conjunction with a provocative interpretation of the most powerful image from A Clockwork Orange, in which the lead character is strapped to a chair and forced to watch violent films. Key features of the book include: a comprehensive bibliography of suggested readings on Plato, on film, on philosophy, and on the philosophy of film a list of suggested films that can be explored following the approach in this book, including brief descriptions of each film, and suggestions regarding its philosophical implications a summary of Plato’s Republic, book by book, highlighting both dramatic context and subject matter. Offering a close reading of the controversial classic film A Clockwork Orange, and an introductory account of the central themes of the philosophical classic The Republic, this book will be of interest to both scholars and students of philosophy and film, as well as to readers of Plato and fans of Stanley Kubrick.

Finding God in the Movies

Finding God in the Movies PDF Author: Catherine M. Barsotti
Publisher: Baker Books
ISBN: 0801064813
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Experience God in the movies! A valuable resource guide examining over thirty films and their theological impact. Excellent for film buffs and church leaders alike.

Films from the Future

Films from the Future PDF Author: Andrew Maynard
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
ISBN: 1633539067
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
“Deftly shows how a seemingly frivolous film genre can guide us in shaping tomorrow’s world.” —Seth Shostak, senior astronomer, SETI Institute Artificial intelligence, gene manipulation, cloning, and interplanetary travel are all ideas that seemed like fairy tales but a few years ago. And now their possibilities are very much here. But are we ready to handle these advances? This book, by a physicist and expert on responsible technology development, reveals how science fiction movies can help us think about and prepare for the social consequences of technologies we don’t yet have, but that are coming faster than we imagine. Films from the Future looks at twelve movies that take us on a journey through the worlds of biological and genetic manipulation, human enhancement, cyber technologies, and nanotechnology. Readers will gain a broader understanding of the complex relationship between science and society. The movies mix old and new, and the familiar and unfamiliar, to provide a unique, entertaining, and ultimately transformative take on the power of emerging technologies, and the responsibilities they come with.

Beyond the Public Sphere

Beyond the Public Sphere PDF Author: Maria Pia Lara
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810142910
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
In Beyond the Public Sphere: Film and the Feminist Imaginary, the renowned philosopher and critical theorist María Pía Lara challenges the notion that the bourgeois public sphere is the most important informal institution between social and political actors and the state. Drawing on a wide range of films—including The Milk of Sorrow, Ixcanul, Wadja, The Stone of Patience, Marnie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Talk to Her—Lara dissects cinematic images of women’s struggles and their oppression. She builds on this analysis, developing a concept of the feminist social imaginary as a broader and more complex space that provides a way of thinking through the possibilities for emancipatory social transformation in response to forms of domination perpetuated by patriarchal capitalism.

Hitler in the Movies

Hitler in the Movies PDF Author: Sidney Homan
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1611479266
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
In Hitler in the Movies: Finding Der Führer on Film, a Shakespearean and a sociologist explore the fascination our popular culture has with Adolf Hitler. What made him … Hitler? Do our explanations tell us more about the perceiver than the actual historical figure? We ask such question by viewing the Hitler character in the movies. How have directors, actors, film critics, and audiences accounted for this monster in a medium that reflects public tastes and opinions? The book first looks at comedic films, such as Chaplain’s The Great Dictator or Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be (1942), along with the Mel Brooks’s 1983 version. Then, there is the Hitler of fantasy, from trash films like The Saved Hitler’s Brain to a serious work like The Boys from Brazil where Hitler is cloned. Psychological portraits include Anthony Hopkins’s The Bunker, the surreal The Empty Mirror, and Max, a portrait of Hitler in his days in Vienna as a would-be artist. Documentaries and docudramas range from Leni Reinfenstahl’s iconic The Triumph of the Will or The Hidden Führer, to the controversial Hitler: A Film from Germany and Quentin Tarantino’s fanciful Inglourious Basterds. Hitler in the Movies also considers the ways Der Führer remains today, as a ghostly presence, if not an actual character. Why is he still with us in everything from political smears to video games to merchandise? In trying to explain this and the man himself, what might we learn about ourselves and our society?

86 TIPS for the Therapeutic Toolbox

86 TIPS for the Therapeutic Toolbox PDF Author: Judith A. Belmont
Publisher: PESI Publishing & Media
ISBN: 0974971197
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This book assists in breaking through treatment resistance and defensiveness. Dozens of reproducible handouts, experiential activities, exercises, self-discovery tools and more are included.