THE PERVERT"S GUIDE TO CINEMA: January 24, at SPACE Gallery. |
On January 24, SPACE Gallery kicks off a series of four films and follow-up dialogues exploring contemporary philosophy. Organized by USM’s undergraduate philosophy club, this forum seeks, in the words of USM philosophy professor Jason Read, “to make philosophy part of our culture in general, rather than simply an academic specialization.”The Phoenix caught up with Read to find out more about the series and its ambitions.
An unfair question: which of these films holds the place closest to your heart, holds the most resonance for you, and for what reason(s)?
I am most interested in showing The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema, even though it probably does not hold the place closest to my heart, nor do I necessarily agree with all of it. I do think that it is the most successful in merging film and philosophy, concept and image. The film shows Slavoj Zizek discussing various films to illustrate the nature of narrative, desire, and illusion. What makes it interesting is that he appears to be doing so from within the films themselves; discussing The Matrix from the very chair that Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) explains the “Matrix” from, explaining the symbolism of Hitchcock’s The Birds from a motorboat in Bodega Bay, etc.
On one level this helps make the film more visually interesting than just watching someone talk for hours. Moreover, it makes it possible to make immediate connections between the dense philosophical points of his argument and the narrative of the films themselves. For example: in The Matrix, Morpheus offers Neo (Keanu Reeves) the choice between two pills, one that would reveal the truth of the “Matrix” and another that would let Neo return to the illusion. At this point in his analysis Zizek discusses a need for a third pill. “So what is the third pill? Definitely not some kind of transcendental pill which enables a fake fast-food religious experience, but a pill that would enable me to perceive not the reality behind the illusion but the reality in illusion itself.”
Thus much of the point of Zizek’s analysis — discussing the way in which fictions, narratives, and stories are real in that they determine how we relate to world — is illustrated and exemplified by the film’s own narrative, the false choice between truth or fiction. Zizek’s film is the third pill.
ANTONIO NEGRI: A REVOLT THAT NEVER ENDS: January 24, at SPACE Gallery. |
What do you think a philosophy film can do that a philosophy book cannot?
If you pick up the book Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, its dust jacket states: “Antonio Negri is an independent researcher and writer and an inmate at Rebibbia Prison, Rome.” However, the book itself does not offer much of an explanation of that odd little biographical sketch. A film can condense a great deal of history and politics into an hour and a half, connecting the viewer in an immediate way with not just ideas but the context and conditions of ideas.This particular “genre” of the philosophical film, or philosophical documentary, is relatively new; the films we are showing were produced in the last several years, and there are new ones coming out all of the time. So it is possible that there may one day be films that are considered philosophical works in their own right, rather than illustrations of philosophy.
Related:
Peace out, Perversion, introversion, Zizek!, More 
- Peace out
At the close of each year we make resolutions and invent scenarios about ourselves that we hope will have come to pass 12 months from now.
- Perversion, introversion
Slavoj Zizek, the fuzzy-bearded Slovenian philosopher, seems a fun guy.
- Zizek!
“I never thought I’d have so much fun talking about this!” exclaims Barry Nolan at the end of a broadcast of CN8’s Nightbeat .
- Terror-fied
This new grand-theoretical manifesto might be completely daft.
- Image-ination
The Phoenix sat down with Jason Read, the film series’s curator and an assistant professor of philosophy at USM, to discuss how this revolutionary concept can still influence artistic practice.
- Changing worlds
On the USM philosophy department's home page, I noticed Karl Marx’s famous lines from Theses on Feuerbach: “the philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.”
- Review: Examined Life
Astra Taylor's peripatetic gabfest doesn't examine "life" so much as it trolls the gray area between genuine philosophy and pop-cultural pap.
- Postapologetic
Interrogation Machine is the sort of book that eschews any particular methodology in favor of throwing itself headlong into an experimental engagement with a vast, difficult, and continually changing historical and aesthetic terrain.
- They’ve got issues
As newspapers and magazines slim and shift their focus to online content and revenue streams, it has become sadly commonplace to overlook the unique capabilities of periodically printed matter.
- Knox's prophet
A Maine native and longtime resident of Belfast, Bern Porter died there in 2004 at the age of 93.
- The thinking ass
Before his imagery got captured and turned into poster art backdrops for dorm-room bong-hits, Salvador Dalí imagined it in service of a revolution in consciousness. “Accommodations of Desire: Surrealist Works on Paper Collected by Julien Levy,” at the Portland Museum of Art through this spring, traces the stages and offshoots of this revolution along the axis established by one crucial figure in its history and its dissemination — collector and dealer Julien Levy.
- Less
Topics:
Features
, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Slavoj Zizek, More
, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Slavoj Zizek, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Jason Read, Less
