Inessentials

As a philosopher (or better, a professional academic philosopher in training) with an interest in film, it was probably inevitable that I would eventually have to engage one of the big debates in the still small field of philosophy of film: Can movies be works of philosophy?

When philosophers do philosophy, it is usually either in dialogue with others or in the solitude of one’s mind and typically results in a presentation (spoken word, perhaps a few slides) or a publication (written word, usually a journal article but occasionally a book or blog post). In each of these cases, philosophers convey concepts in words. Those works of philosophy that are produced are fundamentally verbal. This doesn’t mean there couldn’t be other ways of doing philosophy, but they are far less common. Here’s one now-accepted example: Logicians have come to realize that there could be a completely visual language (think: advanced Venn diagrams) in which one could establish the rules of logic and derive logical results without the use of either a natural language or an artificial, symbolic language. In an analogous way, could one use the “language” of film to do philosophy?

We certainly think of some films as being “philosophical” in the generic sense in which we often use the term when we mean “thoughtful” or “reflective” or “left me thinking about its interesting themes after I left the theater.” These could be sci-fi films like The Matrix or 2001: A Space Odyssey, art house fare like Rashomon, or any other genre or classification of film. There’s no good reason to discontinue this use of the term, but the question I am asking is narrower.

We also think of some filmmakers or individual films as being particularly “philosophical.” For example, Woody Allen’s name is sometimes offered up as an example of a philosophical filmmaker. I suspect that sometimes “philosophical” is used as a sort of honorific term that can be used to identify an intelligent or creative director or writer. I want to be careful to avoid using the term this way. Woody Allen is no more or less great a filmmaker if we determine that he is or is not doing philosophy in his films. Annie Hall is no less funny, sophisticated, or rewarding if we ultimately decide that it is not a work of philosophy. When I argue later that Allen is or is not doing philosophy in his films, I hope it is understood that this in no way marks his films as any less great than they are. The same goes for Charlie Kaufmann, Terrence Malick, and everyone else who makes intellectually stimulating films.

My point is this: We can use “philosophical” in a broad sense to mean “intellectually engaging” or “concerned with long-standing questions.” Or we can use it in a narrow sense, the sense that I plan to use it, to mean the sort of careful, rigorous argumentation, in dialogue with other texts, that seeks to defend or refute a conclusion about any of a range of traditional issues. This is what I mean when I ask if movies are philosophical or if they can be counted as works of philosophy.

Because I want to explore this question further, and could use a little social prompting to keep me going, I thought I would read and publicly respond to Thomas E. Wartenberg’s Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy. From what I can tell (I’ve only glanced through it), it argues for the thesis that films do count as works of philosophy. He provides both general arguments and individual case studies. It also seems the most direct answer to the question I am forming.

I am putting this out here so that you can read along with me if you like. (Book club!) From the bits I have read, the book is written in a very readable style that should not be too off-putting to those not used to the density of most philosophical writing. It’s also fairly short. If that seems too much, you can read my comments as I read along. My goal is to give comments on each chapter as I read, with a new post showing up every 5-7 days or so. (I am dissertating on something not at all film-related, so I’ll be reading slowly.)

At the outset, I should note that I am disinclined to say that films can be works of philosophy. As wonderful as my experiences at the movies have been, I don’t think that I have ever seen a film that argued for a conclusion in a philosophically sophisticated manner. Part of why I am engaging Wartenberg is that he thinks films can be works of philosophy, and I am looking for the best arguments for that thesis that I can find. (We philosophers are a perverse bunch. We are much more interested in the arguments against the positions we hold than the arguments for them.) Part of me wants to be persuaded by Waternberg. I would love to say that Solaris or The Thin Blue Line is a philosophical achievement and not just a cinematic one, but I am not ready to say that.

Yet.

For the last three months or so, I’ve been dealing with an eye condition that makes my right eye blurry, very sensitive to light, and occasionally painful. The treatment for it includes (temporarily) making the eye even blurrier and keeping it dilated all the time. It’s a condition I have had before, and one that I will probably have periodically for the rest of my life. The treatment takes months, but it quickly becomes such a regular part of my routine that I hardly think about it. Because one of eyes is always dilated and out of focus, it changes the way that I interact with technology, so I thought it might be worth sharing some of these altered interactions.

I wrote all this for two reasons. One, I wanted to chronicle (for my own benefit) what it is like when I have this problem, so I can deal with it better in the future. Second, I thought it would be helpful to point out the ways in which I experienced technology differently because of a relatively small difference in my physical condition from most of the technology-consuming public. As ever, I am trying to reflect on who I am and how I engage with the world around me, although this time I’m less interested in the content of what I view than the physical conditions in which I view it. So bear with this unusual (and probably boring) post.

Tom Cruise in shades, from Top Gun

There are basically three things I have changed to deal with the problematic eye.

1. I avoid bright lights. This doesn’t just mean not going outdoors when it’s sunny. It also means keeping the lights off at home, even at night (where the glow of the TV is often the only light source).
2. When I am near bright lights, I wear sunglasses. This includes almost situations when I am outside the house.
3. I wear an eyepatch. Yes, an eyepatch. Even in low light settings, it can be a strain on my eye to be near any light (even the backlit glow of a computer screen). Add to this the fact that my problem eye is always out of focus, and suddenly using an eyepatch can be a very helpful way of seeing things more clearly.

These three changes have an impact on how I engage with various technologies that depend heavily on eyesight. I don’t have a smart phone and I don’t use my iPod for watching video, so I’ll leave those aside.

1. Movie theaters. I simply refused to stop seeing films at the theater because of my eye. So I typically wear sunglass through the previews, when the house lights are still on, then switch to the eyepatch for some or all of the main show. Being in a dark theater isn’t too bad, depending on the brightness of the film. Since I’m especially sensitive to light, I’m particularly aware of the difference in how films are lit. Big Hollywood studio films like Knight & Day, for instance, are considerably brighter than moody indie flicks like Winter’s Bone. Not only is there a difference in lighting techniques (not least Winter Bone‘s greater reliance on natural light), but these choices result in how much light comes through the film strips themselves and therefore how much light reflects off the large white screen and back toward the viewer. Winter’s Bone is more consistent in its color palette and brightness (from outdoor to indoor and from daytime to nighttime scenes) than Knight & Day is from car chase to warehouse gun fight. Other than noticing this, my unequal eyes don’t make a great deal of difference when watching a movie at a theater. It is a bit harder to focus when not wearing the eyepatch, and I do have less depth perception when wearing the eyepatch. But, surprisingly, if I am sitting from the middle to back of the theater, having zero depth perception hasn’t made much of a difference in how I see the film. The closer I move to the front of the theater, though, the greater an impact it makes. In watching Inception, I sat near the front of a crowded theater, and I was losing too much by wearing the eyepatch. It may be that Inception keeps its background in focus more often, or I was more often drawn to the details of the dreamscapes, and thus I need both eyes to take in what is happening, but I suspect that most of the problem stemmed from sitting closer to the screen, where it is more difficult to take in the whole screen with one good eye.
2. 

   How 3-D glasses work from 3dglassesonline.com

   3-D movies. 3-D is completely lost on me because I can’t focus with one eye. So among the many reasons to be skeptical of this “new” technology is that it is (like many “advances”) going to leave some people unable to participate. Since my eye started acting up, I saw only one 3-D film in theaters, How to Train Your Dragon. Watching with only one eye focusing through the 3-D glasses and one not focusing very well is very comparable to watching without the 3-D glasses (based on my mid-movie experiment). Watching with an eyepatch under the 3-D glasses makes 3-D even flatter than traditional film. (I think this is often true of 3-D even with both eyes working, but it is always true if you’ve got one eye covered.) My wife hates 3-D because it gives her headaches to wear the 3-D glasses over her regular glasses, and I avoid it because it so rarely improves a film. (I gave Avatar a “B” when I saw it in theaters, but I suspect it would be no more than a “C” if viewed on other formats. But that is the exception.) (And, yes, I do believe it is legitimate to grade films differently based on the medium employed.) But trying to watch 3-D with one good eye reminds me of how technologies affect people differently depending on their bodily circumstances.

3. Live theater. Going to watch a play is nearly impossible, since I can’t see the stage from the cheap seats (the only ones I can afford). Distance viewing is very difficult, and it is extremely frustrating to be unable to see what is happening on stage. Even if I can handle the lights, which is already a strain, the frustration over watching blurry shapes move around leads me to avoid traditionally staged plays. There is a small black-box theater that I love, that perhaps I could handle because I would be close enough to the action, but I haven’t tried it.


Daryl Hannah, sporting the eyepatch

4. Computers. I keep my laptop’s brightness as low as it can go while still being brighter than the ambient lighting. And, frankly, my MacBook just doesn’t get dim enough for my comfort. I still usually wear an eyepatch, since looking at a computer screen through dark sunglasses is nearly impossible. That increases the strain on my good eye, so I need to relax it more often (close it or focus on something far away for a short while). The one thing that is really noticeable, though, is how difficult it is to watch embedded videos. Nearly all video websites, from Hulu to Youtube to almost every blog on the planet, has a white (or similarly light-colored) background. Videos, however, are typically dark, or at least darker than their surroundings when viewed on a computer. Watching streaming videos on-line is thus one of the most difficult things for me to do. I can lose a lot of quality by taking (some) videos to full-screen; otherwise, it’s a game of trade-offs between making the video bright enough to see and making the surrounding page too bright.
5. Television. My very accommodating wife lets me keep the lights off in our house when we are watching TV, and (with that adjustment) television is the easiest technology for me to engage in right now (at least for the size of our television and its distance away). Apart from the difficulty I have reading subtitles with my poor distance vision right now, television is the most accessible technology for me, in part because it is the most easily adaptable. I have control over the ambient lighting (unlike a movie theater or the area surrounding an on-line video), I have control over the brightness of the television set (unlike a movie theater), and I have control over starting and stopping it so as to give me eyes a rest.
6. Books. Books are perhaps the most difficult to parse. The eyepatch makes it very possible to read a book, but focusing at a reasonable distance puts a large strain on my one good eye, so it is difficult to read for any length of time. This is especially true as day turns to night, and my eye has been worked hard all day. So while reading is quite easy to do (an advantage over almost every other viewable technology), it is very difficult to read for long periods of time. Speaking of which, back to the dissertation…

The dilated eye