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.

Some spoilers for Terminator Salvation, but it’s not like you were going to watch it anyways

Terminator Salvation fails for a number of reasons. It’s about 30 minutes too long, and all the dullest, most senseless, least compelling sequences come in the second half of the film, leaving the viewer with a sour taste. That’s a shame only because there are some pretty nice action set pieces in the first half. But what stands out about the film is its ham-fisted attempt to reflect on the classic science fiction question, “What makes us human?”

You see, in Terminator lore, machines are bad and humans are good. So when Salvation attempts to break new ground, it does so by introducing a character that is partly human and partly machine. This is then supposed to provide a philosophical quandary both for hybrid (“what am I?”) and for those who interact with it (“what is it?”). (Apparently this has become the standard fourth-film-in-a-franchise question, since Alien: Resurrection posed the same question, but with alien-human hybrids instead of machine-human hybrids.) Perhaps in more deft hands this could have been an interesting question for a film. Instead, it is in the hands of McG (Charlie’s Angels, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle), the pens of John D. Brancato & Michael Ferris (Surrogates, Catwoman), and the grunting of Christian Bale (Reign of Fire, Newsies).

Not having anything interesting to say about the interactions of humans and machines, the filmmakers decided to blow stuff up. Personally, I am in favor of blowing stuff up on screen. It’s fun to watch. Maybe not in the second hour, when the filmmakers have lost track of who we care about and why, so we have no reason to root for any of these characters to survive. We just hope our bladders survive the two hours it takes to finish the film. But not content to blow stuff up, McG, Brancato, and Ferris also decide that they should say something. This is a science-fiction film, after all, and therefore must have pretenses to philosophical navel-gazing.

So here is what they do. They create a character that is partly human and partly machine. Half the film’s heroes argue that the hybrid is fully human, and the other half argue that the character is fully machine. Apparently, the writers decided that there would be added emotional resonance if every person in the film was an idiot. This is called “screenwriting.”

As a philosopher (yes, I really do have a postgraduate philosophy degree), one thing I try to do in exploring difficult questions is start with the facts. Applied to this film, in wondering what we should think of a human-machine hybrid, and important fact to consider would be this is a human-machine hybrid. Apparently, this never occurred to anyone involved with the making of this film. They decided that it is much more interesting to ask “Is it fully human?” or “Is it fully machine?” In other words, they could never reach the part where they actually do some philosophical reflection, because they are too stupid to acknowledge the single most basic fact that the entire film is built around. Somewhere between deciding to make a film that introduces a human-machine hybrid and actually making that film, they lost track of that single basic idea.

Now, it would be wrong to say the movie fails because of some intellectual fault in the film. As an action spectacle, this film fails because it is boring. But sometimes boring science fiction films can be saved by the interesting questions they address. This is why we still watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris. And it is also why you should watch Moon, the low-budget space flick that nobody saw last year. Better acting, a more compelling plot, and an interesting question at the center (albeit one that is raised to explore psychological and emotional elements rather than strictly philosophical implications). While I don’t think Moon is an excellent film, I can guarantee that you won’t leave it with that gross, McG-y taste in your mouth.