A Philosophy of Cinematic Art

by Berys Gaut

• ISBN13: 9780521529648
• ISBN10: 0521529646
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-08
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

A Philosophy of Cinematic Art is a systematic study of cinema as an art form, showing how the medium conditions fundamental features of cinematic artworks. It discusses the status of cinema as an art form, whether there is a language of film, realism in cinema, cinematic authorship, intentionalist and constructivist theories of interpretation, cinematic narration, the role of emotions in responses to films, the possibility of identification with characters, and the nature of the cinematic medium. Groundbreaking in its coverage of a wide range of contemporary cinematic media, it analyses not only traditional photographic films, but also digital cinema, and a variety of interactive cinematic works, including videogames. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book examines the work of leading film theorists and philosophers of film, and develops a powerful framework with which to think about cinema as an art.

Author Biography

Berys Gaut is Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of Art, Emotion and Ethics (2007) and co-editor of The Creation of Art (2003) and The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics (2nd edn, 2005).

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Film theory and philosophy	p. 2
Moving image technologies	p. 6
The challenges to cinema as an art	p. 21
The causal challenge	p. 22
The reproduction challenge	p. 34
Film and communication	p. 42
Digital cinema as art	p. 43
Language and realism	p. 51
Film as a language	p. 51
Digital cinema and language	p. 56
Realism: traditional and digital cinema	p. 60
Transparency: traditional and digital cinema	p. 78
Cinematic authorship	p. 98
Two puzzles	p. 98
Varieties of auteurism	p. 99
Minimal auteurism	p. 102
Three strategies for single authorship	p. 105
Cinematic utterance and single authorship	p. 118
Ontology and multiple authorship	p. 125
The multiple-authorship view refined	p. 128
Digital cinema and authorship	p. 133
Interactivity and authorship	p. 140
Understanding cinema	p. 152
Intentionalism	p. 152
Constructivism	p. 164
The patchwork theory	p. 180
Digital cinema and interpretation	p. 192
Cinematic narration	p. 197
Symmetry or asymmetry?	p. 197
The a priori argument	p. 199
Three models of implicit cinematic narrators	p. 202
Absurd imaginings and silly questions	p. 209
Literary narrators	p. 218
Other narrative features	p. 221
Interactive narration	p. 224
Emotion and identification	p. 244
Emotion and cinema	p. 244
The concept of identification	p. 252
Identification and film techniques	p. 263
Identification and emotional learning	p. 268
Emotion and interaction	p. 272
The role of the medium	p. 282
Two tendencies in the philosophy of art	p. 282
Medium-specificity claims	p. 286
Evaluating artworks	p. 292
Explaining artistic features	p. 296
Media and art forms	p. 300
Conclusion	p. 306
Bibliography	p. 308
Index	p. 318
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