Philosophy and Film
Dec 17, 2006尽管驱使许多电影制作的是粗俗的商业主义,但毫无疑问,电影是一种独特而强大的艺术形式。
From Star Trek and the Grateful Dead to South Park and Stephen Colbert, philosophical questions are everywhere in popular culture: Is time travel possible? Can a person survive being disintegrated and reassembled? Does humor enable the expression of deep truths, political or otherwise? John and Ken look at the Big Questions in pop culture with Richard Hanley from the University of Delaware, author ofSouth Park and Philosophy.This program wasrecorded liveat the University of Delaware in Newark, DE.
To start off the show, John wonders whether the concept of philosophy and pop culture is an oxymoron. Isn’t philosophy the epitome of high culture? Ken points to a growing trend of philosophical thoughts making their way into books, movies, and TV shows; philosophy is apparently the “new cool.” John wonders whether philosophy will benefit from its interaction with pop culture or whether the discipline of philosophy and pop culture is just a clever marketing scheme.
接下来,Richard Hanley加入了对话。他首先讨论了自己写这个主题的动机。他解释说,人们已经对流行文化感兴趣了,所以它可以被用来使潜在的哲学思想更吸引大众,以一种偷袭的方式。肯问理查德,哲学思想是否自觉地出现在流行文化中,或者流行文化的作品是否被用作进行哲学思考的借口。理查德认识到这两种情况都有道理。然而,他更感兴趣的是写那些已经明显带有哲学色彩的流行文化。
When prompted to provide an example of a philosophically interesting piece of popular culture, Richard brings up Christopher Nolan’sThe Prestigeand the problems of personal identity it raises.The discussion then moves on to focus onSouth Park作为一场政治哲学秀。Other works likeThe Prestige,Memento, andThe Matrix因为传统的,形而上学的原因。South Park另一方面,它在诚实地看待应用伦理学问题方面做得最好。在节目的最后,左翼和右翼的信世界杯赛程2022赛程表欧洲区仰都被戳穿,以揭示理性的中间立场。
Ken, John, and Richard conclude by taking a look at popular culture that deals specifically with time travel. Movies likeThe Butterfly EffectandA Sound of Thunder, Richard says, do not handle the topic well because they make the common mistake of using time travel as a means of changing the past. Richard thinks that movies that do handle time travel well areBill and Ted’s Excellent AdventureandHarry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
At the conclusion of the show, John admits to having been won over to the project of philosophy and pop culture despite his previous skepticism.