The influence of film's compelling images, characters and storylines has polarized perspectives on cinema and the moral imagination. Does film stimulate the audience's imagination and foster imitation in morally dangerous ways, or elicit ethical insight and empathy? Might the presentation of images on screen denude the capacity to conjure images in the mind's eye, or cultivate the imaginative capacity for moral vision as spectators attend to the plight of protagonists? Using Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) to interrogate paradoxical perspectives on the cinematic imagination, this article develops an account of the moral imagination focusing on sensory, emotional and empathic aspects of the audience's imaginative relationship with screen characters and their innermost thoughts and feelings.
{"title":"Imitation of Life: Cinema and the Moral Imagination","authors":"Jane Stadler","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0342","url":null,"abstract":"The influence of film's compelling images, characters and storylines has polarized perspectives on cinema and the moral imagination. Does film stimulate the audience's imagination and foster imitation in morally dangerous ways, or elicit ethical insight and empathy? Might the presentation of images on screen denude the capacity to conjure images in the mind's eye, or cultivate the imaginative capacity for moral vision as spectators attend to the plight of protagonists? Using Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959) to interrogate paradoxical perspectives on the cinematic imagination, this article develops an account of the moral imagination focusing on sensory, emotional and empathic aspects of the audience's imaginative relationship with screen characters and their innermost thoughts and feelings.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45455861","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder is an intricate explorer of perception. Many of her exquisite silent short films feature flowers that are scrutinized frame by frame in shots that appear to have layers, as well as volume, and to quiver between simultaneity and succession. Yet these perceptual palimpsests that present almost too much for the eye to take in also reveal an as yet unexplored relation to imagination. Informed by ecological principles and foregrounding floral beauty, Lowder's Bouquets create a striking bond between perceptual and imaginative space. This article draws upon twentieth-century phenomenological accounts of perception before delving into earlier historical discussions of beauty in nature and in art, and bringing out connections to moral philosophy and feminist ecophilosophy, in order to understand how the beautiful entwines with ecological concern in the perceptual-imaginative space of her films.
{"title":"Perceptual-Imaginative Space and the Beautiful Ecologies of Rose Lowder's Bouquets","authors":"Sarah Cooper","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0343","url":null,"abstract":"Experimental filmmaker Rose Lowder is an intricate explorer of perception. Many of her exquisite silent short films feature flowers that are scrutinized frame by frame in shots that appear to have layers, as well as volume, and to quiver between simultaneity and succession. Yet these perceptual palimpsests that present almost too much for the eye to take in also reveal an as yet unexplored relation to imagination. Informed by ecological principles and foregrounding floral beauty, Lowder's Bouquets create a striking bond between perceptual and imaginative space. This article draws upon twentieth-century phenomenological accounts of perception before delving into earlier historical discussions of beauty in nature and in art, and bringing out connections to moral philosophy and feminist ecophilosophy, in order to understand how the beautiful entwines with ecological concern in the perceptual-imaginative space of her films.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47127236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article starts out by introducing the category of the ‘one-character film’ — that is, narrative feature films that rely on a single onscreen character. One-character films can range from extremely laconic movies entirely focused on the action in the narrative here-and-now via highly talkative films that revolve around soliloquies of self-reflection, questioning of identity and a problematizing of the narrative past to strongly dialogue-heavy films that — via phones and other telecommunication devices — reach far beyond the depicted scene. It is on the latter that the article eventually focuses. Films like Buried (2010), Locke (2013) or The Guilty (2018) centrifugally thrust the viewers into a simultaneous present that remains invisible and that they have to imagine in sensory ways. Imagining this invisible elsewhere, which I call mise en esprit, can be facilitated and evoked through various cinematic means such as reduced within-modality-interference, suggestive verbalizations, acousmatic voices and sound effects.
本文首先介绍了“一个角色电影”的类别，也就是说，依赖于一个屏幕角色的叙事故事片。一个角色的电影可以是非常简洁的电影，完全专注于此时此地的叙事动作，也可以是围绕自我反思、身份质疑和叙事过去问题化的高度健谈的电影，还可以是通过电话和其他电信设备远远超出所描绘场景的强烈对话的电影。文章最终将重点放在后者上。《被埋葬》（2010年）、《洛克》（2013年）或《有罪》（2018年）等电影将观众离心地推入了一个同时存在的世界，这个世界仍然是看不见的，他们必须以感官的方式进行想象。想象这种看不见的其他地方，我称之为mise en esprit，可以通过各种电影手段来促进和唤起，如减少模态内干扰、暗示性言语、听觉声音和音效。
{"title":"Mise en Esprit: One-Character Films and the Evocation of Sensory Imagination","authors":"Julian Hanich","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0339","url":null,"abstract":"This article starts out by introducing the category of the ‘one-character film’ — that is, narrative feature films that rely on a single onscreen character. One-character films can range from extremely laconic movies entirely focused on the action in the narrative here-and-now via highly talkative films that revolve around soliloquies of self-reflection, questioning of identity and a problematizing of the narrative past to strongly dialogue-heavy films that — via phones and other telecommunication devices — reach far beyond the depicted scene. It is on the latter that the article eventually focuses. Films like Buried (2010), Locke (2013) or The Guilty (2018) centrifugally thrust the viewers into a simultaneous present that remains invisible and that they have to imagine in sensory ways. Imagining this invisible elsewhere, which I call mise en esprit, can be facilitated and evoked through various cinematic means such as reduced within-modality-interference, suggestive verbalizations, acousmatic voices and sound effects.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49640086","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article takes up film and imagination via the problem of empathy. Proposing a different entry into contemporary polemics over empathy, the ‘empathic imagination’ is reconceptualized as a problematic of form rather than psychological experience. That is, instead of adopting a pre-given notion of empathy to illuminate the relation between film and the spectator's moral imagination, this article considers how that imagination is constituted in and through the image to begin with. After tracing the genealogy of empathy ( Einfühlung) in German aesthetics, the concept is put into play through readings of ‘#Look Beyond Borders’, an online video produced by Amnesty International, and two documentaries by Johan van der Keuken – Face Value (1991) and Herman Slobbe (1966). In these works, the facial image is read as the imaginary terrain in which to explore very different notions of what might count as empathy and the empathic imagination in film and media.
{"title":"‘The Cruel Radiance of What Is’: Empathy, Imagination and Estrangement in Johan van der Keuken's Face Value and Herman Slobbe","authors":"A. Geil","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0344","url":null,"abstract":"This article takes up film and imagination via the problem of empathy. Proposing a different entry into contemporary polemics over empathy, the ‘empathic imagination’ is reconceptualized as a problematic of form rather than psychological experience. That is, instead of adopting a pre-given notion of empathy to illuminate the relation between film and the spectator's moral imagination, this article considers how that imagination is constituted in and through the image to begin with. After tracing the genealogy of empathy ( Einfühlung) in German aesthetics, the concept is put into play through readings of ‘#Look Beyond Borders’, an online video produced by Amnesty International, and two documentaries by Johan van der Keuken – Face Value (1991) and Herman Slobbe (1966). In these works, the facial image is read as the imaginary terrain in which to explore very different notions of what might count as empathy and the empathic imagination in film and media.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44699113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The oft-undiscernible boundary between imaging and imagining is especially apparent in our cinematic experience. In Buddhist philosophy, imaging and imagining are neither the same nor different, neither not the same nor not different. In this article, I argue that imaging in Buddhism refers not only to the formational process of an image (external form) out there, but also the external form's interdependent relationship with the internal forms (sensory organs). Likewise, imagining refers not only to the formational process of an image in here, but also to how these imaginations constitute the body's relationship with the larger milieu out there. In the second half of this article, I analyse how the interdependent relationship between imaging and imagining is configured textually and in the overall cinematic experience in Bi Gan's Diqiu zuihou de yewan/ Long Day's Journey into Night (2018).
{"title":"Cinematic Imaging and Imagining through the Lens of Buddhism","authors":"Victor Fan","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0346","url":null,"abstract":"The oft-undiscernible boundary between imaging and imagining is especially apparent in our cinematic experience. In Buddhist philosophy, imaging and imagining are neither the same nor different, neither not the same nor not different. In this article, I argue that imaging in Buddhism refers not only to the formational process of an image (external form) out there, but also the external form's interdependent relationship with the internal forms (sensory organs). Likewise, imagining refers not only to the formational process of an image in here, but also to how these imaginations constitute the body's relationship with the larger milieu out there. In the second half of this article, I analyse how the interdependent relationship between imaging and imagining is configured textually and in the overall cinematic experience in Bi Gan's Diqiu zuihou de yewan/ Long Day's Journey into Night (2018).","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46253661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"New Takes on Film and Imagination","authors":"S. Cooper","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0338","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49320206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
What is the relation between ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’, especially where literary texts are concerned? This essay explores the question by recalling the author's experience with radio plays in the 195...
{"title":"What is a Literary Image?","authors":"Samuel Weber","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0328","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0328","url":null,"abstract":"What is the relation between ‘seeing’ and ‘reading’, especially where literary texts are concerned? This essay explores the question by recalling the author's experience with radio plays in the 195...","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45034834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The neologism ‘(s)extremism’ indicates a nexus of ideas intrinsic to the way in which contemporary culture imagines the figure of the violent woman. First, it identifies the sexism visible in react...
{"title":"‘(S)extremism’: Imagining Violent Women in the Twenty-First Century with Navine G. Khan-Dossos and Julia Kristeva","authors":"L. Downing","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0333","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0333","url":null,"abstract":"The neologism ‘(s)extremism’ indicates a nexus of ideas intrinsic to the way in which contemporary culture imagines the figure of the violent woman. First, it identifies the sexism visible in react...","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42811143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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