Projection and Reception of Film: A Reciprocal Ethics

Abstract Filmmakers begin their work with an empty screen in the same way that artists approach a blank canvas. The implied intention is to create a work that will evoke emotion, thought and reflection. As both film and art have developed, so have the ways in which the screen or canvas is populated. As technology has developed so have methods of transferring the intention. Likewise, there have been adaptations in the way viewers, absorbed in moving images on the screen, interpret the images from moment to moment, ultimately, as a composite work, and from their particular point of view. This article examines certain ethical aspects of watching film with regard to three relevant film innovations, namely: classical Hollywood narrative, modern auteur film, and a comparison between the experience of contemporary viewing, with its access to new technological platforms on the one hand, and viewers’ experience of the very earliest film on the other. The discussion incorporates some thoughts on the Greek philosopher Plato's Allegory of The Cave, which is presented in his work The Republic, where he interrogates how reality and knowledge are mediated according to the point of view from which the images projected onto the wall of the cave are viewed and interpreted. With reference to watching images in film, the article proposes three points of viewer interpretation that affect their experience of reality and knowledge which include the ethics of familiarity (routine viewer), the ethics of expectation (customised viewer), and the ethics of the medium (novel viewer).