"Why are movies important?" With this question, posed on the second page of The World Viewed, Stanley Cavell both inaugurates and pre-emptively rejects the tradition of English-language philosophy of film. Published in 1971 and written at Wesleyan, Cavell's masterpiece was arguably the first full-length manuscript on film written by a British-American academic philosopher. And yet it has largely been disregarded or even denigrated by the tradition that followed it, in large part because of the radicality of Cavell's starting point. Rather than initiating the study of film by asking "Why are movies important?", most academic philosophers initiate that study by asking "What are movies, and how are they unique?" The force and novelty of Cavell's theory of film depends on his intuition that this latter question is the wrong basis for such a theory. In this course, we will closely read the entirety of The World Viewed. This exercise in close reading is also an exercise in desedimentation: by taking Cavell's poetic, autobiographical, far-reaching, and intentionally obscure writing seriously, we will attempt to deconstruct our notions of philosophy, film, thought, and the places the threee intersect. Special attention will be paid to Cavell's inaugural question. Readings will be supplemented by regular film screenings and additional work by Cavell, Noel Carroll, Susanne Langer, and others. |