Noel Carroll

This handbook brings together essays in the philosophy of film and motion pictures from authorities across the spectrum. It boasts contributions from philosophers and film theorists alike, with many essays employing pluralist approaches to this interdisciplinary subject. Core areas treated include film ontology, film structure, psychology, authorship, narrative, and viewer emotion. Emerging areas of interest, including virtual reality, video games, and nonfictional and autobiographical film also have dedicated chapters. Other areas of focus include the film medium’s intersection with contemporary social issues, film’s kinship to other art forms, and the influence of historically seminal schools of thought in the philosophy of film. Of emphasis in many of the essays is the relationship and overlap of analytic and continental perspectives in this subject.

Derek Matravers’s latest book—Fiction and Narrative1—is a bracing review of many of the leading topics in the philosophical discussion of the intersection of—as his title indicates—fiction and narrative. A major aim of the book is to dethrone the prevailing view that the notion of the imagination plays a central role in the definition of fiction versus nonfiction. In addition, Matravers argues that the distinction we should care about in this vicinity is between representation and confrontation. Matravers takes up many other issues in this book, which is alive with argument. But these are the two matters upon which I focus in this review because they appear to be the most important.Matravers dialectically paves the...

This thesis examines several major philosophical issues of film theory. These include debates about the specific nature of the film medium and of film art; debates about the nature of cinematic representation and expression; and about the nature of film fiction and film realism. I approach these issues through the work of three film theorists: Rudolf Arnheim, Andre Bazin and V. F. Perkins. ;The subject of Chapter One is Arnheim. Philosophical issues discussed include: Arnheim's commitment to Lessing-type arguments for medium specificity; his espousal of an expression theory of art; his account of expressive qualities in terms of physiognomic properties; and his ill-defined notion of film-as-merely-mechanical-reproduction-of-reality as the central theoretical contrast or foil to the ideal of film-as-art. ;Bazin is the topic of Chapter Two. Philosophical issues discussed include Bazin's account of the nature of cinematic representation and of film realism. I also review Stanley Cavell's arguments in support of a Bazinian position on the ontological status of the film image. ;Chapter Three examines Perkins' Film as Film. Perkins rejects attempts at essentialist film theory like Bazin's and Arnheim's on the basis of arguments like those that are associated, in philosophical aesthetics, with the open concept theory of art. Perkins holds that the aim of film theory is meta-criticism, and he designs a set of general principles for evaluative criticism. Specific philosophical questions are raised here about Perkins' idea that the task of film theory is meta-criticism, the adequacy of a formalist system of evaluation, Perkins' account of the nature of filmed fiction, and whether or not Perkins succeeds in escaping the essentialist bias of previous film theory. ;In the Conclusion, I argue that each of these three theorists, in different ways, is committed to the belief that certain features specific to the medium of film can be characterized in such a way that these can be used as guidelines for aesthetic decision-making. I offer general objections to what I consider an obsession with medium specificity in film theory.

En posant avec clarté des questions de philosophie de l’esprit, d’ontologie et d’épistémologie, ce livre témoigne à la fois de l’intérêt réel de la danse comme objet philosophique et du rôle unique que peut jouer la philosophie dans une meilleure compréhension de cet art. Qu’est-ce que danser ? Que nous apprend le mouvement dansé sur la nature humaine et la relation entre le corps et l’esprit ? À quelles conditions une œuvre est-elle correctement interprétée par les danseurs et bien identifiée par les spectateurs ?

In this chapter, with reference to the movie Sunset Boulevard, the author argues that some popular narratives, including notably the aforesaid classic film by Billy Wilder, can promote philosophical insight, especially with respect to their intended audience, which is to say, the mass audience. That is, some mass fictions do philosophy in the arena of popular culture, where they encourage plain viewers, readers, and/or listeners to engage in what might be called popular philosophy. In order to drive that insight home forcefully, Sunset Boulevard, like most narrative fictions of the pertinent variety, recruits our emotions. A great many of the complex structures found in countless narrative fictions involve the emotional address of the story. This is true not only of popular fictions in general but also of those that promote philosophical insight.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art, Mind, and IntentionNoël CarrollArt and Intention: A Philosophical Study, by Paisley Livingston ; 266 pp. oxford: oxford University Press, 2005, $74.00, $35.00 paper.The relevance of intention to the philosophy of art was perhaps first made explicit by G.W.F. Hegel who, in his monumental The Philosophy of Fine Art, narrowed the domain of aesthetics to art on the grounds that the beauty that pertains to art is the product of mind. Though Hegel does not single out intention as the aspect of mind that impresses him, his definition of fine art in terms of that which possesses an aim that imbues the pertinent art with content makes it probable that what he is talking about is intention. Since Hegel's day, but maybe most especially in the last three decades, philosophers of art have relied upon the notion of intention to attempt to solve many of the recurring problems of their field, including not only issues involving art status, but those involving authorship, interpretation, and fictional truth, among others. In Art and Intention: A Philosophical Study, Paisley Livingston has performed the very valuable service of corralling a substantial number of topics regarding the intersection of art and intention between the covers of one book.Although there are books devoted to exploring the relation of art and intention with respect to specific topics, most notably interpretation, there is, to my knowledge, no other book like Livingston's that surveys such a diversity of issues concerning the nexus of intention and the [End Page 394] philosophy of art. Thus, Art and Intention should be a welcome addition to the library of any aesthetician.Art and Intention comprises seven chapters. The first chapter, reasonably enough, involves a discussion of what it is to be an intention. For Livingston, who follows the action theorist Alfred Mele quite closely, an intention standardly consists of a propositional attitude in addition to a propositional content toward which said attitude is directed. The propositional attitude is executive in nature—that is, where x is the content, the intender is firmly settled upon or committed to perform x, or, at least, to try to perform x. The propositional content of an intention, in turn, is what Livingston calls a plan. An intention then is an executive attitude towards plans.I am a bit unhappy with this formulation, since I worry that it may be somewhat misleading. To my ear, the word plan insinuates the idea of a formulated method, whereas many intentional actions, including those of artists, are scarcely worked out beforehand but emerge instead in the heat of doing things. Livingston is aware of this and appears to require no more of plans in his sense than that they involve at least a rudimentary grasp of the means for carrying off the purposes at hand. This seems right to me, but it still strikes me as strained to call this sort of procedural knowledge a plan.When Jasper Johns denies that he plans to make a picture in a certain way, but rather only follows a thought that pulls in a certain direction, he does not mean to disagree with Livingston, though his choice of words seems at odds with Livingston's.1 For Johns's, like many others, plan means a precise formulation, whereas for the action theorist it is a technical term of art with broader signification. Nevertheless, since the word still retains its ordinary meaning, the possibility for confusion here is rife. So, perhaps another word can be found or, maybe, coined.Chapter 2 concerns intention and the creation of art. Livingston spends the first part of the chapter fending off counterexamples, like automatic writing, that might be adduced to challenge the claim that artworks require intentions. I am very sympathetic with his treatment of the examples he canvasses. However, I would be curious to hear what he would say about a case that I've heard described of a show at MOMA several decades back where images culled from surveillance cameras, operating automatically, were exhibited.2 These specific images were not produced intentionally by anyone. But aren't they art? Perhaps the curators will be assigned the...

A selection of essays written by one of the leading critics of film over the last two decades, this volume examines theoretical aspects of film and television through penetrating analyses of such genres as soap opera, documentary, comedy, and such topics as 'sight gags', film metaphor, point-of-view editing, and movie music. Throughout, individual films are considered in depth. Carroll's essays, moreover, represent the cognitivist turn in film studies, containing in-depth criticism of existing approaches to film theory, and heralding a new approach.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Noël Carroll THE PARADOX OFJUNK FICTION Perhaps on your way to some academic conference, if you had no papers to grade, you stopped in die airport gift shop for something to read on the plane. You saw racks of novels authored by die likes of Mary Higgins Clark, Michael Crichton, John Grisham, Danielle Steele, Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Sue Grafton, Elmore Leonard, Sara Paretsky, Tom Clancy, and so on. These are the kinds of novels that, when you lend them to friends, you don't care, unless you live in Bowling Green, Ohio, whether you ever get them back. They are mass, popular fictions. In another era, they would have been called pulp fictions. Following Thomas Roberts,1 I will call diem junk fictions, under which rubric I will also include things like Harlequin romances; sci-fi, horror, and mystery magazines; comic books; and broadcast narratives on either the radio or TV, as well as commercial movies. There are a number of interesting philosophical questions diat we may ask aboutjunk fiction. We could, for example, attempt to characterize its essential features. However, for the present, I will assume that the preceding examples are enough to provide you with a rough-andready notion of what I am calling junk fiction, and I will attempt to explore anotiier feature of the phenomenon, viz., what I call the paradox ofjunk fiction. Thejunk fictions that I have in mind are all narratives. Indeed, dieir story dimension is die most important thing about diem. Stephen King, for instance, makes diis point by saying that he is primarily a story teller rather than a writer. Junk fictions aspire to be page-turners—the blurb on the cover of Stillwatch by Mary Higgins Clark says that it is "designed to be read at breatiitaking speed"—and what motivates turning die page so quickly is our interest in what happens next. We do not dawdle Philosophy and Literature, © 1994, 18: 225-241 226Philosophy and Literature over Clark's diction as we might over Updike's nor do we savor die complexity of her sentence structure, as we do widi Virginia Woolfs. Radier, we read for story. Moreover, junk fictions are die sort of narratives that commentators are wont to call formulaic. That is, junk fictions generally belong to well-entrenched genres, which diemselves are typified by tiieir possession of an extremely limited repertoire of story-types. For example, as John Cawelti has pointed out, one such recurring Western narrative is diat of the recendy pacifist gunfighter, like Shane, who is forced by circumstances to take up his pistols again, widi altogedier devastating effect.2 Junk fictions tell diese generic stories again and again with minor variations. Sometimes diese variations may be quite clever and unexpected. Agatiia Christie was the master of this; she was able to use the conventions of the mystery genre in order to "hide" her murderers. In TheMurderofRogerAckroyd, she "secrets" the murderer in the personage of the narrator; in Ten Little Indians, die murderer is a "dead man"; while in Murder on the Orient Express, all the suspects did it. In each of these cases, Christie's brilliance hinges upon her playing (and preying) upon conventional expectations. Neverdieless, even diese surprising variations require a well-established background of narrative forms. That is, in order to appreciate diese variations, die reader must in some sense know die standard story already. And with junk fiction, it is generally fair to say that in some sense, the reader—or, at least, the reader who has read around in die genre before—knows in rough oudine how die story is likely to go. Readers and/or viewers of Jurassic Park surmised, once die dinosaur enclosures were described, diat in fairly short order die dinosaurs would trample them down and go on the rampage—after all we had already seen or read The Lost World, King Kong, and their progeny. So, junk fictions are formulaic. They rehearse certain narrative formats again and again. And, furthermore, in some very general sense, the audience already knows die story in question. But this knowledge on die part of die audience provokes a question, specifically, why if the reader, viewer or listener already...

Noel Carroll, film scholar and philosopher, offers the first serious look at the aesthetics of horror. In this book he discusses the nature and narrative structures of the genre, dealing with horror as a "transmedia" phenomenon. A fan and serious student of the horror genre, Carroll brings to bear his comprehensive knowledge of obscure and forgotten works, as well as of the horror masterpieces. Working from a philosophical perspective, he tries to account for how people can find pleasure in having their wits scared out of them. What, after all, are those "paradoxes of the heart" that make us want to be horrified?

What is art? The contributors to _Theories of Art Today _ address the assertion that the term “art” no longer holds meaning. They explore a variety of issues including: aesthetic and institutional theories of art, feminist perspectives on the philosophy of art, the question of whether art is a cluster concept, and the relevance of tribal art to philosophical aesthetics. Contributors to this book include such distinguished philosophers and historians as Arthur Danto, Joseph Margolis, and George Dickie.