Cinematic Philosophy: Experiential Affirmation in Memento

This article demonstrates that Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000) meets both conditions of Paisley Livingston's bold thesis of cinema as philosophy. I delineate my argument in terms of Aaron Smuts's clarifications of Livingston's conditions. The results condition, which is concerned with the nature of the philosophical content, is developed in relation to Berys Gaut's conception of narrational confirmation, which I designate ‘experiential affirmation.’ Because experiential affirmation is a function of cinematic depiction, it meets Livingston's means condition, which is concerned with the capacities of the medium or art form. I address two objections to my argument and conclude with a brief commentary on the implications for the broader relationship between film and philosophy.     

Cinematic depiction of conflicts of interest in romantic relationships

Conflicts of interest resulting from a romantic relationship, just like conflicts of interest of a financial nature, have the potential to negatively affect professional decisions. For this reason, many companies, universities, and government agencies have policies designed to prevent conflicts of interest at the expense of personal liberties. In addition, the feminist literature in the last two decades has added the specter of sexual harassment to the evaluation of conflicts, of interest. A few academic authors have voiced opposition to this state of affairs. In an effort to enrich the debate with viewpoints from outside of academia, I analyze six popularly acclaimed motion pictures that address the issue of conflicts of interest in romantic relationships. All six films convey the idea that people are aware of potential complications but regularly avoid these complications. This suggests that restrictive policies on conflicts of interest may not be justified.     

Audience,Implicit Racial Bias,and Cinematic Twists in Zootopia

This article argues that Zootopia, while positively exploring implicit racial bias, nonetheless leaves aside a huge swath of nonwhite viewers. By using the vehicle of fear that prey animals have for predators as a metaphor for race, its story primarily caters to white audiences and encourages them to consider what sorts of implications biased presumptions and predispositions might have on one's fellow creatures. Through the use of different epistemological and thematic twists, this movie drives home its point of showing the negative impacts that implicit racial biases may have, even as it sidelines many of its potential viewers.     

Jesus in Hollywood The Cinematic Jesus in a Christological and Contemporary Perspective

This article discusses what early Christian literary sources (Didascalia, the Apostolic Constitutions and Canons and John Chrysostom) say about the upbringing of children. It centres around three aspects:(1) the responsibility of parents to rear children in accordance with Christian ideals, including the responsibility to carry out the upbringing in daily life, (2) its goal and (3) its substance and methods. To put the ideals of the Christian texts in their wider cultural context, the article gives a brief outline of relevant aspects of the upbringing of children in the Greco-Roman world. The Christian sources seem to emphasise even more than pagan authors the need for moral formation, which is the ultimate goal of the upbringing, and argue that, in the end, the parents’ salvation depends on taking this task seriously. The texts reflect the ideal that it is mainly the parents themselves, and not nurses or other servants, who should carry out the Christian formation. Controlling the social lives of children and and leading them into a comprehensive life of piety are seen as significant. The Christian texts argue for a more extensive use of corporal punishment than the classical ideal of the bonus paterfamilias indicated.     

Group Artistic Creativity: Creative Clusters and Cinematic Success in Feature Films1

Filmmaking represents a distinctive form of group creativity in which many individuals contribute to a single creative product. This exploratory investigation examines these contributions in 1,327 English‐language, narrative feature films. Besides control variables, the measures included 2 criteria of impact (Best Picture honors, movie guide ratings) and 16 assessments of outstanding cinematic contributions (direction, male and female lead, male and female supporting, screenplay, art direction, costume design, makeup, cinematography, film editing, score, song, visual effects, sound effects editing, sound). A factor analysis showed that the contributions formed 4 creative clusters: dramatic, visual, technical, and musical. Hierarchical regression analyses indicate that a film's impact was a positive additive function of the dramatic and visual clusters, with the dramatic having the primary role.     

The Art Type Theory of Art

Abstract

The theory I present and defend in this paper—what I term the art type theory— holds that something is a work of art iff it belongs to an established art type. Something is an established art type, in turn, either because its paradigmatic instances standardly satisfy eight art-making conditions, or because the art world has seen fit to enfranchise it as such. It follows that the art status of certain objects is independent of what any individual or culture might say about it, while the art status of others fundamentally depends on the judgment of the art world. Because of the theory's quasi-institutional component, I conclude by defending it against four objections that have been raised against institutional definitions.