What Film Is Good For

On the Values of Spectatorship
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-0-520-38681-5
Verlag: UCAL POD

Buch, Englisch, 432 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 604 g

Reihe: University of California Press

For well over a century, going to the movies has been a favorite pastime for billions across the globe. But is film actually good for anything? This volume brings together thirty-six scholars, critics, and filmmakers in search of an answer. Their responses range from the most personal to the most theoretical—and, together, recast current debates about film ethics. Movie watching here emerges as a wellspring of value, able to sustain countless visions of "the good life." Films, these authors affirm, make us reflect, connect, adapt; they evoke wonder and beauty; they challenge and transform. In a word, its varieties of value make film invaluable.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rossouw, Martin P.

Hanich, Julian

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Mike Figgis

Introduction: Film Ethics as Delivering the Goods

Martin P. Rossouw and Julian Hanich

PART ONE. ADAPTIVE GOODS
1. A Portal to Another World: On Cinema, Climate Change, and a Good Apocalypse

Jennifer Fay
2. Scaling Down: On the Unsustainable Pleasure of Large-File Streaming

Laura U. Marks
3. It’s Invaluable: On Film Spectatorship in the Era of Covid-19

Sarah Cooper
4. Stabilities and Mobilities: On the Generic Values of Emplacements, Displacements,

and Outplacements

Timothy Corrigan

PART TWO. EMPATHETIC GOODS

5. Lies, Loops, or Liberation: On the Dis/Obedience of Feeling More

Michele Aaron
6. Public Engagement: On Postcolonial African Cinema’s Critical Value

Litheko Modisane
7. Shedding Light on Abject Lives: On Global Cinema as Ethical Art

Seung-hoon Jeong
8. Empathy: On Its Limitations and Liabilities

Malcolm Turvey
9. Political Impact: On the Societal Vibrancy of Film

Jens Eder

PART THREE. SENSTITIVE GOODS

10. Moral Reflection: On the Reflective Afterlife of Screen Stories

Carl Plantinga and Garrett Strpko
11. Challenge and Discomfort: On Situated Elitist Pleasures in Art and Indie Film

Geoff King
12. Heterocosmic Connections: On the Many Worlds and World Values of Cinema

Daniel Yacavone
13. Depth of Experience: On Early Phenomenology and the Value of Boredom in the Cinema

Christian Ferencz-Flatz
14. Striking Beauty: On Recuperating the Beautiful in Cinema

Julian Hanich

PART FOUR. REVIVING GOODS

15. Wondering Offscreen: On Cinema’s Transformations of Our Relation to the Unseen

Jaimie Baron
16. Coming to Wonder: On Cinema’s Renewal of Vision

Catherine Wheatley
17. Moral Improvement: On How Watching Films Might Make Us Better People

Thomas E. Wartenberg
18. Cinematic Ethics: On Film as Transformative Experience

Robert Sinnerbrink
19. Spiritual Exercises Before a Screen: On “Film as Philosophy” and Its Transformational

Ethics

Martin P. Rossouw

PART FIVE. COMMUNAL GOODS

20. Remembrance and Reflection: On Social Justice Cinema in the #BlackLivesMatter Era

Maryann Erigha Lawer
21. Making Movie Generations: On the Cultural Work of Hollywood Remaking

Kathleen Loock
22. Reaching Unlettered Audiences: On Global Blockbuster Cinema and Its Oral Affinities

Sheila J. Nayar
23. Love of Community and Reality: On André Bazin and the Good of Cinema

Dudley Andrew

PART SIX. MEDIAL GOODS

24. Projection and Protection: On Cinemagoing as Playing Hide-and-Seek with Reality

Francesco Casetti
25. An Animated and Animating Medium: On Hegel,Adorno, and the Good of Film

Nicholas Baer
26. The Bigger Picture: On Watching Films on a Cinema Screen

Martine Beugnet
27. Quality Time: On Resisting What’s Next, or Staying with the Credits

Tiago de Luca

PART SEVEN. UNSETTLED GOODS

28. Wanton Destruction: On Cinema’s Antisocial Thrills

Adrian Martin
29. Alienating Interventions: On What the “Bad” in David Lynch’s Films Is “Good” For

Annie van den Oever and Dominique Chateau
30. Dangerous Situations: On Whether Cinema Is Poisonous

Michel Chion
31. Good for Nothing? On How Films Help Us through the Night

Tom Gunning
32. Medium-Sized Matters: On Whether Cinema Has Made Any Difference

Mark Cousins

Afterword by Radu Jude

List of Contributors

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Julian Hanich is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Groningen. He is author of The Audience Effect: On the Collective Cinema Experience and Cinematic Emotion in Horror Films and Thrillers: The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear.

Martin P. Rossouw is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Art History and Image Studies at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He is author of Transformational Ethics of Film: Thinking the Cinemakeover in the Film-Philosophy Debate.