The Seventh Seal as existentialist text

In Cinema, Philosophy, Bergman, Paisley Livingston addresses the question of whether cinema can be said to do philosophy, and if so by what means. I am immediately put ill at ease by his definition of philosophy, which seems unfairly skewed … Read More

The Knight

What are the tropes or models we might use to understand the character of Antonius Block? Here, perhaps, are a few ways in.

Taking cue from our discussion of Kierkegaard, a good place to begin may be with the Knight … Read More

closure

We ended class today by talking about the ending of The Seventh Seal and whether it was satisfying.  Some people thought that the film “over-ended,” i.e. it should have ended with the image of the girl’s face (ironically, this discussion occurred … Read More

Bergman, Rothko and the mythic

I was thinking about death in cinema as it relates to other mediums of art making (I’ve also been recently reading Boaz Hagin’s book, Death in Classical Hollywood Cinema which seems to provide a wider basis for theoretically approaching these … Read More

De Düva

For fans (or non-fans?) of Ingmar Berman, I highly recommend this 1968 parody short on his works (if chesska is the game of life, then why not badmintonska? Baseballska?).[and here’s a rotoscope parody of the parody].

Where does parody fit in … Read More

Dead

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Poetic Thinking — can Nietzsche help us? (some insights from The Gay Science)

Here are some quotes from “The Gay Science” by Nietzsche. They have been continuosly in my mind during our discussions regarding possibile characterization of “poetic thinking”. They are also relevant in specific with respect to the use of language poetically.

What … Read More

Joan Didion, Emily Post, and Reclaiming Pre-Feminist Handbooks

Joan Didion, in The Year of Magical Thinking, finds Emily Post’s 1922 manual about etiquette to be the most helpful in helping her understand her own experience of grief. Didion culls through various texts in her mourning, looking for answers. … Read More

Death in the Cabbage Patch

Our discussion of Montaigne and his notion of a swift death made me think of the death of Vito Corleone in The Godfather. Montaigne writes: “I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening” … Read More

Dear Joan

Dear Joan,

I have been thinking about thinking. Being critical v. (what strikes me as its colloquial opposite) being generous.

Thinking against v. thinking with. Reading generously as an antidote to “picking and picking and picking.”

But still: I hate … Read More