In this paper we argue that political envy is central to unraveling the racial dynamics in Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing. Building upon Sara Protasi’s taxonomy of envy and, in particular, from her analysis of some DTRT scenes, we conduct a more thorough interrogation of how political emotions, most notably envy, shape race relations in the film. We start by summarizing Protasi’s account of envy and then review two alternative accounts of political emotions. After elucidating what envy is and (...) how it becomes politically valenced, we analyze three key scenes that are the most emblematic of political envy: 1) a discussion between three Black characters on the street corner, 2) an exchange between the film’s main character, Mookie, and his racist co-worker, Pino; and 3) the film’s climactic riot sequence. Our analysis of these three scenes, in addition to complementing previous readings of Do The Right Thing, highlight envy’s potential to either impede or promote political action. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that political envy is central to unraveling the racial dynamics in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. Building upon Sara Protasi’s taxonomy of envy and, in particular, from her analysis of some DTRT scenes, we conduct a more thorough interrogation of how political emotions, most notably envy, shape race relations in the film. We start by summarizing Protasi’s account of envy and then review two alternative accounts of political emotions. After elucidating what envy is and (...) how it becomes politically valenced, we analyze three key scenes that are the most emblematic of political envy: 1) a discussion between three Black characters on the street corner, 2) an exchange between the film’s main character, Mookie, and his racist co-worker, Pino; and 3) the film’s climactic riot sequence. Our analysis of these three scenes, in addition to complementing previous readings of Do The Right Thing, highlight envy’s potential to either impede or promote political action. (shrink)

This article discusses the history of film ontology and advocates to shift from traditional film interpretations to understanding all images as pseudoreal. Historically, film and images have been understood with an inherent connection to pro-filmic reality: the captured image represented what was in front of the camera at some point in time. While theories of how to retain a sense of film realism have evolved as the processes for capturing and altering images have improved, a proclivity towards the real has (...) been maintained throughout most image interpretation techniques. Due to technological advancements in creating and altering images, the distinction between real and artificial within images has vanished; audiences cannot distinguish what is real or artificial within images. Consequently, the film-image will now be considered pseudoreal; images must be interpreted as completely severed from a relationship with pro-filmic reality. All images must now be understood with deference to the possibility that any or all of the image could be artificial. The first impulse to understanding images in the modern world should be to acknowledge that there is no inherent connection between an image and the real. (shrink)

The film Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987) begins to answer the startling question, “How could being human be superior to enjoying an angelic existence?” The film’s elevation of ordinary humanity is so persuasive that a few angels forego eternity, “take the plunge,” and become mortals. The first layer of human attraction is found in the uncomplicated pleasures of physical embodiment. To the enjoyment of bodily sensations such as warming our hands on a chilly day, the film adds the ecstasy (...) of romantic love, including the social intimacy of conjugal union. The third layer of human life is the stratum of meaning that purposeful action contributes. Finitude demands that we must decide how to spend our limited time as not all options can or will remain open. This animates life with the hope of positive outcomes and the trepidation of mishap. The meaning that accrues to experience, then, depends on the temporality and limitations inherent within life and definitive of mortal existence as such. (shrink)

The Ontological Question seems to be the main source of controversy in the Anti-intentionalism versus Intentionalism debate. The Ontological Question asks what determines the meaning of an artwork? Intentionalists argue that the intention of the artist determines the meaning of the artwork, while Anti-intentionalists argue that the artwork alone determines its own meaning. In this article I answer this question as it relates to film analysis. I propose a Biosemantic variety of film analysis, rooted in semantic externalist philosophy of language. (...) Via this Biosemantic approach, and with the help of a case study of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, I provide an answer to the Ontological Question which refutes two main varieties of Intentionalism and supports Anti-intentionalist film analysis. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the ways in which the humor and narrative arc of Bo Burnham’s comedy special Inside (2021) reflects the existential attitude of today’s chronically-online youth, which I describe as dominated by online aestheticism. First, a Kierkegaardian reading will be offered of Bo’s character as he struggles between pursuing an aesthetic or ethical life-view, watching his own eventual downfall into despair from within. The impact of the film upon its audience, who watches the film from without, will (...) be analyzed both in light of Kierkegaard’s philosophy and Mark Fisher’s cultural criticism. Finally, I discuss whether Inside, in its aestheticism, engenders or thwarts ethical development in its audience and how a tragic, rather than comical, understanding of the special points to an optimistic answer. (shrink)

A fraughtness in the human communicative situation—the impossibility of assuring collegial equality in our presentations to each other, given that we are striving to control each other’s attention—is compellingly figured in the treatment of the focus plane of show entertainment in film musicals. In Busby Berkeley’s seminal work in 42nd Street (1933), the portrait of the Great Showman in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), and Brian De Palma’s satirical Phantom of the Paradise (1974) it may be seen that the show musical (...) genre has a distinctive preoccupation with the focus plane of performance and constructs this place of encounter as fraught—in the sense not only that characters are shown in possibly untenable positions but that viewers are made to recognize that they might be in an untenable relationship with the performers and makers of the shows they are looking at. (shrink)

This paper investigates Shannon Sullivan’s concept of white privilege through the lens of James Gray’s 2022 film, Armageddon Time. Sullivan investigates the concept of white racial privilege and the problem with middle-class, white anti-racism. In Armageddon Time, the Graff family, “good white people”, progressives with anti-racist intentions, actually strive to achieve the white privilege Sullivan analyzes. The dynamics of white privilege in the film are more complex because the family is Jewish. I argue that antisemitism provides a problem for Sullivan’s (...) analytical matrix regarding white privilege, provide an alternative strategy for dealing with ethnic and religious nuances within the category of whiteness and offer a conjecture as to why Sullivan relies on a mostly binary white and non-white analysis. (shrink)