Aesthetics for Birds

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art for Everyone

Tag Archives: film

October 6, 2016
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Whispers of Power, Introduction

We are very excited to introduce a new feature here at AFB: A collaborative art project between the blog and German artist Jörg Reckhenrich – and you, our readers! (See earlier AFB interview with Reckhenrich here.) In brief, Reckhenrich is creating a series of 15 drawings inspired by stills from the hit Netflix series House of Cards. The twist: the drawings are incomplete, with a blank space below each image. We invite readers to suggest captions in the comments (especially iconic quotes that offer an interesting take or spin on the image), and each week a winner will be selected. The winning caption will be written into the drawing itself, and thereby become part of the artwork. As a bonus, the winner will (1) receive recognition as a contributor to the artwork, and, at the end of the series, (2) receive a signed print of the final work! Alex and Jörg have … Continue reading →

September 28, 2016
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Spectators and Giants in Rousseau and Víctor Erice

What follows is a guest post by Byron Davies (Harvard). This column is on the 18th century Swiss Francophone philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the contemporary Spanish director Víctor Erice, especially the latter’s films The Spirit of the Beehive and El Sur. It is tempting to think that cinema somehow has a prehistory in philosophy. That is, among those philosophers who pre-date the invention of cinema, there are some whose very spirits seem to inform the medium itself, making their connections to particular films, even if only implicit, seem especially fated or necessary. Strikingly, these are often philosophers somehow opposed to theater and “theatricality,” and known for harshly depicting the effects of sitting isolated in the dark. (The well-worn comparisons between cinema and Plato’s Myth of the Cave come to mind.) Among such philosophers is surely Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an eighteenth-century philosopher who asked what it is to be spectator of, as well as a spectacle for, other persons. For … Continue reading →

June 10, 2015
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Race & Aesthetics 2015: A Retrospective

What follows is a guest post by Daniel Abrahams and Shen-yi Liao. This blog post is primarily written by Daniel Abrahams, a PhD student specializing in aesthetics at University of Leeds, and supplemented by Shen-yi Liao (in brackets), a Marie Curie fellow at University of Leeds. Liao was a co-organizer of the conference and Abrahams was a conference assistant. However, we would like to stress that these are just our own perspectives rather than any “official” account. Photos are by Shen-yi Liao and Sara Protasi. Race & Aesthetics: A British Society of Aesthetics Connections Conference ran the 19th and 20th of May, at the Leeds Art Gallery. Fourteen speakers and several dozen more participants gathered to share thoughts on any of the points of intersection between the philosophies of race and aesthetics. Topics ranged from sexual attraction to humour to Brett Bailey’s Exhibit B. In what follows, I’ll try to present short but … Continue reading →

June 1, 2014
by Aesthetics for Birds
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The Twisted Femmes Fatales of Christopher Nolan

What follows is a guest post by Andrew Kania. Looking at the plots of Christopher Nolan’s films, you might worry about his attitude towards women. At the end of his first feature-length film, Following (1998), the only female character (“The [unnamed] Blonde”) is murdered with a hammer by her gangster boyfriend. In Nolan’s first mainstream movie, the revenge thriller Memento (2001), Leonard is on a quest to avenge his wife’s rape and murder, though it may be that Leonard himself has inadvertently killed her with an insulin overdose, the fate of another female character in the film (unless these women are one and the same – it’s complicated). The rivalry of the magicians in The Prestige (2006) begins when one kills the other’s wife by (again, inadvertently) tying a trick knot incorrectly. The wife of the first at least gets to exercise her agency in her own death – she hangs herself to escape a (semi-)loveless … Continue reading →