b002 电影哲学 原文

Philosophical Meaning behind FilmsYou're listening to the Onscreen from the BBC World Service. Coming up why the Edinburgh Film Festival is getting a make over. Personally, I can’t help feeling there are too many comic book adaptations in the cinema at the moment. But, maybe that’s because I’m not exactly the target audience, or maybe it’s because I have failed to understand the deeper philosophical meaning behind these films. For instance, have you ever considered the X-men movies are just not about mutants with super human abilities, but a perfect illustration about the ideas of the famous 17th century’s philosopher Spinoza?(MOVIE SNIPPET)Well, just the X-mean grapple with questions like 'what makes us unique' and 'what we are really capable of', so did Spinoza. That’s according to my next guest, the philosophy professor Olivier Pouriol, who uses American blockbusters as teaching aids for his students in Paris. Ridley Scott's science fiction film Bladerunner about genetically manufactured beings called 'Replicants', is one of his favourites. I ask professor Pouriol, why he didn’t use films by great European directors such as Ingmar Bergman or Jean-Luc Goddard in his philosophy lessons. Was he worried his students might get bored?OLIVIER POURIOL: It’s not a question of being bored, it’s ju st a question that if you take movies that are already considered as clever and intellectual, there’s no point making the connection with philosophy, because it's already in it, you know, goes with it. So I think it’s much more interesting to take mainstream American movies like blockbusters because in a ways its, um, what philosophy always dreamt about, to be universal, you know. So blockbusters are, you may say, universal in a concrete way, philosophy has a pretension to being universal, so I’m trying to use this universality of the blockbusters to convey the universality of the philosophy.Can you describe one of your philosophy lessons to me?OLIVIER POURIOL: It starts with a movie clip like with one, two three minutes, to get the attention of the audience, and then I start talking and it’s like dialogue between texts, explanations and movie clips.Give me an example of that.OLIVIER POURIOL: Yeah, for example, if you take Heat of Michael Mann, youhave the struggle between, like, the best cop in the world, who is Al Pacino, and the best burglar in the world, who is Robert de Niro.(MOVIE SNIPPET)OLIVIER POURIOL: Hegal says that the first relationship between two human beings, it’s what he calls 'struggle to death', because each of them wants to be recognized as the only one, as the only spirit, or as the only human being. So we fight each other to death but with no hatred, so this is really interesting because beyond of the movie when de Niro ends up being killed by Al Pacino, they shake hands and that in a way both of them are friends, because they need each other’s recognition. This is a good way to introduce what Hegal means, and in a way that's very concrete where you can feel the violence of this antagonism.Aren't you making people feel better and cleverer about watching a Hollywood blockbuster?OLIVIER POURIOL: There’s a lot of money involved in the writing of Hollywood movies and in fact that money can show on many levels, and most script writers are very good and very are deep, so they put intelligence in places where you couldn’t imagine, you know.You know that Bladerunner, for instance, is one of your favorite films. How do you use that in your lessons?OLIVIER POURIOL: The question of this movie is when you create human beings from nothing; they're like robots, Replicants, at one point they're going to a will to be recognised as human beings.Their own conciousness.OLIVIER POURIOL: Yeah, and so you have Priest, the Replicant, who quotes Descartes(MOVIE SNIPPET)OLIVIER POURIOL: This is really the best way to prove you have a mind, you know, to say you are able to think. And that’s really the question of that movie: how do you decide that someone is authorized to live or not, how do you choose who is human, who is not human and that movie, the limit between being human or being not human it kind of moves and it’s very interesting. So I connect it too with Spinoza, who said that you're not defined by the category you belong to as maybe human being or also anything like that, but you aredefined by the kind of things you are able to do, and the first Replicants, they can do much more than normal human beings and in a way they are more human, no, they are more powerful. When you see Roy meeting his creator, Tyrol, he says, ‘I want more life.’ You could think its just a cry of frustration, because they are to die, they have only four years of life. In fact, Spinoza would say that it’s not frustration; it’s just that you cannot put death in life when we look what makes us alive, death is not within us.Now another of the movies that you use to teach is Forrest Gump, which starred Tom Hanks as this sort of very simple guy who eventually becomes president of the United States, how do you use that?OLIVIER POURIOL: In fact it's to explain what Descartes calls the difference between thought and will. You can understand that Forrest Gump has no thought, he's not clever at all, he is really stupid, but his will is infinite. And Descartes says our will as human beings is as infinite as in God while our ability to understand is always limited. With Forrest Gump you have this situation that really an extreme low level of understanding, for example after the death of his mother he starts running.(MOVIE SNIPPET)OLIVIER POURIOL: With no reason, still you can act. And this is the human situation as described by Descartes, you know, you have to act without knowing, and with Forrest Gump you can see that really.By teaching your students philosophy, and showing them blockbusters, you're helping them to understand the world better.OLIVIER POURIOL: Well, yeah, in the way, maybe I give them the means not to be passive in front of a movie you know, to be more active and to understand how it is made and maybe to make movies later.How has the philosophy establishment in France reacted to your courses? Have they embraced them or are they quite critical? Is there a feeling that your dumbing things down?OLIVIER POURIOL: No, you know because in fact I have quite a normal curriculum, so they like it. The truth is that many intellectual people like the movies. The problem is you need to give them the opportunity to say, that’s it. Hmm, I wonder what they would make of Wanted. Well, that was the Cine-philosopher Olivier Pouriol. 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