The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology of Film

by Stanley Cavell

Stanley Cavell looks closely at America's most popular art and our perceptions of it. His explorations of Hollywood's stars, directors, and most famous films--as well as his fresh look at Godard, Bergman, and other great European directors--will be of lasting interest to movie-viewers and intelligent people everywhere.

Genres: Film, Philosophy, Art, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Essays, Criticism

253 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Stanley Cavell was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, and ordinary language philosophy. As an interpreter, he produced influential works on Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Heidegger. His work is characterized by its conversational tone and frequent literary references.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to emphatically disagree with the Amazon reviewer who called this an "easy read." Sure, Cavell doesn't use the standard theory-speak; he uses plain English, but he uses it in strange ways. He also presumes that the reader possesses not only a thorough familiarity with classic Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood cinema, and the European "New Waves" of the 1960s, but also a solid grounding in the history of philosophy, Romantic poetry, early photographic history, and the history of modern art from Manet through color field painting. I thought I had a fairly firm grasp on most of those things, and still I found the book something to wrestle with. But wrestling with it is a rewarding experience. Cavell's way of looking at cinema seems wholly unique in the history of film theory or film philosophy - there's little I can even compare it to. My reading of the book is that he views philosophy and art as two sides of the same coin, two variations of historically conditioned responses to our epistemological and ontological condition. The changes we see throughout the history of art (and throughout the history of cinema, which is but a subset of that history and whose arrival itself signals a change) correspond with roughly contemporaneous developments in the history of philosophy - both are reflections of our faith in the world, or our isolation from it. The central concepts he circles around continuously all possess a dual meaning, both artistic and philosophical - "presence," "presentness," "acknowledgement," "conviction," "automatism" - I won't attempt to define them because I can't. I don't think that I've understood more than 10% of this book. I give it 4 stars because what I have understood is compelling, and because what I haven't yet understood I feel like is worthy of trying to understand.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book expecting an examination of film as an art form, possibly reflections on the youth of the genera, its development, and maybe even some historical or technical facts to enlighten the discussion.

Instead, I received a somewhat enigmatic, candid, and meandering set of reflections on some elements of the phenomenology of film, with the occasional musing on the ontology of media. The reflections call out little commonalities we see through films, often with just a single reference to a famous scene. I am amazed to find these articulate pictures of exactly what it is that draws us to all the various elements of the silver screen side by side with such confused and over-thought metaphysical analyses.

Cavell's history in philosophy is very similar to mine, a strong background in 20th century analytic works followed by an infatuation with the continental tradition stemming out of Husserl and Heidegger, mostly. Given our common ground, I expected to track well with Cavil as he dove into what makes a photograph a photograph and a record a record, but instead found quite a confused exploration that set the tone for the rest of the books ontological observations. Chapter 2, "Sights and Sounds", is quite the mess of equivocation and an attempt to make noumena our phenomena. Cavell stretches himself across philosophical traditions instead of allowing one to inform another. He practically admits to this near the end of the chapter, when he bemoans the epistemologist's approach and speaks of Hegel and Heidegger almost in the same breath.

If you are the kind of person who has already invested a great deal of thought into what makes movies "movies" - a psychological/phenomenological attribution, not an ontological or grammatical one - both for you and people at large, Cavell will articulate your fascination in beautiful ways, and provide wonderful insights of his own. If instead you are interested in what I believe is the next step, the examination and articulation of film itself, the ontological facts of film, and its place in the history of art, look elsewhere.

[Tacodisc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woosh. This is a challenging book. Cavell's deep insight is that we must take ordinary language as the basis of interrogating conceptual differences between ways of viewing the world. Objects in the world vs. Photographic representations; Paintings vs. Photographs; Plays vs. Film. How do we situate the ontology of film - the specific difference of Being that makes film what it is - to understand the unique ways it generates meaning?

For a work that takes its aim as clarity, it is commendable in its avoidance of jargon and theoretically technical language. But ordinary language, it turns out, presents minefields of confusion. (And perhaps that's the point.) One reviewer commented that he could grasp what Cavell's arguments are about, but not so much what those arguments are. That's a nice way of putting it.

As much as I wanted to trash the book, something about it kept drawing me back in: Cavell has a way of teasing readers into a sense of uncovering philosophical mysteries. (Not sure I have yet.) His style is peculiar and totally his own, somehow rendering ordinary language completely strange and beautiful (not unlike Horse ebooks, legend of early Twitter).

Is it all nonsense? Maybe. And yet it's hard to deny the power of its language:

So our slaughtered beauty mocks us, and gods become legends.

[Nat]

According to Cavell, the "material basis of the media of movies" is "a succession of automatic world projections". In "More of the World Viewed", he responds to an argument that cites the existence of animated cartoons as a counterexample to this account of the media of movies: cartoons are not projections of the real world, and yet they are movies.

Cavell's response consists of pointing out some relevant differences between movies in his sense and cartoons. Here are some selections:

1. We are unsure how the physical laws of our world apply to the cartoon world: gravity is often abrogated, the bodies of cartoons are indestructible, and possibly immortal, and perfectly expressive--they are "animations, disembodiments, pure spirits" (170).
2. As "pure spirits", cartoon animals live in a world devoid of sex and death.
3. Cartoon terror is absolute because the body is indestructible, and so any threat is a threat to the soul itself (171).

[Sébastien Bovie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Recommend if: into film/art-history and ontological thinking based on the principal of project-audience and perception.

To me, it felt a bit outdated. But honest, which is something to appreciate.

Certain references are based on the memory of the writer, not necessarily a frame-to-frame analysis of scenes that impacted the cinema development. This leaves room to think about our own recollection of classic films; room to think about the development of cinema since the 1970s and the prominent place the audience takes in it; and most of all, it gives room to breath.

No ultra-dense academical analysis where you lose track of what sentence you're on. His comparisons to traditional painting and literature, f.e. loved the elaboration of how Baudelaire ties in with the myth of films, puts a relatively young medium in a new perspective (then again, a perspective that feels outdated by now).
Frequenting the cinemas as a social happening have disappeared with the rise of streaming surfaces, torrenting and the installation of home cinemas.

But Cavell gives space for further thinking, he's a stepping stone between the 'sec' and dry history of film and the ontological approach that we should have towards it in our current day.

[Hugh Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

great

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The knowledge of the self as it is always takes place in the betrayal of the self as it was."

[Sean Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gone back and re-read chapters on painting, exhibition, color, automatisms, photography and spent time analyzing the philosophy. It is a good judge of the weakened state of current artistic endeavors for those who subscribe to views that art is of a historical and social world. He attempts to show that modernism has tossed a dark sheet over our heads, preventing us to see the world at it is, but distorted by our human condition. Cavell calls to attention that all you have to do to see the world is pull the cloth off and look out.

as for readability..

very confusing book on film/art and culture. some of its ideas made sense to me only after explained in class but other than that it was a painful read first time through, only making sense after many times back searching for specific answers.

[joseph m · Rating 5 out of 5]

(One can have dreams and have hallucinations. But it makes no apparent sense of being present at dreams or at hallucinations. This suggests why it is wrong to think of movies in terms of dreams or hallucinations.)

[Audrey Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-read with Ben; the gift that keeps on giving.

[KeyForLocked · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s the kind of book that lays bare every old white man’s taste.
Writing, in this case, is a catastrophe — just imagine someone trying to write about cinema in the style of Philosophical Investigations, and you’ll have a fair sense of it. The affection he enjoys, both in England and France (along with Rorty), comes, I suspect, from his rare posture within the analytic style: that of the intellectual. He looks erudite, cultured, always ready to lecture you on the history of philosophy, with just enough political seasoning — a whiff of “social concern.”

To be fair, his accessibility owes something to his genuine cinephile curiosity: he really wants to know what actors are *like*, how intimacy between characters develops. But as for the so-called “theory,” you’ll find it better handled in Noël Carroll (2020) or Arnold Sesonske (1974) — the latter, ironically, being the very essay he replies to in the appendix.

[Benji · Rating 2 out of 5]

This a very difficult book to make sense of, and I’m glad I’m not the only who felt how overcomplicated this was. Cavell takes so much time building up to a point and trying to lay out all the groundwork, and then he kind of just stumbles over what his point is and isn’t really able to present it eloquently. There are some moments here where you can kind of make sense of what he’s saying about the human connection with the film and the anatomy behind that relationship but it would need slot of rereading for me to really grasp this

[Aaron]

One of the most difficult books I've read in recent memory. It's written in fairly ordinary language, but it doesn't make sense to me.

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

You just love to tease us all, don't you!

[Kevin Lucia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't know if this'll make any sense, but this was the easiest-to-read mind-baffler I've ever...er... read. For my film and philosophy class, and I'll say this: Cavell does use plain language. But his points, aims, and arguments are practically incomprehensible, and what's more ludicrous is he often admits that.

Honestly, I think it's more my thin philosophical background that's gave me a hard time here, and I blame that, not Cavell. Even so, what I took away from this was minimal.

[Klay Kubiak · Rating 5 out of 5]

On of the more practical/accessible pieces of film philosophy.