Randall Auxier: Passing the Time: The Bodily Experience of the Movies (lecture)

Susanne Langer said that the primary semblance of movies as an art form is that it is like dreaming. But in this case, someone else dreams for us, and our immobility in the theater chair, in the dark, simulating the sleep state, is the beginning of an education of eye and ear in which our generalized passivity is a condition for travels through lucid narration. A thousand tiny anticipations and rememberings are blended in our interpreting of what we see and hear. I will explore some of the analogies to dreaming we experience when we see a movie on the big screen at the cinema, especially the bending and shaping of time that moviemakers (such as Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino) like to bring into our „waking dreams.“

Randall Auxier is Professor of Philosophy and Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His recent work combines popular culture with the more traditional philosophy of culture, especially in aesthetics, ontology, and time. He is author of many innovative and influential papers in process philosophy and other philosophical areas. His recent books are, Metaphysical Graffiti: Deep Cuts in the Philosophy of Rock (2017); The Quantum of Explanation (with Gary L. Herstein, 2017), and Time, Will, and Purpose (2013). The new book As Deep as It Gets: Movies and Metaphysics is prepared for publication. He edited nine volumes in The Library of Living Philosophers, including volumes on Rorty, Putnam, Eco, and Hintikka. He is co-editor of popular volumes on The Wizard of Oz, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty.