Philosophy

Poverty Porn, Pre-Humanism and Beasts of the Southern Wild

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

Several weeks ago, I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild (adapted from the one-act play Juicy and Delicious by Lucy Alibar), the first feature-length film by director Benh Zeitlin and possibly one of the toughest films to characterize that I’ve ever seen.  Whatever other faults it may have– and I will get to those shortly–…

Read More

The “Real” and “True” You

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Film, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Relativism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

Last week, my Philosophy and Film class took up the theme of “documentary truth.”  In preparation for our Tuesday night seminar, students were required to choose one film from a list of documentaries (Grizzly Man, The Thin Blue Line, Night and Fog, Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans, Man on Wire, Super Size Me, Ghosts…

Read More

Film of Exception: Zero Dark Thirty

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I’m not sure exactly where to place the blame for the total disappointment that is the (Academy Award-nominated) film Zero Dark Thirty, which tells a based-on-real-events story of “the greatest manhunt in history.”  The hunted is, of course, al-Qaeda founder and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks Osama bin Laden.  Zero Dark Thirty is organized as…

Read More

Concepts in Motion (or, Why You Should Assign Short-Films in Philosophy Courses)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Thinking in Images 0 Comments

“I say that I do philosophy, which is to say that I try to invent concepts.  What if I say, to you who do cinema: what do you do?” –Gilles Deleuze French philosopher Gilles Deleuze famously speculated in Cinema 1 (1983) that what he called the “movement-image,” a unique creative product of cinema, makes it…

Read More

Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

It’s been a little while since the inhabitants of Facebookistan got all fired up about something–  where are you now Kony2012?— so I was half-delighted and half-disheartened to see the newest brouhaha to hit the social media site, which I’m calling the Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement (FPD).  As these things tend to happen, FPD had been…

Read More

The Vicissitudes of Netiquette

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

In the last couple of days, I’ve received a lot of criticism about this post, in which I solicited Dr. Vincent Hendricks (and encouraged my readers to solicit Dr. Hendricks) to grant an interview with me, for the benefit of his English-speaking audience, about the recent kerfuffle surrounding his decision to post on his website–…

Read More

Guest-Blogger Shiloh Whitney on the Hendricks Affair

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

[Introductory note from Dr. J: Hello, readers. Just a quick introductory note about today’s “guest blogger.” Shiloh Whitney (pictured left) is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at McGill University. She submitted a rather long comment to the previous discussion taking place on this blog surrounding the Hendricks affair, so I asked her if she wouldn’t…

Read More

The Uncanny Valley 8: Pet Robots

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Uncanny Valley, Weak Humanism 1 Comment

[This is a continuation of my (now numerous) reflections on the Uncanny Valley. You can read the previous seven installments here if you’re interested.] Late last semester, as a part of my department’s semi-regular Philosophy Film Series, we screened Mechanical Love, a 2007 documentary about the ever-evolving relationships between humans and robots. The film focuses…

Read More

If P, then WTF?! (Revisited)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about what has come to be known in the professional philosophical community as “L’Affaire Hendricks,” in which Prof. Vincent Hendricks used several explicit and sexist photos (one example on your left) to advertise his logic course at the University of Copenhagen. I was, quite honestly, surprised to see…

Read More

The Parking Lot Movie: In Defense of Service Workers

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Many years ago, when I found myself griping about the horrible and infuriating treatment that restaurant service-people– at the time, that included me– get from their patrons, I remember my father telling me: “Everyone should have at least four types of jobs in his or her life: (1) a job in the service industry, (2)…

Read More