Cinema and Pragmatism

CINEMA AND PRAGMATISM: A REFLECTION ON THE SIGNIC GENESIS IN CINEMATOGRAPHIC ART

Abstract:
This article aims to discuss the importance and urgency of Charles S. Peirce's philosophy to understand the creative genesis of movie making. This is a reflection on the ontology and possible cinematographic epistemology through Peircean semiotics.

Methodologically, we discuss the phenomenology of the Metropolis as a fulcrum for the development of a language and of an aesthetics such as the aesthetic dimension possible to be achieved within the language of cinema, by observing the hybrid character of such communication and the behavior of the movie makers in relation to those particular possibilities of aesthetics, and by emphasizing the importance of pragmatism in the materalization of a movie through a triadic thought, from the imaginary ideal at first, the try out of possibilities as a second stage, towards a definition of the idea, to the externalization and development of a movie as language.

This triad has the Peircean categories – Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness – as its conceptual ground, and yet keeps many correspondences with the poetics of Aristotle, allowing, thus, a reflection between Peirce and the great Greek philosopher.

Keywords: Semiotics, Pragmatism, Cinema, Epistemology, Phenomenology

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Cinema and Phenomenology

Cinema and Phenomenology: Toward a Reflection on the Phenomena of Modernity as the Kingspin for the Origin of Cinematographic Language.

Abstract:
This article aims at reflecting on cinematography, its origin and development along with the phenomenon of modernity.

The utilization of Charles S. Peirce’s Phenomenology in this study does not refer to the reception of cinematography, but to our aspiration to observe through which parameters, a language such as the one in movies, developed itself, in other words, how a kind of logic, esthetics and ethics found in the movies consolidated itself. Departing from such premises, the first step was to observe the phenomena in the metropolis through the philosophical texts of Walter Benjamin and the recent book organized by Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz: “The Movies and the Invention of Modern Life”; in search of a dialog between Peirce, Modernity and the Cinema.

Keywords: Cinema, Semiotics, Phenomenology, Metropolis

See all this essay on Signs - International Journal of Semiotics http://vip.db.dk/signs/Articles.htm