Abstract

In the twentieth century film became a complex, powerful, pervasive and influential form of art and entertainment. Its unique, though not completely unfamiliar properties, allowed it to spread quickly around the world. Because of this film scholarship arose early and has had a rich, prolific history. The philosophical treatment of film, however, has been rare, sparse and fairly recent. But there is much a philosophical perspective can contribute to the scholarly study of film. In this case, I wish to examine film as an aesthetic phenomenon and its relation to ethics---specifically the ethical formation of self, sex and gender. ;Part of film's aesthetic uniqueness is the many boundaries it crosses. For one, it is both art and technology. Secondly, while superficially objective in character, it contains a powerful subjective aspect as well. Thirdly, it has been a powerful presence across many tiers of society. Fourthly, in conceptual and historical terms film straddles the modern and the postmodern. These areas of boundary crossing make it an especially fertile ground for philosophical study. ;Specifically, in terms of "ethics," my project is a generally "postmodern" one. The ethical models I follow are those from Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Foucault. Levinas provides a particularly "normative" character to postmodern ethics, whereas in Foucault, one finds a probing, aesthetic search for a created self as a form of ethics, an aesthetics of existence. What is of utmost importance for each is the confrontation with the Other. I, then, reinforce this Foucaultian approach with Judith Butler's Foucaultian study of the constructedness of gender and sex. ;What I find is that the ontology of film reflects and reinforces these postmodern ideas of ethics, aesthetics, gender and sex. The pervasive, imagistic influence of film constructs individual selves and can aid the "re-construction" of selves. Through film one finds the evanescence of ontic being, the transience of the performative self, the constructedness of gender and sex, and the confrontation with the Other