In 2008 No Country for Old Men won the Academy Award for Best Picture, adding to the reputation of filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, who were already known for pushing the boundaries of genre. They had already made films that redefined the gangster movie, the screwball comedy, the fable, and the film noir, among others. No Country is just one of many Coen brothers films to center on the struggles of complex characters to understand themselves and their places in the strange worlds they inhabit. To borrow a phrase from Barton Fink, all Coen films explore «the life of the mind» and show that the human condition can often be simultaneously comic and tragic, profound and absurd. In The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers, editor Mark T. Conard and other noted scholars explore the challenging moral and philosophical terrain of the Coen repertoire. Several authors connect the Coens' most widely known plots and characters to the shadowy, violent, and morally ambiguous world of classic film noir and its modern counterpart, neo-noir. As these essays reveal, Coen films often share noir's essential philosophical assumptions: power corrupts, evil is real, and human control of fate is an illusion. In Fargo, not even Minnesota's blankets of snow can hide Jerry Lundegaard's crimes or brighten his long, dark night of the soul. Coen films that stylistically depart from film noir still bear the influence of the genre's prevailing philosophical systems. The tale of love, marriage, betrayal, and divorce in Intolerable Cruelty transcends the plight of the characters to illuminate competing theories of justice. Even in lighter fare, such as Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski, the comedy emerges from characters' journeys to the brink of an amoral abyss. However, the Coens often knowingly and gleefully subvert conventions and occasionally offer symbolic rebirths and other hopeful outcomes. At the end of The Big Lebowski, the Dude abides, his laziness has become a virtue, and the human comedy is perpetuating itself with the promised arrival of a newborn Lebowski. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers sheds new light on these cinematic visionaries and their films' stirring philosophical insights. From Blood Simple to No Country for Old Men, the Coens' films feature characters who hunger for meaning in shared human experience – they are looking for answers. A select few of their protagonists find affirmation and redemption, but for many others, the quest for answers leads, at best, only to more questions.
Оглавление
Mark T. Conard. The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers
THE PHILOSOPHY OF. THE COEN. BROTHERS
Contents
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
RAISING ARIZONA AS AN AMERICAN COMEDY
THE HUMAN COMEDY. PERPETUATES ITSELF
PHILOSOPHIES OF COMEDY IN. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU?
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
DECEIT, DESIRE, AND DARK COMEDY
“AND IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY!”
JUSTICE, POWER, AND LOVE
ETHICS, HEART, AND VIOLENCE IN MILLER's CROSSING
“TAKIN’ ’ER EASY FOR. ALL US SINNERS”
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN AS MORAL PHILOSOPHY
HEIDEGGER AND THE PROBLEM OF INTERPRETATION IN BARTON FINK
THE PAST IS NOW
“A HOMESPUN MURDER STORY”
“WHAT KIND OF MAN ARE YOU?”
BEING THE BARBER
THINKING BEYOND THE FAILED COMMUNITY
CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX
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THE PHILOSOPHY OF POPULAR CULTURE
The books published in the Philosophy of Popular Culture series will illuminate and explore philosophical themes and ideas that occur in popular culture. The goal of this series is to demonstrate how philosophical inquiry has been reinvigorated by increased scholarly interest in the intersection of popular culture and philosophy, as well as to explore through philosophical analysis beloved modes of entertainment, such as movies, TV shows, and music. Philosophical concepts will be made accessible to the general reader through examples in popular culture. This series seeks to publish both established and emerging scholars who will engage a major area of popular culture for philosophical interpretation and examine the philosophical underpinnings of its themes. Eschewing ephemeral trends of philosophical and cultural theory, authors will establish and elaborate on connections between traditional philosophical ideas from important thinkers and the ever-expanding world of popular culture.
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Index
At the beginning of the first section of Dante's Commedia, the “Inferno,” after Dante awakes in the dark wood, he sees a distant peak with the bright light of the sun, representing goodness, shining atop it. He turns to make his way toward it, but his way is blocked by three beasts: a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf. These beasts are, allegorically, his own sins that he is not yet quite ready to give up, things that he cannot quite convince himself are really evil. Similarly, Hi has to confront his own outlaw ways, which have been at the core of his identity. In some sense, he knows that he has to give up those ways, but in another sense, he does not know that at all and really wants to hold on to those parts of himself. That is part of the conflict within himself that Hi has to work through during the course of the movie. When Hi does manage to work through some of his issues, these two emissaries from his unconscious go back down into the dark hole from which they escaped. We are never completely free of those desires we once nurtured but now suppress, but we can keep them in a prison so that they never see the light of day.
