STIEREN ARTS ENRICHMENT SERIES      SPRING 2008

 

Trinity University Department of Philosophy

DR. GREGORY CURRIE

 

Professor of Philosophy

 

Dean of Faculty of Arts

 

University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

 

Public Talk entitled The Pleasures of Irony

 

April 1, 2008 at 8:00pm

 

Chapman Center Auditorium

 

Reception to follow in the Gold Room

 

Our ways of talking about irony in pictures are confused; we often call pictures ironic when they don’t deserve the name. Once we distinguish between an ironic picture and a picture of an ironic situation, we better understand why many pictures called ironic are not really so. But a puzzle remains. We are greatly subject to confusion about irony in pictures, and much less so about irony in statements. I explain why this is so: with pictures, it is harder to separate properties of the thing depicted from properties of the depiction. I’ll also argue that, in some cases, it is up to us to decide whether a picture or a statement is ironic. Also, the irony of a situation is not always something that exists in the situation and independent of any representation of it. Thus I am urging what philosophers call a ‘projectivist’ view of irony.

 

Departmental Talk entitled Movies and Photographs

 

March 31, 2008 from 4:30pm-6:30-pm

 

Chapman Center 040

 

It is often said that the presence of very high-profile stars in movies inhibits the make-believe of the audience, who find it difficult to see beyond the real person to the character he or she is playing. (Of course in some circumstances and for some types of audiences this is regarded as an advantage). It is remarkable, however, the extent to which film successfully overcomes this difficulty when compared to the medium of still photography. The practice of photographing real people "as" historical or mythical persons was popular a century and a half ago, and was notably pursued by Margaret Cameron. The practice is often treated with derision. Why? I argue that the difficulty is created by photography's very direct relation to the sitter, a relation which is not found in painting and drawing. But of course this direct relation holds in film as well. So why is film more able to overcome the "tyranny of reality" in its representations that still photography is? I argue that the reason lies in the richly dynamic narrative structure of film, which still photography cannot match. I explore some of the ways in which film presents a tension between make-believe promoting narrative and the make-believe suppressing realism of its images.

 

 

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