The Red Baloon

MID-TERM EXAM

PHL 103

Each response should not be less than 250 words and, preferably, it should be limited to 400 words.

Each response is worth 6 points (out of a maximum grade of 42 points; please note that for topic no. 6 you have two versions. Respond only one of the two).

For your responses you should take into consideration the following points:

• Please make sure to use correctly the key terms (these are the terms listed in the class handouts. You do not need to include the definition with your answer, unless specifically asked to do so.
• Please make sure that your references to the film are detailed and relevant. I will need to understand from your response that you have watched the film and that you have reflected on its meaning.
• Please cut and paste the topic question and include it in your exam, along with your responses.
• Please make sure to use the phenomenological terminology; make sure that your answers are expressed in a coherent, well-articulated and thoughtful manner.
• Please make sure to avoid any resemblance (in ideas or in form) between your answer and the term tests that your colleagues have posted already Sakai. Any plagiarized answer entails a grade of zero points for the whole Midterm test.
• If possible, use a Word document for your response.

On Chapter 1 and The Red Baloon

Refer to a scene in the film in which the behavior of the balloon suggests that the balloon has an intentional life. Describe the behavior of the balloon; the description should include a discussion of the intender, the intending and the intended object. Argue for the inseparability of these three elements within the intentional life of the balloon.

On Lesson 2 and Antonio Gaudi

On p. 19 of IPh Sokolowski develops his previous analysis of the perception of a cube by substituting to the cube a public building. His point is that a public building (which can be considered a larger scale cube), has sides (a façade or a front, side walls, a back, a roof, a foundation), which people experience from a certain angle, that is under certain aspects. Sides and aspects are intersubjective presentations of a building, in the sense that they have a public character and everyone can agree on their truth. And yet, each viewing of a side under a certain aspect is also a subjective experience, it happens as this act of viewing performed by this subject at this time. The way in which the building appears to me at this moment is called a profile. Profiles are subjective (private), rather than intersubjective (public); their truth does not comport an intersubjective verification.

After watching Tashigahara’s documentary about Antonio Gaudi (1852-1926), modify Sokolowski’s assessment of the experience of a building as follows. Refer to the interior of one of Gaudi’s buildings as it appears in Teshigahara’s film (it could be an apartment, a house, the inner yard of a house, a hallway, a stairway, the interior of a church). Describe the sides and the aspects under which these sides are presented in the film as if you were viewing them from within the building (imagine that you are the person filming the scene and take the stand point that the camera takes in regard to the interior of the house or church). Include also a discussion of the subjective profile under which you would see this interior if you were the one filming it. For the discussion of the profile you would need to monitor the impression that the interior made on you, the subjective quality of your experience of being inside this building, of inhabiting it (in your imagination).

On Lesson 3 and on Ermanno Olmi, Il Posto

Refer to the scene in which the corporate employees clear the desk of their colleague (the “writer”) who has passed away. The sight of the presence of the writer’s personal belongings refer the writer’s colleagues to the absence of these items departed owner. Considering that absence can be of many kinds, depending on who intends upon it, and keeping in mind also that absence is personalized (it is the absence of this and that person, whom I have once encountered in this or that circumstances, while I was in this or that state of mind), discuss the particularity of the writer’s absence. How is his absence perceived by (a) the writer’s colleagues, (b) the film maker/camera man, and (c) the spectator (you, that is)?

Lesson 4 and Wings of Desire

Explain briefly the meaning of the phenomenological notion of reduction. Consider Damiel’s love for Marion as a reversed reduction (a passage from the phenomenological attitude to the natural attitude; a naturalization, an un-reducing). Discus the way in which this reversed reduction works in the film (by what means is it presented; how does it manifest itself artistically). Offer an example of the way in which Wenders presents visually this reversed-reduction along the lines of an “intending” which is that of love-desire. Could this explain the title of the movie (Wings of Desire) and if so how?

On Lesson 5 and Tarkovski’s Solaris

In his visit on the spaceship that investigates the planet Solaris, the psychologist Kris Kelvin is visited by a person who has the apearences of his dead wife, Hari. Hari emerges as a materialization of Kris’ memory of Hari but she does not have a memory of her own about her “own” life as Hari, nor is she in all respects like Hari. Discuss the following two issues from a phenomenological point of view:

1. Why is it phenomenologically impossible to encounter a recollected person as a current perception? (Refer to the difference between (a) the once currently perceived past as present and the rememorated past; (b) presence and absence, filled and empty intending in recollection and in perception; (c) Discus the difference between the notions of presentation and presentiation.
2. Can one anticipate an encounter with an entity like Solaris? Offer both a pro- and a contra- position and explain each of them. (explain the difference between the notions of anticipation and mere, “wild” imagination).

Lesson 6 and News from Home

Explain the following statement: “ Signitive intentions point away to the thing, pictorial intentions draw the thing near.” (Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, p. 82). Refer to the section of the film that starts 01:12 and ends at 01:15. Analyze first the signitive dimension of this section (supporting perceptive layer, then the subject, the act, and the object of the properly speaking signitive intentionality), then analyze the pictorial dimension of the same section (supporting perceptive layer; subject, act, object of the properly speaking pictorial intentionality). After doing so, comment on the overall effect of the juxtaposition of the signitive and the pictorial dimensions in this section of the film, keeping in mind Sokolowski’s statement above.

Lesson 6 and Wings of Desire (alternate topic)

Explain the following statement: “Signitive intentions point away to the thing, pictorial intentions draw the thing near.” (Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology, p. 82). Refer to the scene at the coffee stand in  Wenders’ Wings of Desire, in which Peter Falk addresses Damiel in the following way: “I can’t see you but I know you’re there. But you are not here. I am here. I wish you were here, and if we were here together, etc.” Analyze first the signitive dimension of this  scene (the supporting perceptive layer of the statement, the signitive act, object and subject), then analyze the pictorial dimension of the statement (the supporting perceptive layer, the pictorial act, object, subject). After doing so, comment on the overall effect of the juxtaposition of the signitive and the pictorial dimensions in this particular scene (keep in mind Sokolowski’s statement at the beginning of this text).