Bringing Up Play, Film, and Philosophy :: Essays Papers

Bringing Up Play, Film, and Philosophy (1) Wittgenstein once said, A typical the States film, naive and silly, can for all its silliness and rase by means of it be instructive . . . I have often learnt from a silly American film. (Wittgenstein 57e). He is pointing out that the humor, and the means of humor, in some films can be a tool of instruction. The ability of film to cause a reaction deal laughter is of philosophic interest. While Wittgensteins comment is itself playful and dense, it directs our attention to a philosophical aspect of some films. Understood in a wider scope, I believe the comment is a terse philosophy of film. Understood in an even wider scope, we can see it as a terse theory of philosophical method.(2) Exploring implications of Wittgensteins comment, however, is not my intention in this essay. I will not explain how we can profit philosophically by examining film. My intention is to show how we can.(3) When Wittgenstein admits he found some films instructive, he very well could have admitted Howard Hawks film entitled Bringing Up Baby. Despite the silliness of the film, even by means of it, Bringing Up Baby explores the role of play in the nature of romantic relationships. I argue that in the film a relationship that is principally animated by game-play is legitimate. We learn that game-play enters into the justification of a true relationship.1(4) Johannes Huizinga symptomatically describes play as, . . . a free action standing quite a consciously outside ordinary life as being not honest, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and topographic point according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. (Huizinga 13).Play is defined as an open-ended set of non-serious activities, chosen of free will in lieu of serious or or dinary activities. The distinction between serious and non-serious is not intended to characterize the mental state of a player because, more often than not, a silly game is still a mentally absorbing activity.