‘Talk To Them’

1. ‘Talk To Them’ By Sam and Savannah

2. The Philosophy Of Motion Pictures There are 3 types of Philosophy and film. • “the philosophy of motion pictures” - the philosophical examination of the concepts that organize the practices of motion picture-making and movie-going. Asking: “What is the relation of film to reality?” “What is the relation of movies to the other arts?”

3. Philosophy “in” film 2. Philosophy In Film - this involves the interpretation of various motion pictures in terms of the standing philosophical themes that they can be shown to illustrate, adumbrate, or articulate, as one might find egoism exemplified by the television series ‘The Sopranos’.

4. Philosophy Through Film 3. Proponents of this view, which many find highly controversial, believe that some motion pictures do philosophy - that is, some motion pictures may offer significant contributions or insights to the conversation of philosophy. All these essays the writers provide examples of all three philosophical ideas.

5. First essay Summary of the first Essay: • The film presents Benigno in a positive way, as a caring male nurse, so his subsequent rape of Alicia off screen isn’t taken as immorally inappropriate as it should be. “Nevertheless, Eaton notes that the moral heinousness of Benigno’sdeed never strikes the viewer with the force that it deserves. Its impact has been aesthetically muted by Almodóvar. Reviewers, for example, treat the film as if the relation between Benigno and Alicia was a romance, albeit of the l’amourfou variety.”

6. Second Essay • About viewers response to Benigno • “on Pippin’s accounting, we also admire something about Benigno—namely his single-minded authenticity; his integrity; his wholehearted, uncompromising embrace of his existential commitments. As Pippin observes, “Benigno, for all of his delusions, retains some sort of aesthetically admirable genuineness [an integratedness?] throughout the film, an aesthetic genuineness, I would say, that we want to count as morally relevant.”

7. Third Essay In George M. Wilson’s “Rapport, rupture, and rape: reflections on Talk to Her,” further details are added to the portrait of what is admirable about Benigno. For Wilson, Benigno is an exemplar of a kind of fundamental human virtue. That virtue can be marked by the slogan “talk to her;” “understood in the appropriate expanded sense, [it] is a prime instance of and a metonomy for the activity of taking care of another person with unquestioning love, without any conditions and without expectations of reward or immediate response.” Indeed, it is when Marco is able to talk to the dead Benigno, standing at the foot of his grave, that we come to suppose that Marco may finally be capable of love.

8. Fourth Essay - Cynthia Freeland, in her article “Nothing is simple,” reminds us that talking to her is not enough. From the perspective of feminist philosophy, Freeland notes that men must also listen to women and, if that is impossible, they must at least strive to interpret them. For, had Benignointerpreted Alicia’s wishes—had he taken them seriously—he would never have violated her.

9. Fifth Essay • C.D.C. Reeve, similarly, makes the unmasking of appearances, perhaps the most ancient subject of philosophy (dear to Plato and Hindu philosophy alike), the central theme of his explication of the film. Through various devices and on many levels, Reeve sensitively points out Almodóvar’s recurring allusions, visual, verbal, narratological, and symbolic—to comely outsides that cover up black, smelly things inside, things whose emblem Reeve associates with feces. Benigno’soutward appearance of innocence and naiveté, for instance, is a façade, disguising ultimately sordid desires

10. Conclusion “Talk to Her is an example of the category of philosophy through the motion picture. It is a challenge to our almost automatic tendencies when it comes to issuing ethical judgments and it functions as an occasion for deepening our appreciation of the complexity of moral judgment”