Film and Ethics: The Cancelled Conflict Author: [UK] Lisa Downing / [UK] Libby Saxton Publisher: Baideya | Chongqing University Press

-Editor's Recommendation-

★ Hitchcock and psychoanalysis?

★"Thelma and Louise" and feminism?

★"Kill Bill" and postmodernism?

★"Alien" and posthumanism?

Since the birth of film, the ethical debate surrounding film has never stopped. From whether kissing should be shown in movies to how to properly express violence; from the standards for film ratings to the way private life is presented, ethical issues have accompanied every historical period of world cinema.

Yet, film studies has been slow to explicitly adopt an ethical approach to film. This book seeks to change that, to present this “canceled conflict” in current film criticism. It seeks to fill this gap, both by describing key issues in the field and by suggesting directions for future research.

-Content Introduction-

In recent years, there has been a trend of reaffirming the research of ethics in the international film community, and relevant results have been published continuously. This book is one of the earliest important studies. Influenced by poststructuralist thought, this book presents two basic dimensions of film research:

First, academic research on film has been increasingly dominated by ethical issues, and filmmakers have responded to the challenge in various ways—fully expressing identity, difference, and the relationship between self and other.

Second, with the development of film practice, the act of viewing itself has been implicitly set in various theoretical clues.

At the same time, this book is co-authored by two scholars. In each chapter, readers may see very different views. The ethics of otherness and responsibility have profoundly influenced Saxton's theoretical thinking, while Downing often explores ethical issues in the antisocial and self-oriented energy of radical philosophy deeply influenced by psychoanalysis and queer theory. Therefore, this book not only provides an introduction and reflection on the relationship between ethical thought and film, but also presents a series of conflicts between apparently opposite views, refusing to smooth over the ethical dilemmas that must be faced when dealing with differences and disagreements.