Enrico Terrone

What aesthetic interest do we have in watching films? In a much debated paper, Roger Scruton argued that this interest typically comes down to the interest in the dramatic representations recorded by such films. Berys Gaut and Catharine Abell criticized Scruton’s argument by claiming that films can elicit an aesthetic interest also by virtue of their pictorial representation. In this paper, we develop a different criticism of Scruton’s argument. In our view, a film can elicit an aesthetic interest that does not come down to an interest in the dramatic representation or in the pictorial representation. We will argue that this is a distinctively cinematic interest. In § I we outline Scruton’s argument. In § II we point out an interest in how the cinematic medium presents the portrayed subject as detached from the spectator’s environment. In § III, by referring to Wittgenstein’s account of the contemplation from outside, we contend that the interest in films introduced in § II can count as an aesthetic interest. In § IV we argue that both documentaries and fiction films can elicit this kind of interest. In § V we compare the three different kinds of aesthetic interest that, in our view, a film can elicit. In § VI we describe the corresponding kinds of cinematic achievements.

La sceneggiatura è la premessa essenziale della costruzione delle immagini e dei suoni che costituiranno il film; analogamente il discorso sulla sceneggiatura è la premessa essenziale del lavoro critico sul film. Una sceneggiatura approssimativa genererà dunque, con buona probabilità, un film malfermo; un’analisi approssimativa della sceneggiatura genererà, ancora più probabilmente, una recensione malferma. Per neutralizzare questi rischi, occorre concepire la sceneggiatura come un sistema, cioè come un intero formato da parti essenzialmente connesse fra loro.
Tenendo fermo tale principio, questo saggio propone un modello concettuale in grado di spiegare il funzionamento narrativo di qualsiasi film, da L’arroseur arrosé dei Lumière a Tutti pazzi per Mary dei Farrelly, da Biancaneve e i sette nani di Walt Disney a Goodbye South, Goodbye di Hou Hsiao-hsien. Non solo: nell’elaborare schemi applicabili a qualsiasi film, Il sistema sceneggiatura si rivolge a un qualsiasi potenziale lettore, sia questo sceneggiatore, critico cinematografico, cinéphile, insegnante o studente. Nel suo tentativo di coniugare teoria e pedagogia aggiornando la Poetica di Aristotele all’era delle immagini in movimento, Il sistema sceneggiatura ambisce a essere al tempo stesso un manuale per imparare a scrivere i film e un trattato per imparare a capirli.

Perspectives on Social Ontology and Social Cognition brings together contributions from researchers with a highly diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds – from philosophy to anthropology, economics, psychology, neurosci- ence and linguistics. Although the concepts and the methods that shape their contributions differ greatly, one thing that they all share in common is that they have been inspired in one way or another (indeed, in many ways) by John Searle’s pioneering and foundational work in the philosophy of language and mind and, more recently, society.
The project of editing a collection of essays on some of the most pressing and fascinating questions in current research on social ontology and social cognition started to take shape at the Interacting Minds Centre at the University of Aarhus in Summer 2011. Some of the essays included in this volume were first presented in the context of Objects in Mind, the first Aarhus-Paris conference on social ontol- ogy and social cognition, which was held at the Centre of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience at the University of Aarhus on June 25–26, 2012.

This paper starts by claiming that the amount of narrative time is one of the distinctive features by virtue of which TV series are treated as a self-standing appreciative kind in contemporary culture. As suggested by Jason Mittell, time is constitutive of TV seriality: " a series is a cumulative narrative that builds over time " and also " time is an essential element of all storytelling but is even more crucial for television " or " seriality itself is defi ned by its use of time " 1. There are so many contemporary series considered experimental in time structure that, as Melissa Ames puts it, " although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the twenty-fi rst century […] never before has narrative time played such an important role in mainstream television " 2. We will argue that this vast amount of time can confl ict with the structural constraints of formulaic narrative, especially from an Aristotelian perspective according to which a narrative is inherently a knot to be untied. More specifi cally, according to Aristotle, " Every tragedy is in part Complication and in part Denouement; the incidents before the opening scene, and often certain also of those within the play, forming the Complication; and the rest the Denouement ". We will show that, with respect to this issue, contemporary TV series primarily face two options, which we will call the super-knot and the super-knotty rope. We will argue that these two options are not suffi cient in order to fi ll the TV series' amount of time. Further fi lling strategies are needed. We will present what we consider the two main fi lling strategies in contemporary TV series, namely the fl ash strategy 3 and the strand strategy 4. Finally, we will argue that these strategies can raise issues that risk to make the narrative experience of contemporary TV series less valuable. We will do so with particular reference to heavily serialized shows both in US and in Europe.

Page 1. 3 Rivista di estetica, ns, 23 (2 / 2003), XLIII, pp. 3-31 © Rosenberg & Sellier ontologia dell'arte ... Avons-nous des statistiques? Il s'agit là d'un des problèmes les plus intéressants à monavis, le fait qu'on discute souvent en esthétique de notions d'ordres, ou quantitatives. ...