Philosophy and movies: a pedagogical proposition

It is not an unfamiliar state of affairs when students consider philosophy classes as stale, tedious, and humdrum. This misfortune could be attributed to the pedagogical ineptitude of the teacher, the inaccessibility of the content-knowledge involved, and the inability of the student to relate to the topics or issues due to the lack of real-world manifestation of the subject’s inherent theoretical abstractions.

With the use of movies, it would be possible to make philosophy as a class lively and interesting. A lot of movies have philosophical ideas embedded in their narrative. In other words, movies are an excellent repository of philosophical ideas portrayed visually, thus rendering them within the grasp of today’s predominantly visual learners.

Allow me to cite movies that can be potentially used in this course. We have the popular Matrix Trilogy which makes a good case-in-point in studying the dualism of either Plato or Descartes. Even the movie adaptation of Fight Club can be used in discussing both Freud’s and Nietzsche’s opposition to the repression of man’s primitive desires. Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal can be utilized in a discussion on existentialism. I am extremely confident that there are numerous movies available for this approach of teaching philosophy.

This method should be explored by academics and university curriculum committees. Seriously, how great it would be to discuss Bertolucci's The Conformist, specifically that scene when the movie's protagonist Clerici, a Fascist supporter sent to assassinate his former philosophy professor, closed the blinds of the professor's Parisian office in order to prevent the light from coming in as he and his former professor discussed his unfinished thesis on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. HEHE.