Beyond Ontology: Levinas and the Ethical Frame in Film

Abstract

From its beginning, film set forth a new scene for ethical and moral engagement. For more than a century, film’s frame and image have opened fresh space for enacting ethical and moral conflicts and dilemmas. To scholars and critics such as Andre Bazin, it became apparent that in film matters of aesthetics influence ethical and moral questions (Bazin 2005, 39–40). As Dudley Andrew says: ‘In cinema, aesthetic issues lead immediately to moral ones’ (Andrew 2005, xxi). Today, the connection between aesthetic and ethical issues in film acquires new meaning from the relationship between time and ethics as described so differently by Gilles Deleuze, Paul Ricoeur, and Emmanuel Levinas. While only Deleuze directly addresses and discusses cinema, the work of all three on the relationship of time and ethics to a variety of issues – movement, space, otherness, identity, selfhood, and narrative – also pertains to and informs the interaction between aesthetic and ethical issues in film. Indeed, Deleuze and Ricoeur contrive compelling theories, concepts, and operations concerning time, movement and narrative that facilitate film’s participation in ethical discourse. From a Levinasian perspective, their work provides tools and means for relating film and Levinasian ethical language to each other. Individually and collectively, Deleuze, Ricoeur, and Levinas seek a discordant and disruptive temporal order for re-engaging ethical and moral exigencies and investing new ideas and fresh imagination in a revivified ethical debate. In this debate, aesthetic issues and ethical issues in film continue the process of mutual regeneration.