Cavell and the Magic of Cinema

Abstract

The World Viewed is a fascinating, dense and enigmatic book by Stanley Cavell on the ontology of cinema, understood as a fact of experience that leads us back to our fundamental existential dimension as individuals displaced before the world that passes before our eyes. The world viewed on the big screen in the dark movie theater is our world, but we are not in it, we are present to it by looking at it from the outside, we own it in this mythological way. This is the magic of film, according to Cavell: “How do movies reproduce the world magically? Not by literally presenting us with the world, but by permitting us to view it unseen.” A magic that repays us for our loneliness and sadness by making them stand out against the background of the world seen on the screen, fabulous and mythical: “movies also promise us happiness exactly not because we are rich or beautiful or perfectly expressive, but because we can tolerate individuality, separateness, and inexpressiveness. In particular, because we can maintain a connection with reality despite our condemnation to viewing it in private.”