
The 19th Century Painting That Most Blockbuster Movie Posters Are Based On - subsystem
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/01/the-19th-century-painting-that-most-blockbuster-movie-posters-are-based-on
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zenogais
To me it seems a lot simpler. The perspective of the shot juxtaposes a lone
man always against something much larger than himself - facing it head on.
It's an archetypically heroic pose. If it has to do with anything Kantian I'd
think it would have less to do with his moral philosophy and more to do with
the realm of the noumena and phenomena and his transcendental philosophy as
contemplated by a lone man who for the first time sees something of the shape
of things from a vantage point above the fog.

~~~
olavk
The heroic pose may be timeless, but in Friedrichs painting it has a novel (I
believe) interpretation in that we see the hero from the back, and he is dark
and unspecific, while the vista is bright. So rather than focus on the hero as
an object (as we do with e.g. Michelangelo David), we identify with the hero
(because he is "generic" and have the same position as we have relative to the
image) and contemplate the vista along with him. We become the hero. I believe
this is the effect that the movie posters also strive for.

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DenisM
Excellent observation! To me the picture evokes Byron rather than, Kant -
solitude, reflection on the state of the world from a distance, from a
subjective higher ground. Ultimately, growing up and away from being one with
peers, to being an independent being, defining your own person by rejecting
what it is not.

~~~
gruseom
_To me the picture evokes Byron rather than Kant_

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Byron was the absolute Elvis of 1818,
when this was painted, and the image is as Byronic as can be.

    
    
      I live not in myself, but I become
      Portion of that around me; and to me,
      High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
      Of human cities torture: I can see
      Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be
      A link reluctant in a fleshly chain,
      Classed among creatures, when the soul can flee,
      And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain
      Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in vain.
    

(This from a man who used to spend four hours on his toilette before breakfast
at 1 pm.)

It's also as far from Kant as you can get. Kant never travelled more than 10
miles from Konigsberg in his life, for Pete's sake – where the housewives, as
the saying goes, would set their clocks by his afternoon walk.

~~~
akkartik
Another reference to both Byron and Wanderer:
<http://akkartik.name/blog/2010-10-25-04-33-56-soc>

~~~
DenisM
Pure gold. I knew my Byron comment had potential to start a great thread.

~~~
gruseom
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're Russian. Byron is better
remembered in Russia than he is in the English-speaking world, perhaps because
of the close affinity to Pushkin. Moreover (and I am only saying this because
the thread is so obscure that its Expected Flame Value is low enough that I
will probably get away with it) Russians tend to be better educated, at least
literarily, than we are.

~~~
DenisM
Yes, I'm a Russian, and Pushkin is indeed my "Byron connection". Funny how
predictable things like that could be.

I think your last sentence is selection bias at play - a non-Russian is more
likely to meet an educated Russian, rather than the average one. This bias
likely accounts for 99% of the appearance. For the remaining 1% you may
actually have a valid point - literary education in the 20th century Russia
was a bigger part of the education system, even on the technical tracks, when
compared to the US.

~~~
gruseom
_Funny how predictable_

There's also your name, which narrowed it down to Russian or French, and I
don't think the French care about Byron :)

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ck2
Any person standing in front of a large perspective background is copying a
single painting? Really?

~~~
chongli
To me, this juxtaposition lays bare the true nature of Hollywood for all to
see: a bunch of derivative, hypocritical, entitled, self-righteous hacks that
go around calling themselves "creators" while simultaneously attacking the
rights of the public with their copyright-maximalist agenda.

OK, perhaps I didn't get all of that from a painting and a couple of movie
posters but you get the idea. At some point everything in art derives from
something else. The notion that, absent permission, this is somehow "wrong"
just blows my mind completely.

~~~
kristofferR
You should watch this: <http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/>
, especially Part 2

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lists
"Briefly, the categorical imperative states: “Act only according to the maxim
whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal
law.” Whoa! That certainly describes the extreme nature of tons of the
protagonists/antagonists of these various films. From Bane and Batman in The
Dark Knight Rises to everyone in Inception, the idea of finding a universal
truth and then applying it (sometimes forcefully) onto everyone seems to be
exactly what’s at the core of all these movies."

Philosophy grad here. Absolutely none of these characters are exemplary of
Kantian moral philosophy. That goes for about 99% of blockbuster heroes.

The key thing to understand is that 'universal' is a technical term in Kantian
philosophy. Kant doesn't use this term to designate a relationship like that
between a genus and its species, a class and its instances, or a set and its
members. 'Universal' in Kant is synonymous with 'necessary', as in, "all
stones necessarily fall back down to the ground if I throw them in the air."
So what the categorical imperative really says is, "Live your life as if it
were a force of necessity", or a more humanist formulation, "Live your life as
if you were fulfilling your duty." If that sounds weird, realize that Kant
doesn't think altruism qualifies as a foundation for morality because it's
still based on pleasure, which for him brings us right back to egoism.

In terms of blockbusters, Watchmen's Rorschach or The Dark Knight's Joker are
better approximations.

~~~
andreasvc
> Kant doesn't use this term to designate a relationship like that between a
> genus and its species, a class and its instances, or a set and its members.

Doesn't he simply mean universal law as in "a law that applies in every
situation"? So the universe of discourse would be situations. I think your
formulation with "necessity" is rather more ambiguous, because it doesn't
stress the deontic nature of the statement.

~~~
lists
"A law that applies in every situation" is an instance of empirical
universality, which is the weaker species of universality. Kant's entire
problem with this is that a principle that has to be applied to a case in
order to be true can admit exceptions since the only way to actually prove it
true is to intractably observe every situation, so instead the warrant for the
principle ends up being a mere inference. On this point he's specifically
going after Hume: If I can only infer that the sun will rise tomorrow because
it rose yesterday and the day before, I still leave open the possibility that
the sun simply won't rise tomorrow. This is how Hume started questioning
necessary causality and Kant totally freaked out.

Pure Universality is strictu sensu synonymous with necessity because a
principle of this sort is a _condition of possibility_. This example is
technically incorrect, but for illustrative purposes all stones either
necessarily fall back down to the ground when thrown up in the air or I'm not
able to write this. Kant thought causality in much the same way, either human
beings can necessarily conceive of it without any empirical support or
experience _in toto_ is impossible.

Kant explicitly wants to derive morality from _Pure_ rather than _empirical_
reason. Self-interest, altruism, pleasure, and even our everyday notion of
happiness are set by the wayside in the name of actions that wholly brought
about by principle than any expectation of reward, service to a higher cause,
or just plain conformity (which are all arguably the same thing).

The key thing to realize is that Kantian morality is really really _inhuman_ :
for all intents and purposes, Kant wants to _automate_ morality. Hence my
language of "Act as if you were a force of necessity".

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Apocryphon
More like most blockbuster movies from the last two to three years. Neat
trend, but hardly representative of all film posters in general. When I think
of blockbuster movie posters, I think of Drew Struzan's work for Star Wars and
Indiana Jones. Now that's iconic.

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pluies
The lone hero is reminiscent of the archetypical Kantian concept of Übermensch
( <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch> ).

Interesting article, but blockbuster posters come in a myriad of formats - I
was actually expecting a "hero prominently at the center, sidekicks scattered
around the background of the frame" kind of thing, much like that GI Joe:
Retaliation movie (cf links). I just checked a few on the top of my head, and
the only one that follows the painting style is I Am Legend for obvious
reasons.

Armageddon: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0232500/>

Fast and Furious: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0232500/>

Avatar: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/>

Transformers: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418279/>

GI Joe: Retaliation: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1583421/>

I Am Legend: <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480249/>

~~~
dchuk
Übermensch was Nietzsche, not Kant

~~~
pluies
D'oh... Indeed. With the Wiki link and all. My bad.

