1 Meta-critical Detective Notes
If I have achieved what I set out to do with this book, then there is little need for a conclusion here. As much as I hate to end proceedings with a scholarly cliché, this one does strike me as particularly pertinent. Its pertinence derives from the often demonstrative nature of the meta-critical endeavor that I took on. I had to demonstrate the transformational ethics that I claim to be implicit to the project of film as philosophy. And, to achieve this, I had to do the painstaking work of showing readers – from one case to another – clues, traces, and guises of the motive of personal transformation at work within philosophers’ conceptions of film as philosophy. Like a Sherlock Holmes, in conversation with his Watson, my mission was to guide the reader through the evidence and consequent ethical ‘deductions’ that I have gathered about film as philosophy. In this sense, a ‘conclusion’ was reached every time I was able to make my readers see some piece of the cinemakeover as I discern it, in all its multifaceted glory, within film as philosophy.
That said, a meta-theoretical detective is of course bound to pick up further, deeper insights as part of the process of working through ‘evidence’. Sharing my notes on those insights – some deeply confirmative, some ancillary but intriguing, and some quite surprising – is what I take this conclusion to be for.
1.1 The Scene of the Investigation
Before I was able to proceed with the ethical investigations of this book, the detective in me first needed to map the proverbial ‘scene of the crime’: the project of film as philosophy.
As any detective would, I approached my job in Chapter 1 as one of drawing connections: I set out to construct meta-theoretical perspectives that could help correlate and interrelate different conceptions or theories of film as philosophy. Yet the main insight gained, quite to the contrary, is that ‘going meta’ on film as philosophy mostly brings to light fundamental disconnections that prohibit productive engagement between philosophers. These disconnections stem from essentially different assumptions about the nature of philosophy; assumptions which, in turn, dictate different conditions that films must meet
However, meta-critical analysis can also play a role in alleviating those disconnections that it brings into view. Not that disconnections necessarily need ‘fixing’. One might conclude that disconnections, mismatches and contradictions are the lifeblood that keeps a theoretical project such as film as philosophy alive. Yet, I have learned, meta-theory can do the work of placing differing conceptions within a more cohesive whole that consolidates possibilities for constructive dialogue and debate. I arrived at such a more cohesive whole by relating the differences in conceptions of film as philosophy to the basic motives of Knowledge, Subjectivity, Power, and Nature. Although my intention with these motives is to magnify the essential differences that I detect between various conceptions of film as philosophy (and this they certainly did), the fundamental ontological contexts invoked by the motives are nevertheless intertwined to such an extent that they invite many potential connections to be drawn between them – and, as a result, connections also to be drawn between the distinct conceptions of film as philosophy that they undergird. ‘Drawing connections’ is thus still the name of the meta-critical detective game – except at this point it involves higher-order connections, drawn at an abstracted level of guiding motives, which help consolidate the diversity of assumptions and approaches that characterize the project of film as philosophy.
I, for one, did not see it coming, given the diversity and disconnections at stake: that my appraisal of film as philosophy from the perspective of its most basic motives enables a degree of unification between approaches. Then again, the question of unifying motives was the major lead that started this entire ‘meta’ investigation to begin with. For if there’s one motive around which the diverse approaches to film as philosophy truly do converge, then it is the motive of personal transformation.
1.2 My Forensic Tools: A Multipurpose Set
No Sherlock Holmes (let alone the one envisioned by Benedict Cumberbatch) can get away from having to put a good deal of thinking into the forensic tools
Initially, Visagie’s trans-historical approach to practices of self-transformation simply helped me formulate the somewhat elusive ethical image that the project of film as philosophy had led me to pursue: the image of the ‘cinemakeover’. The notion of the cinemakeover, as I used it in this book, is shorthand for the idea of transforming oneself by watching films – a clearly hypothetical practice that may be guided by various (and equally hypothetical) forms of transformational ethics of film. People accept many everyday activities as potential practices of self-transformation: reading, writing, exercising, making art. But self-transformation through watching films? I am certainly not aware of any group (say, a cinephile gang of philosophers, or a cinema-worshipping cult) who explicitly preaches and practices the cinemakeover – perhaps, that might still happen.1 Nevertheless, I still see a great need for defining and scrutinizing the cinemakeover, even if only as a hypothetical idea. For as something that is implied, suggested, even consciously toyed with, you run into this idea around practically every film theoretical corner. The idea is already out there, and prevalently so.
Of course, I first ran into the cinemakeover around the film-theoretical corner called ‘film as philosophy’. Again, no philosopher in this sphere explicitly entertains the notion that one could practice self-transformation by watching films. However, in busying themselves with the question of how films may do philosophy, the ostensible matter at the front of their minds, they nevertheless conjure up various countenances of this hypothetical practice that I call the cinemakeover. Like an ethical kind of metal detector, the concept of the cinemakeover allowed me to scan for this ethical motive that lights up all over the scene: the valuing of film as a means to self-transformation. The very notion of film as philosophy, as I have argued, entails intrinsic acts of value-attribution. And as far as explicitly ethical value-attribution goes, there is really only one clear suspect: the value of personal transformation.
Yet to build this into a proper case, I had to call in Visagie, whose theory presented in Chapter 2 provided me with the analytical tools that I could adapt for my ethical investigations of film as philosophy. Visagie has never used his own
However, the endeavor of film as philosophy is but one field in which one can find clues pointing towards the idea of a cinemakeover. Given the broad cultural-historical reach that transformational ethics obviously exercises, there is really no chance for this ethical motive to be restricted only to the theoretical project of film as philosophy. It therefore quickly dawned on me that this same ethical framework may prove just as incisive to other meta-detectives working on cases other than film as philosophy. Meta-critical inquiries into transformational ethics of film – imaginings of the cinemakeover on the basis of extant theory – can no doubt be launched from an entire range of film-theoretical projects, with each promising a unique set of results. Just because I stumbled upon the idea of the cinemakeover within the context of film as philosophy does not mean that it is the only place to look for such a makeover.
Presumably, I would have had an equally good chance of running into the cinemakeover as a film theorist (for lack of a better term), posing similar kinds of ethical questions, which prove to be at the heart of classical film theory too. The question of ‘the good’ of film, much as it takes center stage in the notion of film as philosophy, have always been present in numerous ways in the history of film theory. And inevitably, so it seems, that question of ‘the good’ of film will in one way or another link up with the perennial value of personal transformation. For example, on more than one occasion I have noted that the revelationists, as Malcolm Turvey (2008) names them – epitomized by the likes of Epstein and Vertov, who stress the cinema’s capacity for enhancing human perception of the world – would represent a perfect tradition to mine into for exemplars of transformational ethics in early film theory. Yet even the theories of revelationists do not need to explicitly thematize ethics for them to nevertheless hold ethical relevance. Any film theory has a potential capacity to deliver some vision of the cinemakeover, even if only a glimpse. Hence, as I have done with contemporary film philosophers, one can read and indeed re-read also the Eisensteins and the Bazins lined up in the history of film theory through the prism of their implicit investments in personal transformation as
1.3 Profiles and Patterns
The cinemakeover is a slippery suspect to track down. Like a perfume that smells different on every person, it can take on radically different forms from one case to the next. This is why I needed to devote so much attention to devising my tools of analysis. They should allow for a meta-analytical perspective that probes deep enough to see that you are in fact constantly dealing with the same, usual suspect – the motive of personal transformation – yet a perspective also mutable enough to be able to profile – in terms of transformational modes, values, domains, etc. – the multiple guises that the suspect will adopt. This exercise in profiling can therefore at best result in a mosaic, consisting of the different guises of the motive, and different resultant visions of the cinemakeover, as they emerge from various conceptions of film as philosophy.
Yet the culmination of this profiling exercise, Chapter 3, very much confirmed one of my detective’s intuitions: as different as visions of the cinemakeover may be from one conception to the next, the eventual form that the cinemakeover will assume in any given case is not all that unpredictable. There is always one clear lead: to have an idea of what the cinemakeover will look like in a given case, look at the assumptions guiding that particular conception of film as philosophy. This brings us back to the keystones of Knowledge, Subjectivity, Power, and Nature – except at this point I was able to confirm that, in addition to motivating essentially distinct approaches to film as philosophy, these motives in many respects anticipate also distinct types of transformational ethics. If a conception of film as philosophy is based on a motive of Knowledge, for example, there is a good chance that the ethic will be an ethic of self-concentration, aimed at somehow finding the self, and aimed typically at values of (self-)awareness. Alternatively, if a conception of film as philosophy is based on Power or Nature, you can count on the ethic being an ethic of self-expansion, emphasizing loss of self, guided by the value of unity (typically unity with nature). These patterns were confirmed in Chapter 4, in which the same motives yielded similar ethical results.
As a meta-critical detective, I take note of these recurrent accents and slants that bind the overall image together; for they potentially reveal some of the biases and blind spots that the project of film as philosophy imposes on the idea(l) of a cinemakeover.
The most obvious bias in film as philosophy’s overall image of the cinemakeover is the extent to which most of its transformational ethics converge around contemplation as a mode of transformation (and often even as a domain and
At this point, however, one should also ask: what kind of contemplation? From this perspective, too, there are clear biases to be detected within the transformational mode of contemplation so frequently invoked by the philosophers in my investigation. From what we have seen, the project of film as philosophy undoubtedly skews towards the idea of film eliciting a difficult and challenging kind of contemplation, in order for viewer-transformation to occur through a mode of contemplative endurance. For this reason, I notice, the project of film as philosophy exhibits an affinity for suitably ‘challenging’ films, meaning films that are perceived as suitably complex or ambiguous or unsettlingly affective – or all of this at once. I am thinking, for instance, of the affinities that Robert Sinnerbrink sees between cinematic thinking and the cinemas of Lynch, Von Trier, and Malick. Interestingly, the philosophers covered in my analyses hardly consider, for instance, pleasurable modalities of contemplative transformation – possible transformation through what I would call contemplative pleasure. And this might in turn link up with the idea of the cinemakeover as a cultivation of the imagination, another theme (and a specific transformational domain) that hardly comes up in film as philosophy, which is inclined to reduce the viewer’s transformational experience to some or other form of ‘thinking’.
Yet apart from the challenging, ‘endurational’ inflection of contemplation as transformational mode it seems to me that a few things in film as philosophy’s mosaic of the cinemakeover also goes lost in terms of the audience and viewing conditions that one may hypothesize for self-transformation through film.
Firstly, the implied viewer of film as philosophy’s cinemakeover is a solitary viewer in a (mainly) contemplative self-transformation under the guidance of a given film. (Or I should say: there is little suggested by philosophers considered here to conclude otherwise.) One motive conspicuous in its absence in the project of film as philosophy, alongside the motives of Knowledge, Subjectivity, Power, and Nature, is a motive of Society – to conceptualize film as philosophy on the basis of philosophy understood also as an inescapably social, intersubjective practice. Consequently, a major blind spot in film as philosophy’s overall image of the cinemakeover is its lack of emphasis on communal (collective, shared, interactive, dialogical) aspects of both film as
Secondly, film as philosophy hardly hypothesizes the role of various potential viewing situations within its overall impression of the cinemakeover. Film philosophers tend to focus only on the film event, the encounter between a hypothetical solitary viewer and the film work, with whatever experience it gives the viewer. Yet there is a variety of further factors to take into consideration. For example, what are the particular transformational affordances of the (big) screen typical of the cinema; how does it play on emotions, steer the narrative, and appeal to the masses? Or, a related matter: how may the collective experience of cinema audiences specifically enhance (or perhaps detract from) the potential of self-transformation through films (see Hanich 2014; 2017).
Thirdly, film as philosophy’s mosaic of the cinemakeover leaves obvious gaps relating to possible temporal dimensions of contemplative transformation. One temporal dimension concerns the length of time that the contemplative mode elicited by film may be active in the viewer. Put simply: when exactly are the hypothesized transformational ethical effects induced in the viewers? And, then: how long do they last? Moreover, does the transformation occur immediately? The general and admittedly incomplete image derived from film as philosophy is that the cinemakeover as an envisioned practice coincides with viewing a film, with transformation occurring more or less while viewing. Yet a more developed account of the cinemakeover would also have to take into account the reflections and memories of viewers within an ongoing
A related temporal dimension concerns also the frequency of viewing. Here lies the question of the need for second viewings, or rather repeated viewings, for substantive contemplative practices of self-transformation through film to occur. To cultivate certain competencies and skills within oneself not only takes time, as all learning, but also repetition. Should one therefore construe the cinemakeover along the lines of especially such self-cultivation, then repeated viewings of films (or at least the viewing of repeated motifs within a film, or within a television series more likely) will prove indispensable to attaining personal transformation.
However, for all the blind spots that it may have, the one aspect where the project of film as philosophy makes a massive contribution to thinking about the cinemakeover is the prominence that it accords to preparatory ethics. The pivotal presence of a preparatory ethics of film as philosophy was perhaps the most surprising discovery in my investigations, simply because I was by no means on the lookout for anything along these lines. This repeatedly stressed category of transformational techniques by which viewers must prepare themselves for the ‘rebound’ transformational effects of films, as I pointed out at the close of Chapter 3, seems decisive to the entire idea of the cinemakeover and needs to be central to future theorizing on the subject.
As one should expect, the picture of preparatory ethics emerging from film as philosophy has its own set of biases and blind spots. The general self-work required from viewers in the discussion is once more fixated on a mode of contemplation; although, in this case, on a contemplative asceticism: to prepare themselves, viewers must rid themselves of their philosophical arguments, pre-conceptions, and beliefs, in order to not block the philosophical and transformational work that films can/might do. Apart from there being a number of problems and contradictions inherent to these requirements already covered in Chapter 3, such a contemplative asceticism ultimately provides a very decided – and one-sided – model of what preparatory ethics in the cinemakeover might involve. For instance, one might object that rather than giving up one’s beliefs, the preparatory stance of the viewer might just as well be to hold on to her beliefs and use the film experience to critically affirm them. Or, in a preparatory mode of contemplative endurance, the viewer may set out to put her beliefs to the test, to see if they can stand up to a given film or film experience.
1.4 The Curious Case of Terrence Malick
In the final stage of my investigation, I turned to the curious case of Terrence Malick and the sense that philosophers try to make of his style. Yet why call it ‘curious’?
To begin with, philosophers have a curious fascination with the filmmaker. I unraveled this fascination in terms of the unique style that he presents philosophers with. Yet, even before any concrete considerations of his style, the filmmaker persona of the ‘mysterious Malick’, as he is usually spoken of, already offers significant insights on certain motivations of the film philosophers concerned. As noted in Chapter 4, the particular authorial image of the famously ‘reclusive’ director (who is an ex-philosopher on top of that) is marked by all sorts of ascetic gestures, the most notable of which is his avoidance of public appearances and refusal to speak about his own films. These ascetic gestures, it appears, boost the sentiment on the part of film philosophers that Malick’s films should be seen as somehow speaking for themselves – which then gives them all the more encouragement to carefully listen to what, philosophy-wise, his films have to ‘say’.
Yet for all this talk about films-speaking-for-themselves, one cannot quite shake off the impression that these philosophers are still looking to the large-looming figure of Malick to subtly whisper profundities through his films. Because, for all the talk about films doing philosophy, the project of film as philosophy does display a surprisingly strong degree of auteurist leanings; which in fact also grants a good deal of validation for intentionalist approaches to
Yet what the Malick-case furthermore underlines is the extent to which a motive of personal transformation seems to encourage such a valorization of auteurs. Perhaps owing to the importance of individual subjectivity to transformational ethics, the motive seems to prompt a need to identify with a model ethical subject – the ‘author’ – who offers the philosopher-viewer the guidance, dialogue, or even induction necessary for self-transformation. The filmmaker is thus summoned as an aide to transformation, thereby establishing a mode of ministering to the viewer, even though the subject thus summoned is largely the viewer’s own interpretative heuristic. Such an author-heuristic is of course important to many different acts of interpretation. But the point in this case is that the heuristic, which essentially assigns a transformation-intending subject to the filmmaker, is fashioned after the motive for having an ethical-transformational encounter with the film.
Another reason for referring to the case of Malick as ‘curious’ concerns the undeniable philosophical curiosity piqued by Malick’s unique and free floating filmmaking style. Most of my investigation in Chapter 4 went into establishing those elements of his style – his ‘contemplative’ style – that elicit the most film-philosophical interest, yet doing so to primarily demonstrate the value-laden, ethical nature of that interest. Basically, this was another effort at tracking down potential manifestations of the cinemakeover, except this time in the somewhat more concrete context of how philosophers evaluate stylistic devices and effects.
A shift in emphasis was thus required in my detective work: from meta-theorizing film as philosophy to doing meta-hermeneutics thereof. No doubt, the two kinds of investigation go hand in hand. My meta-hermeneutics is guided by the meta-theoretical conceptions that I established; yet my meta-theoretical conceptions are deepened and developed by my meta-hermeneutic explorations. Indeed, the meta-hermeneutics does produce a distinct set of insights: it elucidates the actual interpretative strategies and procedures – ‘pathways’ – by which philosophers arrive at images of the cinemakeover with
So it is perhaps worth asking, in conclusion, whether I would have come to the same conclusion had I not focused on Malick but on one of the other ‘usual suspects’ of film as philosophy – to again invoke the likes of Lynch, Akerman, and Von Trier. As with Malick, I believe, the initial reasons for film philosophers to look into such other filmmakers may in every case turn out to be quite unique. But, judging by the persistent motives and assumptions that dominated my analyses in this book, the ethical-transformational evaluations and interpretations that philosophers will arrive at should look rather familiar.
This might perhaps be the most curious part of the case of the ‘enigmatic’ Malick: that the striking dissimilarities in ethical evaluations of his film style do make surprising sense in light of the assumptions and ambitions that, I argue, drive the project of film as philosophy.
2 Looking Ahead: Taking Off the Meta-hat
On the topic of transformational ethics, it only feels right to end proceedings on a more introspective note. So let me take the opportunity to do some much-needed self-examination on the role of wearing the meta-critical detective hat, a role that no doubt has its limitations, even risks, and also – the biggest struggle that I had to contend with – its discontents.
However, the biggest value – and perhaps biggest irony – underlying my meta-approach is ultimately that of personal transformation itself. There is a certain logic of value-attribution at work in my own case too: when you devote an entire book to the theme of transformational ethics, even if your every intention is to do so from a ‘detached’ perspective, then you are still under the sway of the motive of personal transformation. I am reminded of Yves Citton’s observation that attention and valorization always goes hand in hand (Citton 2017: 67). People give attention to the things they value, but also value things that they give attention to. My wanting to unleash this meta-theoretical spotlight called ‘transformational ethics’ ultimately says a lot about what I value. For me to chase after the motive of personal transformation in film as philosophy, to want to give the cinemakeover a face, expresses a clear commitment to the motive. Like a detective whose identity is paradoxically shaped by chasing after a career-defining suspect (say, a ‘Professor Moriarty’), my seemingly distanced stance as meta-theorist is just as inspired by that very motive of personal transformation which I seek out in conceptions of film as philosophy.
Of course, right from the outset of the book, I have professed the complicated relationship that I have with the cinemakeover. Yes, this detective is certainly deeply intrigued by the possibility of the cinemakeover, so much so that his ‘meta’ detective-identity is essentially tied up with it. Yet, as I also noted before, I nevertheless have nagging doubts about the viability of achieving genuine self-transformation, or at least certain radical forms thereof, and
However, while my personal doubts over transformational ethics have remained unresolved, I can confess that I have at least undergone something of a conversion experience regarding its analytical merit. Perhaps the greatest insight that I gained from this journey is that my framework for transformational ethics of film promises a multitude of uses beyond the sphere of the meta-theory and analysis that I demarcated for this book. This however entails that I need to take off my meta-hat.
2.1 On Film-Ethical Interpretation (and Hat-Switching with Malick)
The theme of transformational ethics – far from being limited to the turf of film as philosophy and its meta-analysis – proliferates across a number of possible fields of film analysis. I have three obvious fields in mind. My analytical framework can firstly speak directly to a film as work, to how the film may thematize and give formal expression to its own ethical-transformational interests – as in the case of Fight Club – apart from what philosophers and theorists make of it, that is. Secondly, the framework may interpret various levels and spheres of film reception alongside its capacity to interpret theoretical interpretations, such as the concrete transformational uses of film that may take effect within a particular fan community. And, thirdly, the framework can address transformational ethics that may transpire in the sphere of filmmaking – which may include issues such as a filmmaker’s personal investments in self-transformation, filmmaking practices that resemble and even amount to practices of transformation, or ethical-transformational notions that may define a filmmaker’s image and appeal. This recurrence of transformational ethics gives my framework a foothold in each such field, footholds that enable its analytical concepts to travel and translate between them, and so establish a productive set of ethical connections that bridge their obvious divides.
What is basically at stake in these various footholds is my framework’s capacity for good old-fashioned ethical interpretation. It can speak incisively to ethical-transformational elements in films, practices of filmmaking, or acts of film reception at a ‘direct’, first-order level of analysis. For the non-meta interpreter or critic it can therefore enrich ethical interpretations of films and filmmakers, and generally deepen reflections on film and ethics in terms of their transformational implications.
However, since I had committed myself to a strictly meta-critical agenda, I had to set aside my own impulse to engage in such ethical interpretations. Talk of asceticism! I had to keep in check the overwhelming temptation to simply interpret the transformational ethics of films and filmmakers that
As an analyst and interpreter of the transformational ethics implied by the ‘contemplative’ cinema of Terrence Malick, I would mainly be interested in the kinds of contemplative techniques that his films typically stage. As we have seen, one might immediately cite Malick’s use of voice-over monologues, which can be said to express contemplative techniques like self-dialogue or self-examination.
However, wearing my ‘critic’ hat, I would instead want to call attention to acts of walking as a prominent, though strangely neglected stylistic motif in Malick’s oeuvre. Owing to his affinity for narrative ellipses, Malick’s films typically explore the ‘in-between’ moments, before and after dramatic events occur. And it is in the progressive growth of these moments that Malick’s cinema has grown into a cinema of walking. It seems to me that, as a general rule, Malick’s in-between moments involve characters taking a walk – and always in tandem with a ‘walking’ camera, strolling, wandering, pensively moving in circles. Anyone familiar with his films – one only needs to think of the sauntering characters in the wheat fields of Days of Heaven; the roaming figures of Pocahontas and John Smith in The New World; or the many pondering strolls that permeate To the Wonder – cannot but affirm the ubiquity and persistence of walking, wandering characters in Malick’s work. Yet evident as this motif may be, I know of not a single commentary explicitly dedicated to walking in Malick’s oeuvre, let alone an ethical interpretation thereof.2
The point of singling out the motif of walking would be that walking enjoys widespread recognition as a potent contemplative technique, commonly practiced by people to stimulate reflection, to gain awareness, or to bond with nature. In his eloquent treatise, A Philosophy of Walking (2014a), Frédéric Gros for example details the long tradition of contemplative walking within philosophy (a tradition that one would no doubt be able to appraise in terms of the framework for transformational ethics developed in this book). Therefore, if it is true that walking “renders us more receptive to thought” (Gros 2014b), then my proposal would be that one finds in Malick’s visual obsessions with
Then there is still the question of transformational ethics in Malick’s (in)famously improvisational approach to filmmaking, as often reported by his collaborators in the mainstream press. This requires wearing a hat dedicated to the analysis of filmmaking practices, and an informal ‘ethnography’ done via second-hand reports, to explore these practices as resembling, approximating, or even overlapping with practices of self-transformation. Malick is known for instituting various measures on-set that are meant to close off any recourse to routine and convention. One such measure, for example, is to have a highly mobile crew that has to be constantly moving about (read: walking, once more) (see Ebiri 2013). What interests me here is how Malick’s measures seems to be geared towards fostering in himself and his collaborators an openness and receptivity to the unplanned spontaneous moments that he seems to consider integral to his cinematic aesthetic.
Not incidentally, the same transformational values of openness and receptivity that I sense in Malick’s filmmaking practice were identified in Chapter 4 in the philosophical appraisals of Malick’s films; this underlines the value that meta-analysis can bring to transformational ethics as an interpretative program. And it underlines the ideal of constant hat-switching – to and fro, from using the framework as a meta-theoretical tool to using it as an ethical-interpretive tool in non-theoretical spheres – when playing the multi-perspectival game of analyzing transformational ethics of film.
2.2 On Film-Ethical Theory (and the Many Futures of the Cinemakeover)
Apart from its potential for ethical interpretation, it seems to me that my framework has heuristic usefulness also for theorizing film ethics proper. Following George Ritzer (2001: 18), one could think of my meta-theorizing in this book as a ‘prelude’ to theory development, in the sense that my framework ultimately encourages new first-order theorizing in film ethics. After all,
Alongside film ethics, which is a recognized field of enquiry in both film theory and philosophy of film, many further scholarly fields and themes could act as stations from which to pursue and develop distinct notions of the cinemakeover on the basis of transformational ethics. They include reception studies, fan studies, studies of cinephilia, contemplative and ‘slow’ cinemas, psychology of film, film and pedagogy, as well as film and religion. I can also envisage a potentially fruitful cooperation between theorists (including meta-thinkers) and empirical psychologists and cognitive scientists within a broader program of transformational ethics of film. And, naturally, these fields need not be limited to the medium and artform of film – the potential transformational ethics of literature and reading, painting, music, and theatre would be equally legitimate for further exploration. True to its subject matter, the cinemakeover seems capable of innumerous transformations in reaction to different fields of scholarship. These and similar options represent a range of possible research ventures for trading the hat of the meta-critical ‘detective’ for that of a first-order film ethics ‘perpetrator’ – who simply gets on with the business of directly doing transformational ethics of film. For my detective-analogy to suggest that first-order theorizing is a sort ‘crime’ is of course somewhat rash. Yet contrary to what a Benedict Cumberbatch-like Sherlock Holmes figure would make you believe, playing the elevated, nit-picking detective is not always the most satisfying job to do. For one thing, you always remain one step behind the creative masterminds whom you are trying to catch up with. When you are the one committing the ‘crimes’ (though you might eventually be caught, of course) you can at least taste the thrill of breaking rules as well as breaking new grounds. Hence, in the future, I will make every effort to wear also my ‘criminal’ theorist hat whenever the opportunity to do such film ethics presents itself.
Cult film fans do not belong to a literal ‘cult’, of course; but they do perhaps come closest to what I am imagining here. Or better even, festival-goers, who make a self-transformational investment by attending a politically or otherwise themed film festival.