March
1, 2002
Wartenberg
at the Wadsworth Atheneum
In March 14, Mount
Holyoke Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Film Studies Thomas
Wartenberg will introduce Together, the second of seven films
to be screened under the theme "Unlikely Couples?" at
the Museum of Theater at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum, one of
America's oldest public art museums. The theme of the film series
was inspired by the title of Wartenberg's 1999 book Unlikely
Couples: Movie Romance as Social Criticism.
In his book, Wartenberg
examines films from the 1930s to the 1990s to explore how romantic
unions deemed inappropriate (due to mismatched class levels, race,
or gender) can expose and criticize societal attitudes, boundaries,
and prejudices. He considers on-screen romances between cross-class
couples, such as language expert Henry Higgins and flower girl
Eliza Doolittle in the 1938 film Pygmalion; cross-race
couples, such as the black urban architect and the working-class
Italian secretary in Spike Lee's 1991 Jungle Fever; and
homosexual couples, such as the Irish Republican Army operative
and the male transsexual in the 1986 film The Crying Game.
"I thought exploring
couples in movies would be a great theme," said Debbie Gaudet,
managing director of theater at the Wadsworth Atheneum. "I
added a question mark to the title of my series when I adapted
the title of Tom's book, expanding the focus from unlikely couples
to couples who may or may not be mismatched, and from romantic
couples to pairings of all sorts, including a mother-daughter
relationship and a relationship between brothers."
Songcatcher,
the first film of the series, features both a turn-of-the-century
lesbian relationship and a cross-class relationship between a
refined musicologist and the rugged mountain man she loves. It
will be screened Thursday, March 7, at 7:30 pm. The second film,
Together, is a comedy about a 1970s Swedish commune and
the intricate pairings of its residents and neighbors, says Wartenberg.
"Including a homosexual couple, an abusive marriage, and
an 'open' relationship, Together raises all kinds of questions
about what makes a couple appropriate or inappropriate,"
he said. Wartenberg will introduce the film Thursday, March 14,
at 7:30 pm and will participate in a discussion after its screening
at 8 pm. Together will show again March 16 at 2 pm and
7:30 pm.
With a special interest
in the politics of film, Wartenberg has written on issues in the
philosophy of film, as well as on a wide range of topics in social
theory and in the history of philosophy. He is coeditor of the
anthology Philosophy and Film (1995), author of The
Forms of Power (1990), and editor of Rethinking Power
(1992). His newest book, The Nature of Art: An Anthology,
has just been published by Harcourt. Beginning with a discussion
of the nature and definition of art, launched by a conversation
about a painting of a solid white rectangle, the anthology includes
twenty-eight excerpts from philosophers and theorists attempting
to define art through the ages, from Plato and Aristotle, through
Dewey and Adorno, to Derrida, Hein, Jegede, Appiah, and Davis.
Introductions and questions precede each excerpt, helping the
reader contextualize and focus on each author's argument.
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