Chapter 9

Consider films as philosophical machinery by choosing a pair from the list below. How do they make distinctions between what is human and inhuman? How do they engage with principles of modernity and ideas of progress? How does modernity relate to gender? How is modern materiality represented? Compare No Country for Old Men to There Will be Blood (Amazon video); Einstein's Wife to Maya Lin; Where the Heart Is to Rebel Without a Cause; and Independence Day to any version of Men in Black. In a class, different groups could focus on different films, watching them outside of class and then discussing them together in the class as a whole. (Most of these are available through Amazon video or YouTube.)