Allowing the Fly to Leave: The Chance Meeting of Wittgenstein and Buñuel at a Mexican Dinner Table. Issue 3 (October 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Miller, Michael T.; Batcho, James
• Is Part Of: Film-philosophy. Volume 22:Issue 3(2018)
• Page Start: 384
• Page End: 405
• Publication Date: 2018-10
• Subjects: Ludwig Wittgenstein -- Luis Buñuel -- Language -- Surrealism -- Class -- Privilege; Cinematography -- Periodicals; Cinematography -- Study and teaching; Journalism -- Philosophy; 791.4305
• DOI: 10.3366/film.2018.0086
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1466-4615

Abstract

Abstract : Within Luis Buñuel's classic surrealist film The Exterminating Angel ( El ángel exterminador, 1962) is a philosophical motif which expresses, demonstrates, and develops two of Ludwig Wittgenstein's central concepts: (1) language lays traps for the unwary that can lead to illogical thought and mind-bending quests; and (2) any picture of the world ( Weltbild ) is formed through cultural habits that cannot be rationally expressed but can be changed. This article argues that what we find in Buñuel's Angel is a "picture" that is at one level rational and habitual and at another entirely absurd. These apparently rational preconceptions – the insular habits of privilege and the language that maintains it – produce a certain "aspect" which, when clung to, can entrap us. In this effort we thread a series of chance meetings into a web of encounters: of people at a dinner party, of a philosopher and a filmmaker, and perhaps most significantly, of games that form a totality of gamesmanship – a chance meeting of the game of language and the game of cinema.