Scene Week a la Shark Week

 I'm teaching Ethics this Spring. 

And here, for your moral pleasure, Scene Week from my syllabus:

SCENE WEEK

DO: Watch the scenes and think about the questions posed below. That’s all.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

The Seder Scene from Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors

Judah is having a flashback/memory from his childhood. At this point in the movie, he has had his lover killed. As you watch the clip ask:

Did the Nazis get away with it?

Does might make right?

Are human impulses basically decent?

Is anything “handed down in stone?” Is anything objectively (categorically) good or bad/right or wrong?

“That which originates from a black deed will blossom in a foul manner?” Agree or disagree? Why?

Is history written by the winners?

What is the importance of history when thinking about ethics/morality?

Groundhog Day

The I Am A God Scene from Groundhog Day

(Warning – depictions of self-harm)

Nihilism is the lack of values. This relates to Ethics because values are a necessary condition for ethics. One can’t have ethics without values.

The scene in the movie plays on the interconnection between time, both finite and eternal, (“I am an immortal.”) and values and ethics. Because Phil is immortal (though he is “trapped” in the same day) he becomes nihilistic. He kills himself, uses people, and “isn’t going to live by their rules anymore!”

The What If There Were No Tomorrow Scene from Groundhog Day

What happens to ethics/morality if time doesn’t press/demarcate on our lives (if we are eternal)?

Do concepts like duty, compassion, or justice still hold meaning if there is no future to consider?

Sophie’s Choice or Beloved (No scene available for Beloved)

(Warning: While there is no depicted violence, the scene is incredibly sad.)

The Choice Scene in Sophie’s Choice

For those of you with sensitive constitutions (full disclosure, I had trouble finishing the scene), here is a summary:

On the night Sophie arrives at Auschwitz, a Nazi makes her choose which of her two children will die immediately by gassing and which will continue to live.

Which moral calculus can be used to make the choice?

Can Kant’s Categorical Imperative help? Consequentialism? To what duty is Sophie beholden in this situation? What is the greatest good for the greatest number in this situation?

 

In Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sethe must choose between killing her children or allowing them to be taken back into slavery.

Which moral calculus can be used to make the choice?

Can Kant’s Categorical Imperative help? Consequentialism? To what duty is Sethe beholden in this situation? What is the greatest good for the greatest number in this situation?

Swans and Kant

 

We took the shoreline first, we usually take the shoreline to finish. I didn’t have a dog in the fight, I was just trying to get the boys out of the house as they were at peak riot before seven thirty in the morning. It was MLK day 2021, deep in the throes of the CoronaVirus pandemic. Getting them out of the house, even if for an hour, helps calm them a little, makes bedtime a little easier if they’ve been on their feet for at least a little while. As I said, we took the shoreline first. Goddard park is a great walk. One always has the shore for a good vista but there is also the path that glides and meanders between a forest dense enough to cut out a good deal of the human noise we probably aren’t adapted for yet and unknowingly makes us crazy. There have been days where after a walk at Goddard, the boys, usually riotous at seven thirty in the morning and cacophonous the other waking hours, are dare I say it, calm and serene. It is low tide and I am frigid; I tuck my nose inside my coat and I can feel how cold it is. I breathe inside my coat for as long as I can as the wind drills us on the shoreline. It is so early and our direction means we’re getting no sun. The boys are impervious to the cold. Julian has taken his gloves off for better rock skipping. Julian finds the sole of a shoe. Avery is carrying sticks...for protection. We reach the rocks and ah, sunlight hits me. The bite of the wind is softened. The star a mere ninety-three million miles away warms my Irish nose and reminds me, there can be warmth. The rocks are the informal half-way point. At low tide the rocks jut out to where, traversing them, one can feel in the middle of the bay. Not for me today; looking at the water makes me shiver. I let the boys linger though I am cold and my Raynauds has my hands and feet stinging. I let them be boys and they are gloriously boys. Loud, active, gregarious, with elan to burn...and they burn it and it powers them: on the rocks, off the rocks, karate pose, stick fight!, on the rocks again, off the rocks again. I can’t help myself so I get some pictures; they are too glorious not to take pictures. But the wind drilling me for a half-hour is all I can tolerate so I say it is time to head back. The walk back is through the woods, a reprieve from the wind. We know this path well. The leaves soften the walk and the noise is dampened. Funny how the noise of a forest, isn’t called noise, doesn’t feel like noise. Perception. There is no noumenal realm. Plus Kant died from eating a wheel of cheese. I tell the boys we should try to be quiet as we near the pond. There have been days we spotted a Heron at the back of the pond. The pond sits just about seventy-five yards from the shoreline at low tide. It is surrounded by trees but a nice path has been beaten around most of its near-acre size. We do not see the Heron but I tell the boys there are swans back there. Two, white dollops of feathered mashed potatoes somehow floating on the water. I have never given swans much thought. Near the zoo, there are swan-shaped paddle boats the boys have enjoyed and my calves have not. Who really thinks about swans? Maybe Kant did. We round the corner and I point out to Avery that someone has dropped some seed for birds. He lingers, noticing the birds, and appreciating how close he is to them. Nuthatches mostly. Julian is ahead of me, Julian will always be ahead of me, and he’s talking about something I can’t quite make out because Avery is in my ear about wanting a small, cute bird for a pet. I tell him, “My sister had a cockatiel,” when I am alerted to the sound of a jeep or some vehicle driving through this forest. Impossible. How in the world did someone get a vehicle back here? I think. The birds scatter at the sound of this vehicle rumbling toward us. I try to locate the source and my ears point me to the center of the pond, but...it is not a vehicle. It is the sound of the two swans, pelting the surface of the pond to take flight. I realize these swans are huge; their wings must be seven feet or more from tip to tip and those wings are beating the pond like a drum. Bam bam bam, like an old Dodge motor with perhaps a rod knocking. Huge birds. We are rapt. All attention on them as they finally get off the water and the old Dodge turns into a wind turbine, their long strong wings forcing a loud, dare I say cacophonous whooomph with every flap. Quickly, loudly they flap in order to rise over the surrounding maples and sumacs. They do, the dollops of white, quintessential orange beaks, and jet-black eyes, rise above and are gone. But not forgotten. Julian and I look at each other in amazement. Julian is speechless. “That was cool,” I riotously yell. I am thinking about swans. Swans have been perceived, not in some cold, mathematical, taxonomical, noumenal realm but in a phenomenal realm, where sounds startle you and sights dazzle you, and the smell from a wheel of cheese overtakes you.