Examined Life, All That Heaven Allows

In week one, I immediately found myself interested and alert as I tried to absorb as much as possible from Examined Life. It was difficult to find a balance between taking as many good notes as possible, with making sure not to miss anything these eight philosophers had to say. I took to heart many of the thoughts and ideas that were shared throughout the film. The first that struck a cord with me was that it is not necessary to find meaning. At first that sounds contrary to philosophy at its core, because I find that is usually what we ponder; the meaning of whatever it is we are thinking, doing, or discussing. I realized that sometimes it is fine for things to just be, and not know why. Much of the film has to do with how we think, and what we do in private. Collectively, through these moral and ethical acts (or lack of them) we can impact the public. Also by sharing these thoughts and concepts with the public in the documentary, it can affect our thoughts and actions in our private lives; I know it has at least for myself.

One of the earliest topics in the film that I took note of was the ethics of certain matters, in a way that I had never considered before. The first, was the ethics of how we spend our money. An analogy was proposed by Peter Singer, who said he had asked many people this philosophical question in the past, and always gets the same answer. The question is, at its root, if you could save a child from drowning, with no risk to your own safety, but you would ruin your nice pair of shoes, would you do it? This is what I call a no-brainer. Nearly all would save the child, myself included. In turn, one would be out the cost of those nice shoes. However, Singer's point is that one could take the cost of those shoe...

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...using flow to determine when to move from task to task. There was a correlation between the protagonist and chromonormativity as well. Both films showed very interesting family dynamics with All That Heaven Allows showing the children being very talkative and interested in their mother's dating and sex life. The other film had very little verbal interaction at all between mother and son, and he seemed completely clueless to his mother being a sex worker. Each showed a different kind of family domestic dynamics, with one having the mother take care of everything, without even a thank you from her son, and the other having one of the adult children making alcoholic drinks for everyone. I would argue that both films were solid choices relating to our keywords so far.

Works Cited

Examined Life, All That Heaven Allows, Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du commerce 1080 Bruxelles