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PLATO'S CAVE 

Plato's allegory of the cave is probably the most foundational thought experiment in the history of western philosophy.  It's a deceptively simple story: several people are imprisoned inside of a cave, chained to a wall, staring at another wall in front of them. Above and behind them, some other people are holding up puppets of some sort. Behind those people there's a blazing fire casting light on the wall in front of the prisoners. The puppets cast shadows in front of the prisoners, who mistake those shadows for reality.

One day, one of the prisoners is freed by a stranger, who leads the prisoner out of the cave and into the light, where he sees reality as it is. He eventually runs back to tell the prisoners.  But they don't believe him and, in fact, threaten to kill him if he tries to help them escape as well.
That's, basically, it.
Then came about 2,500 years of philosophers reflecting on the story trying to figure out what it all means.
Why don't they believe him?
Does he have a responsibility to keep trying to help them escape?
If it's an allegory for our situation, what does each element represent? Are we the prisoners? If so, who imprisoned us and why? Who are the puppet carriers, and what are the puppets? What does the fire represent? 
Can we ever know if what we're seeing is reality and not shadows?
So many questions.   

As viewers of films, we've since gotten used to the idea that it's "just a movie" -- and yet, there remains always a part of us that gets fully immersed. We cry for events we "know" never really happened. We get stressed over possibilities we "know" will never happen. All the while we retain some distance, some knowledge that this isn't real. We operate on multiple epistemological levels (levels of knowing) simultaneously and creators of film paint their masterpieces on the canvas of the screen using the various levels of our knowledge as much as they use lighting and make-up and actors and scripts and million dollar production sets.
 

There's something so cinematic about the whole scene, isn't there? I mean, it's so similar to going to a movie...A bunch of people staring transfixed at a screen in front of them onto which images are projected via a light source set above and behind them. Cast on the screen are representations (shadows?) of reality and, at least on some level, and for some time, the audience (mis)takes the representations for reality.

But is it so obvious that the world outside of the theatre is so real, or that what shows up in the film is less real than the world outside it? Are there some ways that a film can show us something about walking down a street that we would miss if we were simply walking down the street?



Beyond the form of movies, on the level of the content, movies have been playing with the illusive relationship between reality and illusion since the Lumière brothers first filmed a train heading, apparently, straight for a theatre audience causing, so the story goes, the audience to scream and stand up and run panicking... 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. READ this -- it's a translation of the allegory of the cave found in Book VII of Plato's Republic.  

2. WATCH these three videos: 

3. WRITE a 500 word reflection in which you:

  • Rank the three video interpretations of the cave allegory and justify that ranking. 

  • Reflect on what the cave allegory means to you. Incorporate my introduction above into your reflection...

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