Table of Contents Popular Culture and Philosophy™ Title Page Dedication Foreword Acknowledgements Introduction Act I - Morality, Interpretation, and the Meaning of Life Chapter 1 - God, Suicide, and the Meaning of Life in the Films of Woody Allen Meaning and Permanence Depression and Suicide God and Meaning Distractions The Failure of Our Attempts at Meaning Chapter 2 - Integrity in Woody Allen’s Manhattan The Hobgoblin Parts and Wholes One of the Beautiful People Why Not to Buy the Porsche Chapter 3 - Does Morality Have to Be Blind? A Kantian Analysis of Crimes and Misdemeanors Two Visions of Life Conflicting Conclusions From Knowledge to Faith Chapter 4 - Arguing Interpretation: The Pragmatic Optimism of Woody Allen Dramatizing versus Arguing Depicting Pessimism Secret Knowledge Husbands, Wives, and Harry Interpretation and Its Problems Justice, Crime, and Pessimism Criteria for Interpretation Hope and Despair Act II - Woody’s Craft Chapter 5 - The Mousetrap: Reading Woody Allen Woody’s Mousetraps The Bait The Trap The Mechanism Avoiding the Trap: Reader Response Criticism The Gap Is the Meaning Interpretive Communities Chapter 6 - Woody on Aesthetic Appreciation A Marvelous Negative Capability I Love Songs about Extra-Terrestrial Life, Don’t You? The Brain Is My Second Favorite Organ Don’t Speak Chapter 7 - Art and Voyeurism in the Films of Woody Allen The Problem of Surveillance in Philosophy The Problem of Surveillance in Woody Allen: The ‘Eyes of Film’ Are On Us Always Unlimited Voyeurism and Aesthetic Self-Fashioning And There Is No Escape Chapter 8 - “You Don’t Deserve Cole Porter”: Love and Music According to Woody Allen “He Loves and She Loves” “I’m in Love Again” “You Made Me Love You” “I’m in Love Again” “I’m Thru with Love” “Just What They Say It for I Never Knew” Chapter 9 - Dead Sharks and Dynamite Ham: The Philosophical Use of Humor in ... Schopenhauer’s Theory of Humor The Philosophical Value of Humor Woody Allen and Social Analysis The Nature of Romantic Love Woody Allen and Cultural Analysis The Provincial New Yorker Humor and Philosophy Chapter 10 - Reconstructing Ingmar: The Aesthetic Purging of the Great Model Comparing Allen and Bergman Allusion Modernism and Irony Art and Pretension Art and Life Act III - Five Films Chapter 11 - The Dangers of Hedonism: A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy Philosophical Sources Analytic Philosophy and Hedonism Cinematic Antecedents The Sartrean “Perfect Moment” Trying to Recapture a Lost Moment A Second Perfect Moment Primitive Passions The Dangers of Hedonism Chapter 12 - Inauthenticity and Personal Identity in Zelig The Problem of Personal Identity Existentialism Inauthenticity Inauthenticity and Fascism Chapter 13 - It’s All Darkness: Plato, The Ring of Gyges, and Crimes and Misdemeanors The Issues Plato’s Gyges Story Virtue Its Own Reward? Crime Does Pay Cliff Judah and Aunt May Pushing the Button The End: Is It All Darkness? Chapter 14 - Self-Knowledge in Another Woman The Self-Seeing Eye Marion Marion and Her Brother A Passionate Lover Ken’s Daughter A Childhood Friend “Be Honest with Me, Paul” Marion’s Influence on Others Another Woman The Dream Two Women Meet Hope Chapter 15 - Woody Allen’s Film Noir Light: Crime, Love, and Self-Knowledge in ... The Criminal World of The Maltese Falcon The Criminal World of the Jade Scorpion The Stuff Dreams are Made Of The Power of the Jade Scorpion Opposites Attract? The Limits of Hypnosis More Than Hope Criminals, Lovers, and Friends Love and Self-Discovery Entertainment for Intellectuals: A Woody Allen Filmography All These Great Minds . . . Index ALSO FROM OPEN COURT Copyright Page Popular Culture and Philosophy™ Series Editor: William Irwin VOLUME 1 Seinfeld and Philosophy: A Book about Everything and Nothing (2000) Edited by William Irwin VOLUME 2 The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D’oh! of Homer (2001) Edited by William Irwin, Mark T. Conard, and Aeon J. Skoble VOLUME 3 The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002) Edited by William Irwin VOLUME 4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale (2003) Edited by James South