Hi Greg, et.al.In response to your question, in this film of a stage show by Derek DelGaudio, he explores people’s concept of identity, starting before his audience even leaves the lobby to enter the auditorium. As a stage production it requires the community of an audience to exist, so as a film we are shown his audiences as they participate with him. Its message is to question who we see ourselves as, who we see others as, and the inherent issues with labeling ourselves and others. For my interests, as you’ve likely already surmised, he is basically exploring Sartre’s concept of bad faith, a facet of which is labeling ourselves and others making everyone into narrowly defined inert objects—being-in-itself, rather than the ever nascent being-for-itself.
Revealing DelGaudio's message is not a spoiler of the film, but sharing my opinion of his methods might be. I don’t want to put a weight of bias on how others might perceive the film. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has 100% rating from reviewers, and an 89% viewer rating, which is impressive for whatever it means.
I’ve been reading up lately about cognitive bias as it is a psychological definition of Sartre’s concept of bad faith, which might be a remarkable bit of psychology by a philosopher, from back in the days when the two fields were actively sparring. Which reminds me to ask, do you consider yourself a practitioner of mathematical psychology?
Anyway, to get back to Derek DelGaudio’s film, I shared it because it reveals the power of rhetoric, slight of hand, and emotion within the context of cognitive bias and ontological identity. I saw the film as a weird demonstration, sort of like the Stanford Prison “Experiment", in this case where we were the audience to its audience.
Peter
Peter Lloyd Jones
562-209-4080
Sent by determined causes that no amount of will is able to thwart.
This did look interesting.
Peter, can you share a bit about the kinds of “ontological questions” this film raises? Magicians seem to manipulate our epistemological frames to make it appear as if our ontologies are flawed, but as you said, they are “lies,” in that there is no “real magic.” As such, I am now curious what the message is. If you don’t want to spoil it, no problem.
Best,
Gregg
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