In front of nothing we can smile: tragic imaginary and pedagogy of choice in contemporary cinema

• Grant number: 19/00649-3
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2019
• End date: June 30, 2021
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Education - Specific topics in Education
• Principal Investigator: Rogério de Almeida
• Grantee: Rogério de Almeida
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The circulation of the works of the imagination, as in the case of cinematographic art, reflects and projects images of the world, inscribing itself as one discourse among others on the contemporaneity. Among these imagistic-discursive forces, the tragic imaginary, understood as an unconditional affirmation of life, even if parsimoniously disseminated, has become an alternative has been constituted for the nihilistic expressions, of denial of life, and for those of conditioned approval. The research here designed aims to study the tragic imaginary in contemporary cinema and its implications for the pedagogy of choice, which establishes the issue of approval as fundamental for the education of lifestyles. Cinema is not reduced to reproduction of what is socially and culturally given, but constitutes itself as a form of thought, that is, it exerts pedagogical pressure in projecting propositions of the world that organize it symbolically, influencing the current and future ways of living. The corpus to be investigated consists of the films Big Jato (2016), Paterson (2016), Lucky (2017), Perfetti sconosciuti (2017) and The wild pear tree (2018) (tragic imaginary); Nocturama (2016), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) and The house that Jack built (2018) (nihilistic imaginary). The methodology is based on the understanding phenomenology and symbolic hermeneutics, and will have as procedures the dense description of the selected films and later discussion of the possible interpretations, aiming at the understanding of their (imaginary) senses. As results, the results of the trajectory imaginary in contemporary cinema and the deepening of the knowledge of the pedagogy of choice (suspension of belief, aesthetic experience, formatives itineraries) are expected. (AU)