Abstract
This chapter presents the first of three film analyses, and focuses on The Seventh Continent. After setting out the events of the film, we turn to existing film theory literature to show how the film has been understood previously, which tends particularly toward reading it in psychological terms in light of its tragic ending. In contrast, we offer a reading that is led by the film’s own devices—the repetition of the same activities, prolonged close-ups, and the use of diegetic sounds. These, we suggest, invite a different stance towards it than the critical approach, which seeks explanation and deeper meaning. By focusing only on what is seen and heard through the film’s devices we argue that the film brings into view that raising children is always about inheritance and thus involves forms of taking care of things in the world and of one another, showing and maintaining these forms of care, and passing on these and the objects concerned in it. Furthermore, it shows that the maintenance of community entails the willingness to do these things, time and again.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
For a clip from The Seventh Continent, see, for example , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGM73TuKCg4.
- 2.
In fact, it is this very familiarity that struck us about this depiction of family life on its first viewing . As said in Chapter 2, our viewing , and subsequent discussing, of the film was not dis-interested. Up until the dramatic moment of the destruction of the house and their self-destruction, what we saw was, in a very strong sense, our life, we felt, that was being presented in the film . And the familiar critical reading of the film did not seem to connect to how we experienced it.
References
Cavell, S. (1979a). The world viewed (Enlarged edition). Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Cavell, S. (1979b). The claim of reason: Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy. New York: Oxford University Press.
De Vos, J. (2012). Psychologisation in times of globalisation. London: Routledge.
Giroux, H. (2011). Breaking into the movies: Public pedagogy and the politics of film. Policy Futures in Education, 9, 686–695.
Grossvogel, D. (2007). The coercion of vision. Film Quarterly, 60(4), 36–43.
Haneke, M. (1989). Der Siebente Kontinent. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098327/.
Rothman, W. (2003). Cavell on film, television, and opera. In R. Eldridge (Ed.), Stanley Cavell (pp. 206–238). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sharrett, C. (2005). The Seventh Continent. Cinémathèque Annotations on Film, Issue, 34, February. http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/seventh_continent/.
Sorfa, D. (2006). Uneasy domesticity in the films of Michael Haneke. Studies in European Cinema, 3(2), 93–104.
Wheatley, C. (2009). Michael Haneke’s cinema: The ethic of the image. New York: Berghahn Books.
Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical investigations) (G. E. M. Anscombe, trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hodgson, N., Ramaekers, S. (2019). The Seventh Continent: Taking Care and Making Family. In: Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12540-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12540-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-12539-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-12540-0
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)