Film expresses thought and conversation between images concepts and the viewer. The product is an experience that offers “cavellian mediations” in capturing the ways films think. This “thought” pertains to the mechanism by which film elicits and expresses thought, both within its own means of expression and through the potential of self-reflection amongst the viewers.

The film provides voice, animating the effort to find words to describe the experience to film. Essentially, the film invites us to express, experience, and think.

In reflection upon the conversation, I must recognize it’s existence as a moment that is situated within a series of instances.

Reconcile the fact that genre exists both at once “full-blown” and emerges spontaneously within conversation

Genre requires a level of engagement between reader and the text. While “genre exists as a form characterized by features, as an object by its properties; accordingly to emerge to the question is that later members can ‘add’ something to the genre because there is no such thing as ‘all its features’” (315).

Cavell establishes two forms of genre: one consisting of genre as a medium and the other consisting of genre as a cycle. The role that criticism plays within these two cases of genre differs. In genre as a cycle, the criticism falls predominantly on the genre rather than the individual object.

“Genre as a form characterized by features, as an object by its properties; accordingly to emerge full-blow must mean to emerge possessing all its features” 1) “First, nothing would count as a feature until an act of criticism defines it as such (otherwise it would always have been obvious that, for instance, the subject of remarriage was a feature, indeed a leading feature of a genre) 2) “Second, if a member of a genre were just an object with features the if it shared all its features with its companion members they would presumably be indistinguishable from one another” 3) “Third, a genre must be left open to new members, a new bearing of responsibility for its inheritance” 4) “”fourth, membership in the genre requires that if an instance (apparently) lacks a given feature, it must compensate for it, for example by showing a further feature ‘instead of’ the one it lacks” (316) 5) “the test of this compensation is that the new feature introduced by the new member will, in turn, contribute to a description of the genre as a whole”

I use the qualifications of genre to characterize the “state of saturation, completeness of expression” (317) of my own experience.

The dialogue itself fell within the realm of ordinary conversation, and thus the features also where characterized by ordinary conversation. This raises notion as to what is ordinary conversation. Ordinary conversation, I see, as the social interactions existing between individuals—the casual conversation people engage in on a daily basis. This conversation that I had with my grandmother was no exception. She talked about a phone call she needed to make, trivial facts about life.

The conversation still could not escape the genre of cancer. Cancer provided the backdrop to our small talk. This conversation invoked the fourth rule where the lacking feature (the topic of cancer) was replaced by an alternative feature. While not verbalized, cancer still remained a part of this “dialogue.” Cancer presented itself in my grandmother’s fatigue, the fact that she was handicapped, the very venue of a nursing home. Cancer presented an inescapable feature that permeated the experience indirectly.

The conversation developed itself within the genre of memory through reflections. The normalcy of the conversation immediately resonated with me. And yet, the significance became allocated to the genre of memory only subsequent to a series of instances. Cavell presents the dualistic nature of genre where it emerges both “full-blown in a particular instance” and in conversation with other instances by “work[ing] out its internal consequences in future instances” (315). The product is a genre that emerges through reflection and insight, and that serves as the beginning of a conversation with experience.

Cavell's emphasis is on experience, a grounding in facts as facts are revealed moment to moment, in time. Ethics will thus necessarily become "situational." The phi- losopher's task, in Cavell's analysis, remains "to discover what we need." He must discover what our lives really depend on, and proceed from there, with intelligence and compassion.

Cavell emphasizes that, “[t]o take an interest in an object is to take an interest in one’s experience of the object, so that to examine and defend my interest in these films is to examine and defend my interest in my own experience, in the moments and passages of my life I have spent with them” (294)

Cavellian Critique: * Viewing a film requires placing the individual within the film, where the reading requires interpretation of the work. The process of viewing, reading, observing, and experiencing the viewing experience requires the examination and defense of our personal interest in that specific experience. QUOTE! * The viewing experience guides experience. It provides a groundwork for relating th * This provides insight regarding the human ‘presence’ on screen. Photographic image captures a moment in time—capturing a specific time, place, and moment. The camera serves to capture image objectively. However, it is the human interpretation of that image that engages human subjectivity in its representation.

Photograph tangibly and objectively captures human presence in a moment of time.

Memory allows for the repeated “viewing” of experience. With reach reading, greater interpretation is necessary and acquired. The act of reflection illustrates an interest in the experience. The fact that a moment become memory illustrates the extent to which we “examine and defend” our interest in that experience. Thus, Cavellian criticism serves as a “natural extension of conversation” in that viewers test knowledge, share experience, and reflect upon the cultural inheritance.

How is memory similar to film.
It means something that can’t necessarily be explained in words. Cavell engages with film in a similar mechanism- in a way that is internal.
Perspective
Undergoing change
The moment at which he recognized everything matters in the arts. Absolute knowledge that everything in that film matters. Understand why each gesture, each posture, each word, each frame was important.
How is memory different from film?