The Frankfurt School and cinema: a defense of dialectical logic or “questioning of values” to the detriment of formal logic or projection of “positive values” within films

Abstract

This article will analyze how cinema modifies the thinking of its viewers through the logic that underlies its films. To do this, we will begin by referring to the double function of cinema: the mimetic, that which reproduces a certain state of things, and the imaginary, that which invites us to question what is established by imagining other possible worlds. Next, we will present the definition of “formal logic” and “dialectical logic” of the Frankfurt School and clarify their relevance to analyze the logic of films. We will defend that films underlaid by a formal logic, that is, films whose characters and elements are closed, teleological and are aimed at a “positive” outcome - in the sense of positum, of data without ambiguity or questioning -, promote an identitarianism that does not discuss the existing state of affairs, while cinema underpinned by dialectical logic, a cinema whose characters contain a conflictive ambiguity without possible reconciliation, encourages the questioning of identities, morality and the society. We will conclude that dialectical logic, that which encourages the questioning of established or “positive” values, is the highest philosophical proposal of cinema, to the detriment of formal logic.