At first blush, holiday movies might seem like an unusual arena for encountering TOK-type questions and issues. However, with just a little bit of reflection, one can see that at the heart of many holiday movies is a consideration of the relationships between the concepts of knowledge, truth, justification, belief, and reality. Think about some of the most famous holiday movies:--The central question of "Miracle on 34th Street" is the veracity of a department store Santa's claim that he is the real Santa Claus.
--At the end of "A Christmas Carol," Scrooge is seen hugging the blankets on his bed and wondering if his visions of the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future were real or not. And there is Scrooge's classic line when Marley's ghost first appears to him, "There's more of gravy than the grave about you, whatever you are!"
--In the final scenes of "It's a Wonderful Life," George Bailey is confronted with two versions of reality, and in the closing scenes, he excitedly and ironically embraces his bloody lip, his crashed car, and the irritating propensity of a finial on the staircase rail to come off as signs that he really was born.
Below, ready for your comments, are a couple of quotes and clips from "The Polar Express" that touch on knowledge, truth, belief, justification, and reality. Connections can also be made to our present consideration of sense perception as a way of knowing. You are also invited to submit quotes and/or clips from another holiday movie, along with your comments or reflection on them, for dual credit (i.e. credit for two journal/blog entries).
Click the play button above twice (with a pause between) to see the film clip for this piece of dialogue.
Hobo: What exactly is...is your persuasion...on the Big Man, since you brought him up?
The Boy: Well...I...I want to believe, but…
Hobo: But you don’t want to be bamboozled. You don’t want to be led down the primrose path! You don’t want to be conned or duped...have the wool pulled over your eyes. Hoodwinked! You don't want to be taken for a ride! Railroaded!...Seeing is believing....Am I right?
Seeing, Believing, and Reality
source: Spike TV
Click the play button above twice (with a pause between) to see the film clip for this piece of dialogue.
The Boy: Wait!...Wait! Wha...Wha...What did he look like? Did ya see him?
The Conductor: No, sir. But sometimes, seeing is believing....And, sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.
8 comments:
I think that the hobo is using sense perception a lot... seeing is believing.... and the boy is using more reason... like how can santa be true? And the conductor is all about belief, sometimes you have to believe in things you can't see and don't even know to be true.
So out of the two clips, (the last one you cant see but you can read it) the Hobo says that "seeing is believing" yet the conductor says that "sometimes we know things we cant see" or something like that, i dont remember exactly. To us, seeing something helps a great deal in determining whether it is real or not. and according to the hobo that is the only way. I think that the hobo thinks this because maybe he has seen santa clause and that is the only thing that changed his mind about whether he is real or not. if that were the case, then it would make sense that he believes seeing is believing.
The conductor on the other hand adds more to the hobos thought. he also believes that seeing can aide in believing. but he thinks that its not the only way of believing. Which ties in with the movie Elf. Where santa needs christmas spirit to make his sleigh fly. for some reason people believe that santa is real without seeing him (unless yo count the news claiming they have seen them) and begin to sing christmas songs to help him out. I dont know if I made that comparison clear enough but it works for me : D
I'm going off the second set of dialogue.
Here the two characters are saying that seeing is believing, but sometimes we have to believe in things that we can not see.
I won't go into religion and stuff about how people, like myself, believe in someone who they can't see but believe in. So I'm going to talk about gravity. I believe in gravity but you can't see it. If you don't believe in gravity go jump off a cliff. I think that there are lots of true things we can not see. Like wind. We could argue all day if it's called wind or galbladder or whatever mr. Currier but I'm talking about truth that is relative. Like oxygen we know it's there we breathe it every day and we need it to survive and that is truth and we all know it. I believe that there are things that I believe in that we cannot see.
hmmmmm. I guess you could say that seeing is the easiest way to believe something. But I'm not sure how much I agree with the statement that the most real things in the world are ones we can't see. It seems a little far fetched to say something you can't experience is one of the most real things in life.
Twice Upon a Christmas – The female protagonist, Kristen Claus, the daughter of Santa Claus had given up her memory in order to save her new family. Now she is trying to find her origins, but it’s not so easy when she is with a family that doesn’t believe in Santa Claus.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsemiiQjlWI&feature=related
In this film, the almost out-of-the-blue theory that Kristen is in fact from the North pole, although would logically make sense if the family considered the existence of a Santa Claus, is automatically thrown away just because most are not willing to believe in the man’s existence.
Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus
Watch the last minute of the video -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_LcxW6dPbU&feature=related
Watch the first minute - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReMc6gWCWHM&feature=related
Watch from 3 minutes to the end- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik7Hcyh4lhw&feature=related
"Listen to your heart, not your head. Because your heart is so much wiser." is the statement that Nick tells Beth when she outright dismisses his claims of being the next Santa Claus, as many believe through reason and logic that Santa Claus does not exist. Sense perception plays a role into believing Santa Claus’ existence as well. No one has officially seen the old man, especially not on Christmas day in the living room of a home setting out gifts. And logically, there is no way for a man to travel the entire Earth in one night. The excuse of magic also being illogical, as that too has never been truly proven with reason, logic, and evidence. There are people of many other cultures as well that in fact, do not believe in Santa Claus in the way that the western world does. In fact, there are those that do not know the existence nor story of such a man at all; so is that not even more proof that the man does not truly exist?
Also, as we have been taught, emotions and intuition are not a very good basis for knowledge, though is fair as aids as long as we already have proof. After all, how can the heart, a person’s emotions and intuition, really know anything? Children on the other hand, in these films especially, always emphasize and state that not everything can be explained through logic, and that one just has to believe. This argument, very commonly used, does state a good point, in that even the logic and way we perceive the world right now is very incomplete and that we do not know everything that is going on; but we are merely just closed-minded to the idea, refusing to believe ourselves fallible.
In most of these Christmas films, children are almost always depicted as believing in Santa Claus and magic, while adults or others who have “grown up” do not, because they are still young and innocent. Another factor as to why the children still believe is likely because they have not yet been subjected entirely to nor completely accepted the rules and standards that society has set yet. The children have not yet been taught to only listen and to never question what they are told.
I think that seeing is not necessary believing because although sense perception is one way of believing it is not the only way. As we get older we come to rely on our senses to tell us what reality is and what is not but sometimes are senses can deceive us. We do not notice it when it happens though because when we come to a belief with our sense perception, we have justifiable proof. How can we believe something if we have no proof of it being so? I think most people rely on faith. We believe things such as god, gravity, and santa is true because we have faith and it works well with our lives. We can't know anything without having faith in it being so.
I think it is interestion how well what the conductor says about seeing being believing fits with our readong on senses and perception. This clip could be interpreted as a statement about how the human senses do not actually pick up the majority of stimulus, yet we still seem to rely on experiencing something with our senses to acknowledge that it is real. This does not actually make sense because even just with the sense of sight we see only a tiny portion of what is "real". I don't think that this is what is really referred to when the conductor says, "sometimes the most real things in this world are things we can't see", but it definately fits the reading.
Here are some T.O.K.ish christmas quotes.
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Schroeder: This is the music I've selected for the Christmas play.
[Schroeder plays Fur Elise]
Lucy Van Pelt: What kind of Christmas music is that?
Schroeder: Beethoven Christmas music.
Lucy Van Pelt: What has Beethoven got to do with Christmas? Everyone talks about how "great" Beethoven was. Beethoven wasn't so great. He never got his picture on bubblegum cards, did he? Have you ever seen his picture on a bubblegum card? Hmmm? How can you say someone is great who's never had his picture on bubblegum cards?
Schroeder: Good grief.
I thought that this was a good example of when logic as a means of knowledge can go wrong. Lucy remains entirely logical within her own web of belief. However her entire web is built in a messed up way. Her system works because it doesn’t contradict itself at all, if someone is great they are on bubblegum cards and if not then the aren’t included in the cards. But, bubblegum cards obviously aren’t a good indicator of musicianship.
Elf
Buddy: You stink. You smell like beef and cheese! You don't smell like Santa. If you’re the real Santa what did you sing to me on my birthday last year?
Mall Santa: Why Happy Birthday, of course!
I thought this was a funny quote that illustrates sense perception as a means of knowledge. The mall Santa obviously isn’t the real one because he doesn’t smell right. Even though he knows that Santa sang happy birthday to Buddy on his birthday.
(Sorry Mr. Currier if I sent several copies of this, it keeps saying i have the wrong password)
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