Group Presentation

   Our group presentation went reasonably well. "The sublime" turned out to be a rather polarizing subject, but we covered our ground well by providing various examples and having the class choose between them. The clip that I provided from Akira Kurosawa's "Dreams" went over alright but there was a student in class who found objection to it. He said that my scene wasn't sublime because there was nothing extraordinary about it - we've all seen mountains, we've all seen meadows, we've all seen children, and I suppose we've all seen beautifully rendered film. This struck me a little dumb, because the scene was without a doubt sublime in my mind, but therein lies the categories fundamental subjectivity. However, in reading Kant, I discovered that his definition of the sublime doesn't only describe fundamentally huge phenomenon, but relates to the feeling in the observer of a certain disparity between their logical faculties and that which they are viewing: 'sublime cannot be contained in any sensible form, but concerns only ideas of reason, which, though no presentation adequate to them is possible, are provoked and called to mind precisely by this inadequacy, which does allow of sensible presentation." (Kant 432) Therefore, I still argue my scene as sublime, although I do not know if it could be seen as such outside of the context that brings the little boy to the mountain. However, there is a fundamental disparity and hugeness to the scene, the looming mountains and rainbow which we've been told has foxes living under it, the boy carrying the knife which he might have to kill himself with if the foxes refuse to forgive him, and the brevity of all that's conveyed in a minute of powerful footage. 

 Kant "Critique of the Power of Judgment." ed. Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.