The Allegory and Cinema

After the textbook introduction to this topic, let's further breakdown Plato’s allegory of the cave and how it relates to cinema.

 

  

In the above floating mountains from the Avatar film (left) and Pandora: World of Avatar area of Walt Disney World (right), observe how filmmakers represent artificial world through cinema vs. how they are conveyed in reality. From Avatar.com Links to an external site.

 

Film confronts the audience with strong impressions of reality delivered artificially. A spectator’s experience is created through these impressions (or illusions). Illusions are anything that a film does to guard the diegesis. Films create diegetic elements to build worlds for viewers. In the reading, Branigan posits that these filmmaking techniques create illusions that shape the spectator’s experience. These can be considered as artificial constructs by filmmakers that create impressions of reality, rather than a window into actual reality. 

 

 

Plato’s allegory of the cave has a long history in cinema. Films like The Matrix, Total Recall and Fight Club have all used the allegory to question how we view cinema. These films create fictions within fictions and manipulate narrative perspective.

Plato’s allegory led to a re-insurgence of film theory in the 1970s that gave spectators the ability to critically engage with film. The allegory confronts our viewing habits of a film and allows us to identify specific cinematic techniques that lead to meaning. Theorists used this analogy to make film less alienating.

On the next page, you'll review a diagram of plato's cave. 

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