Arrival: Embrace the Problem of Language
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- Опубліковано 15 бер 2017
- This video contains spoilers!
Denis Villeneuve’s film Arrival demonstrates different approaches to solving the problem of language’s necessary ambiguity. By looking at Plato’s treatment of speech and writing and Jacques Derrida’s seminal deconstruction of it, it starts to become clear that the most responsible thing to do, in light of the fact that we can’t just escape the textuality of experience, is to follow Louise Banks’ example and embrace the problem of language.
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Works Cited:
Arrival, directed by Denis Villeneuve, written by Eric Heisserer, 2016
Plato, Phaedrus (classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedru...)
Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” 1968
Barbara Johnson, “Translator’s Introduction” to Jacques Derrida, Dissemination (1981; 2004: University of Chicago Press)
Jacques Derrida (trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak), Of Grammatology (1976)
“Understand (v.),” Online Etymology Dictionary (www.etymonline.com/index.php?t...)
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Assets:
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Interstellar - CLIP: The Wormhole (2014) | HD ( • Video )
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Blade Runner 30th Anniversary Trailer ( • Blade Runner | 30th An... )
Thoth: Eden, Janine and Jim CC BY (www.flickr.com/photos/edenpic...)
Jacques Derrida (thebrooklyninstitute.com/item...)
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Music:
“Love is love, You is love” by Monsplaisir (freemusicarchive.org/music/Mon...)
“Trampled” by P C III, CC BY (freemusicarchive.org/music/P_C...)
“Fresh for N” by Kosta T, CC BY (freemusicarchive.org/music/Kos...)
“Oneiri” by Kai Engel, CC BY (freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai...)
![Can language change the way you think? [The Science of Arrival]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lIPi3OiaG3I/mqdefault.jpg)
![Can language change the way you think? [The Science of Arrival]](/img/tr.png)
"Louise begins to experience the past, the future and the present all at the same time"....she becomes present. All time is now. Beautiful.
The arrogance of this movie.
This movie is cool and all with ideas about speech, language, communication etc,.
But just because you can gather your thoughts and speak very intelligently and carefully doesn't mean aliens will think the same.
There's possibility that things can still get fucked up after all the improved communication thing anyway.
This movie is pretentious, trying to touch on psychology as much as sophistication, but things work differently in reality.
@@norpriest521 Yeah...reality is always worse !!
@@norpriest521maybe but we can never prove that the movie is wrong, we'll never evolve to see time like this.
i feel like i'm reading a seminar paper and i love it
Ten years ago, I was in a car accident. I suffered from catastrophic massive stroke. I couldn't talk and write. My toddler and my elementary daughter are empathize beings. We communicated through facial expressions and gestures. My toddler's index finger show me a bird, a juice or a DVD. I hold them during bike accidents, hold them through my love for them or they used cried and I hold them. True, speech can be a wonderful poetic language. It can communicate well in our jobs. Speech is a viral marketing device.
Alon K are you ok now?
@@mikehawk9773 Yup. I talk to my employees, to strangers, to my daughters. However, I was completely silent in the awesomeness of Nature. I felt I am within the winds blowing thru the winter’s branches. All of us united by the fire of energy. Sadly, it too has vanished.
Really thought provoking. Text vs speech, understanding vs violence, could you imagine if we were just as careful with communication and understanding in our world as they were with the aliens in the movie? Or at least the ones who didn't resort to violence. I know there's way more to your video, hard for me to grasp all of it
I would replace violence with fear, humans have a big fear of fear. People attack out of fear, it would be my best guess if alliens actually did come, also the whole understanding thing, having multiple languages is great and all, but how are you supposed to understand the other guy yelling at you?
It’s funny, we have that capability. It needs to be cultivated.
Wow how cool that the greek word for "I know", Epistemai, literally translates to "to stand upon". In my native Danish language our word for "to understand" is "forstå", which means "fore stand".
It's the same in norwegian, "forstå", and it could also mean "stand before" or "stand for" (as when you stand up for something). : )
We always speculate what it would be like to communicate with an alien race. I think it would be much like our interaction with animals on our planet. We communicate to some degree depending upon the species, but there is always a void or gap that is insurmountable to our understanding.
I sorta have the same feeling about it, odd
As Wittgenstein put it, " if a lion could speak, we could not understand it"
Which I take to mean the inner life of another creature is inaccessible to us,
because their experiences are different, and fundamentally incomprehensible.
@@smkh2890but could lion understand different species like cheetah? one's lyin', one's a cheeta
what about humans from very different cultures, maybe some tribe who has no idea about technology, could we understand each other? or us and people from 3000 years ago?
Tremendous video about a very underrated science fiction film, and more importantly, about the nuance of language.
Thank you so much! ^__^
From perception we collect data then move to information and then knowledge, but knowledge is the false Sefirot (Da’at), the chasm we must leap to reach understanding. Knowing is not the same as understanding. From intuition we move directly to wisdom and then to understanding. Louise starts with data and information, but then makes an intuitive leap when she places her bare hand on the glass. She intuitively realizes that understanding requires contact, and only then truly begins the process of understanding the Heptapods. From that point on, her understanding grows in leaps until she finally understands what she’s really learning. Not just a different language, but a different way of understanding.
That was such an interesting presentation. I didn't know these concepts before. Thank you for making and sharing this video.
Also, A+ use of music.
Aw, thank you so much! ^_^
Hey, great breakdown. I was using this movie as an example for a friend to explain some ideas in hermeneutics, your video was more more I could have asked for. I appreciate the time and effort you put into it.
Be safe.
I find your point about the etymologies of the word understanding interesting. As human beings we attempt to become one with concepts and ideas we are communicated and in communicating we invite others to do the same. The fact that we are able to speak and understand each other at all is a miracle. And I believe this desire to communicate our ideas denotes a deeper desire to communion with others beyond speech, a communion on the level of our being.
Wow, well packed and put together. Fully stimulated with new signposts to better understanding. Cheers.
"Understanding" via Language and Writing are necessary when direct and actual perception is not possible. Language and Understanding are emergent qualities due to "our" prior existing state, and that state is the perception of all things as a separative egoic-self, a perception of not "connected" ( not among, not part of, nor in understanding ). Writing and Language are an assumed understanding, or a mutually assumed belief of a connection inherently un-real. In actuality we are as distant from each other, as the characters and the aliens were. Much like the Touring problem, we are only directly aware of the reality of our own awareness, wherein Language and Writing are artifices that create the belief of connection.
So interesting, thank you for this and all of your videos!
Hey, thanks so much! That means a lot. :)
This video, in and by itself, stands tall among the briefs that deal with the 'power of language'. It captures the essence of the 'subject' while inviting the viewer or listener to explore further.
Thank you.
Thank you ^__^
Awesome video, I had to watch it twice before the first time I wasn't paying as much attention as I needed lol
Have you read Understand, from the same author of Story of Your Life in which Arrival is based? If not, make sure to look it up, the entire book is amazing in it's use of language and how his stories are used not only to propose but to create a better understanding of interesting concepts.
Vinícius Monteiro Hey thanks for the love. 😁 no, I'll def have to look that up!
What a delightful and thought-provoking treatise (though verbal instead of written) on the underlying theme(s) of this movie. While I am educated and (theoretically) of above average intelligence, I found much of your video over my head - and yet I still loved it. I'm a little sad that youtube's algorithm has tucked this gem of a video into a dark and dusty shelf in the back of the archive, only grudgingly serving it up to those of us who have watched two dozen other, lesser videos on the film. Only 62K views in five years? It is deserving of so much more. And less than 2K likes? Perhaps I am not alone in my deficit of understanding... Ahh, the problem of language - of communicating - of communion - indeed... Thanks again for making this video.
Loving your work. I met Dennis picking fruit in the Okanagan, 80's ... we spoke of Meher Baba and 'aliens' from nowhere but here 🙂
Love 💝🙏
Meher Baba. That's a name I haven't heard in years.
I felt sophisticated as hell watching this video.
Lol
Thanks for sharing this amazing video!
Excellent video!
EyE Love your IN'Sights. I wish that the Creators of Arrival would have made sure that the Japanese Enso (Zen brushstroke heART Work that means "Circle of Togetherness") was giving credit.
Great video! Thank you!! WOW
Interesting thoughts. Good job!
Why thanks!
Lee's Elucidation: 'A finite number of words must be made to represent an infinite number of things and possibilities.' Hence homonyms, ploysemy, and levels of abstraction.
From the short story the movie is based on, Louis learns that the Heptapods need a big favor from the Human people, in 3000 years. So they are now giving humans the tools to survive that long, and then make the request which is a non request since it is not at all specific. But since they can't really see that far in the future, it gets murky and indefinite. They only see a need and that humans can help.
This is put simply a wonderfully done and executed videl with informative elaboration, with that said I'd like to thank you for potentially taking the time and patience to read this i appreciate it.
^_^
Thanks so much! ^__^
Electric Didact no problem it's my distinguished pleasure, honestly in my opinion everyone deserves a nice compliment once in awhile but especially with something so excellently done and expressed upon i think it was definitely due... and put additionally I'm surprised that you're channel is larger, anyways though with all of that said you needn't thank me although i appreciate the consideration, i was just expressing my gratitude for such excellently executed content.
Very inspiring, thanks!
^__^
WELL DONE!
What a wonderful and clever movie! Great video!
Thank you!
Love this insight! 1 problem with banks is she couldn’t distinguish between hypothesis and theory!! It was in the definition !!!!
Pretty important to a scientist or 2 scientists
Hey there. I'm working on Portuguese subtitles for your video and I having a hard time to understand what u say at 1:09. "Which makes the ......... film Arrival".
Awesome video by the way.
Thank you! It's the name of the director. "Which makes Denis Villeneuve's film, Arrival,..."
Thank you! I'm part of a discussion group on comunications philosophy at my master program and I'll show your video during our meeting once the subtitle is done. We're currently discussing the Derrida's Plato's Pharmacy.
Wow! Honored. ^_^
Hello again! I've finished adding the subs, but I guess you have to aprove it so it can be enabled on the video.
@@Gabriel-jf1yi Ah! Thanks for letting me know. UA-cam didn't notify that there was a transcription for me to review. Should be published now! Thanks so much!
Your Video is very helpful for my text about communication in arrival and I wanted to ask you, if you know which page the cite in Dissemination was. Thank you!
Thank you! I don't recall the page number, sorry. It was in the Introduction, I believe. Good luck!
can i please say what a fascinating topic that seemes to be
Exactly. And a fine insight into Plato's Pharmakon.
Thanks! Just sharing the insights of others. :)
So here's a serious question and pardon me if it sounds insulting b/c I'm not trying to be but genuinely pondering: why do you bother? what compels you to share these great ideas with anybody? what is it that propels you to cast such pearls and then endure the barrage of anger or ignorance or stupidity or general nuisance that inevitably flies your way? Perhaps this is not the right forum for this, bit I feel a bit like I'm becoming the monster that I hate.
Fortunately, I've been pretty spared from the trollz, all things considered. I don't actually have that much exposure, so it kinda means I get scant garbage. But I hear you. Part of it is that as an artist and a writer, I just have a deep need to "put my work out there". But there's always fear and self-consciousness. If you haven't watched it yet, my most recent video essay on hope and speech (which actually is a spiritual sequel to this video), and the essay on which it's based, is the result of a lot of thought on just the sort of question you pose.
Plato was a thief.
This view of communication ignores key aspects of human interactions: idiots exist, assholes too, sometimes simply passing information around, no matter how, isn't enough.
You sure get a Like and Sub from me! this really made my day and i hope to see more videos from you in the future!
Woohoo! Thanks. :)
smart movie i love it, my favorite kind of movie
Wow.
Interesting introduction to Derrida, but the title of the video is misleading. There are occasional mentions of Arrival, but this is not an analysis of how the movie, specifically, examines the power of language.
Nice video but I still don't understand Derrida.
Me neither
謝謝
Which came first...Language or Science?
❤
The next step for humanity is to become more telepathic, meditate.
Not to boo hoo your vid, but why does everyone make a big deal of the film discussing language and how it makes us think when Kurt Vonnegut explored that decades earlier with Slaughter House 5?
Could you please elaborate on that?
This analysis should have been divided into human-human communication and human-alien communication. Humans all share the same senses, IQ's, emotions, personal goals, values, perceptions, histories, speed-of-thought, and so on. Aliens might very well differ in some or all of these things.
but alien were create by humans, like the gods, so they cannot have other senses that the humans already have
One line of code tells the computer to create a red dot on a screen. Millions of lines of code give you a word program that can do spreadsheet applications as well. Billions of lines of code married with dense 2 or 5nm chips, you have the basis of neural network. Now use fine fiber optic cable and quantum processing chips with advanced learning AI algorithms. You reach the level of processing indistinguishable from the neurons that make up the human brain. Complexity breeds more complexity until like evolution you get an animal capable of conceptualizing his or her environment. Not just the instinctual reactive brain but a brain that changes factors of survival moving the probabilities in their favor.
In the alien language, one word for tool and weapon. Hyper language economy.
Ted Chiang
If you cant get your message through in less than 15 words then you failed.
Your music is too damned loud.
Derrida doesn't help your analysis. I hear you running through the usual tired deconstructive tropes. Speech v. writing, différance, etc. could possibly be relevant to a consideration of this film, but not if your ultimate point is that language is ambiguous. Your review is consequently subpar and I would even go so far as to brand it an insult to your viewers. Did you even see the film? I want my 15 minutes back.