Seduction and Ethics

While the cinematic construction of the body and the aestheticization of proxemics—as we have seen—can be used for a seductive mediation of inner crises, the question of an ethical classification of the presented events remains open. And it is precisely in the ethical challenge that a great potential for cinematic attractiveness is found. Film can challenge us to take a position, to align the staged events with our own values and at the same time to question the universal ‘rightness’. Siegfried Kracauer states in his Theory of Film (1960) that cinema, beyond its function as a mirror of society, is also capable of conveying phenomena that seem barely bearable in reality. The screen becomes “Medusa’s mirror”. Facing the hard to bear becomes the greatest ethical challenge that narrative cinema has to offer. And only in this way can film as a medium change, expand and possibly also alter the perception of reality. In the following chapter, I would like to discuss this ethical challenge as a seductive strategy using three examples.