Two bits of news

originally posted by Arjun Mendiratta:
Where is Ice Cream Man???
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Van Halen says he's passing by:

I'm your ice cream man, stop me when I'm passin' by
Oh my, my, I'm your ice cream man, stop me when I'm passin' by
See now all my flavors are guaranteed to satisfy
Hold on a second baby

I got bim bam banana pops, dixie cups
All flavors and pushups too

I'm your ice cream man baby, stop me when I'm passin' by
See now all my flavors are guaranteed to satisfy
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
Jonathan:

Is the John Malkovich of "Being John Malkovich" real or fictional?

Enquiring minds want to know.

(Well, I want to know, anyway.)
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Surely you already know the answer to this one. Do you think the events in the film happened to the John Malkovich who played the role of John Malkovich?
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

Surely you already know the answer to this one. Do you think the events in the film happened to the John Malkovich who played the role of John Malkovich?
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Most of them certainly did not. But I'm honestly a little bit confused about the broader issue.

Your argument makes a case for the fictional side of things. But, the real John Malkovich is in some sense the referent of "John Malkovich" in the title of the film and in various instances of its usage in the film itself.

One might acknowledge this and still hold that the John Malkovich of the film is a fictional character, one constructed out of the real JM and some additional imaginary material, as for example the Picasso and Einstein of "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" might also be regarded as being (without the presence of the actual person named). The play is in some sense about the historical personages but says things about them through fictional doppelgangers.

The worry I have about this is as follows. Let's say I write a biography which contains various falsehoods about a real person. Have I created a biography with errors or a fiction of the type under discussion above?

Is it really as simple as whether I call it a biography or a work of fiction?

Maybe it is, and maybe it's just a question of whether we apply the 'fiction' operator to the work as a whole or not. But these gray areas worry me, especially given the role of imagination and narrative in constructing our picture of the world and the stories, such as they are, of our own lives. What's needed is a principled distinction by which the fictional can be marked off from the real without making the real fictional or the fictional real. If 'fictional' or 'imaginary', etc. is basic, a brute operator one places on certain sorts of mental or speech actions, then it seems like fictionality is part of the furniture of the universe. Which would be interesting.

Ah well, this is hard and I'm hung over. Probably I'm making it more complex than it needs to be.
 
originally posted by Steven Spielmann:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:

Surely you already know the answer to this one. Do you think the events in the film happened to the John Malkovich who played the role of John Malkovich?
Click to expand...

Most of them certainly did not. But I'm honestly a little bit confused about the broader issue.

Your argument makes a case for the fictional side of things. But, the real John Malkovich is in some sense the referent of "John Malkovich" in the title of the film and in various instances of its usage in the film itself.

One might acknowledge this and still hold that the John Malkovich of the film is a fictional character, one constructed out of the real JM and some additional imaginary material, as for example the Picasso and Einstein of "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" might also be regarded as being (without the presence of the actual person named). The play is in some sense about the historical personages but says things about them through fictional doppelgangers.

The worry I have about this is as follows. Let's say I write a biography which contains various falsehoods about a real person. Have I created a biography with errors or a fiction of the type under discussion above?

Is it really as simple as whether I call it a biography or a work of fiction?

Maybe it is, and maybe it's just a question of whether we apply the 'fiction' operator to the work as a whole or not. But these gray areas worry me, especially given the role of imagination and narrative in constructing our picture of the world and the stories, such as they are, of our own lives. What's needed is a principled distinction by which the fictional can be marked off from the real without making the real fictional or the fictional real. If 'fictional' or 'imaginary', etc. is basic, a brute operator one places on certain sorts of mental or speech actions, then it seems like fictionality is part of the furniture of the universe. Which would be interesting.

Ah well, this is hard and I'm hung over. Probably I'm making it more complex than it needs to be.
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Well, I would say that generic declarations do play a fairly important determinative role here. We don't urinate in Duchamp's "Fountain" because it is presented to us as an artwork, not because it looks different from a urinal. If James Frey had called his work a novel, in addition to having gone unnoticed, it would also not have been fraudulent. I am unsure of what this sentence means:
"If 'fictional' or 'imaginary', etc. is basic, a brute operator one places on certain sorts of mental or speech actions, then it seems like fictionality is part of the furniture of the universe." If "part of the furniture of the universe" means simply that the concept of fiction exists (all it takes, I would say to be part of the furniture of the universe)then I don't see why that is particularly interesting since who would argue that it doesn't exist? If you mean something in excess of that, I can't make it out.
 
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