Pseudos, Kalos and Eikōs Mythos in Plato and Film

Myths and films do more than serve as prompts for reflection and critical thinking. They also engage us in unique and visceral ways as audience members and philosophers. Understanding that experience is essential to defending their philosophical value. In this paper, we offer an account of that value by describing three ways Plato utilizes myths in his dialogues before showing how those three uses suggest an account of the way we experience film that is broadly Platonic in spirit. In Part 1 we focus on different ways Plato constructs and uses images and myths in his dialogues, distinguishing them into three rough categories of pseudos, kalos, and eikōsmythos. We argue that each category directs our attention to certain general forms of life. In Part 2, we describe four kinds of existential experience we can have through our engagements with imagery in Plato and contemporary film: self-reflexive or intra-personal experience, relational or interpersonal experiences,phantasticor world-view experiences and finally, erotic experiences or experiences of a motivating desire toward a form of life. We provide multiple brief descriptions of films that offer viewers each of the three types of existential experience. We conclude that these experiences show how images and myth making in Plato and on the screen point to the philosophical value in our experience of them.