The selfishness of reality in Blowup.

• Main Author: Ng, Caine Yuan Peng.
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50605
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The conception of the 1966 film BlowUp comes from the filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni’s questioning of “the nature of reality” (Garner, Antonioni’s Blow-Up 7). This is precisely what sets the preliminary investigation of this paper- what actually is the nature of reality? This paper argues that the nature of reality is subjected and embodied by the individual, and further qualifies that the individual experience (of reality) is constantly changing through a negotiation of time and space. In short, the nature of reality is not only subjective ; it is also an embodiment by the individual who is always adapting through time and space. An objective and yet conventional way of looking at reality is offered by The Oxford English Dictionary which defines reality as “the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them” (OED). This paper does not agree with the given definition. Rather, it attempts to debunk such a parochial understanding of reality by arguing for reality to exist even beyond the state of things as they “actually exist”. Reality, and in fact, the nature of reality must expand to include the ever-changing idealistic and notional idea of things as subscribed by the individual.