“For me, as a philosopher of art, a Kurosawa film and Friends (1994-2004) are the same.” Dominic McIver Lopes (University of British Columbia) said these words a while ago when he was at Kent. I wrote them on my notebook at the time with the feeling that I had heard a sentence that encapsulates my own understanding. I abide by the same principle.
As a philosopher of art, Lopes was defending his choice of popular art as an object of inquiry and a source of examples. This does not mean that there are no differences between, say, Ikiru (1952) and Friends. It just means that, in abstract terms, their similarities as instances of the art of the moving image are more relevant — and more persuasive.
