Literary Criticism

American Pragmatism is a political philosophy rooted in the twin principles of action and usefulness. "If we take this action, will it be more useful than that action?" That is the basic question of American pragmatism.

The great American pragmatists, of course, are names that we once held up in this country with great pride, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, Abraham Lincoln.
The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies is the first book to tell in detail the story of a maverick filmmaker who worked outside the studio system. Providing extended critical discussion on six of his most important films (Shadows, Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Love Streams), Ray Carney argues that Cassavetes' work is a distinctly life-affirming form of modernist expression that is at odds with the world-denying modernism of many of the most important art works produced in this century. Cassavetes is revealed to be a profoundly thoughtful and self-aware filmmaker and a deeply philosophical thinker, whose work takes its place in the American tradition along with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James. The six films treated here emerge as expressive interpretations of the bewildering challenges in contemporary American cultural experience.

THE INTERPRETATION:

This movie perfectly suits the American Pragmatism, because aside from having an American culture or experiences in this movie, the flow of the story has no complications though it has some aspects of situations or experiences which involves the modernist expressions rather than ideas.