Smoking/ No smoking - Ereignis im Zeitverlauf

Abstract

This article reconsiders the 'category' of time in the light of current discussions that explore the question as to whether there are events that can be considered as changing or not changing »the world«. The films Smoking and No Smoking by the French film-maker Alain Resnais based on a play by Alan Ayckbourn are discussed at length. Both films start with the same episode, a highly insignificant, apparently meaning-less 'event' - one of the female protagonists either lights a cigarette or does not -, developing twelve entirely different stories spanning a period of five years. The insignificant but decisive event is also a main theme of chaos theory and the sciences of complexity. Problems of entropic irreversibility and the arrow of time may therefore be discussed in the context of a small social system. For such reasons Resnais' films are viewed as a major didactic 'exemplum' that makes it possible to discuss theoretical problems of history.