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There is an upsurge of interest in contemporary film theory towards cinematic emotions. Tarja Laine's innovative study proposes a methodology for interpreting affective encounters with films, not as objectively readable texts, but as emotionally salient events. Laine argues convincingly that film is not an immutable system of representation that is meant for (one-way) communication, but an active, dynamic participant in the becoming of the cinematic experience. Through a range of chapters that include Horror, Hope, Shame and Love - and through close readings of films such as The Shining, American Beauty and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Laine demonstrates that cinematic emotions are more than mere indicators of the properties of their objects. They are processes that are intentional in a phenomenological sense, supporting the continuous, shifting, and reciprocal exchange between the film's world and the spectator's world. Grounded in continental philosophy, this provocative book explores the affective dynamics of cinema as an interchange between the film and the spectator in a manner that transcends traditional generic patterns.
In Reframing Trauma in Contemporary Fiction Film, Tarja Laine provides insights into how cinema engages its spectator emotionally with the pathology of memory that lies at the heart of trauma. By arguing that cinema communicates the inability to process a traumatic event by means of its aesthetic specificity, Laine demonstrates that traumatic cinema can be an important source of ethical knowledge, both within and beyond the cinematic world. The films discussed in this book do not necessarily narrate trauma but embody that aspect of trauma which resists narrativization. This is why there are modes of affective engagement beyond storytelling by which spectators can meaningfully relate to trauma. Scholars of film studies, media studies, and philosophy will find this book of particular interest.
Shooting the Family, a collection of essays on the contemporary media landscape, explores ever-changing representations of family life on a global scale. The contributors argue that new recording technologies allows families an unusual kind of freedom—until now unknown—to define and respond to their own lives and memories. Recently released videos made by young émigrés as they discover new homelands and resolve conflicts with their parents, for example, reverberate alongside the dark portrayals of family life in the formal filmmaking of Ang Lee. This book will be a boon to scholars of film theory and media studies, as well as to anyone interested in the construction of the family in a postmodern world.
The world's largest and longest-running song competition, the Eurovision Song Contest is a significant and extremely popular media event throughout the continent and abroad. The Contest is broadcast live in over 30 countries with over 100 million viewers annually. Established in 1956 as a televised spectacle to unify postwar Western Europe through music, the Contest features singers who represent a participating nation with a new popular song. Viewers vote by phone for their favourite performance, though they cannot vote for their own country's entry. This process alone reveals much about national identities and identifications, as voting patterns expose deep-seated alliances and animosities...
The films of Darren Aronofsky invite emotional engagement by means of affective resonance between the film and the spectator’s lived body. Aronofsky’s films, which include a rich range of production from Requiem for a Dream to Black Swan, are often considered “cerebral” because they explore topics like mathematics, madness, hallucinations, obsessions, social anxiety, addiction, psychosis, schizophrenia, and neuroscience. Yet this interest in intelligence and mental processes is deeply embedded in the operations of the body, shared with the spectator by means of a distinctively corporeal audiovisual style. Bodies in Pain looks at how Aronofsky’s films engage the spectator in an affective form of viewing that involves all the senses, ultimately engendering a process of (self) reflection through their emotional dynamics.
Michael Haneke, whose films include 'The Piano Teacher' and 'The White Ribbon', has emerged over the past 15 years as a major figure in world cinema. This collection of essays offers a criticial inquiry & close formal analysis of his work, noted for its philosophical, historical & stylistic complexity.
Mind Reeling investigates how cinema displays and mirrors psychological disorders, such as bipolar disorder, amnesia, psychotic delusions, obsessive compulsive behavior, trauma, paranoia, and borderline personalities. It explores a range of genres, including biopics, comedies, film noirs, contemporary dramedies, thrillers, Gothic mysteries, and docufictions. The contributors open up critical approaches to audience fascination with film depictions of serious disturbances within the human psyche. Many films examined here have had little scholarly attention and commentary. These essays focus on how cinematic techniques contribute to popular culture's conception of mental dysfunction, trauma, and illness. This book reveals the complex artistic and generic patterns that produce contemporary images of psychopathology in cinema.
What is a moving image, and how does it move us? In Thinking In Film, celebrated theorist Mieke Bal engages in an exploration - part dialogue, part voyage - with the video installations of Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila to understand movement as artistic practice and as affect. Through fifteen years of Ahtila's practice, including such seminal works as The Annunciation, Where Is Where? and The House, Bal searches for the places where theoretical and artistic practices intersect, to create radical spaces in which genuinely democratic acts are performed. Bringing together different understandings of 'figure' from form to character, Bal examines the syntax of the exhibition and its ability to...
The Pathogenesis of Fear gathers together diverse conversations about cultural constructions of the monstrous. Interdisciplinary essays map the margins of monstrosity as follows: the cannibalistic paradox in Kleist’s late-Romantic Penthesilea; intersections of the monstrous-feminine and the new Victorian psycho-physiology of consciousness in George Eliot’s early novels; the monster-formed citizens of Dickensian and later dystopias; the killing of African Americans targeted as monstrous entities in US cities; the post-human anguish of a television zombie-world; the monstrous mutilations of a Spanish horror film; psychosocial aberration in Martin Millar’s werewolf fiction; the demonization of the Other on the war-torn streets of Ireland; Derridean devouring sovereignty. Discursively correlated with different categories of body and mind, monstrosity, these essays argue, persists in taking many forms. Contributors are Elizabeth Hollis Berry, Niculae Gheran, Sarah Harris, Fiona Harris-Ramsby and Mubarak Muhammad, Michaela Marková, Kimberley McMahon Coleman, Judith Rahn, Cindy Smith and Marita Vyrgioti.
This book investigates a group of exceptional films that single-mindedly consider one particular emotion – be it pity, lust, grief, or anxiety – to examine cinematic emotion in depth. Drawing on philosophical and psychological approaches, Fischer’s unique analysis offers unparalleled case studies for comprehending emotion in the movies. The book provides the reader with an opportunity to contemplate what notion of a particular emotion is advanced onscreen; to describe how the unique tools and aesthetics of cinema are utilized to do so; to place such representations in dialogue with film theory as well as philosophical and psychological commentary; and to illustrate the important dichotomy between filmic portrayals and audience response. Beyond film and media scholars and students, this book will have resonance for academics and practitioners in several fields of psychology, including social work, psychiatry, and therapy.