ISBN:
9780520256958
,
9780520256965
Language:
Undetermined
Pages:
XII, 280 S.
Edition:
Online-Ausg. Online-Ressource
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
DDC:
302.2343
Keywords:
Motion picture audiences - Psychology
;
Electronic books
;
Motion pictures
;
United States
;
Motion picture audiences
;
Psychology
Abstract:
Everyone knows the thrill of being transported by a film, but what is it that makes movie watching such a compelling emotional experience? In Moving Viewers, Carl Plantinga explores this question and the implications of its answer for aesthetics, the psychology of spectatorship, and the place of movies in culture. Through an in-depth discussion of mainstream Hollywood films, Plantinga investigates what he terms "the paradox of negative emotion" and the function of mainstream narratives as ritualistic fantasies. He describes the sensual nature of the movies and shows how film emotions are often elicited for rhetorical purposes. He uses cognitive science and philosophical aesthetics to demonstrate why cinema may deliver a similar emotional charge for diverse audiences.
Abstract:
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Affect and the Movies -- The Significance of Affect -- A Theory of Affect at the Movies -- In Defense of Films -- Spectators and Roles: A Brief Note on Terminology -- 1. Pleasures, Desires, Fantasies -- Movie Pleasures -- Cognitive Play -- Visceral Experience -- Sympathy, Antipathy, and Parasocial Engagement -- Narrative Scenarios and Emotional Satisfactions -- Reflexive and Social Pleasures -- The Multiple Pleasures of the Spectator -- Movie Desires -- Movies as Fantasies -- Movies and Dreams -- 2. Movies and Emotions -- Automaticity and the Psychological Unconscious -- What Is Emotion? -- A Cognitive-Perceptual Approach -- Basic Concepts and Terms -- Emotions inside and outside the Movie Theater -- The Paradox of Fiction -- Play and the Regulation of Emotion -- Kinds of Emotions -- Direct, Sympathetic/Antipathetic, Artifact, and Meta-emotions -- Memory Traces and Associations -- Summary: Emotions at the Movies -- 3. Stories and Sympathies -- Affective Prefocusing -- Paradigm Scenarios -- Primary Emotions and the Movies -- Hollywood and the New Hollywood -- Narrative and Character -- Classical Narrative Structure and Emotion -- Character Engagement -- Character Goals and Engagement -- The Structure of Engagement -- Character Engagement and Spectator Difference -- What Character Engagement Is: A Summary -- 4. The Sensual Medium -- Seeing and Hearing Movies -- Film and the Body -- Direct Affect -- Representing Emotional Experience -- Affective Mimicry -- Mimicry and the Face -- Mimicry and the Body -- Music, Sound, and Affect -- Affect and Contemporary Hollywood Style -- 5. Affective Trajectories and Synesthesia -- Narrative Focus -- Character Goals and Narration -- Synesthetic Affect and Fittingness -- Narrative Scenarios and Synesthetic Affect.
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
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